When We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate

This is a very entertaining historical fiction novel based on a real life incident/scandal.

Rill is a 12-year-old girl who lives a romantic and very unconventional life as a river rat. She and her family live on a river house boat, on the Mississippi River. The house boat is tied up near Memphis as the novel opens.

Tragedy strikes her family when her mother confronts a difficult childbirth and her father takes her mother to a nearby hospital. Before her parents return, the police arrive with a woman who removes all five of the children from the house boat and takes them to a boarding house filled with other children who are wards of the state.  Not all of them are orphans; some have been actually been snatched off the street. Most have been signed away by their parents, but not always with their parents' true consent.

I read this with a book group and the members offered a lot of opinions that I found worth noting. Two folks thought that Wingate is a beautiful prose stylist; I agree. Several folks noted that the structure of the plot was quite predictable. I agree with this point as well, and, in fact, while I was reading the book I felt that I knew almost exactly what was going to happen and what was going to be revealed. Usually, I'm not that far-sighted when reading fiction and, unlike many mystery readers I've met, not good at guessing the murderer. Interestingly, a lot of libraries didn't have this book when we book group readers went to the library to try to get it; I think that this historical fiction was a little bit of a departure for Wingate. Wingate has won a Christy award.

I got the impression that several members of the group enjoyed the book even while recognizing some of its weaknesses, because it had a lively plot told in a suspenseful way and wasn't too challenging.

There were a couple of other things that made an impression on me. The primary point of the story is that children were treated as if they were commodities; however, there was also abuse of various kinds, including sexual abuse. I initially felt so uncomfortable with this, and even described it as "lurid" to someone to whom I was explaining the book; but, a few days after that conversation I was hanging laundry on the line and listening to the radio and heard a story about sexual abuse of Australian orphans, and this caused me to remember stories of child sexual abuse in Ireland and in our own country, and I realized that what I viewed as sensationalism was really commonplace.

I liked the setting at the beginning of the novel. I didn't know that folks lived on the river. I found that interesting.

War and Peace (BBC, 2015)

Really enjoyed this Andrew Davies-penned adaptation of Tolstoy's novel about the French invasion during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century.I love costume dramas, and this one has a fine cast, but what I love most about it are Lily James' and Paul Dano's performances. Paul Dano plays Pierre, who is at the center of the story, and who is perhaps a character who is somewhat aubiographical. Pierre is a self--effacing sort, and the "natural" (illegitimate) son of a wealthy nobleman. Unexpectedly, Pierre inherits his father's title and estate. This sudden change in his circumstances is a bit overwhelming for Pierre, and he is persuaded to make a marriage to a woman who is beautiful, popular and well-connected, but who does not love Pierre and only agrees to marry him because he is rich and she has no money of her own.

The woman Pierre does love is named Natasha. They have been part of the same social set since Pierre was a child, and she eventually meets and falls in love with Andrei, Pierre's great friend.

Meanwhile, Russia fights Napoleon as an ally of Austria. Later, Napoleon invades Russia. The war is a frightful experience for all of Pierre's friends. Pierre himself, although once an admirer of Napoleon, has changed his opinion and goes to the battlefield, hoping for  a chance to assassinate the French general. Instead, he becomes a prisoner of war and is forced on a death march led ed by the French army. Pierre is rescued by Russian soldiers, but so many of Pierre's acquaintance have perished or lost their property that Pierre's world after the war is shrunken and somber. Pierre's attempts to grapple with first, social justice in his own country and in the larger world, and his struggle the assimilate the trauma of the war, are at the heart of this novel.

As the miniseries ended, I found myself feeling that there was something so familiar about this story - and then I realized that it reminded me of Voltaire's Candide.

Can Jane Eyre be Happy?: More Puzzles in Classic Fiction by John Sutherland

Published in 1997, this book is actually a follow-up to Is Heathcliff a Murderer? Can Jane Eyre Be Happy offers a number of short essays on questions in classic fiction and their possible answers.

