Sycamore Row by John Grisham

This book came out last year and I'm only getting around to reading it now.  One of my reasons for pushing it to the top of my TBR (to-be-read) list is my interest in finding out if it would be a good selection for a book group.

I'm now past the two-thirds mark.  I have to say I am really enjoying this book.

One of the qualities Grisham possesses, one which has turned me off in the past, is his intense interest on who stands where in the pecking order.  His interest in how manners, money, dress and comportment dictate your social standing has made me feel painfully self-conscious, and I have not enjoyed it.  It is the business of the novel, in my opinion, to talk about how we live now and certainly, this novel and his other novels do that. I think that one of the things that I particularly like about this novel is that there is so much to say about everything in this long novel that his socioeconomic rankings are less obtrusive than I have found them to be in the past.

Jake Brigance is a small town "street lawyer," in Mississippi in 1984.  He's well-known in his town because he represented Carl Lee Hailey in his trial for murdering the white men who raped his daughter, three years earlier.  Carl Lee was African-American, so Jake is highly regarded in the African-American community.

Jake is struggling financially, however.  He didn't make much money defending Carl Lee and his house was firebombed by racists during the trial.  He's been unable to settle with the insurance company and he, his wife, and his daughter are living in a rental house.

Enter Seth Hubbard, albeit by letter.  Seth is a cantankerous soul, who has made millions in timber and furniture in the previous ten years.  Then Seth learned that he had terminal cancer.

Seth has hung himself, and before doing so, made a new will and writtern Jake a letter in which he asks Jake to defend the new will vigorously.  (Seth chooses Jake because of his local reputation as the defender of Carl Lee Hailey)  Seth knows it will be challenged, because in his new will he cuts out his children.  The new beneficiary is his housekeeper, who is to receive 90% of Hubbard's estate.

Jake is stunned, but he instantly understands that the new will will be contested by the deceased's children and that he, as the estate's lawyer defending the new will, will have an opportunity to have a good, steady income for the first time in years.  When he begins discussing the will with his closest attorney friends, and the local sheriff, they all immediately understand that the fact that Seth Hubbard's housekeeper was black means that there will be a very big fight and that some jurors will feel reluctance to award 90% of a multimillion dollar estate to a black woman.

Grisham mentions Faulkner more than once in this book, and it's clear to me that he shared Faulkner's view that "the past isn't dead, it isn't even passed."  Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful note.

Appropos of nothing, I found this reference to dining and shopping in East London in an ad from Phaidon, the publishers.

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/food/articles/2014/may/19/the-insiders-guide-to-london/

10/24/2017

I read Sycamore Row for  a second time this past spring, for another book group, and I have to say that I enjoyed it even more the second time. I found myself dwelling on details I hadn't noticed the first time around, and I loved the local color - the restaurant and Jake and one of his cronies goes to discuss the trial during a lunch break. It's in the country, and Jake's lunch partner is another lawyer, a really startling intellect. It's so rich in detail and feeling. If only every Grisham outing were this resonant. And this book is resonant.

Parade's End

Back in May, I watched all five episodes of the BBC miniseries, "Parade's End."  This is based on the series of novels by Ford Madox Ford, based in part on his experiences in the First World War.  It seems so odd to me that this year is the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, because we seem to continue to read books and watch movies about the war.

Well, I loved it. The cinematography was wonderful, as was the music.  I thought Adeline Clements was sublime, as were the supporting actors, including Rufus Sewell as the mad vicar.  I recommend it to you for that alone.  It had a wonderful cast:  Janet McTeer, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Roger Allam, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall.

I know that the screenplay was by Tom Stoppard and having enjoyed his plays very much, I found myself wondering if that was part of why I loved it.  The villain of the piece (Sylvia) was given some absolutely wonderful lines and I found myself thinking it was hard to dislike her entirely when she had such interesting things to say!

I thought Janet McTeer's performance as Sylvia's mother was note-perfect and I enjoyed watching her.  I loved everybody else, too.  Loved it!

