Blue Castle by Lucy Maud Montgomery

 I LOVED this book! 

My paperback copy, published by Sourcebooks in Naperville (Illinois), asserts that this is a Young Adult book. But, as a friend said to me, it's really a romance for adults, although it is not a modern romance: no sex and no double-entendres.

I see Austen's influence here in so many ways. Above all, the central theme is courage. In this regard, it is very much like Persuasion. Valancy Stirling, the heroine of the novel, is a little sad: she quite repressed by her mother's insistence on perfect obedience and her limited life choices. 

As the novel opens, she is having her 29th birthday; her uncle teases her relentlessly about her old maid status, which really wears on her.

She suddenly receives shocking news which galvanizes her; she resolves to please herself, and while her family is so shocked by her behavior that they investigate whether they can institutionalize her, her determination to "seize the day" sets the novel's events in motion.

My thoughts about this book's similarity to Persuasion are that Valency, like Anne, fears that she will never marry; the neglect and disregard of her family is similar to that experienced by Anne Elliot; like Anne, she learns to assert herself, to think what she wants and to act on it; Valency's story, like Anne's, turns on some elaborate but deeply satisfying contrivances.

Montgomery is a funny, funny writer. Her descriptions of Valency's family, as Valency sees them, are hilarious. Valency is a character of deep thoughts and feelings; she is compassionate, a hard worker, and those readers who require a admirable heroine will be well-satisfied. 

And, to me, although the conventions of the romance novel go back to the 18th century, Valency's reactions to her family circle and others show both a conventional view of proper female behavior and an ability to assert herself that will delight fans of Lizzie Bennet and Anne Shirley.

 

 

 

Maigret Goes Home (L'Affaire Saint Fiacre)

This has been my very first Simenon novel.

Being a big Inspector Montalbano/Andrea Camilleri fan, I'd always wanted to read Simenon, because Camilleri said publicly that he greatly admired Simenon. Camilleri said that there is a theme running through Simenon's work, and that is the conflict between money and family love, or how family love is often trumped by the need for money. Camilleri said that there was a similar theme running through his work, and that was how sex trumped family love.

And, through my interest in Camilleri, I came to find out about the Maigret series, starring Bruno Cremer, produced through cooperation between French, Belgian, and Czechoslovakian TV in the 1990's. I loved that series. 

I found Maigret Goes Home at a used book sale (I suppose I would have preferred to begin with Peter the Latvian). Since it was written in 1931, I believe, I expected something like a cross between Agatha Christie and Dashiell Hammett.

The plot is roughly this: Maigret receives an unsigned typewritten note, informing him that there will be a murder at Mass in Saint Fiacre tomorrow.  He immediately decides he's going to Saint Fiacre, the town where he grew up. 

He attends 6 am Mass. At the end of Mass, everyone leaves and the priest, the altar boy, and the sacristan start cleaning up. Only one person remains: the Countess Saint Fiacre, widow of the old Count. Maigret approaches her from behind and places his hand on her shoulder; he's shocked to discover she's died during the Mass.

He learns that her son, who will inherit what's left of the heavily mortgaged estate, has a reputation for being an alcoholic wastrel; he arrives at the estate a few hours later, and he's come to ask his mother to cover a check he's just written that will otherwise bounce. Maigret meets the son, the Countess's secretary who is thought to have been the Countess's lover, the estate manager, the doctor and the local priest. Initially, they are all suspects.

I found it surprising in a lot of ways. First of all, the narrator explicitly tells the reader three times that Maigret is upset because he is profoundly shocked and offended by the way people in Saint Fiacre talk about the Countess, now in her early 60s. (So much for "show, don't tell.")

When he was a child, Maigret's father was the estate manager, and Maigret regarded the countess with an enormous amount of respect. When Maigret was a boy, the present Count was a baby in a pram being pushed by his mother.

Maigret visits the present estate manager in his home, and notices that the new manager has made expensive improvements to his house, and the surrounding courtyard. 

Later in the novel, there is a classic confrontation scene where Maigret and all the suspects are present. 