The title essay, Can Jane Eyre Be Happy? reveals that Bluebeard was a commonly collected fairy tale for children in the Victorian era. The author states that Jane Eyre contains several references to the Bluebeard tale and is a kind of re-telling of it. As a self-avowed vacuous reader of fiction, the questions raised here about Rochester's character and motivations, and Jane's future happiness, had never occurred to me before.

Sutherland's essay on Jane Eyre begins by noting that editor Margaret Smith, in her critical introduction to the Oxford University Press World Classics edition of the novel, correctly notes the influences of the Bible, Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim's Progress, less known today in this country although it is mentioned in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women), Shakespeare, Scott and Wordsworth. He goes on to note that an omission in her list is the tale of Bluebeard, a fairy tale retold by French fairy tale collector Perrault and well known to Victorian children. (Interestingly, Bluebeard did not appear in my Andrew Lang book or my Signet The Twelve Dancing Princesses.)

Bluebeard marries a young woman and when he has to go on a trip, he gives his wife the keys to the house and instructs not to enter a specific room. Curiosity gets the best of her and she enters the room only to discover the corpses of Bluebeard's former wives. Her husband returns and a drop of blood on the key for the forbidden room betrays the wife's secret. In mortal peril, the bride is saved by the arrival of her brothers, who kill Bluebeard.

Sutherland argues that the loss of Rochester's first wife Bertha in the fire at Thornfield Hall is convenient for him and even that the innkeeper's testimony that he saw Bertha fall is "clearly" a reiteration verbatim of his testimony at the coroner's inquest, with the implication that his role as a businessman in the community gives him a motive for exonerating Rochester. Sutherland asks why Rochester didn't commit his wife to one of the new, much more humane sanitariums then already in existence in England. He sees Grace Poole's alcoholism as impairment of her fitness for her role as keeper and as casting further doubt on Rochester's true motivations. He explains Blanche Ingram's visit as a sign that Rochester has determined to marry again despite the fact that it is bigamy and opines that Rochester's interest in Jane is due to a proposed match with Ingram being thwarted by the arrival of Bertha's brother.

Further, Sutherland sees Mrs. Fairfax's role as that of a wise protector of Jane, and her dismissal by Fairfax as evidence of his desire to hide his criminal intent to commit bigamy.

Given that Rochester may have murdered his first wife and Mrs. Fairfax is gone, is Jane Eyre safe with Rochester and likely to be happy? Sutherland mentions that Rochester is blinded by his accident during the fire and argues that his disability and reduced agency may transform him from bigamist to more suitablem or at least, less threatening, husband for Jane.

Sutherland concludes, "But what if, like Edward Rochester, after years of marriage, his sight were to return and -- barring the blemish of a missing hand (common enough, and even rather glamorous in these post-war years) -- Bluebeard still cut a handsome figure. Could one be entirely confident that his wife-killing way would not return?"

Sutherland's conclusion really surprised me because I had always thought of the story of Jane Eye as a woman's empowerment story: Jane is (eventually) able to marry the man she loves despite the fact that she is: plain, an orphan, and poor. Seeing Jane Eyre as a re-telling of the Blackbeard story turns my vision of the meaning of the Jane Eyre story on its head.

If this idea Jane Eyre as a retelling of the Blackbeard story intrigues you, you might enjoy reading this well-supported student essay on this theme:   http://bit.ly/2hzbCfX.

There are a lot of other essays on favorite novels here: an essay on the vulgarity of Mrs. Elton in Emma, the paternity of Tom Jones in Tom Jones (it never occurred to me to wonder), how Mrs. Dalloway gets home so quickly from her excursion to get flowers the day of her party, the gender of Lady Bertram's pug in Mansfield Park, Tristram Shandy, Fanny Hill, The Mill on the Floss, Adam Bede, Barchester Towers, Hardy's A Pair of Blue Eyes (I'd never even heard of this).

Postscript: After I'd read this book, including its essay on Mill on the Floss which concludes that George Eliot was no sailor, I thought of that essay again when I was reading When We Were Yours.
There's an exciting scene where the houseboat of the family in the story is unmoored, drifts out on the river, and breaks up. I found it hard to follow the action, even though it was exciting, and it reminded me of this essay; I wondered if perhaps the fact that I am no sailor made it more difficult for me to understand.