I have not read the novels, but I learned something about them by going to the Wikipedia entry.  There's a scene in which Sylvia throws a plate at Christopher, complaining that he is correcting the Encyclopedia Britannica. She further complains that no jury would convict her if she killed her husband; I can't remember what her specific complaint is, but it seems to be that it is horrible to be married to such a pedantic person. In the novel, I learned from Wikipedia, Christopher reads the Encyclopedia Britannica to restore his lost memory as he recovers from shell shock.

I would say that it reminded me of the Makioka Sisters, the novel by Tanizaki Junichiro, but lately I've been thinking that everything reminds me of the Makioka Sisters, so I'll skip that.  (In the Makioka Sisters, different daughters react differently to the decline in their family's fortunes in the context of Westernization and militarization - here Christopher Tietjens and his elder brother have slightly different takes on responding to the ending of a way of life on landed estates after the First World War.  It seemed to me that the heart of the piece was the tension between Christopher's values and those of the world around him which were rapidly undergoing a huge shift.)

A friend gave me a copy of Parade's End and I've just finished watching it a second time. In my second viewing, Benedict Cumberbatch's performance seemed wonderful.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I thought the book started off surprisingly slowly.  I thought it did quickly get rolling and was very suspenseful.

In this classic women's fiction tale of a white woman and two African-American maids, set in 1960s era Jackson, Mississippi, the suspense comes not just from not knowing the outcome of the story but from understanding the very real danger in which these characters are placed by their actions.  I think that's definitely part of the appeal:  it's a social satire, an adventure story, a family story, and a town saga (many characters), all wrapped into one.

The book opens with Aibileen, a black maid, getting ready to start work at a new job.  For three months, she's been grieving the loss of her adult son, and she hasn't been working.

Her son was a physically slight and bookish man, who worked at manual labor.  Aibileen feels that his fatal accident at work occurred because her son was not physically strong enough for the job he had.

She feels bitter, and she feels conflicted about going to work for another white family.

Before he died, he started work on a book about what it was like to work for white people.

Aibileen mentions this to Skeeter, a young woman who has just returned from college (without that "Mrs. Degree").  Coincidentally, Skeeter's applied for a job at a New York publishing house and while she didn't get the job, an editor there advised her that she should write something.  It occurs to Skeeter that she should write about the black maids in her world and their experiences working for white people.

Minny is a friend of Aibileen and she also works as a maid for a white lady.  The daughter of her employer decides that her mother should be moved to a rest home, ending Minny's employment.  Hilarious hijinks ensue.  Actually, this occasions a crisis in Minny's life as she really needs that job.  Minny is a plain-spoken person who has a reputation for speaking her mind regardless of the consequences.

She eventually gets a job with a young white woman who is struggling with several aspects of married life. This aspect of Minny's story has many comic and heart-warming elements.

  

Invisible Woman

I loved this film.  It's based on a book by Clare Tomalin on Charles Dickens (which I haven't read) of the same title.

It's about Dickens' love affair with an actress named Ellen Ternan.  In many ways, it's a quite interesting story.  I was surprised to learn about Dickens' affair because he seemed to me to be such an connoiseur of fine family feeling in his fiction that I imagined that sensibility would be a central part of his own family life.

As shown in the film, he was close friends with Wilkie Collins, who was also living with a woman outside of marriage.  What the film doesn't show is that Collins had two mistresses.

The reason I loved the film, however, was not the interesting biographical facts it contained.  It was the acting, which I thought was sublime.

Ralph Fiennes played Dickens; Felicity Jones played Ellen Ternan; Kirstin Scott Thomas played Ellen Ternan's mother, an actress of some distinction, and Tom Hollander played Collins.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I'm torn about this book.  I know it's a crowd pleaser, not because I know that it was a bestseller and book club favorite (which I do), but as I read the book I felt as though I could glimpse the Great Wizard behind the curtain, pulling the levers.

Is it wrong to please people?  Surely not!  Yet the fantasy aspect of this book made me feel uneasy.  I remember that line from Murder in the Cathedral, "Humankind cannot bear too much reality."  I don't know if I ever knew what that has to do with the death of Becket but I can see how it would make this book very appealing.

