In past years, I've carefully charted out a formula that neatly determined how many books had the "right" to be considered the best. Last year, I carefully categorized books and presented the best by topic. I don't, frankly, have time for such shenanigans this year. What follows, instead, is a list of those books I would highly advise any avid reader to add to their list for the coming year.
Non-Fiction:
The Last Resort: A Memoir of Mishchief and Mayhem on a Family Farm in Africa
Black market currency dealers? Check. Backpacker lodge turned local hotspot for pimps, prostitutes, illegal diamond dealers, and government ministers? Check. Pot, power cuts, and police run amok? Check, check, check. Only in Zimbabwe.
Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds
Or, perhaps better subtitled: what happens when half of a family is "interred" in America and the other half is conscripted to fight for the Japanese while living in Hiroshima. This is a fascinating, chilling, haunting read that will get you thinking about everything from loyalty and resiliency to how life is so seldom black-and-white,
right-and-wrong. And certainly about the human lives impacted by government decree, and about
how capricious it all is.
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
Of all the careers I never knew existed, art detective may top the list. Who knew? In any case, Charley Hill rescues art. He is Scotland Yard's art recovery man, and this is the man, and more to the
point, the profession, that Edward Dolnick brings to life in Rescue Artist.
Fiction:
Gutenberg's Apprentice
Peter Schoeffer a scribe-on-the-make,
recalled from Paris by his foster father in order to
become part of a harebrained new scheme to print books. Schoeffer is to be nothing less than Johann Gutenberg's apprentice and the rest, as they say, is history. Reading the author's note and discovering how much of the book was true
was the icing on the cake for me. Schoeffer and company not only really existed, but based on historical records,
existed largely as author Alix Christie portrayed them. For a connoisseur of
excelling historical fiction, there are few happier conclusions than
learning that it really happened the way the author said.
West of Sunset
Zelda and Scott. What couple better embodies the Roaring Twenties? West of Sunset is set well beyond the roar, though, deep into the years of madness and drink. No longer golden children, Zelda is locked away in an Asheville asylum and Scott is desperate often destitute, torn between the past and the
present, obsessed with his failures, and resolving to be better. Stewart O'Nan's Scott feels absolutely authentic.
Lucky Us
Amy Bloom has created an entire cast of memorable characters, each with
their own personalities, quirks, and, perhaps most importantly, flaws.
And she has done this using some of the most beautiful prose I have read
in a long time. Most notably, Lucky Us contains two of the best quotes I encountered all year:
"The wicked people of the world are not supposed to be calm and
composed." Another character explains her aversion to religion concisely with this beauty: "she absolutely did not believe that a white man was going to
come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her
hand or be her friend."
The Summer Before the War
England, 1913. The inhabitants of quaint, little Rye feel the drumbeat of war and are prepared to do their part, and out do their neighbors, to defend their King and country. Helen Simonson tackles more heavy topics in a single book than many authors span in several: war crimes, racial discrimination, homosexuality (remember, this is 1913), unwed motherhood (I repeat, it's 1913), loyalty, patriotism, and women's rights come to mind in a hurry. Yet she does it deftly, softly, almost, so that this book is not a dark and gloomy slog, but a quiet day's journey into the English countryside.
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
This is a book about books. It is a book for and about people who prefer the
company of books to that of other humans. Anyone who has ever loved
reading so much that they've turned down an invitation or marinated in
the stew of so-many-books, so-little-time will be able to relate to the protagonists, Sara
and Amy.
Happy New Year and, as always, Happy Reading!
Saturday, December 31, 2016
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West
I would love to report that I've sent 2016 out with a bang, but unfortunately, the last book on my list this year is one I couldn't quite finish. I've read just more than one-third and determined I've learned more than enough about Lewis and Clark. I will say this: Stephen Ambrose is nothing, if not thorough, (re)recording everything from the daily highs to the miles the expedition made on any given day. (I occasionally felt I was reliving an adolescent family vacation during which we drove no small part of the Lewis and Clark, but that is a story for another day.)
Also, Lewis and Clark make the pioneers look like they had it easy. I cannot help but be continually amazed at the litany of tasks an individual used to accomplish in a given day or week or month or year. Lewis was not yet in his third decade when Jefferson tasked him with opening the West; the fact that he saved a party from Indians when he was only 10 seems only natural.
Ambrose resolutely makes the case that the Lewis and Clark expedition was possibly the most important undertaking in U.S. history, and certainly that the repercussions and reverberations shaped the country into what it is today. Undaunted Courage is well-researched and well-written. It is a good book. It is also a long book, written for an audience with a greater interest in the nitty-gritty of Lewis and Clark's days. If this is you, by all means, read it. If this doesn't describe you, I predict it would make for a long, hard slog. Which is perhaps appropriate, given the subject matter.
Also, Lewis and Clark make the pioneers look like they had it easy. I cannot help but be continually amazed at the litany of tasks an individual used to accomplish in a given day or week or month or year. Lewis was not yet in his third decade when Jefferson tasked him with opening the West; the fact that he saved a party from Indians when he was only 10 seems only natural.
Ambrose resolutely makes the case that the Lewis and Clark expedition was possibly the most important undertaking in U.S. history, and certainly that the repercussions and reverberations shaped the country into what it is today. Undaunted Courage is well-researched and well-written. It is a good book. It is also a long book, written for an audience with a greater interest in the nitty-gritty of Lewis and Clark's days. If this is you, by all means, read it. If this doesn't describe you, I predict it would make for a long, hard slog. Which is perhaps appropriate, given the subject matter.
Wednesday, December 21, 2016
The Cherry Harvest
I can't pinpoint the exact point where The Cherry Harvest "jumped the shark" for me, but I can affirm positively that as I approached the end, I was no longer buying what Lucy Sanna was selling.
The book begins well enough, with the Christiansen family struggling to make ends meet as World War II grinds on and the pool of available men to harvest the cherry crop has completely and utterly disappeared - that is, except for the possibility of using German POWs, a possibility that only strong-willed Charlotte is able to contemplate. Charlotte successfully badgers first her husband, the mild-mannered Thomas, and then the town's leaders into allowing this, only to face undreamed of consequences when her son returns from Europe wounded, broken, and bitter.
The biggest challenge for me in really buying into The Cherry Harvest had to do with both the number of events occurring in a highly condensed time frame, the number of unlikely coincidences required for the pieces to fit together, and the unlikelihood of so many of the individual events occurring, let alone occurring in rapid succession. Couple that with an incredibly rushed ending and...yeah. While I'm on the topic, my biggest beef has got to be how hurried the ending is. Sanna relies on an Epilogue to tie up some of her plot, but a few lines to resolve key plot points left me feeling cheated, to say the least.
The character of Kate, the daughter, was the best developed, and her character is certainly the most sympathetic, particularly as she struggles with her loyalties to her parents and brother Ben.
Final verdict: there's a lot of good (historical) fiction out there. The Cherry Harvest was too over-the-top for me to class it in the top tier.
The book begins well enough, with the Christiansen family struggling to make ends meet as World War II grinds on and the pool of available men to harvest the cherry crop has completely and utterly disappeared - that is, except for the possibility of using German POWs, a possibility that only strong-willed Charlotte is able to contemplate. Charlotte successfully badgers first her husband, the mild-mannered Thomas, and then the town's leaders into allowing this, only to face undreamed of consequences when her son returns from Europe wounded, broken, and bitter.
The biggest challenge for me in really buying into The Cherry Harvest had to do with both the number of events occurring in a highly condensed time frame, the number of unlikely coincidences required for the pieces to fit together, and the unlikelihood of so many of the individual events occurring, let alone occurring in rapid succession. Couple that with an incredibly rushed ending and...yeah. While I'm on the topic, my biggest beef has got to be how hurried the ending is. Sanna relies on an Epilogue to tie up some of her plot, but a few lines to resolve key plot points left me feeling cheated, to say the least.
The character of Kate, the daughter, was the best developed, and her character is certainly the most sympathetic, particularly as she struggles with her loyalties to her parents and brother Ben.
Final verdict: there's a lot of good (historical) fiction out there. The Cherry Harvest was too over-the-top for me to class it in the top tier.
Friday, December 16, 2016
The Perfume Collector
Grace Monroe is 28-years-old, a socialite who runs with titled set in 1950s England, and utterly uninspired by it all. Her life is turned on its head when she learns she has inherited a considerable fortune from a Parisian named Eva d'Orsey whose name she has never heard, and whose connection she cannot fathom.
Rather than simply sign on the line, Grace feels compelled to learn more of who Eva was and why she selected her to receive such bounty. Much to the exasperation of her lawyer in Paris, to say nothing of her friends and husband, Grace leaves no stone unturned, ultimately uncovering more than she bargained for.
The Perfume Collector is essentially two stories, that of Grace, a 1950s socialite, and that of Eva, a New York chambermaid who inspired three perfumes before the untimely death of the perfumer who adored her. (In that sense, Kathleen Tessaro's book seems slightly misnamed: as best I can tell, there was no perfume collector, only a perfume maker and a muse.) On the whole, I enjoyed this book, although there were a few details that Tessaro seemed to simply abandon as the story progressed. I'm still scratching my head, for example, about the multiple mentions of the "black Daimlers," which in the end are neither mentioned nor resolved and seemed to serve no purpose.
The character of Grace, too, contained a number of frustration contradictions. She alternates between a spine of steel (breaking into an abandoned building!) and the courage of a jellyfish (her interactions with her friend Mallory and, to a lesser extent, her husband). As for Eva, I would have liked to see more of her "grown-up" character, particularly her war years experiences. As it is, we learn of these through her proxy, Madame Zed.
That said, The Perfume Collector is a page-turner. I read the entire book in two sittings and was invested in Grace's story. This may not have been the *best* book I've read this year, but it is plenty good.
3.5 stars
Rather than simply sign on the line, Grace feels compelled to learn more of who Eva was and why she selected her to receive such bounty. Much to the exasperation of her lawyer in Paris, to say nothing of her friends and husband, Grace leaves no stone unturned, ultimately uncovering more than she bargained for.
The Perfume Collector is essentially two stories, that of Grace, a 1950s socialite, and that of Eva, a New York chambermaid who inspired three perfumes before the untimely death of the perfumer who adored her. (In that sense, Kathleen Tessaro's book seems slightly misnamed: as best I can tell, there was no perfume collector, only a perfume maker and a muse.) On the whole, I enjoyed this book, although there were a few details that Tessaro seemed to simply abandon as the story progressed. I'm still scratching my head, for example, about the multiple mentions of the "black Daimlers," which in the end are neither mentioned nor resolved and seemed to serve no purpose.
The character of Grace, too, contained a number of frustration contradictions. She alternates between a spine of steel (breaking into an abandoned building!) and the courage of a jellyfish (her interactions with her friend Mallory and, to a lesser extent, her husband). As for Eva, I would have liked to see more of her "grown-up" character, particularly her war years experiences. As it is, we learn of these through her proxy, Madame Zed.
That said, The Perfume Collector is a page-turner. I read the entire book in two sittings and was invested in Grace's story. This may not have been the *best* book I've read this year, but it is plenty good.
3.5 stars
Thursday, December 8, 2016
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper
Given that the story is British, the most apt adjective for it is probably "lovely." It really is. Phaedra Patrick's The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper is just a delightful little story of the recently-widowed septuagenarian Arthur Pepper, who discovers a charm bracelet as he is cleaning out his late wife's belongings on the first anniversary of her death. Following its discovery, Arthur embarks on a quest to uncover the stories behind the charms.
His wife, Miriam, it seems led a varied and exciting life before she met him and settled down in the shadow of York Minster. In fact, the more of her life he discovers, the more he is certain that she couldn't really have been as happy with their quiet life together as she had seemed. Arthur begins to ask himself if, even after 40+ years, you can ever really know another person.