 

Cold Comfort Farm (1996)

This 1995 movie has a wonderful cast and is very funny. In fact, 71% of those who rated it on Amazon.com gave it five stars; Rotten Tomatoes gave it an 83% rating. My favorite scene is when Seth, the movie-mad farm laborer played by Rufus Sewell, agrees that he would very much like to be a star of the silver screen. I'm still laughing about it.

Kate Beckinsale plays a young woman, Flora Poste, who has recently been orphaned; having learned that she has only 100 pounds a year to live on, and having a desire to become a writer, she thinks she will try bunking in with whichever interesting relative will agree to host her. Judith Starkadder (Eileen Atkins) writes her a cryptic letter in which she refers to some wrong done Flora's father in the past, and which also contains a reference to Flora's "rights," without any further explanation. As decidedly rural as Judith's home, Cold Comfort Farm must be, Flora thinks that these mysterious references hold out the greatest promise of a grand adventure, and accepts her cousin's invitation. As she tells her confidante, Mrs. Smiley, she's quite sure she will encounter some cousins that will be named Reuben and Seth; sure enough, her cousins are named Reuben and Seth.

With a cast that includes Ian McKellen as a fire and brimstone preacher, this comic send-up of novels about women coming-of-age is very amusing.

Middlemarch (BBC, 1994)

I watched the 1994 BBC production of Middlemarch on DVD. (My library didn't have it, but was able to borrow it from another library through interlibrary loan.) Middlemarch was wonderful, and it captured the spirit of the novel. I did think that the story suffered from being compressed into six hours or so.  Although it is clear that Ladislaw and Dorothea love each other by the end of the series, they met so infrequently that I felt I couldn't see that their behavior was sufficiently motivated. I recall that when I read the novel I felt that Ladislaw and Dorothea had some sophomoric conversations. That's absent here. I'm not sure that it matters: that sense of wistfulness and compromise about the end of Lydgate and Dorothea's stories has been preserved.

Dorothea and Ladislaw, from a 1910 edition of the novel by Jenkins Publishing

On the other hand, the performances of Casaubon (Patrick Malahide) and Rosamund Vincy (Trevyn McDowell) were so fine that I felt that they really enhanced my understanding of the issues in the novel. Perhaps the actors were kinder to these characters than George Eliot was - I'm not sure, because it's been years since I read the novel. Almost certainly I have changed since I read the novel.

There's only one "special feature" on the DVD. It's a "Reader's Guide to Middlemarch," and I loved it. David Lodge, Howard Jacobson, A.S. Byatt and Clare Tomalin, Kate Flint, screenwriter Andrew Davies, as well as some members of the George Eliot Fellowship, talk about the novel in a very thoughtful way. The ladies and gentleman of the George Eliot Fellowship have some things to say which I think student readers will find helpful: Eliot's portrait is realistic, not romantic, and reflects our real lives (and gives us an opportunity to recognize ourselves); Eliot's realism includes writing about the real jobs that people have; Eliot not only offers realistic portraits but tremendous psychological insight into why people behave the way that they do.

Mary Garth and Fred Vincy, from the same edition

Rosamund and Tertius Lydgate, from the same edition

Davies' enthusiasm is charming and infectious, opining that watching the TV series will inspire viewers to read the book: he says that he hopes viewers will become "George Eliot buffs." Kate Flint tells a wonderful story about being on a bus, reading Middlemarch, coming upon the passage in Middlemarch where Dorothea realizes that her husband has emotional needs just as she has, and suddenly realizing that all the people on the bus sitting around her all had emotional needs too. Terry Eagleton explains that the novel is set in a time of political tumult, in which the reform bill of 1832 promised reform of the parliamentary electoral system and to extend the franchise to people in cities, reducing the influence of the aristocracy and the landed class. Howard Jacobson warns against reading the novel for its romance and promises that if he sees a woman reading the novel in a vacuous way on a train, he will seize the novel and throw it from the train. Since reading novels in a vacuous way is the only way I ever do it, I am quite grateful for the many miles between us. In Mr. Jacobson's defense, being a caretaker of culture is a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it.