The book has more than one theme and I may not have picked up on them all:  the most important, I think, is about forgiving our parents for the foolish things they do, forgiving ourselves for the foolish things we do, and beginning the process of healing.  It's also about love in all its many forms.  I'm sure this is part of why this book was so popular (as well as its being a coming-of-age novel, which everyone seems to love - why is that?  Adolescence is often a horrible time, for one reason or another).  Race is also a theme.  The novel is set in South Carolina in the 1960's.

This author has a new book out, The Invention of Wings, about the Grimke sisters (famous abolitionists), which deals with the issue of slavery as well as the yin/yang of dependence on those we love and our desire for independence from them.

Since I wrote this post I've learned that the author knew of a house where bees came swimming out of the wall.  I realize that's not necessarily fantastic.  It's almost as if the time that has passed has allowed the novel to settle in my mind and I realize that the themes of forgiveness are very powerful, as is the idea of creating your own religion that permits you to affirm not only your own values but to affirm your value as a human being.

Saving Mr. Banks/Philomena/The Invention of Lying/About Time

I saw all four of these movies this weekend; of course, none of them were new.

I was so interested in Saving Mr. Banks because I loved the Travers books when I was a child and saw them as really wonderfully weird.  Learning that Walt Disney and Travers had a rocky relationship was no surprise then, really.  This film was so beautifully made.  The acting was fantastic (it was a wonderful cast, down to Melanie Paxson and Kathy Banks as secretaries).  I love Emma Thompson and I thought her ability to imitate Travers' speech patterns and accent was sublime.  I thought that there was a real anarchic streak in the Travers books, so I suspect that their relationship was even more rocky than depicted.  And the depiction of Travers' childhood was the experience of many; that could have been my grandmother.

Philomena was another wonderfully crafted movie - great music, good writing, another wonderful cast, wonderful acting from Judi Dench .. although it was a wonderful script, one that permitted Philomena to be a complex person with many feelings, some of them unexpected, I just think the movie would not have worked without Judi Dench's performance.  I read some criticism that argued that the jokes in the movie are made at Philomena's expense.  That's true, and a fair criticism.  Criticizing her perspective was part of the characterization of the character Martin Sixmith, and it added a needed comic element.  I can see how it would make some viewers uncomfortable and seem exploitative and like a cheap shot.

I loved the Invention of Lying, which is more a social satire than a romance.  Jennifer Garner's performance is both charming and deeply disturbing.  The film was shot in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in the film, Lowell is filled with many handsome buildings.

The notion of the film is that there was a time when no one lied, not even to spare each others' feelings.  In the film, we see that all that honesty makes people really scary; there's a wonderful scene in which Rob Lowe's character says of Ricky Gervais's character, "I don't like him because there's something different about him and that challenges me."  Have to love it; that's so much conflict in a nutshell.

Ricky Gervais is set upfor a date with Jennifer Garner and crushed when she tells him that she won't go out with him again because she wants someone more attractive to father her children.  (Actually, he takes it fairly calmly because he's accustomed to being disappointed.)  Then he's fired and faces homelessness - until, in desperation, he discovers lying can at least solve his income problem.

About Time is a Richard Curtis film that stars Rachel McAdams and Domhnall Gleeson; the fact that she starred in another time travel movie, The Time Traveler's Wife, caused me to be surprised to see her here.  Still, the time travel is not really an important part of this film:  it's more of a scaffold on which to lay some sentiment about family love.  I know I read a review of this film that was lukewarm, but I enjoyed it.  I think that I enjoyed having these issues explored again, although they've all been explored many times before.  I also was happy to see Lindsay Duncan, whom I like very much, and who played a part a little different than the others I've seen her in - most recently, Lady Blackwood in "The Last Vow" episode of Sherlock.

And, of course, Bill Nighy.  I love Bill Nighy.  His persona of self-deprecation is so charming:  it seems to make him a natural joke-tossing-off vehicle.  Yes, I never tire of Bill Nighy.