As I said, this is a lovely story, a quick read, but with deeper issues to be pondered just below the surface. For Phaedra Patrick has really created a story about the malleability of memory, both what we choose to forget, as well as how what we remember can change shape with the passage of time. Patrick does this in a subtle enough way, never bludgeoning her reader with the heavy stuff, such that one can just as happily read about Arthur Pepper's adventures when seeking a light read as when in a brooding mood.
Most impressively, Patrick has created a bevy of unique characters about whom I cared and for whose successes I cheered. I finished this book wanting more, thinking about where a sequel might lead.
Five stars.
His wife, Miriam, it seems led a varied and exciting life before she met him and settled down in the shadow of York Minster. In fact, the more of her life he discovers, the more he is certain that she couldn't really have been as happy with their quiet life together as she had seemed. Arthur begins to ask himself if, even after 40+ years, you can ever really know another person.
As I said, this is a lovely story, a quick read, but with deeper issues to be pondered just below the surface. For Phaedra Patrick has really created a story about the malleability of memory, both what we choose to forget, as well as how what we remember can change shape with the passage of time. Patrick does this in a subtle enough way, never bludgeoning her reader with the heavy stuff, such that one can just as happily read about Arthur Pepper's adventures when seeking a light read as when in a brooding mood.
Most impressively, Patrick has created a bevy of unique characters about whom I cared and for whose successes I cheered. I finished this book wanting more, thinking about where a sequel might lead.
Five stars.
Saturday, December 3, 2016
The Mirrored World
Occasionally, I finish a book and find myself struggling to describe it in a meaningful way. That was the case with The Mirrored World. I chose this book for its relatively unique setting (at least as far as historical fiction is concerned): St. Petersburg in the years immediately before Catherine the Great ascended the throne. Unfortunately, save for the occasional glimpse of the Neva or description of the Winter Palace, the city itself was a relatively minor character.
At the most basic level, Debra Dean's novel is the story of cousins Dasha and Xenia, whose families are loosely connected to the royal court, and the latter of whom eventually marries one of the court's choristers, Colonel Andrei Feodorovich. When he dies tragically, Xenia descends rapidly into madness, distributing all of her wealth and possessions to the poor, while cousin Xenia tries futilely to help her overcome her grief.
I did not realize until after I'd finished the book and begin doing a bit of research that Xenia and Andrei were, in fact, a real couple, and that she became St. Xenia (saint day: September 11), a "holy fool" beloved by the residents of her city and famous for her sense of clairvoyance. The character of Dasha, as best I can tell, is Dean's own work.
Ultimately, I felt rather ambivalent about this book. Learning of St. Xenia lends a level of interest to it, and Dean's prose is fluid and beautiful, but I just wasn't that invested in what happened to either Xenia or Dasha, and I was admittedly disappointed by the fact that St. Petersburg, which looms so large in life, was relegated to such a supporting role in this book.
At the most basic level, Debra Dean's novel is the story of cousins Dasha and Xenia, whose families are loosely connected to the royal court, and the latter of whom eventually marries one of the court's choristers, Colonel Andrei Feodorovich. When he dies tragically, Xenia descends rapidly into madness, distributing all of her wealth and possessions to the poor, while cousin Xenia tries futilely to help her overcome her grief.
I did not realize until after I'd finished the book and begin doing a bit of research that Xenia and Andrei were, in fact, a real couple, and that she became St. Xenia (saint day: September 11), a "holy fool" beloved by the residents of her city and famous for her sense of clairvoyance. The character of Dasha, as best I can tell, is Dean's own work.
Ultimately, I felt rather ambivalent about this book. Learning of St. Xenia lends a level of interest to it, and Dean's prose is fluid and beautiful, but I just wasn't that invested in what happened to either Xenia or Dasha, and I was admittedly disappointed by the fact that St. Petersburg, which looms so large in life, was relegated to such a supporting role in this book.
Saturday, November 19, 2016
The Fall of the House of Dixie: The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South
There is something to be said for a book whose opening chapter includes the passage: "Since ancient Greece and Rome, republican thinkers had worried and warned about the dangers inherent in conferring full citizenship upon those who performed the republic's hardest, most disagreeable labor in return for the meanest standard of life. Wouldn't such poor and unhappy citizens use their freedoms and civic rights to cause trouble? Wouldn't they protest and act collectively to change their condition? Wouldn't they elect to public office either one of their own - or some adventurer , some demagogue, some Caesar, who appealed to the mob's resentments and frustrations in order to gain power for himself? Wouldn't any of these outcomes doom the republic, just as it had repeatedly done in the ancient world?" [emphasis mine] Looking around today, I can't but think more prescient words have seldom been written.
The Fall of the House of Dixie, in addition to musing on the political leanings of the lower classes, examines the social and political cracks that existed in the Confederate States of America before, during, and immediately after the American Civil War. Far from being a closely united and firmly committed entity, the Confederacy was, in many ways, a loosely confederated block of states, whose only real point of agreement was on the supremacy of the white race over all others.
Bruce Levine mines rich material to paint a detailed portrait of a South in chaos: state government fighting one another, planters fighting the state governments, the state governments and the planters fighting the "national" government at virtually every turn. In much the same way that Michael Korda's Hero was a revelation to me as regards the Middle East, a single thought recurred to me throughout Dixie: ungovernable. The Confederates, and especially the planters, were ungovernable, working against their best interest at every turn, undermining anyone in a position of authority.
The greatest strength of The Fall of the House of Dixie is that it explores an aspect of the Civil War that is relatively unknown, as Levine discusses in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book. The South is almost always portrayed as a cohesive union in which the citizenry supported Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis to the last man. Levine reveals this "truth" for the myth that it is and explores many others along the way.
Leaving off as it does at the beginning of Reconstruction, this book makes an excellent precursor to After Appomattox: How the South Won the War, which completes the story of how the ungovernable were allowed to govern over all.
The Fall of the House of Dixie, in addition to musing on the political leanings of the lower classes, examines the social and political cracks that existed in the Confederate States of America before, during, and immediately after the American Civil War. Far from being a closely united and firmly committed entity, the Confederacy was, in many ways, a loosely confederated block of states, whose only real point of agreement was on the supremacy of the white race over all others.
Bruce Levine mines rich material to paint a detailed portrait of a South in chaos: state government fighting one another, planters fighting the state governments, the state governments and the planters fighting the "national" government at virtually every turn. In much the same way that Michael Korda's Hero was a revelation to me as regards the Middle East, a single thought recurred to me throughout Dixie: ungovernable. The Confederates, and especially the planters, were ungovernable, working against their best interest at every turn, undermining anyone in a position of authority.
The greatest strength of The Fall of the House of Dixie is that it explores an aspect of the Civil War that is relatively unknown, as Levine discusses in the Acknowledgements at the end of the book. The South is almost always portrayed as a cohesive union in which the citizenry supported Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis to the last man. Levine reveals this "truth" for the myth that it is and explores many others along the way.
Leaving off as it does at the beginning of Reconstruction, this book makes an excellent precursor to After Appomattox: How the South Won the War, which completes the story of how the ungovernable were allowed to govern over all.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
Zigzag: The Incredible Wartime Exploits of Double Agent Eddie Chapman
Zigzag takes its name from Eddie Chapman's code names; Chapman being one of the most successful double agents in all of World War II. His story is a fascinating one but, unfortunately, loses something in the telling. As a result, some of the "adventure" that so motivated Chapman is lost - and that assumes the reader makes it past Chapman's early (criminal) life and to his spy days.
Chapman was a serial safebreaker and petty criminal in the '30s, and found himself locked inside a Jersey jail when the Germans invaded. Seeking - always - to save his skin, Chapman offered to work for them, with an eye toward being sent back to England. His plan worked, and he was able to offer his services to the British, who used him to great affect in the latter years of the war.
I don't have any particular bones to pick with author Nicholas Booth. Zigzag is at least the fourth book I've read on World War II-era spying. With the exception of Operation Mincemeat (which I loved), I have been disappointed in all of them. I did not finish the one about Richard Sorge and was singularly unimpressed with the works on Vera Atkins and Roald Dahl's espionage career. On the other hand, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy and She Rode with Generals are excellent Civil War-era spy biographies, so perhaps spying in that war makes for better reading.
Chapman was a serial safebreaker and petty criminal in the '30s, and found himself locked inside a Jersey jail when the Germans invaded. Seeking - always - to save his skin, Chapman offered to work for them, with an eye toward being sent back to England. His plan worked, and he was able to offer his services to the British, who used him to great affect in the latter years of the war.
I don't have any particular bones to pick with author Nicholas Booth. Zigzag is at least the fourth book I've read on World War II-era spying. With the exception of Operation Mincemeat (which I loved), I have been disappointed in all of them. I did not finish the one about Richard Sorge and was singularly unimpressed with the works on Vera Atkins and Roald Dahl's espionage career. On the other hand, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy and She Rode with Generals are excellent Civil War-era spy biographies, so perhaps spying in that war makes for better reading.
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
The Truth According to Us
In the midst of the Great Depression, Layla Beck's father, the Honorable Senator from Delaware, cuts her off and she must go on relief. Fortunately for Layla, she has friends in high places and, unlike the millions standing in soup lines, she's able to quickly secure a job as a writer for the Federal Writers' Project. Promptly, she is shuttled off to little Macedonia, West Virginia, a far cry from her previous summer playground, Cape May.
Macedonia is, Layla quickly deduces, a hick town, with little of consequence. (It does not, however, have coal mines, for which is is at least minimally grateful.) Still she must write her book, and she throws herself into the task with gusto. As the weeks pass, her life becomes intertwined with the formerly proud but now fallen Romeyns, in particular shady Felix and his daughters Bird and Willa, as well as Felix's steady but odd siblings, Jottie, Mae, Emmett, and Minerva.
I *loved* the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, of which Annie Barrows was one of two authors, and I wanted to love this. And I did love parts of it. The names, for example. Jottie. Willa. Bird. Felix. Also, the incorporation of the Federal Writers' Project, and some of the hilarious interactions between author and subject(s). Likewise, The Truth According to Us does a fine job of capturing the prettiness and pettiness of small-town America, and America teetering between the teeth of the Great Depression and the brink of World War II.
In the end, though, I couldn't help but feel a bit...meh. In part, I believe that's because the letter writing device, which worked to so well in Guernsey, seemed trite and tired here. A few pages chopped here and there wouldn't have hurt. The characters, too, felt overdrawn to the point of caricature and Willa, for whom I believe the reader is supposed to have the greatest felling, evoked a combination of contempt and pity from me. Mostly, though, I put that down to the ending, which, without giving anything away, left me disappointed. Barrows, it seemed, was about proving some larger "life lesson" than allowing the story to end as seemed most fitting. Or least as I deemed most fitting.
Macedonia is, Layla quickly deduces, a hick town, with little of consequence. (It does not, however, have coal mines, for which is is at least minimally grateful.) Still she must write her book, and she throws herself into the task with gusto. As the weeks pass, her life becomes intertwined with the formerly proud but now fallen Romeyns, in particular shady Felix and his daughters Bird and Willa, as well as Felix's steady but odd siblings, Jottie, Mae, Emmett, and Minerva.
I *loved* the The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, of which Annie Barrows was one of two authors, and I wanted to love this. And I did love parts of it. The names, for example. Jottie. Willa. Bird. Felix. Also, the incorporation of the Federal Writers' Project, and some of the hilarious interactions between author and subject(s). Likewise, The Truth According to Us does a fine job of capturing the prettiness and pettiness of small-town America, and America teetering between the teeth of the Great Depression and the brink of World War II.