I think that the "Reader's Guide" provides excellent answers to the question, "Why is Middlemarch important?" and I think students will find its discussion enlightening and helpful.

Dangerous Beauty (directed by Marshall Herskovitz)

I so enjoyed Rufus Sewell's performance in Victoria that I decided to use my library's online search catalog to create a little Rufus Sewell festival in my DVD player.

Dangerous Beauty doesn't offer Sewell as many opportunities to do the "laughing eyes" thing I enjoyed so much in Victoria, but his performance is note perfect. The film offers beautiful scenes in Venice, sumptuous costumes, and lots of great performances, especially that of Catherine McCormack. McCormack's part is big, varied and includes sword-fighting.

The screenplay was based on a nonfiction book, The Honest Courtesan by Margaret Rosenthal, about Veronica Franco, an historical person who was both a courtesan and a poet.

Next stop, Middlemarch, which I'm sure to enjoy.

Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt

I have been reading Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. I was attracted to it because I remembered reading favorable reviews of it ten years ago when it came out, because it had an attractive cover, interesting color plates, and because I read a little bit and found myself swept along by Greenblatt's lively, handsome and accessible writing. I was intrigued when Greenblatt explained that Shakespeare is one of our greatest biographical puzzles because while there is a large amount of certain kinds of documentation, such as criminal charges, lawsuits, property records, church attendance records, and wills, there are no personal letters, no diaries, and little eyewitness account.

I believe it is intended to be a biography in which the author's own creative output is used to illuminate the biography. It's intended for a general audience, rather than a scholarly one, and if you have been watching Will on TNT and want to know more about the life of William Shakespeare, this book is an excellent choice.

If you are specifically interested in the "lost years," the seven years between Shakespeare's marriage and the first mention of him in London living as an actor and a playwright, you will be disappointed. Greenblatt mentions the usual suppositions: that he worked as a tutor for one or more wealthy Northern recusant families, that he traveled in Italy, that he worked for his father and possibly, worked for a touring acting company. I should mention that almost nothing is known about these seven years of Shakespeare's life. There are no diaries or letters to or from Shakespeare in this period, and no universally accepted records of his employment. Records that we do know about are the schoolmasters of the Stratford Grammar School that Shakespeare himself had attended for some time; Greenblatt shows that there is evidence that three schoolteachers had links to the Catholic recusant movement (Catholics who did not attend Church of England services and English and other priests, educated and ordained on the Continent), which means that he could have had the connections to work in that capacity.

If you are interested in knowing whether it's likely that Shakespare's life was touched by Catholic thought and politics, or the politics of the Tudor era, this book would be a good resource because Greenblatt explains this very well. He talks about the references to Catholicism in his plays and other aspects of Shakespeare's biography that appear in the plays: references to the processes of curing leather, for instance, something Shakespeare knew from having worked in his father's glove business.

I found that aspect alone fascinating; I took Elizabethan Era History in college and cannot recall anything about "recusants," or about how the Elizabethan police state and the continuing loyalty to the Catholic faith in rural England, especially the north, created ongiong fear and tension. (At this time, everybody was expected to go to a Church of England church.) In fact, Greenblatt argues that there are many references to Catholic ritual in the plays and Shakespeare may have viewed the theatre as a sphere in which some of the communal concerns of a population that felt the absence of a former practice and cultural dislocation might feel some acknowledgment of their feelings.

There is a great deal here about Shakespeare's life in London, and about the aspects of Shakespeare's life that influenced his playwriting. Especially, Greenblatt makes some interesting inferences about Shakespeare's life: 1) That he regretted his early marriage at 18 (he finds references to the foolishness of marrying young in his work); 2) that he detested his wife; 3) That Hamlet was not only informed by the loss of his son and the impending loss of his father but by his awareness that Protestantism's relationship to the dead was very different from that of Catholicism, and less comforting; 4) That his father's reversal of fortune made the theme of restoration a recurring one in Shakespeare's work; 5) that the late plays' recurring father-daughter relationships reflected Shakespeare's close relationship with his elder daughter, Susanna. Greenblatt also discusses the biographical aspects of the sonnets, Venus and Adonis, and The Rape of Lucrece. I have not read these poems and only a few of the sonnets, but I found this discussion very interesting.

