Persuasion by Jane Austen

My book group is reading Persuasion and I'm ecstatic.

I think other folks in my book group are also enthusiastic about reading Persuasion and that, as a result, we'll have a lively discussion.

I guess I'm a Janeite although I'm unsure when I underwent the change. Sometime between when, as a college sophomore, I was present as two professors discussed Emma and I thought that they meant Emma Bovary and the end of college, at which point I'd read all six of the finished novels.

Persuasion is my favorite Austen novel. I suppose that's because it's been described as a novel of second chances. At the beginning of the novel, Anne seems to be destined to be an old maid although she hasn't quite arrived there yet: Lady Russell says that she's been "too little seen," which I took to imply that Lady Russell that socializing only at home with her family prevented Anne from meeting men whom she might marry.

Her fine qualities are overlooked by her immediate family. Lady Russell is her close friend but seems not to understand how deeply she regrets her lost chance to marry Captain Wentworth. Her sister insists that she be accompanied to Bath and says that Anne had better go visit their married sister because she's sure "no one will want" Anne.

As much as it embarrasses her, she is forced to meet Wentworth frequently when his sister and brother-in-law move into Anne's old home (rented to help meet an embarrassing level of indebtedness). After their first meeting in seven years, Wentworth opines to her sisters-in-law that she is much changed -- so much so that he wouldn't recognize her. I'm not sure exactly what he means but I know it isn't meant to be complimentary.

But, by the end of the novel, things have changed: one acquaintance is thought to have been interested in her (Captain Benwick, although that interest does not last long) and another, Mr. Elliot, has proposed. Most significantly, she is now to be married to the man she's always loved, Captain Wentworth.

So Anne is the underdog and you're rooting for her once you understand her situation. But she's not just the underdog but "really nice." She strives to control her emotions in public and mostly succeeds, almost too well; she's a good nurse and a loyal friend; she supports and shows concern for others.

I read Fanny Burney's Evelina earlier this year and saw that that novel is greatly concerned with proper conduct. Austen's work also shows much concern for proper conduct but entertains us at the same time with humor, satire and romantic stories that all end happily.

Part of the delight I take in this novel is that the happy ending could not happened to a nicer person. Anne Elliot is so deserving. I read somewhere once that Jane Austen said of Anne something like that she was "too good." I'm delighted to know that Anne's creator can appreciate that it's pretty hard to be as patient and restrained as Anne is. But while I recognize that Anne Elliot is too good to be true I still enjoy her virtue and I'm happy that the ending is "virtue rewarded."

I thought about the Elliots and the "Elliot pride," a common enough failing, as I was reading the book. Pride seems to me to rarely be considered seriously. It is a failing but also has positive aspects. In short, it's a complicated topic. Mary Elliot is not just proud; she's someone who desperately needs attention. That, too is a familiar quality I've noticed in myself and others. I suppose this portrait of human nature, a little exaggerated (but possibly not much) for comic effect, is timeless and another attraction of this novel.

Faceless Killers and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

With mysteries, especially, I think it's important not to spoil the ending for those who haven't yet read the book.

For myself, I find preserving the suspense of storytelling important, whether it's a book, TV, or movies. I can't tell you how delighted I was to discover the happy ending of Orfeo ed Euridice. Oops! Gave away the ending!

I enjoyed both of these novels but despite the huge popularity of Stieg Larsson's The Girl series, I actually liked Faceless Killers more.

Both novels are by Swedes, set in Sweden, and both of them display an intense anxiety about the seamy underside of modern life that reminds me of the Len Deighton and Alistair MacLean novels about the espionage during the Cold War that I read as a child.

In this, they're really very similar to the police procedurals on TV that deal with corruption and terrible crimes. That perhaps explains part of their popularity.

One of the things I really admired about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was that Larsson, whose work as a journalist seemed to focus on business reporting, especially exposes of criminal corporate behavior, uses that knowledge in his novel but also introduces many other classic elements of popular novels. I'm sure that this, too, is part of its popularity.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is a murder mystery, a business thriller, a family saga, and, most interestingly, a critique of violence against women. It has surprised me that this aspect of the novel, the presentation of violence against women, is so little discussed.

As befits a long novel, the exposition begins slowly and indirectly.

With great sadness, an elderly man opens a package. It contains a rare flower, pressed and framed. He regards the collection of similar flowers he’s received every year on his birthday, for forty years. Who is sending these mysterious gifts and why are they sending them? He calls another retired man, a former detective, as he always does when he receives these somber packages.