In the end, though, I couldn't help but feel a bit...meh. In part, I believe that's because the letter writing device, which worked to so well in Guernsey, seemed trite and tired here. A few pages chopped here and there wouldn't have hurt. The characters, too, felt overdrawn to the point of caricature and Willa, for whom I believe the reader is supposed to have the greatest felling, evoked a combination of contempt and pity from me. Mostly, though, I put that down to the ending, which, without giving anything away, left me disappointed. Barrows, it seemed, was about proving some larger "life lesson" than allowing the story to end as seemed most fitting. Or least as I deemed most fitting.
Thursday, October 27, 2016
Nuns Behaving Badly: Tales of Music, Magic, Art, and Arson in the Convents of Italy
The title of Craig Monson's work on naughty nuns doesn't leave much to the imagination. It is, as stated, a compilation of incidents involving Italy's nuns in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries - taken straight from the Vatican archives, no less. Some were rather mundane, certainly by today's standards: a nun who loved to sing, for example, and had to be barred from doing so by formal decree, only to fall afoul of the decree. Others - such as the Calabrian nuns who set fire to their convent in order to escaped the cloistered life - are admittedly more shocking.
As Monson discovered in the course of his research, a typical nun's life was rather dull. Surprised? I wasn't either. I was surprised to learn, though that the life of a nun often began at the age of six or seven, and sometimes as young as two. Also, that there were aristocratic convents, convents for converted prostitutes (the appropriately named Convertites), and for everyone in between. What's more, the convent was the usual choice for younger daughters, as the Church's dowry requirements were significantly less than a husband's.
All of which is to say that as much as I enjoyed reading about the episodes themselves (sneaking relatives into convents! sneaking out to the opera! an escalating dispute over convent cushions!), I enjoyed even more learning learning about this aspect of life during and after the Renaissance. I've commented before of being impressed by the power of the Church and its total and utter domination of life; I come away from Nuns Behaving Badly amazed again at the acts committed in the name of God.
Amen.
As Monson discovered in the course of his research, a typical nun's life was rather dull. Surprised? I wasn't either. I was surprised to learn, though that the life of a nun often began at the age of six or seven, and sometimes as young as two. Also, that there were aristocratic convents, convents for converted prostitutes (the appropriately named Convertites), and for everyone in between. What's more, the convent was the usual choice for younger daughters, as the Church's dowry requirements were significantly less than a husband's.
All of which is to say that as much as I enjoyed reading about the episodes themselves (sneaking relatives into convents! sneaking out to the opera! an escalating dispute over convent cushions!), I enjoyed even more learning learning about this aspect of life during and after the Renaissance. I've commented before of being impressed by the power of the Church and its total and utter domination of life; I come away from Nuns Behaving Badly amazed again at the acts committed in the name of God.
Amen.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Mr. Wilson's War: From the Assassination of McKinley to the Defeat of the League of Nations
So here's the thing: 200 pages in, the only war Mr. Wilson had fought was against Villa, in Mexico. And I think he was still fighting it when I finally called time. I can't say I wasn't warned. The title clearly states that this book chronicles events from 1901 onward, but I am guilty of not taking the title at face value. Thus far, Woodrow Wilson's upbringing, years at Princeton, first marriage (death did them part), and remarriage while in her first term as President have been chronicled at length, along with events more closely related to war, albeit not necessarily the one raging in Europe.
More than the plodding pace, what did me in was the poor grammar and punctuation. I'm not sure whether this is unique to the electronic (Nook) format or if the print version suffers from the same dearth of commas and apostrophes, but I was nearly driven to distraction by this issue.
In short, I come away more disappointed than anything. I had high hopes, as I've heard wonderful things about the author, John Dos Passos, but I just couldn't make this one work for me. Perhaps that's a testament to some of the wonderful World War I writing I've already done: The Guns of August and The Beauty and the Sorrow, which both present a holistic view of the war, particularly the causes; Dead Wake, which chronicles the Lusitania disaster; and, of course, The Last of the Doughboys, which is a collection of memoirs from the Americans who served in Mr. Wilson's war - including one who was stationed on the Mexican border.
More than the plodding pace, what did me in was the poor grammar and punctuation. I'm not sure whether this is unique to the electronic (Nook) format or if the print version suffers from the same dearth of commas and apostrophes, but I was nearly driven to distraction by this issue.
In short, I come away more disappointed than anything. I had high hopes, as I've heard wonderful things about the author, John Dos Passos, but I just couldn't make this one work for me. Perhaps that's a testament to some of the wonderful World War I writing I've already done: The Guns of August and The Beauty and the Sorrow, which both present a holistic view of the war, particularly the causes; Dead Wake, which chronicles the Lusitania disaster; and, of course, The Last of the Doughboys, which is a collection of memoirs from the Americans who served in Mr. Wilson's war - including one who was stationed on the Mexican border.
Wednesday, October 12, 2016
The Summer Before the War
It's not often that I finish a book, only to return to the beginning to begin rereading it (albeit quickly!) with an eye toward anything I missed the first time around. Helen Simonson's The Summer Before the War is just such a rare book.
On one level, it is the story of the inhabitants of the Rye, a quintessential English village, as they come to terms with this new war - and the new world it ushers in. It is peopled with rich characters and not a few petty rivalries. The Kent family is the heart of the story, with Aunt Agatha and Uncle John and their nephews Daniel and Hugh. Into their midst enters Beatrice Nash, come to town to teach Latin, a proposition which many in the town find downright scandalous. She arrives in Rye in the middle of that last summer when England was "Old England," and when the English, and the upper classes in particular, had every faith that war could be averted. Simonson captures the end of the age as well as those who lived it.
On a deeper level, The Summer Before the War is the story of stigma: the stigma of insufficient patriotism; the stigma of acts that mar an otherwise upstanding reputation; the stigma of loving the wrong person - or loving the right person at the wrong time; the stigma of not being British (or not being British enough). The stigma of being a Gypsy. From war crimes to homosexuality, Simonson handles heavy topics with a deft touch. In fact, her work is so fine that it was not until I'd finished this novel that I realized how consistently this thread runs through the book. Moreover, and like Simonson's last novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Simonson's characters are multi-dimensional and feel entirely real. Their adventures are fun, touching, and highly readable. The relationships that she crafts are a strong point of the story.
I have read many novels with World War I as the backdrop, and no small number of these British. (The Walnut Tree and Somewhere in France are but two that trade on this setting.) To my mind, though, The Summer Before the War is the richest, most involved, and most emotionally charged of those I have read. From the presence of the Belgian refugees to the emergence of women's rights, Simonson has created a story in which going over the top is only part of the story of England's war.
On one level, it is the story of the inhabitants of the Rye, a quintessential English village, as they come to terms with this new war - and the new world it ushers in. It is peopled with rich characters and not a few petty rivalries. The Kent family is the heart of the story, with Aunt Agatha and Uncle John and their nephews Daniel and Hugh. Into their midst enters Beatrice Nash, come to town to teach Latin, a proposition which many in the town find downright scandalous. She arrives in Rye in the middle of that last summer when England was "Old England," and when the English, and the upper classes in particular, had every faith that war could be averted. Simonson captures the end of the age as well as those who lived it.
On a deeper level, The Summer Before the War is the story of stigma: the stigma of insufficient patriotism; the stigma of acts that mar an otherwise upstanding reputation; the stigma of loving the wrong person - or loving the right person at the wrong time; the stigma of not being British (or not being British enough). The stigma of being a Gypsy. From war crimes to homosexuality, Simonson handles heavy topics with a deft touch. In fact, her work is so fine that it was not until I'd finished this novel that I realized how consistently this thread runs through the book. Moreover, and like Simonson's last novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, Simonson's characters are multi-dimensional and feel entirely real. Their adventures are fun, touching, and highly readable. The relationships that she crafts are a strong point of the story.
I have read many novels with World War I as the backdrop, and no small number of these British. (The Walnut Tree and Somewhere in France are but two that trade on this setting.) To my mind, though, The Summer Before the War is the richest, most involved, and most emotionally charged of those I have read. From the presence of the Belgian refugees to the emergence of women's rights, Simonson has created a story in which going over the top is only part of the story of England's war.
Tuesday, October 4, 2016
West With the Night
Born in 1902, Beryl Markham was a woman ahead of her time. A champion racehorse trainer, author, and bush pilot, Markham was the first female pilot in Kenya and flew solo across the Atlantic during the early years of the aviation age. She is also a fine author, as evidenced by this memoir, in which she writes what must be one of my all-time favorite lines. Writing of an encounter with low-level Italian bureaucrats in the years immediately preceding World War II, Markham writes that there is "no hell like uncertainty, and no greater menace to society than an Italian with three liras worth of authority." I'll have to remember that the next time I'm bemoaning a peon on a power trip.
West with the Night offers not only a glimpse into Markham's own remarkable life (if Gertrude Bell was the Desert Queen, perhaps Markham is the queen of the savanna), but also into British colonialism. Unlike White Mischief, which focuses almost entirely on the British experience in Kenya, West with the Night includes extensive memories of Markham living the "authentic" Kenyan experience, including being "moderately eaten by [a] large lion." Although I was most interested in Beryl the bush pilot, Beryl the bush hunter is also a fascinating study, particularly as this phase of life preceded the former by many years - making Markham but a girl when she would join native tribesman on boar hunts!
Markham may have been ahead of her time in some respects, but in her regard for native populations, she was very much a woman of her time and place. The early pages, in particular, reek of colonialism; Markham's description of the various Kenyan people are jarring, and the depth of British imperialism is something to behold. To say it is a long way from West with the Night to The Last Resort is to rather understate things.
West with the Night offers not only a glimpse into Markham's own remarkable life (if Gertrude Bell was the Desert Queen, perhaps Markham is the queen of the savanna), but also into British colonialism. Unlike White Mischief, which focuses almost entirely on the British experience in Kenya, West with the Night includes extensive memories of Markham living the "authentic" Kenyan experience, including being "moderately eaten by [a] large lion." Although I was most interested in Beryl the bush pilot, Beryl the bush hunter is also a fascinating study, particularly as this phase of life preceded the former by many years - making Markham but a girl when she would join native tribesman on boar hunts!
Markham may have been ahead of her time in some respects, but in her regard for native populations, she was very much a woman of her time and place. The early pages, in particular, reek of colonialism; Markham's description of the various Kenyan people are jarring, and the depth of British imperialism is something to behold. To say it is a long way from West with the Night to The Last Resort is to rather understate things.
Tuesday, September 27, 2016
Long Summer Day
It seems ages since I last read anything by Delderfield, but if anything the time since I last read his work has only made me appreciate it more. Long Summer Day, like To Serve Them All My Days, is a leisurely read, and a quintessentially English one at that. Beyond the pacing and prose, the former has in common with the latter that a wounded veteran (in this case, of the Boer war, and physically as opposed to psychologically) determines to put any thought of war behind him by retreating deep into the English countryside.
And so it is that Paul Craddock survives the Boer War to learn of his father's death - and a far greater inheritance than he expected. This he spends on the purchase of a rundown estate, Shallowford, which he determines to make over for the better of all residing there. Too, Squire and tenants alike must grapple with the rapid changes in society, from the introduction of the motor car to the debate over women's suffrage. Here, Delderfield has created a vast array of supporting characters, each unique enough to be memorable, but similar enough to fit nicely into a single estate without creating undue conflict or tension. Long Summer Day is also suffused with the foreboding of future entanglements with Germany: that the Kaiser is building his fleet is regularly put to the reader. There can be no doubt that Shallowford is on the cusp of the end, as Laurie Lee wrote, "of a thousand years' life."