There is much evidence of factual events Shakespeare's life but it comes almost entirely from legal documents: lawsuits, contracts, references to his father's life as a local public official and Shakespeare's own will.

For students, I think the chapter notes at the back of the book may be quite helpful in locating books that deal with certain questions in greater depth.

The Lovers

What an interesting film The Lovers turned out to be (directed by Azazel Jacobs). It's being marketed as a middle-age Cousin, Cousine, and while it has comic elements (a laugh out loud moment), it's going to disappoint folks who attend thinking that the two films are similar.

It has received a high rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes (86%; by way of comparison, Wonder Woman got 93%), and it's easy for me to see why. It's fresh and original and features wonderful acting. Aiden Gillen's performance was especially fascinating to me. At first, I had trouble taking it in. It felt like viewing a cubist painting without being able to resolve the different points of view. I imagine that his performance in Game of Thrones made such an indelible impression on me that it was hard for me to see him as someone else. (Even though I'd also seen his performance in The Wire, which I also thought wonderful.) But I felt that I was able to see him as someone else, and his performance, as well as the others, all seemed to be very real, to be imitative of reality in a way that's unusual for a Hollywood film.

I loved all the performances. Tracy Letts and Debra Winger were wonderful. Melora Walters, who played the husband's lover, Lucy, was also wonderful. Winger and Letts were the cheating spouses, with so much vitality that it was easy to see how they could be loved despite their cheating ways.

After I thought I'd caught the tenor of the film, I kept thinking Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, Ernst Lubitsch, he would have done something different with this material. I think I was troubled by the gap in expectation that this would be a funny film and its somber tone. Then I thought We can't have Little Shop Around the Corner, we've seen too much. Perhaps that's true, given that domestic violence made an appearance in Eleanor & Park, a cozy culinary mystery by Diane Mott Davidson and even Debbie Macomber. Does an escapist film have to deny reality? Can there not be an admixture of truthful comfort in the humor of a what is clearly a ridiculous (as well as sad) situation?

I did not like the music or the set design, and while both served to underscore the unsentimentality of the film I found them alienating. I imagine the set design was partly meant to underscore the idea that the wife was emotionally absent and had no emotional investment in her home, no motivation to make it beautiful or personal or full of sentimental touches like a ceramic napkinholder from Key West (not beautiful, sophisticated or elegant, nor even very personal but not anonymous).

Towards the end of the film Debra Winger's character is trying to grapple with the inherent deceit of cheating, and she says, "We're not bad people." At that moment, I wasn't convinced of that statement and I'm not sure that her character was, either. Contrast that with the last line of Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot: "Nobody's perfect." The last line of this film is funny, and it has a happy ending.

If you're interested in Billy Wilder, you might enjoy the episode of the Austin Film Festival's On Story series, entitled Deconstructing Billy Wilder (Episode 709) in which Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot are discussed.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

This is a very entertaining and engaging book, and I think it's great for both teens and adults, and a wonderful title for a parent and teen to read together. I love this book, and certainly Rainbow Rowell fans are an enthusiastic group. I lent this book to a neighbor, and she agreed that it was good. (So nice of her to approve my enthusiasm.)

It's a love story about how Eleanor and Park meet, on a school bus, junior year, and confront a situation that's really scary and overwhelming. And they struggle with some of the same issues you would find in an adult romance novel.

It's a fast and easy read - I read it in five hours. I was just sharing my enthusiasm for this book with a friend, and as she said, I didn't want it to end. It was so sweet, but not maudlin. It's a real feel-good read, with lots of funny dialogue and well-rounded characters.

I was surprised to see that domestic violence is part of the story. It's presented in a psychologically realistic way. I think I was surprised because it seems to me to come up so often in my reading: it was a theme in the Debbie Macomber novel I read, and also in a Diane Mott Davidson novel (where I really didn't expect it). Dealing with tough real-life issues seems to be a hallmark of the best YA fiction.