Mikael Blomkvist is a disgraced investigative journalist, convicted in court of libel. He's lost his reputation and is going to jail. The fate of his once-prestigious business magazine is now uncertain. The man who brought Blomkvist to court is a businessman named Wennerstrom.

And Wennerstrom is being investigated by Armansky. Armansky is an interesting man with an unusual background and an unusual helper, the tattooed hacker Lisbeth Salander.

What connects these people? An aged, retired Swedish industrialist who is haunted by the loss of a beloved niece. It turns out that he thinks that there's something fishy about the Wennerstrom case, and he decides to take advantage of Blomkvist's unemployment to entice him to look into the disappearance of his niece, so many years before.

And that's just the very beginning of this intricate and varied novel. There are other people to meet, and many other stories to tell.

Lisabeth Salander is a fascinating character. I don't know how to describe her. She's a little wild although really very reclusive, very tough and well -- almost fearless. This first novel in the series has so much in it, so many characters and so many pieces of a large, intricate plot that Salander isn't as central here as she is in the other two books of the trilogy.
Blomkvist is fairly unconventional, too, but less so. I'd say that although he's quiet about it, Blomkvist is a lover of women and so perhaps it's fitting that his character is here not only as a detective but as a witness.

The strength of Faceless Killers, in my eyes, is its sharper focus. It's a more character-driven novel. Wallander is a senior police detective in a obscure, mid-size Swedish town. He's divorced and still misses his ex-wife. He's estranged from his daughter. He sees his father but not nearly as much as he should: his father is quite angry that Wallander can't find more time for him. He misses the people in his life, his people, but he doesn't seem to really see them.

He would never say this himself but he is married to his work. It fills his waking thoughts. He's a good man nearly crushed by loneliness and love of his work which, while fascinating, is hardly emotionally sustaining. This aspect of the novel is, I think, realistic. It's hard to be a cop -- it can be draining or worse.

This novel is filled with anxiety as well. Here, the anxiety is less about the crimes of the past than it is about profound social change. The plot turns on the murder of an elderly couple on their farm in the middle of the night. Their neighbors realize something is wrong because they hear the couple's horse neighing. The isolation of this couple intensifies the horror of the case.

A media feeding frenzy erupts when someone leaks to the press that the dying woman's last word sounded like, "foreigners," igniting a murderous backlash of anti-immigrant feeling and revealing the existence of Swedish fascists.

Wallander is a complicated character, a man who has the best of intentions but can't sustain relationships. Wallander is someone whose sometimes inappropriate behavior is quietly tolerated by those around them, I think as a mark of respect. His subordinates say nothing but drive him home when they find him driving up to a checkpoint with liquor on his breath. He makes a clumsy pass at a local prosecutor who eventually dates him. Its this complexity that makes him such an appealing character to me.

Elegance of the Hedgehog

The Elegance of the Hedgehog, translated from the French novel by Muriel Barbery, is a remarkable book in so many ways.

It lingered on the New York Times bestseller lists for over a year, and that's a rarer achievement given that it's a novel translated from the French.

It's also a novel with twin and very different protagonists: a young French girl and the concierge of her expensive Parisian apartment building. The young girl, Paloma, is painfully precocious and the concierge, Renee, is surprising, too: a woman who pretends to have no interests "above her station" and yet is an avid reader of philosophy and viewer of Japanese film.

And, finally, it is not only a novel that discusses philosophy and philosophers but is itself about the central question of philosophy: how should we live?

All this highfalutin' philosophy and class consciousness is wrapped up in a sprightly and very conventionally plotted novel. The exposition at the beginning of the novel may move a little slowly but the pace of events picks up very strongly after that. The suspense I felt about what was going to happen to the concierge, whom I'd grown to love, was just as gripping as if I were reading a mystery and waiting to discover the true identity of the killer.

Let me assure you that I'm no philosopher: I dropped two philosophy classes in college. I dreaded reading this novel because I feared the philosophy I'd heard it contained: I thought it would be way over my head and would put me to sleep.

I can't tell you that I understood the philosophy but I can tell you that the story held my attention from start to finish. If we used this phrase in talking about novels, I'd call this novel well-made. And, while I'm no philosopher, the struggle of our protagonists to decide how to live was moving to me and very immediate. I cared tremendously about both of these characters.

My book group read this book for their inaugural book. I was a little disappointed that no one else seemed to love it quite as much as I did. I think I was more than prepared to overlook some of the lack of sentiment Paloma expressed because I thought that what she had to say was interesting.

I wondered if I found it a little more accessible because the question of how we should live never seems to come up again after college and I was actually eager to hear some earnest and also jaded people talk about that.