As I've noted about Delderfield in the past, the one complaint, if I'm to have one, is that this book, too, is a tome, totally some 800 pages before all is said and done. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but rather to say I'm quite certain I would have enjoyed it equally well at, say, 550 pages. (I should acknowledge, though, that this is the exact opposite of my complaint regarding the last book I read, Mademoiselle Chanel, whose author I accused of erasing entire years from Chanel's life for the sake, one presumes, of brevity. So perhaps there's just no pleasing me.)
All told, this book is a wonderful, leisurely stroll into a world that doesn't exist any longer. Its length requires a serious commitment of time on the part of the reader, but Delderfield has never failed to make an impression on me and I somehow feel richer for reading his works.
And so it is that Paul Craddock survives the Boer War to learn of his father's death - and a far greater inheritance than he expected. This he spends on the purchase of a rundown estate, Shallowford, which he determines to make over for the better of all residing there. Too, Squire and tenants alike must grapple with the rapid changes in society, from the introduction of the motor car to the debate over women's suffrage. Here, Delderfield has created a vast array of supporting characters, each unique enough to be memorable, but similar enough to fit nicely into a single estate without creating undue conflict or tension. Long Summer Day is also suffused with the foreboding of future entanglements with Germany: that the Kaiser is building his fleet is regularly put to the reader. There can be no doubt that Shallowford is on the cusp of the end, as Laurie Lee wrote, "of a thousand years' life."
As I've noted about Delderfield in the past, the one complaint, if I'm to have one, is that this book, too, is a tome, totally some 800 pages before all is said and done. That is not to say that I didn't enjoy it, but rather to say I'm quite certain I would have enjoyed it equally well at, say, 550 pages. (I should acknowledge, though, that this is the exact opposite of my complaint regarding the last book I read, Mademoiselle Chanel, whose author I accused of erasing entire years from Chanel's life for the sake, one presumes, of brevity. So perhaps there's just no pleasing me.)
All told, this book is a wonderful, leisurely stroll into a world that doesn't exist any longer. Its length requires a serious commitment of time on the part of the reader, but Delderfield has never failed to make an impression on me and I somehow feel richer for reading his works.
Monday, September 19, 2016
Mademoiselle Chanel
From the opening pages, C. W. Gortner's Mademoiselle Chanel put me in mind of Melanie Benjamin's work. Like Benjamin, Gortner plunges his reader immediately into the story, in this case the life and times of Coco Chanel. This he does thoroughly, and well, and the bones I have to pick here come only from knowing too much, if you will about Chanel from prior reading. (Thank you, Coco Chanel: An Intimate Life.)
For example, I drove myself crazy thinking I'd made up that Chanel spurned two marriage proposals from Balsan, before confirming that I wasn't going crazy; Gortner had simply played with the facts. Novels such as these often leave the reader unsure where real life ends and fiction begins. I would have liked a bit of clarification from Gortner at the end of the book, but this is a relatively minor quibble, and one that shouldn't bother those who haven't, say, recently read a biography of Chanel.
A bigger quibble is with Gortner's transitions, which often seemed abrupt, and too frequently were used to compress (or entirely erase) entire years in order to move more quickly through Chanel's life. Moreover, the transitions from what was happening in the broader world (World War I, Black Tuesday, Pearl Harbor, D-Day...you know, nothing major) and Chanel's life, often felt forced, jolting the reader from one topic to another with little (or no) warning. Taken together, this quality detracted from the overall book.
I've noted previously that Coco Chanel, orphan-turned-couturier, was almost certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. She survived untold hardships and a pretty serious morphine habit (glossed over by Gortner, but remarkable in and of itself) to be the leading light of the French fashion scene for decades. Gortner's work brings this multi-dimensional woman into focus for a new audience, and certainly a wider audience than is likely to read a biography. For that alone, he deserves credit. Although not perfect, Mademoiselle Chanel is still a highly readable and engaging work of historical fiction.
For example, I drove myself crazy thinking I'd made up that Chanel spurned two marriage proposals from Balsan, before confirming that I wasn't going crazy; Gortner had simply played with the facts. Novels such as these often leave the reader unsure where real life ends and fiction begins. I would have liked a bit of clarification from Gortner at the end of the book, but this is a relatively minor quibble, and one that shouldn't bother those who haven't, say, recently read a biography of Chanel.
A bigger quibble is with Gortner's transitions, which often seemed abrupt, and too frequently were used to compress (or entirely erase) entire years in order to move more quickly through Chanel's life. Moreover, the transitions from what was happening in the broader world (World War I, Black Tuesday, Pearl Harbor, D-Day...you know, nothing major) and Chanel's life, often felt forced, jolting the reader from one topic to another with little (or no) warning. Taken together, this quality detracted from the overall book.
I've noted previously that Coco Chanel, orphan-turned-couturier, was almost certainly one of the most remarkable figures of the 20th century. She survived untold hardships and a pretty serious morphine habit (glossed over by Gortner, but remarkable in and of itself) to be the leading light of the French fashion scene for decades. Gortner's work brings this multi-dimensional woman into focus for a new audience, and certainly a wider audience than is likely to read a biography. For that alone, he deserves credit. Although not perfect, Mademoiselle Chanel is still a highly readable and engaging work of historical fiction.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
Cider with Rosie
As regular followers of this blog may already know, I often read memoirs, not a few of which have been British (see all of James Herriot or Goodbye to All That). Laurie Lee was born in middle of the Great War, deep in green England, and begins his memoirs by warning readers that some of what he recalls may have been obscured by the fog of young memories. Quickly I understood his meaning, as I often felt I was reading a lot of pretty words, as opposed to a lucid story.
As I was reading, felt more like a collection of anecdotes centered around the dotty and colorful characters who peopled Lee's childhood than a work that captured the zeitgeist of rural, post-war England. Only after reflecting that this was the same time period captured by Edmund Love did I realize that in describing these individuals, Lee was reproducing the time and place - and how very, very different they are from Love's midwestern memories. Lee was not kidding when he wrote that his generation saw, "the end of a thousand years' life."Coincidentally, where Lee ends is nearly where Herriot begins. Between them, a reader is privy to some half-century of life in rural England.
Cider with Rosie ends rather abruptly, with Lee an adolescent on the cusp of leaving home, an adventures he remembers in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, a continuation of Cider with Rosie, which, at this time, I do not anticipate reading.
As I was reading, felt more like a collection of anecdotes centered around the dotty and colorful characters who peopled Lee's childhood than a work that captured the zeitgeist of rural, post-war England. Only after reflecting that this was the same time period captured by Edmund Love did I realize that in describing these individuals, Lee was reproducing the time and place - and how very, very different they are from Love's midwestern memories. Lee was not kidding when he wrote that his generation saw, "the end of a thousand years' life."Coincidentally, where Lee ends is nearly where Herriot begins. Between them, a reader is privy to some half-century of life in rural England.
Cider with Rosie ends rather abruptly, with Lee an adolescent on the cusp of leaving home, an adventures he remembers in As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, a continuation of Cider with Rosie, which, at this time, I do not anticipate reading.
Saturday, September 3, 2016
My Man Jeeves
P.G. Wodehouse's work has been on my reading list for some time now, and all the more since learning of Faith Sullivan's Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse. I am rather fond of Sullivan's work, and took her endorsement of Wodehouse as further evidence that I should move him up my list. And so.
My Man Jeeves is a collection of Wodehouse's short stories, the vast majority of which feature - you guessed it - Jeeves. (Jeeves, of course, is the smarter-than-the-master butler who is forever getting his idling employer and said employer's kith and kin out of various jams.) I have mixed feelings on this collection. At a minimum I will say it took time for me to warm up to Wodehouse's style; title character Jeeves; and, not least, Jeeves's emplyer Bertie Wooster.
Originally published in early 1919, the life and times described in these pages are a world apart from anything most (all?) modern readers know. The language, too, causes the reader to sit up and take notice - British, yes, but also terribly old-fashioned. And unlike a historian, Wodehouse wasn't writing for today's audience, providing context as he worked. Coupled with the fact that Wodehouse's work is in many ways a parody, the overall affect can be a bit jarring.
Make no mistake, I'm glad I read all of the stories in My Man Jeeves. I'm simply not sure I need to follow his adventures any further.
My Man Jeeves is a collection of Wodehouse's short stories, the vast majority of which feature - you guessed it - Jeeves. (Jeeves, of course, is the smarter-than-the-master butler who is forever getting his idling employer and said employer's kith and kin out of various jams.) I have mixed feelings on this collection. At a minimum I will say it took time for me to warm up to Wodehouse's style; title character Jeeves; and, not least, Jeeves's emplyer Bertie Wooster.
Originally published in early 1919, the life and times described in these pages are a world apart from anything most (all?) modern readers know. The language, too, causes the reader to sit up and take notice - British, yes, but also terribly old-fashioned. And unlike a historian, Wodehouse wasn't writing for today's audience, providing context as he worked. Coupled with the fact that Wodehouse's work is in many ways a parody, the overall affect can be a bit jarring.
Make no mistake, I'm glad I read all of the stories in My Man Jeeves. I'm simply not sure I need to follow his adventures any further.
Sunday, August 28, 2016
The Hurricane Sisters
Recently I was hotel-bound in Hong Kong as the result of, you guessed it, a hurricane. Correction: typhoon. Whatever you call it, had it not been for a lack of viable alternatives, I likely would not have finished. I didn't hate Hurricane Sisters, per se, but I found the characters to generally be really big whiners.
Dorothea Benton Frank has written this novel primarily through alternating points of view by three members of the Rivers family. Daughter Ashley is the clear protagonist - a starving artist, she fashions herself as the second coming of Jackie O and bemoans the fact that she's never once gotten to visit Paris. (Side note: this is hard to swallow given the money Frank tells us this family has.) Fast on Ashley's heels is mother Liz, who continually laments 1) her horrible mother (Ashley has nicknamed her own parents "The Impossibles," so there's definitely a bit of a theme here) and 2) that no one in her family has ever cared one lick about her work with victims of domestic violence. Dad Clayton is experiencing a bit of a mid-life crisis and does his own share of poor me-ing. Brother Ivy (as in Clayton IV) makes only brief appearances, which is a shame because he is the only one who doesn't carry on constantly about the hand he's been dealt.
The family, as you've probably gathered, is a bit dysfunctional. The book opens with Liz and Clayton bailing her mother of of jail for walking a llama on a highway. It gets simultaneously wackier and entirely more believable from there, in a you-can't-make it-up kind of way. Snake charmers and sleezebag pols are only two of the types who play bit parts and starring roles.
Upon finishing Hurricane Sisters, I understood why Frank made her main characters so irritating. And, frankly, I was able to appreciate what she had done; I definitely liked the book better after I'd finished it than I did while I was reading it. That said, some chapters were a slog when all I wanted to do was reach through the pages and shake someone (which, yes, is a testament to Frank's skill as an author). In that sense, it wasn't so different from my experience reading the Lowcountry Summer trilogy last summer. Maybe books set in South Carolina in summer are not my thing.
Despite the fact that I opened this review noting that I only finished Hurricane Sisters because of an actual hurricane, I wouldn't completely write it off. This is a fine beach/airplane read provided the reader can bear a hearty helping of whining along with the hijinx.
Dorothea Benton Frank has written this novel primarily through alternating points of view by three members of the Rivers family. Daughter Ashley is the clear protagonist - a starving artist, she fashions herself as the second coming of Jackie O and bemoans the fact that she's never once gotten to visit Paris. (Side note: this is hard to swallow given the money Frank tells us this family has.) Fast on Ashley's heels is mother Liz, who continually laments 1) her horrible mother (Ashley has nicknamed her own parents "The Impossibles," so there's definitely a bit of a theme here) and 2) that no one in her family has ever cared one lick about her work with victims of domestic violence. Dad Clayton is experiencing a bit of a mid-life crisis and does his own share of poor me-ing. Brother Ivy (as in Clayton IV) makes only brief appearances, which is a shame because he is the only one who doesn't carry on constantly about the hand he's been dealt.