Like all romances, there are obstacles to be overcome. I think that one of the things that's charming about Pride and Prejudice is that the characters grow and change; that's true of Eleanor & Park. In fact, Park struggles with wanting social acceptance, and he worries about how the other kids will view him if they perceive that Eleanor is his girlfriend. Eleanor has a different set of issues to struggle with, including a desire to be invisible and to avoid notice (and therefore, trouble); for her own different reasons she hesitates to admit her feelings for Park, and to resist acknowledging the relationship.

Park learns that, after all, his friends don't care that much, and more importantly, Eleanor is far more important to him than their opinion. Eleanor begins to be able trust that Park's feelings for her are enduring. Classic romance!

After I read the book, I went to Google Images and found a collection of fan art depicting Eleanor & Park and scenes in the book. I was so delighted. Check it out. Knowing that the fans know how to depict scenes in the book makes me wonder why it is proving hard to get the film of the book produced.

The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan

When I first found the Seattle PBS-produced show about books and authors, Well Read, I caught an interview with Ian Rankin. Ian Rankin lives in Edinburgh and is the author of the Inspector Rebus novels, a best-selling mystery series. During the interview, Rankin said that the crime fiction he writes gives him an opportunity to talk about the social issues of the day. I think that's the kind of writing I find most interesting; writing that offers some social or personal commentary wrapped inside a mystery story.

I really enjoyed Ausma Zehanat Khan's debut mystery novel. 
In the novel, Esa Khattak, a Canadian Muslim, is a special police detective assigned to investigate crimes that may be especially sensitive to the Muslim community. He has a partner, Rachel Getty.

Khattak is called upon to investigate an accident that took the life of a wealthy man. It isn't immediately clear why this accident is suspicious and merits investigation. Getty, Khattak's partner, is troubled by her feeling that she hasn't been told everything about the case. She soon learns that this is true: the dead man was living under an assumed identity and his hidden past may contain the motive for a murder.

There's a romance in this police procedural, as well as a very subtle sexual frisson between Khattak, a widower, and his single partner, Getty. There are several suspects, and the ending was a complete surprise to me.


I'm an armchair traveler, and reading books set in faraway places appeals strongly. This novel is set in Toronto, and some of the characters in the novel are Muslim refugees from the genocide of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the former Yugoslavia. Their memories of the genocide are part of the novel as well.

The role that the Bosnian genocide plays in the novel, especially the massacre of Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, both gives it gravity and probably disqualifies it as an entertainment for some readers.

My take is a little bit different. There are no murders in my real life, but there is irremediable loss, grief, and suffering. There is the mystery that we all carry around, the mystery of the losses and hurts that have shaped our character in a way that is not always obvious to ourselves, much less others. How loss shapes us, or misshapes us, was a theme in Tana French's Faithful Place, and one of the reasons I loved that novel. To me, the ongoing role that loss plays in our lives is the serious business of mystery.

I learned that the term "ethnic cleansing" was coined during the Balkan war of the early 90s to permit officials to avoid using the term "genocide." The two terms mean the exact same thing: the systematic imprisonment, or murder, of a certain ethnic group. Using the term "ethnic cleansing" instead of "genocide" seems very reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, in which a variety of doublespeak, some quite imaginative, was used to deceive the public. Of course, this doesn't seem very fictional, because it isn't. Doublespeak, or the use of occasionally bizarre, occasionally transparent euphemisms to obscure the truth, is a fact of life today.

This use of fiction, as an educational tool rather than only entertainment, may be a  little old-fashioned today. I think there was a time when more readers read fiction as an exercise in self-education. In 1967, Marshall McLuhan wrote:  Anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn’t know the first thing about either. Although I imagine McLuhan offered this aphorism to provoke thought, I find myself agreeing in the context of popular fiction, and am happiest encountering fiction with a clear message. This fiction is meant to entertain but also to educate, and I find that this kind of fiction is something I admire.

Other novels in this detective mystery series include: The Language of Secrets, Among the Ruins, and the just-released Dangerous Crossing.