The family, as you've probably gathered, is a bit dysfunctional. The book opens with Liz and Clayton bailing her mother of of jail for walking a llama on a highway. It gets simultaneously wackier and entirely more believable from there, in a you-can't-make it-up kind of way. Snake charmers and sleezebag pols are only two of the types who play bit parts and starring roles.
Upon finishing Hurricane Sisters, I understood why Frank made her main characters so irritating. And, frankly, I was able to appreciate what she had done; I definitely liked the book better after I'd finished it than I did while I was reading it. That said, some chapters were a slog when all I wanted to do was reach through the pages and shake someone (which, yes, is a testament to Frank's skill as an author). In that sense, it wasn't so different from my experience reading the Lowcountry Summer trilogy last summer. Maybe books set in South Carolina in summer are not my thing.
Despite the fact that I opened this review noting that I only finished Hurricane Sisters because of an actual hurricane, I wouldn't completely write it off. This is a fine beach/airplane read provided the reader can bear a hearty helping of whining along with the hijinx.
Monday, August 22, 2016
The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend
Ostensibly, Katarina Bivald's The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend, is the story of a twenty-something Swedish woman, Sara Lindqvist, who strikes up an improbable, long-distance friendship with the elderly Amy Harris of Broken Wheel, Iowa, bonding over their shared love of books. Having lost her job in a small bookshop when it closed, Sara accepts Amy's invitation to visit Iowa and discover life in small town America.
Sara arrives in Broken Wheel to discover Amy Harris is dead. This is no Agatha Christie plot, though. Amy, it seems, had been sick for some time and her correspondence with Amy was one of her last true pleasures; she failed to disclose her illness for fear of dissuading Sara from making the trip.
Sara, understandably, was stunned by Amy's death and moreso by the insistence of Amy's friends and neighbors that she stay in Amy's house for the planned visit. Slowly, Sarah becomes increasingly ingrained in the life of the town and lives of its inhabitants to the extent that neither she nor they can imagine her departing when her visa expires.
Ostensibly.
More than anything, though, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is a book about books. It is a book for and about people who prefer the company of books to that of other humans. Anyone who has ever loved reading so much that they've turned down an invitation or marinated in the stew of so-many-books, so-little-time will be able to relate to Sara and Amy. Sara muses on using books to hide from life and also on whether her life, so dominated and defined by books was "really enough," thoughts I'd wager only the most committed of bibliophiles can likewise claim.
I want to add, too, that The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is the story of life in tiny-town America and, in particular, the ways that life is disappearing. Bivald has done an excellent job of capturing the zeitgesit, characterized so often by an all-consuming angst, which is all the more impressive given that she is Swedish. (The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is actually an English translation of a Swedish original.)
All-in-all, this book is outstanding and one I can easily and happily recommend to anyone looking for a good work of fiction. Happy reading!
Sara arrives in Broken Wheel to discover Amy Harris is dead. This is no Agatha Christie plot, though. Amy, it seems, had been sick for some time and her correspondence with Amy was one of her last true pleasures; she failed to disclose her illness for fear of dissuading Sara from making the trip.
Sara, understandably, was stunned by Amy's death and moreso by the insistence of Amy's friends and neighbors that she stay in Amy's house for the planned visit. Slowly, Sarah becomes increasingly ingrained in the life of the town and lives of its inhabitants to the extent that neither she nor they can imagine her departing when her visa expires.
Ostensibly.
More than anything, though, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is a book about books. It is a book for and about people who prefer the company of books to that of other humans. Anyone who has ever loved reading so much that they've turned down an invitation or marinated in the stew of so-many-books, so-little-time will be able to relate to Sara and Amy. Sara muses on using books to hide from life and also on whether her life, so dominated and defined by books was "really enough," thoughts I'd wager only the most committed of bibliophiles can likewise claim.
I want to add, too, that The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is the story of life in tiny-town America and, in particular, the ways that life is disappearing. Bivald has done an excellent job of capturing the zeitgesit, characterized so often by an all-consuming angst, which is all the more impressive given that she is Swedish. (The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend is actually an English translation of a Swedish original.)
All-in-all, this book is outstanding and one I can easily and happily recommend to anyone looking for a good work of fiction. Happy reading!
Wednesday, August 17, 2016
Finding Fontainebleau: An American Boy in France
Several years ago I read Julia Child's memoir of her time in France in the immediate post-war years, My Life in France, which is one of the finest memoirs I've read to date. Naturally, then, Finding Fontainebleau, jumped out at me from the pages of a recent Publisher's Weekly. So first:
Thad Carhart was four-years-old when his father was stationed in France as part of the NATO command. The entire family lived in Fontainebleau for three years, during which Thad started school (becoming "Ted" in the process, as Thad proved impossible to render, as he explains in a humorous anecdote), a good, but naughty, student. In Finding Fontainebleau, Carhart looks back on those three years - a giant Chevy station wagon, a brood of five rambunctious children, and a France still awakening from the nightmare that was World War II - while also weaving in the history of Fontainebleau, and by extension the kings and emperors of France. (Side note: it is to my great regret that I have not yet visited Fontainebleau. If this book convinced me of anything, it is that I really must do so at the next opportunity.)
I enjoyed Carhart's style very much, although I found the steady stream of inserted French to be distracting. For me, it was distracting because I could read it, and so the translations served only to repeat what had read in the previous line. I'm not sure if it would be more or less distracting to a non-French speaker. And, while I enjoyed both the memoir aspect as well as the French history lessons, I felt these were often each so short as to be quite choppy. Carhart's interjections about his life in France since returning to live with his own in the late 1980s further served to heighten this sense for me. And, unfairly, I couldn't help but compare it to the incomparable My Life in France. This is entirely unreasonable, as one memoir is told from the perspective of an adult, while the other is a child's memories, but given the time and place, I couldn't help myself.
Francophiles will still, no doubt, enjoy this book. Carhart provides a particularly interesting look at the work of renovation in France and the work that goes into maintaining the country's patrimoine - the churches, chateaux, palaces, and even parks that make France, well, France. He does a great job distilling the cultural quirks of the French and capturing the old Paris of berets, pissotières, and baguettes.
Thad Carhart was four-years-old when his father was stationed in France as part of the NATO command. The entire family lived in Fontainebleau for three years, during which Thad started school (becoming "Ted" in the process, as Thad proved impossible to render, as he explains in a humorous anecdote), a good, but naughty, student. In Finding Fontainebleau, Carhart looks back on those three years - a giant Chevy station wagon, a brood of five rambunctious children, and a France still awakening from the nightmare that was World War II - while also weaving in the history of Fontainebleau, and by extension the kings and emperors of France. (Side note: it is to my great regret that I have not yet visited Fontainebleau. If this book convinced me of anything, it is that I really must do so at the next opportunity.)
I enjoyed Carhart's style very much, although I found the steady stream of inserted French to be distracting. For me, it was distracting because I could read it, and so the translations served only to repeat what had read in the previous line. I'm not sure if it would be more or less distracting to a non-French speaker. And, while I enjoyed both the memoir aspect as well as the French history lessons, I felt these were often each so short as to be quite choppy. Carhart's interjections about his life in France since returning to live with his own in the late 1980s further served to heighten this sense for me. And, unfairly, I couldn't help but compare it to the incomparable My Life in France. This is entirely unreasonable, as one memoir is told from the perspective of an adult, while the other is a child's memories, but given the time and place, I couldn't help myself.
Francophiles will still, no doubt, enjoy this book. Carhart provides a particularly interesting look at the work of renovation in France and the work that goes into maintaining the country's patrimoine - the churches, chateaux, palaces, and even parks that make France, well, France. He does a great job distilling the cultural quirks of the French and capturing the old Paris of berets, pissotières, and baguettes.
Friday, August 12, 2016
Cluny Brown
Cluny Brown is an orphan, happy enough to be living with her widowed uncle, a plumber, looking after him and answering his calls. She also happens to fancy a spot of tea at the Ritz and, well, any number of other things that are, shall we say, above her station. This is still England in 1938, after all. And so, hoping to put her in her place once and for all, her uncle packs Cluny off to a Devonshire great house where she is to become a parlor maid.
Cluny Brown does not lack for spirit and her lighthearted hijinx are often amusing. Margery Smith wrote this novel in 1944 and the era suffuses that pages in a way that even the best historical fiction is not able to capture. (In this way, it is similar to The Ladies Paradise or Suite Française.) In fact, it is notable that the characters speak often of the coming war, yet with a somewhat vague sense of what this will mean. Of course, when Cluny Brown was published, the victors had not yet been victorious.
Ultimately, I felt the book was so-so. I may have liked it better had it not been for the ending, which I never foresaw (so points to the author for that bit, at least), and which I didn't quite understand. What bothered me most was that I felt it was entirely out-of-character. That said, there was enough of "jolly old England" between the covers that I couldn't feel too cheated by the characters when the setting itself was so refreshing.
Cluny Brown does not lack for spirit and her lighthearted hijinx are often amusing. Margery Smith wrote this novel in 1944 and the era suffuses that pages in a way that even the best historical fiction is not able to capture. (In this way, it is similar to The Ladies Paradise or Suite Française.) In fact, it is notable that the characters speak often of the coming war, yet with a somewhat vague sense of what this will mean. Of course, when Cluny Brown was published, the victors had not yet been victorious.
Ultimately, I felt the book was so-so. I may have liked it better had it not been for the ending, which I never foresaw (so points to the author for that bit, at least), and which I didn't quite understand. What bothered me most was that I felt it was entirely out-of-character. That said, there was enough of "jolly old England" between the covers that I couldn't feel too cheated by the characters when the setting itself was so refreshing.
Saturday, August 6, 2016
The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu: And Their Race to Save the World's Most Precious Manuscripts
Abdel Kader Haidara never could have known what he was in for when he was designated the heir of his father's library of ancient and precious books. Soon he was recruited to traverse the countryside to add to the growing collection in Timbuktu. I'll pause here to note that this book is an excellent antidote to any feelings of inconvenience which are so often inherent to business travel. Haidara's travels are often by camel and canoe and he must take care not to appear too tempting a target to bandits and thieves. There's more than a bit of Dark Star Safari to his travels.
In any event, Haidara is very, very good at his job. In a single year he collects more manuscripts than an entire team of predecessors had managed in the better part of a decade. Soon the city of Timbuktu is home to some 350,000 volumes, many of which are many hundreds of years old. As in, written before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. For centuries, families have safe-guarded their books, locking them in trunks and burying them in desert holes. (The history of these volumes parallels that of the Sarajevo Haggadah in many respects.)
Book-by-book, Haidara has rounded them up from across the Sahara and was nearly as dogged in pursuit of funding to build a library to house them as he was at collecting them. No sooner, it seems, than he has received funding from the likes of the Andrew Mellon Foundation to house, protect, and archive the 800,000 books he and his colleagues have amassed, than Al Qaeda threatens to destroy it all.
Advancing on the former city of scholars, Al Qaeda, as Joshua Hammer explains succinctly, begins imposing Sharia law, chopping off the hands of suspected thieves, stoning to death those suspected of extramarital relations, and burning books. Thus, Haidara becomes a smuggler, building a network of couriers to carry Timbuktu's treasure out of harm's way. The work is fraught with danger of almost unimaginable magnitude, but nothing seems to cow Haidara. He rounds up village elders to testify for his men when they are caught, bribes militants at checkpoints, and just generally becomes a first-rate smuggler.
It is hard to give too much credit to Hammer for what he's accomplished here. He has managed to capture each of the elements of the story, from the geopolitical environment in Mali, to the war on terror, to Mali's history as a French colony, to, of course, the books and Haidara himself. Parts of the book read like a travelogue (Where the West Ends comes to mind), other parts like a biography, but the various story strands are woven together seamlessly and, if I may say so, pretty brilliantly. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is a must read for book lovers everywhere.
In any event, Haidara is very, very good at his job. In a single year he collects more manuscripts than an entire team of predecessors had managed in the better part of a decade. Soon the city of Timbuktu is home to some 350,000 volumes, many of which are many hundreds of years old. As in, written before Columbus sailed the ocean blue. For centuries, families have safe-guarded their books, locking them in trunks and burying them in desert holes. (The history of these volumes parallels that of the Sarajevo Haggadah in many respects.)
Book-by-book, Haidara has rounded them up from across the Sahara and was nearly as dogged in pursuit of funding to build a library to house them as he was at collecting them. No sooner, it seems, than he has received funding from the likes of the Andrew Mellon Foundation to house, protect, and archive the 800,000 books he and his colleagues have amassed, than Al Qaeda threatens to destroy it all.
Advancing on the former city of scholars, Al Qaeda, as Joshua Hammer explains succinctly, begins imposing Sharia law, chopping off the hands of suspected thieves, stoning to death those suspected of extramarital relations, and burning books. Thus, Haidara becomes a smuggler, building a network of couriers to carry Timbuktu's treasure out of harm's way. The work is fraught with danger of almost unimaginable magnitude, but nothing seems to cow Haidara. He rounds up village elders to testify for his men when they are caught, bribes militants at checkpoints, and just generally becomes a first-rate smuggler.
It is hard to give too much credit to Hammer for what he's accomplished here. He has managed to capture each of the elements of the story, from the geopolitical environment in Mali, to the war on terror, to Mali's history as a French colony, to, of course, the books and Haidara himself. Parts of the book read like a travelogue (Where the West Ends comes to mind), other parts like a biography, but the various story strands are woven together seamlessly and, if I may say so, pretty brilliantly. The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu is a must read for book lovers everywhere.
Monday, August 1, 2016
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge
Reading a book like this fills me with awe for the feats of engineering and and, frankly, back-breaking labor, that occurred regularly
and as a matter of course for much of this country's history. Such
mammoth undertakings are the stuff of David McCullough - from the Panama Canal, which, yes, I know, is not in this country, but was very much
constructed at the will of it; to bridges and dams; to the Wright brothers' first flying machines. (Side note: it's
no wonder McCullough is the master here - his latest book was published
this past spring; Great Bridge in 1972.) There is no one better at bringing the greatest examples of innovation,
invention, and engineering down to size than McCullough.
That said, the primary weakness of The Great Bridge is, perhaps, McCullough's own strength: he has such a grasp of the engineering principles that he cannot help but include every last detail on how the caissons bore into the earth, how the cables were spun, how the planks were laid. Sometimes I felt I was reading an engineering text, rather than an historical account of the construction. I plead guilt to some serious skimming of these sections.
I was much more interested in the life and times of the Chief Engineer, Washington Roebling, the (exceedingly corrupt) political environments in Tammany Hall and the Grant administration, Henry Beecher's hypocrisy, the inimitable Emily Roebling, and the medical advances of the age...pretty much everything but the tensile strength of Bessamer vs. crucible steel. I had to chuckle when I read, "Collingwood spoke a little too long about the staggering quantities of brick, stone, steel, and iron that had gone into the bridge..." Like Collingwood's audience, I felt McCullough belabored these points a little too much.
Evidently I've lodged this complaint before as, in reviewing my previous McCullough posts, I noted my final verdict on the Paris book, "Overall, this was a good read, although it could be quite dense at time and, therefore, a bit of a slow go. French history or American art history buffs would enjoy it greatly, but others might find it just a bit on the dull side." Likewise, those with a strong interest in our nation's public works might go ga-ga for McCullough's detailed work, but other readers might find parts of it a slow go.
That said, the primary weakness of The Great Bridge is, perhaps, McCullough's own strength: he has such a grasp of the engineering principles that he cannot help but include every last detail on how the caissons bore into the earth, how the cables were spun, how the planks were laid. Sometimes I felt I was reading an engineering text, rather than an historical account of the construction. I plead guilt to some serious skimming of these sections.
I was much more interested in the life and times of the Chief Engineer, Washington Roebling, the (exceedingly corrupt) political environments in Tammany Hall and the Grant administration, Henry Beecher's hypocrisy, the inimitable Emily Roebling, and the medical advances of the age...pretty much everything but the tensile strength of Bessamer vs. crucible steel. I had to chuckle when I read, "Collingwood spoke a little too long about the staggering quantities of brick, stone, steel, and iron that had gone into the bridge..." Like Collingwood's audience, I felt McCullough belabored these points a little too much.
Evidently I've lodged this complaint before as, in reviewing my previous McCullough posts, I noted my final verdict on the Paris book, "Overall, this was a good read, although it could be quite dense at time and, therefore, a bit of a slow go. French history or American art history buffs would enjoy it greatly, but others might find it just a bit on the dull side." Likewise, those with a strong interest in our nation's public works might go ga-ga for McCullough's detailed work, but other readers might find parts of it a slow go.
Wednesday, July 27, 2016
The Matchmaker of Périgord - Did Not Finish
According to Amazon, "For every reader who adored Chocolat, Julia Stuart's The Matchmaker of Périgord is a delectable, utterly enchanting, and sinfully satisfying delight." I tend to disagree.
The premise of Julia Stuart's novel is this: Guillaume Ladoucette is a barber of long-standing whose customer base has aged, lost some hairs, and generally found themselves to have far less need of his services than in years past. Looking around his little town (Amour-sur-Belle, population: 33), Guillaume decides to convert his little barber shop into a matchmaker's office. The results are about what you would expect, or so it seemed when I finally gave it up...
For some reason, I expected The Matchmaker of Périgord to be something like Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (read just before this blog, unfortunately, so the Amazon page will have to suffice). It was not. Neither did it put me in the mind of Chocolat either, despite the lush French countryside Stuart depicts and the somewhat timeless nature of the story. (I thought it was historical fiction when I began, and continually had to revise my guess as to when this was set as more recent dates and events appeared.)
Instead, in light of the innumerable individual quirks, I was reminded of the Confederacy of Dunces, still one of my most-loathed books ever. And, yes, I'm aware that the latter has been described as a masterpiece. To each his own. Call me crazy, but I just don't find two elderly women who have an on-going feud which has been regularly stoked by overripe tomatoes, entertaining. And I was frankly revolted by the idea of an "ancient cassoulet" which has been tended for decades first by Madame Ladoucette and now by her son the barber-turned-matchmaker. On the whole, I found all of the characters very weird, and I just couldn't move beyond that.
I have only myself to blame, as I did not care for Stuart's previous novel, The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise for many of the same reasons. Alas, c'est la vie.
The premise of Julia Stuart's novel is this: Guillaume Ladoucette is a barber of long-standing whose customer base has aged, lost some hairs, and generally found themselves to have far less need of his services than in years past. Looking around his little town (Amour-sur-Belle, population: 33), Guillaume decides to convert his little barber shop into a matchmaker's office. The results are about what you would expect, or so it seemed when I finally gave it up...
For some reason, I expected The Matchmaker of Périgord to be something like Major Pettigrew's Last Stand (read just before this blog, unfortunately, so the Amazon page will have to suffice). It was not. Neither did it put me in the mind of Chocolat either, despite the lush French countryside Stuart depicts and the somewhat timeless nature of the story. (I thought it was historical fiction when I began, and continually had to revise my guess as to when this was set as more recent dates and events appeared.)
Instead, in light of the innumerable individual quirks, I was reminded of the Confederacy of Dunces, still one of my most-loathed books ever. And, yes, I'm aware that the latter has been described as a masterpiece. To each his own. Call me crazy, but I just don't find two elderly women who have an on-going feud which has been regularly stoked by overripe tomatoes, entertaining. And I was frankly revolted by the idea of an "ancient cassoulet" which has been tended for decades first by Madame Ladoucette and now by her son the barber-turned-matchmaker. On the whole, I found all of the characters very weird, and I just couldn't move beyond that.
I have only myself to blame, as I did not care for Stuart's previous novel, The Tower, The Zoo, and the Tortoise for many of the same reasons. Alas, c'est la vie.
Friday, July 22, 2016
The Art of the Con: The Most Notorious Fakes, Frauds, and Forgeries in the Art World
When I read The Art Forger, one of my hang-ups was that the entire plot - a struggling artist forging great works by the masters - seemed to far-fetched to me that I had a hard time coming around to it. It turns out the only thing at all far-fetched was that the artist was a woman: virtually all of the renowned forgers in history are men. (Or maybe it's only the men who get caught.)
In any case, Anthony M. Amore has compiled an authoritative volume on individuals who have made their livelihoods peddling in fraud, whether created by their own hand or the hand of someone in their pay - Chinese immigrants, for example. Amore also looks at art scams more generally, from stolen art that was then hidden away for decades to unscrupulous artist associates who create additional copies beyond what the artist authorized. I found virtually all of the scams - as well as those who perpetrated them - fascinating.
The Art of the Con is a relatively quick and short read, with each chapter focusing on a different forgery, fraud, scam, or outright theft. Amore tells each story succinctly, and his style is fairly colorful and punchy, which contributes to making this a quick read. I could not help comparing it to The Rescue Artist, and between the two I did prefer the latter, if only because Charley Hill is such an outsize character. That said, for a reader looking for a broader understanding of the underbelly of the art world, as opposed to one man's role in it, The Art of the Con is certainly the stronger of the two titles.
Ultimately, this book is a reminder of that if a deal looks too good to be true, it's too good to be true.
In any case, Anthony M. Amore has compiled an authoritative volume on individuals who have made their livelihoods peddling in fraud, whether created by their own hand or the hand of someone in their pay - Chinese immigrants, for example. Amore also looks at art scams more generally, from stolen art that was then hidden away for decades to unscrupulous artist associates who create additional copies beyond what the artist authorized. I found virtually all of the scams - as well as those who perpetrated them - fascinating.
The Art of the Con is a relatively quick and short read, with each chapter focusing on a different forgery, fraud, scam, or outright theft. Amore tells each story succinctly, and his style is fairly colorful and punchy, which contributes to making this a quick read. I could not help comparing it to The Rescue Artist, and between the two I did prefer the latter, if only because Charley Hill is such an outsize character. That said, for a reader looking for a broader understanding of the underbelly of the art world, as opposed to one man's role in it, The Art of the Con is certainly the stronger of the two titles.
Ultimately, this book is a reminder of that if a deal looks too good to be true, it's too good to be true.
Saturday, July 16, 2016
The Boys of Summer
As the cover states, The Boys of Summer is "the classical narrative of growing up within shouting distance of Ebbets Field, covering the Dodgers in the Jackie Robinson years...and what's happened to everyone since." While not false, I would say that the emphasis is strongly on the "covering the Dodgers" and "what's happened," with less focus on the growing up in Brooklyn bit. In other words, this is more Mike Royko meets The Summer of Beer and Whiskey than it is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.
Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, in the shadow of Ebbets Field, the son of a man who loved the Dodgers almost more than he loved his family. Roger never had a chance of being anything other than a Dodgers fan. Through luck, happenstance, and hard work, he became the Dodgers beat reporter at the tender age of 24, at which point he hopscotched the country with the likes of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese in 1952 and 1953. Traveling with an integrated ball club through the Jim Crow South, he learned more than he expected before leaving the assignment after two seasons. These experience comprise the first half of the book.