Hero of the Empire by Candace Millard

This is a very entertaining book, and I would certainly recommend it for any fan of Churchill or of history. Millard was recommended to me as someone who wrote history in a very accessible way, and I certainly agree. Her prose is lively, and she shapes her narrative for its maximum entertainment value. And the story of Churchill's escape from a prisoner of war camp was a ripping good yarn.

A Coffin for Demetrios by Eric Ambler

While I was doing informal research about Alan Furst on the Internet, after I'd read Hero of France, I came across an interview somewhere in which Furst reported, if I remember correctly, that he'd started his first novel after finishing A Coffin for Demetrios. I think I remember Frederick Pohl mentioning Ambler's novel in his book about espionage novels. I checked it out from my local library, finished it a few days ago, and must say that I really enjoyed it.

I thought that Ambler's prose was sometimes a little florid, and I found myself having an expectation that his exposition would be concise and his prose plain. Neither was true, and I found that I really enjoyed his prose.

Of course, I felt at sea reading this novel set in about 1925. The novel opens with a writer meeting a government official at a party in Istanbul. It turns out that the Turkish government official, Colonel Haki, is a great fan of police procedurals although, he points out, they bear very little relation to reality.

Latimer, the writer, is facing a deadline from his publisher. He's feeling uninspired, and an experience he has while visiting Colonel Haki intrigues him, and he's soon tempted away from his work by the project of acting as a detective himself, and uncovering the criminal career of a man who seemed to be notoriously amoral among the few who knew of him.

When Latimer first encounters a man whom he later learns is an associate of Demetrios, I found myself feeling, "This is the fifth or so really bizarre character that Latimer has met in the course of this novel." I felt Latimer was entirely too accepting of the company of these strange people. But, of course, these strange characters make the story.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

Regeneration is a tough novel to sum up. It's historical fiction: an imagining of the relationship of some real people, Dr. Williams Rivers, and his shell-shock patients at the Craiglockhart Hospital, renowned war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen.

Author Pat Barker wrote this novel after she realized that her work had been pigeon-holed as women's fiction.

I find the inclusion of real people among the characters engaging. Barker did a lot of research, and I find myself imagining that this gave her the freedom to imagine her characters while grounding them reality, giving her work authenticity.

Underneath it all, Barker conveys something tough-minded and honest, and I think that is part of the appeal of the novel to me. Another aspect that I think interests me is the sense that this moment in time is a turning-point, a switch, or a change, from one culture to another, although in reality, contradictory cultural currents exist side by side.

A review I found somewhere emphasized the character of Billy Prior. Prior is not a historical person, and he is perhaps the least sympathetic of Rivers' patients in the book. As this essay asserted, Prior is an officer who is working-class, and has earned his rank through merit, and his attitude is one of fairly obvious scorn and disdain for the upper-class young men with whom he shares his rank.

Prior starts dating a girl in town during the course of the novel. At times, he feels anger toward her, and this may be simply a reflection of a soldier's contempt for civilians, or something darker. I felt I could never quite get a fix on his feelings for her. My difficulty understanding Prior, or fixing his identity, was the thing that troubled me the most about this novel. I wonder if the difficulty I had "fixing him," or pinpointing his identity, reflects his crossing class lines and his discomfort in the place where he has arrived.

I'd read this novel years ago, perhaps 15 or 20 - I can't remember exactly. As I read it again, I found myself feeling as if I were reading it for the first time. I loved the novel when I read it before, and I struggled to try to recapture the feeling that I had then. After turning over the elements of the novel in my mind, I suspect now that what moved me so greatly was Rivers' character, his kindness and his openness.

It was interesting to read Regeneration right after Longbourn, because the appearance of class in the former novel somehow made me feel more keenly the element of class in Longbourn.

7/29/17  Today I read an interesting personal essay about how reading Regeneration influenced one student's feeling about her own disability. I found it interesting. Here's a link: http://bit.ly/2vGrrTL

Longbourn by Jo Baker

Longbourn is an historical fiction novel about the servants' lives at Longbourn, the home of the Bennet family in Pride and Prejudice.