The second half is the "what's happened" bit, where Kahn criss-crosses the country again, this time by himself, as he visits the former players who have scattered from Connecticut to LA to Middle America. Their stories are fascinating for what they show us about how former athletes used to retire versus how they retire today. Carl Furillo has a job installing elevators in the World Trade Center. Billy Cox is tending bar at an American Legion. A few have gone into business, but none seems to have achieved over-the-top success. Only Gil Hodges is still in baseball. The modesty with which they are living out their lives - and for the most part these are still relatively young men - speaks volumes about how the country and professional sports have changed.
I liked this book. At times Kahn was a little too technical (or, honestly long-winded) in describing specific plays or games, but on the whole this is a book that a layman can read without getting bogged down. I especially enjoyed the passages that focused on journalism in the 1950s - the nuts and bolts of the newsroom and the culture, in particular.
In 1997, Kahn added an afterward where he writes about how the book was originally received in 1972. "Yardley complained, not entirely pleasantly, that I had written two books, not one." When I read that, I thought, "bingo!" The two haves are well-written, certainly, and each is interesting in its own way, but they really do feel like two different books. Unlike Yardley, I'm not convinced this is a complaint, but it was unexpected.
Final verdict: Baseball fans will undoubtedly relish Kahn's work. Non-fans may want to consider what other titles comprise their current reading list and prioritize accordingly.
Roger Kahn grew up in Brooklyn, in the shadow of Ebbets Field, the son of a man who loved the Dodgers almost more than he loved his family. Roger never had a chance of being anything other than a Dodgers fan. Through luck, happenstance, and hard work, he became the Dodgers beat reporter at the tender age of 24, at which point he hopscotched the country with the likes of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese in 1952 and 1953. Traveling with an integrated ball club through the Jim Crow South, he learned more than he expected before leaving the assignment after two seasons. These experience comprise the first half of the book.
The second half is the "what's happened" bit, where Kahn criss-crosses the country again, this time by himself, as he visits the former players who have scattered from Connecticut to LA to Middle America. Their stories are fascinating for what they show us about how former athletes used to retire versus how they retire today. Carl Furillo has a job installing elevators in the World Trade Center. Billy Cox is tending bar at an American Legion. A few have gone into business, but none seems to have achieved over-the-top success. Only Gil Hodges is still in baseball. The modesty with which they are living out their lives - and for the most part these are still relatively young men - speaks volumes about how the country and professional sports have changed.
I liked this book. At times Kahn was a little too technical (or, honestly long-winded) in describing specific plays or games, but on the whole this is a book that a layman can read without getting bogged down. I especially enjoyed the passages that focused on journalism in the 1950s - the nuts and bolts of the newsroom and the culture, in particular.
In 1997, Kahn added an afterward where he writes about how the book was originally received in 1972. "Yardley complained, not entirely pleasantly, that I had written two books, not one." When I read that, I thought, "bingo!" The two haves are well-written, certainly, and each is interesting in its own way, but they really do feel like two different books. Unlike Yardley, I'm not convinced this is a complaint, but it was unexpected.
Final verdict: Baseball fans will undoubtedly relish Kahn's work. Non-fans may want to consider what other titles comprise their current reading list and prioritize accordingly.
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
Lucky Us
At it's most basic level, Lucky Us is the story of two half sisters, Iris and Eva, who meet as adolescents in the midst of rather awkward circumstances. Iris's mother has just died and Eva's has left her abruptly with her father, Edgar. With World War II as a backdrop, Iris and Eva hightail it out of Ohio and away from Edgar and to Hollywood where Iris's fate is heartbreak and disillusionment.
This is a book that starts a bit slowly, and is told through letters - both sent and unsent - memories, and multiple perspectives. For that reason, the story itself sometimes feels a bit disjointed, sometimes flowing smoothly and sometimes moving in fits and starts. Even so, it is a beautifully written story. Amy Bloom has created an entire cast of memorable characters, each with their own personalities, quirks, and, perhaps most importantly, flaws. And she has done this using some of the most beautiful prose I have read in a long time.
"The wicked people of the world are not supposed to be calm and composed," Eva muses at one point, and with that one sentence I am transported into my own musings on wickedness and human nature. When Clara tries to help Eva understand her aversion to religion, Bloom writes, "she absolutely did not believe that a white man was going to come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her hand or be her friend." These are words that reach into the reader's mind, create strong imagery, and pull the story - and the reader - along.
None of the characters is who they seem initially and all make questionable decisions. I was reminded more than once of When the World Was Young (another mid-century historical fiction which sees a young girl settle into life without her mother). And while Lucky Us is a coming of a age story, I would argue that it is really about decisions and consequences, the shades of gray surrounding "truth," the meaning of family - those we are born to and those we choose, and not least what it means to forgive - or not.
This is a book that starts a bit slowly, and is told through letters - both sent and unsent - memories, and multiple perspectives. For that reason, the story itself sometimes feels a bit disjointed, sometimes flowing smoothly and sometimes moving in fits and starts. Even so, it is a beautifully written story. Amy Bloom has created an entire cast of memorable characters, each with their own personalities, quirks, and, perhaps most importantly, flaws. And she has done this using some of the most beautiful prose I have read in a long time.
"The wicked people of the world are not supposed to be calm and composed," Eva muses at one point, and with that one sentence I am transported into my own musings on wickedness and human nature. When Clara tries to help Eva understand her aversion to religion, Bloom writes, "she absolutely did not believe that a white man was going to come back from his own lynching to help out Clara Williams or take her hand or be her friend." These are words that reach into the reader's mind, create strong imagery, and pull the story - and the reader - along.
None of the characters is who they seem initially and all make questionable decisions. I was reminded more than once of When the World Was Young (another mid-century historical fiction which sees a young girl settle into life without her mother). And while Lucky Us is a coming of a age story, I would argue that it is really about decisions and consequences, the shades of gray surrounding "truth," the meaning of family - those we are born to and those we choose, and not least what it means to forgive - or not.
Thursday, July 7, 2016
Paper: Paging Through History
In some ways, Paper is
exactly what it purports to be: a history of paper. That said, I would argue
that it is a history of a specific type of paper and, more generally, a
specific use for that paper. Which is to say that Paper is as much a history of the written word as the product
itself. Much like The Silk Roads, it
begins by tracing the history of early writing from east to west, for it was
the Chinese and then the Mesopotanians who developed the earliest writing systems and turned
natural products (barks and animal skins, chiefly) into materials for holding
the recorded word. In this way, it is the history of writing, of words on
paper, than the product itself.
Mark Kurlansky has reconstructed an incredibly precise
history, from those barks and skins through the advent of printing, onto the
production process of paper itself and then forays briefly, ever so briefly,
into other uses for paper. This last is where my chief complaint lies. When
thinking of all the uses for paper, writing paper – whether newsprint, book
pages, or high end stationary – is but one product that comes to mind. I love
books and newspapers, but where would we be without toilet paper?? (Or, let's be honest, ladies, certain feminine hygiene products that rely on paper or paper derivatives as crucial components.) All told, and among their myriad uses, paper products are used for packaging, for hygiene, for eating on the go,
for entertainment (or they were, in the heyday of paper dolls), and for
cleaning sticky fingers.
Kurlansky glosses over each of these, failing to mention
some altogether, and devoting the most time to paper clothes and paper money.
Even these do not receive the amount of attention I would have liked. I would
have been interested in a broader history of paper as it transitioned from a
single use product (or maybe it never was that) to having multiple uses across
different societies.
I recognize that I may be asking too much here – obviously
this history of paper and writing and printing is its own volume, as Kurlansky
has proven, and I have no reason to doubt that these other things, properly
researched, would be their own volumes as well.
In fairness to Kurlansky, I should note that my disappointment no doubt
stems in part from the incredibly high bar he set with The Food of a Younger Land, which is simply perfection. In the end, though, I couldn’t help but feel
that Paper either 1) didn’t live up
to its potential or 2) should have had a different title. It is the history of
paper, but specific paper for a specific use.
Saturday, July 2, 2016
Midnight in Broad Daylight: A Japanese American Family Caught Between Two Worlds
Harry Fukuhara was born in Washington and grew up in the
idyllic little town of Auburn, the son of Japanese immigrants on the make. Life
was perhaps a bit complicated – an older brother and sister were sent to live
in Japan with extended family and never did quite settle back into the rhythm
of American life upon their abrupt reentry, for example – but generally good.
This changed dramatically when Harry’s father died in the midst of the Great
Depression and his mother had to sell everything and move the family to Japan.
To Hiroshima, I should add.
Harry hated Japan, longed for America, and finally returned
in 1938. The America he encountered was a bit different from the one he’s left,
particularly in regards to the treatment of anyone with a Japanese name, and
particularly on the West Coast. Yet, as terrible as Harry’s timing may seem, it
could have been worse, at least for a Japanese-American who longest for this
country: shortly after Harry returned to the U.S., it became much, much more
difficult to do so.
And so Harry settled into a somewhat tenuous existence,
which he led right up until he was interred – along with his older sister and
niece and thousands of other law-abiding Japanese whose crime, of course, was
their ethnicity. Here Harry’s story becomes particularly interesting, for
despite his anger and bitterness toward his current treatment, he volunteered
to serve in the U.S. Army as a translator. Sometimes he interrogated prisoners.
Sometimes he deciphered reeking, blood-splattered documents. Sometimes he waded
ashore under enemy fire. And in the most improbable way, he encountered an
enemy he knew in another life.
This story alone would be book-worthy enough, but while
Harry slogged his way through the South Pacific, three brothers found themselves
cogs of war in Imperial Japan. To say nothing of the whole atomic bomb bit. And
the fact that, after the war, he rose to become one of the highest ranking
military officials in Japan, and certainly the highest counterintelligence
official.
All of which makes Midnight
in Broad Daylight a fascinating – and chilling – read. Pamela Rotner
Sakamoto has captured the essence of two cultures, as well as the inexorable
march of time and conflict and the political process. She sprinkles a liberal
helping of Japanese terminology throughout the book so that the reader, too, is
constantly pulled between Japan and America, Japanese and English. Most
critically, Sakamoto appears to write without judgment. She presents the issues
from multiple vantage points, letting readers feel the individual and
collective dilemmas of the time. In that way, this book is similar to Flyboys, in which James Bradley succeeds
in creating a wholly objective portrait of the war in the Pacific. There’s no
question, though, that Sakamoto’s portrait is more personal, and perhaps more
searing. (It is certainly less grisly, which is my only complaint about
Bradley’s work.)
Above all, Midnight in
Broad Daylight is a book to make the reader think. About the lives each of
us has lived, from the stranger on the bus to the neighbor three doors down.
About loyalty and resiliency. About how life is so seldom black-and-white,
right-and-wrong. About the human lives impacted by government decree, and about
how capricious it all is.
Tuesday, June 28, 2016
The Gentle Tamers: Women of the Old Wild West
I would have been a terrible pioneer. I've had this reaction before, but the thought coursed through my mind time and again as I read Dee Brown's characterization of life in the Old West: work, work, work, Indian raids, work, dust storms, work, you get the idea. The list of tasks an average woman was expected to complete was daunting, from making soap and candles, to pureeing fruit and drying it as a paste to ward off scurvy in winter months, a pioneer was never idle. (In truth, this is not so different from other women's lot either, including many southern plantation mistresses.)
But first, before she could begin her life as a pioneer woman, she had to get there. And it is in telling this part of the story that Brown does her best work. The stories of the earliest pioneers are the strongest, particularly the Army brides bustling from primitive fort to primitive fort and the women making their way across the endless prairie - including one who made the crossing as part of the infamous Donner party.
Once the West is a bit more "settled," Brown spends less time on the individual women themselves and their hardships and lives, and more on suffrage (which originated out West), women's roles as entertainers (of both the professional and, uh, private variety), the fight for prohibition, and women as teachers. The difference between the two halves of the book is that, while I was interested in women's broader roles in the west, I was inspired by their personal stories.