The Longbourn house is too grand to be without servants but not nearly grand enough for there to be much of an hierarchy. Mr. and Mrs. Hill are assisted by two young girls that came to them from the local workhouse to help with the massive amount of laundry generated by the five Bennet sisters; both serving girls are orphans. Although none of the servants are related to each other, they make up a kind of chosen family. Sarah, for instance, as deeply exhausted as she is, allows Polly, the younger girl, to slack off early recognizing her need to play. Mrs. Hill becomes concerned when Jane, Lizzie and Lydia marry, knowing that there will no longer be enough work for Sarah and Polly.

Sarah is older, and perhaps a little more interesting because, as Baker tells us, Sarah has memories of her life with her parents, weavers, before they died. 

While the world of the novel seems to make clear that there is nothing for Sarah and Polly than a life of service, both are readers, lent books by the Bennets. Nevertheless, Polly eventually becomes the village teacher.

A stranger arrives to work as a footman, and his arrival perplexes Sarah greatly. She alternately hates him and confesses to herself that she is attracted to him. He, for his part, becomes gradually attached to her until he suddenly realizes that he loves her. I saw this as the chief way that Longbourn mirrored Pride and Prejudice.

Another way, though perhaps less obviously, Longbourn mirrors Pride and Prejudice is the concern of Longbourn with class. One example is Wickham himself; here is portrayed as "neither fish nor fowl," a man whose varied background has left him able to charm the Bennet sisters while he remains more comfortable visiting the Bennet servants. Pride and Prejudice implies that Wickham is a sexual predator; Longbourn makes this explicit.

Longbourn is gritty, lingering on Sarah's chilblains, on the long hours worked by the servants.

The characters are well-rounded and feel like real people. 

Baker's novel feels deeply authentic, in part because the characters behave in a way that seems to reflect the restrictions of the period. One note that I found jarring is when Mrs. Hill talks to Lizzie about Lizzie's engagement to Darcy; Mrs. Hill thinks to herself that she understood that Lizzie had made "a spectacular deal." That language seemed a little too modern for me, although it's certainly true. I like best historical fiction that feels authentic and seems to convey the concerns of the period rather than our own concerns. Longbourn is very good in this respect, and some of my favorite historical fiction ever.

The things that I liked best about Longbourn were:

1. The "downstairs" story mirrored the upstairs story, with a romance that included a "true" and a "false" suitor;

2. Sarah, the protagonist, was a complicated, sympathetic and interesting person;

3. Wickham, Lydia and Mrs. Bennet all make an appearance, and their character here is entirely consistent with the same in Pride and Prejudice, while elaborated.

4. Baker's prose  is very beautiful. She uses metaphor for economy in her description is a way that's quite poetic.

5. The novel is full of historical details that I imagine Baker carefully researched.

The Lewis Man by Peter May

Peter May, a television writer, has written a series of mystery novels set in Scotland. The Lewis Man is full of sharp observations of nature written in lyrical prose. Good choice for fans of police procedurals who do not mind some poetical writing. Loved it; recommend it.

This book is a good choice for folks who enjoy mysteries where the setting is strongly described, present, and/or influences the action.

A Hero of France by Alan Furst

A Hero of France was on the Washington Post's list of best mysteries of 2016. It has seemed to me that over the past few years, each newly released Furst novel of wartime Europe has been widely reviewed and greatly publicized.  After reading The Nightingale, The Paris Architect (by Charles Belfoure; I recommended it for its wonderfully clever premise, its clearly motivated characters, its detail and suspense), All the Things We Cannot See and The City of Women, I thought it was a bit surprising that I'd never read Furst.

Furst's novels are often described as spy novels, and his most loyal readers are probably those who have enjoyed LeCarre, MacDonald, and Follett. I don't see A Hero of France as a spy novel, however. There are a few spies, and some spy characters who recur from other of Fursts' novels, but this novel is primarily about the leader of French resistance cell who is in contact with English spies and bringing downed British pilots out of German-occupied France.

Reviews that I read suggested that this is not Furst's most accomplished novel, and I found myself feeling that it did not quite make sense that the cell leader was so trusting, especially when he characterized himself as a shrewd judge of nature. I found suspense slow to build but did find the middle of the novel very suspenseful. The novel does have a very happy ending indeed, something that I am sure will please many readers.