Final verdict: I wanted to like this book a bit more than I ultimately did. The first few chapters, in which the pluck and spirit of the women pioneers nearly springs from the pages, is four-star material. The latter few chapters, which read like something out of a women's history book, are probably two-star material. And for those looking for further inspiration from women who had it so much harder than we did, look no further than They Fought Like Demons, which is the story of women who disguised themselves as men and fought in the Civil War. I bet they would have found soap making child's play after that.
But first, before she could begin her life as a pioneer woman, she had to get there. And it is in telling this part of the story that Brown does her best work. The stories of the earliest pioneers are the strongest, particularly the Army brides bustling from primitive fort to primitive fort and the women making their way across the endless prairie - including one who made the crossing as part of the infamous Donner party.
Once the West is a bit more "settled," Brown spends less time on the individual women themselves and their hardships and lives, and more on suffrage (which originated out West), women's roles as entertainers (of both the professional and, uh, private variety), the fight for prohibition, and women as teachers. The difference between the two halves of the book is that, while I was interested in women's broader roles in the west, I was inspired by their personal stories.
Final verdict: I wanted to like this book a bit more than I ultimately did. The first few chapters, in which the pluck and spirit of the women pioneers nearly springs from the pages, is four-star material. The latter few chapters, which read like something out of a women's history book, are probably two-star material. And for those looking for further inspiration from women who had it so much harder than we did, look no further than They Fought Like Demons, which is the story of women who disguised themselves as men and fought in the Civil War. I bet they would have found soap making child's play after that.
Friday, June 24, 2016
Goodbye to All That
Robert Graves graduated from high school in June 1914 and in
perhaps the most egregious example in history of “be careful what you wish
for,” hoped that some circumstance would intercede before he was compelled to
go up to Oxford that fall. Circumstances did intercede, and instead of entering
Oxford, Graves quickly found himself a junior officer in the English Army,
shipped to France, and fighting in the trenches.
His memoir, Goodbye to
All That, is a beautiful, poignant, and thought-provoking account of one
man’s war. It is full of trench warfare, but also of idle times, of injuries
and illness, and anecdotes about the French civilians who were attempting to
live in the midst of the Great War. Graves also considers the politics of war,
proposing at one point that perhaps only those over the age of 45 should be
eligible for the draft, as they are the ones managing the country’s affairs.
Graves was a published poet during the war and, as such, this book is also full
of his encounters with other writers from the era, from Siegfried Sassoon to
Thomas Hardy.
Most remarkably, though, Graves has written a clear-eyed
account of his struggle with neurasthenia, or what we know today as shell shock
(a term that does appear toward the end), or PTSD. Like many soldiers, Graves
was badly affected by what he experienced in France, and his description of
re-entering civilian life and the nightmares he faced for a full decade after
the war are truly remarkable. There is no question that he would agree with Peter Englund's assertion in The Beauty and the Sorrow, "Endurance is far harder than bravery."
I was reminded regularly of Arthur Guy Empey's Over the Top; the
best-sourced work (here’s looking at you, Guns of August and The Assassination of the Archduke) simply cannot hold a candle to the first person
accounts of war’s terrible toll.
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece
Charley Hill rescues art. More precisely, he rescues stolen masterpieces. He is Scotland Yard's art recovery man, and perhaps best known for his role in locating Edvard Munch's Scream, stolen from Oslo's National Gallery in 1994. This is the man, and more to the point, the profession, that Edward Dolnick brings to life in Rescue Artist.
Dolnick's portrait (no pun intended) of Hill is colorful, complex, and frankly quite fascinating. Hill regularly goes undercover, you see, assuming and shedding identities - and the requisite personality traits and accents - as the circumstances dictate. Art theft being big business, Charley Hill is rather a busy man. More than being a biography of Hill, though, Rescue Artist examines the underbelly of the art world in detailing numerous heists, from that of the Mona Lisa in 1913 to, of course, the Scream, whose recovery is the centerpiece of this book.
As an aside, one of the thefts Dolnick describes is the one from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Thirteen paintings were swiped and none has been recovered. This is actually the second time I've encountered these particular stolen works of art (the first time was in The Art Forger), so I decided to visit when I was in Boston recently. 1) They didn't know about their cameo in Rescue Artist, which is too bad, as I actually prefer it to the fictional Art Forger. and 2) I overheard a woman asking a docent about the theft. She would have learned more from Dolnick.
But I digress.
In addition to detailing the theft of art, Dolnick also does a remarkable job or writing about its creation. Having read his descriptions of brush strokes and craquelure, canvas creases, and chalk smudges, it's impossible now to look at art without focusing on these elements (at least when you can get close enough to the works to do so, as at the ISGM), which give a painting nearly as much character as its actual composition.
Final Verdict: I really, really enjoyed this book. It should appeal to a wide audience, from art lovers to crime fans. Dolnick's style is fast-paced and his prose is crisp and lively. Four stars.
Dolnick's portrait (no pun intended) of Hill is colorful, complex, and frankly quite fascinating. Hill regularly goes undercover, you see, assuming and shedding identities - and the requisite personality traits and accents - as the circumstances dictate. Art theft being big business, Charley Hill is rather a busy man. More than being a biography of Hill, though, Rescue Artist examines the underbelly of the art world in detailing numerous heists, from that of the Mona Lisa in 1913 to, of course, the Scream, whose recovery is the centerpiece of this book.
As an aside, one of the thefts Dolnick describes is the one from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston in 1990. Thirteen paintings were swiped and none has been recovered. This is actually the second time I've encountered these particular stolen works of art (the first time was in The Art Forger), so I decided to visit when I was in Boston recently. 1) They didn't know about their cameo in Rescue Artist, which is too bad, as I actually prefer it to the fictional Art Forger. and 2) I overheard a woman asking a docent about the theft. She would have learned more from Dolnick.
But I digress.
In addition to detailing the theft of art, Dolnick also does a remarkable job or writing about its creation. Having read his descriptions of brush strokes and craquelure, canvas creases, and chalk smudges, it's impossible now to look at art without focusing on these elements (at least when you can get close enough to the works to do so, as at the ISGM), which give a painting nearly as much character as its actual composition.
Final Verdict: I really, really enjoyed this book. It should appeal to a wide audience, from art lovers to crime fans. Dolnick's style is fast-paced and his prose is crisp and lively. Four stars.
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Shakespeare: The World as Stage
Bill Bryson begins by acknowledging how very, very little we know about William Shakespeare. From these paltry facts, Bryson builds an entire, and entirely entertaining, biography. That said, given the few concrete pieces of information we have, I'm not sure I learned much new about Shakespeare. (Caveat: In addition to a mostly-forgotten Shakespeare class, I have visited all places Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon, where I learned not only about the man himself, but the origins of such phrases as "sleep tight" and "lunatic.")
I did, however, learn a great deal about Elizabethan England. This is Bryson at his finest. The subject is light years from hiking the Appalachian Trail or the great American summertime, but the research, the style, and the serious irreverence are Bryson's hallmark. And the plagues. Oh, the plagues. It is easy to forget how absolutely incessant they were.
As much as I enjoyed Bryson's work on Shakespeare, and more broadly on Shakespeare's times, I was most impressed by the way Bryson dispatched with the doubters. Systematically, he examined the claims of those who posit "Shakespeare" was other than Shakespeare. Although I'm positive a deep body of work exists on this aspect of Shakespeare alone, this is the first I've really delved into it and, let me say, Bryson is extremely persuasive.
Shakespeare is one of the slimmest volumes I've read this year, but it packs an outsize punch. This is a great little book for anyone who loves biography, or English literature, or history, or Bill Bryson. Happy reading!
I did, however, learn a great deal about Elizabethan England. This is Bryson at his finest. The subject is light years from hiking the Appalachian Trail or the great American summertime, but the research, the style, and the serious irreverence are Bryson's hallmark. And the plagues. Oh, the plagues. It is easy to forget how absolutely incessant they were.
As much as I enjoyed Bryson's work on Shakespeare, and more broadly on Shakespeare's times, I was most impressed by the way Bryson dispatched with the doubters. Systematically, he examined the claims of those who posit "Shakespeare" was other than Shakespeare. Although I'm positive a deep body of work exists on this aspect of Shakespeare alone, this is the first I've really delved into it and, let me say, Bryson is extremely persuasive.
Shakespeare is one of the slimmest volumes I've read this year, but it packs an outsize punch. This is a great little book for anyone who loves biography, or English literature, or history, or Bill Bryson. Happy reading!
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of a Global Citizen
Had I read the description more closely, I probably would not have read Laughing Without an Accent. I thought this was Firoozeh Dumas's memoir about growing up as an Iranian American in California. Oops - that was the description of a previous best seller and the hook to for Laughing, which contains "stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on
her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told
with insights into the universality of the human condition." It's no wonder my favorite chapters were the earliest ones which were heavy on memoir and life in pre-Revolution Iran, as opposed to musings on andouillette and bedroom decor.
That said, I did enjoy this book. It's a fast-paced, lighthearted, lightning fast read, and I found Dumas's descriptions of life in the Middle East especially interesting. Although it occasionally feels like she is trying a little too hard to be witty, for the most part I liked Dumas's style; a few passages are laugh-out-loud hilarious, which never hurts. The most memorable anecdote involved the ruination of an Iran Air carry-on bag and Dumas's musings that perhaps the loss would not have been so keenly felt had one known that in the future it would be less than advisable to carry such a bag through TSA checkpoints.
The final verdict: Had I not misread the description I would have missed out on this eminently readable little book, which I heartily recommend to those looking for reading material for a trip to the beach (or enroute).
That said, I did enjoy this book. It's a fast-paced, lighthearted, lightning fast read, and I found Dumas's descriptions of life in the Middle East especially interesting. Although it occasionally feels like she is trying a little too hard to be witty, for the most part I liked Dumas's style; a few passages are laugh-out-loud hilarious, which never hurts. The most memorable anecdote involved the ruination of an Iran Air carry-on bag and Dumas's musings that perhaps the loss would not have been so keenly felt had one known that in the future it would be less than advisable to carry such a bag through TSA checkpoints.
The final verdict: Had I not misread the description I would have missed out on this eminently readable little book, which I heartily recommend to those looking for reading material for a trip to the beach (or enroute).
Wednesday, June 8, 2016
Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France's Greatest Treasure
Earlier this spring I read and reviewed The Nightingale and complained
about what I perceive to be the over-saturation of the French Resistance genre
within World War II historical fiction. I wanted a more nuanced history, I
said, one that acknowledged the reality that every Frenchman was not for
Charles de Gaulle or the Maquis.
Well, it’s not fiction, but Wine and War fits the bill. Donald Kladstrup and Petie Kladstrup have written an insightful, multi-dimensional, and frankly fascinating account of the actions of French winemakers (and, in some cases, restaurateurs) during World War II. Some were actively engaged in the Resistance. Many undertook their own, independent acts of subterfuge or rebellion against the Germans. A few collaborated with the boches.
The authors Kladstrup also take pains to ensure their readers understand that not all Germans were created equal. Many of those responsible for the oversight of the wine and champagne industries in France were Francophiles - a few had previously owed their own maisons before losing the property following Germany's loss in World War I. Often they wanted to preserve the French heritage, tradition, and friendships in spite of orders from above. Others were keen profiteers.
Most impressively, this is not a textbook history, per se, but more of an anthropological one. The Kladstrups conducted countless interviews with French and German survivors of the war, as well as their children and sometimes grandchildren. They have taken pains to tell the history of wine in France and the winemaking process, as well, rather than diving directly into the events of the second World War. Taken together, this is a fascinating history, and would that should interest history lovers and especially World War II buffs and Francophile of all stripes.
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