But, as Simenon points out, the confrontation scene was not arranged by Maigret; it was arranged by the Count, the Countess's son. 

When I'd finished reading, I not only still had questions--many mysteries fail to explain all the red herrings or tie up all the loose ends--but I still wondered who the real killer was. Was it Emile, the banker son of the estate manager? Or was the Count himself, behaving like an impious version of Telemachus. 

 

 

Maus by Art Spiegelman; Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

I read this graphic novel, along with Persepolis, because I'd read that both books had been challenged by parents when it had been assigned in school to their children. I think I'd read that Persepolis was objectionable to some parents because it had swear words (an objection that has also been raised about Huckleberry Finn). I didn't notice any swear words; they may well have been there but I didn't notice them. Of course, I read Borstal Boy when I was 13. I found Borstal Boy difficult to read: there's a lot of Cockney rhyming slang: china is mate (china plate), fag-ends were cigarette butts, and screws is what the warders were called. I think someone who's read Borstal Boy is not going to be too intimidated by Persepolis, which is a sweet, funny book. In fact, I read John Hersey's Hiroshima the same year.

Maus is a wonderful book. It's mostly about Vladek, Art Spiegelman's father, who survived Auschwitz. There's a scene (I remember it all only inexactly) where his family is going through selection, and his father is spared because he's personally known by the man making the selection, but his daughter (Vladek's sister) and her children are selected, and Vladek's father climbs over the fence so that he can be with his daughter and her children, thus sealing his own fate. In the second volume, Spiegelman's character speculates that his father, who showed tremendous ingenuity in Auschwitz and even managed to smuggle food to his wife in Birkenau, "survived" Auschwitz and in so many ways was lucky (his brother survived, his wife survived, he was able to do jobs for the Polish and German guards that got him extra rations) but whose mental health suffered because of the trauma he experienced.

When I think about parents wanting to protect their children from the vicarious, empathic pain they may suffer from Persepolis or Maus, I feel sympathetic. I personally think that it's a shame, however, because I think the way that these books engage empathy is terrifically valuable because adult life is full of situations where competing values need to be evaluated. In short, if reading these books cause sorrow (and Persepolis, though it is challenging in some ways, is funny and engaging), I also think that they have great value. 

Chinese Fairy Tales with illustrations by Jeanyee Wong

I love this book, and while it's now out of print, it's still held in a few libraries and a few copies are available on Amazon and eBay.

I wish I knew more about it, but my internet search has turned up nothing. No author is listed or shown on or in the book itself, nor an editor. I assume that the illustrator, Jeanyee Yong (who I take it had a long career as an illustrator in the publishing industry in New York), collected and edited these stories herself. The stories here are not strictly speaking, fairy tales. There are no fairies here, neither the tiny ones with diaphonous wings nor the kind that push you into a ditch and jump on you until you're black or blue. I'd describe these stories as folk stories, although the fact that Jeanyee Wong assembled them makes them literary.

 

 

Hospital Suite by John Porcellino

 I came across this graphic novel in the Library when I was looking for a copy of Persepolis. 

Porcellino tells a story of severe, early illness (he had to have surgery on his intestines; I think he was 28 when this happened) and how it led to increased feelings of anxiety, depression and OCD. As his OCD worsened, his wife found it increasingly difficult to cope.

This story, told in a restrained and very matter-of-fact way, feels more like an adventure story than one of loss. I'm so glad I found it.

 

Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

I'm about halfway through reading Trevor Noah's memoir, Born A Crime. I am really enjoying it and would strongly recommend it.

I didn't know what to expect from this book, and I think I guessed it would have lots of one-liners and some satirical hot takes and exaggeration for humor's sake. I don't see much of that here. Noah relates extraordinary events from his childhood in a straightforward way. 

He's a very good prose stylist although his style is fairly plain. Not surprisingly for a stand-up comic, he's a good storyteller, but here his storytelling style is mostly not very theatrical.

As a narrator, he conveys the sense that he is very grounded. He does offer explanation and context of his past, his parents' past, and his country's past.

I guess my feeling is that Noah grew up in a world with a lot of violence: criminal, political and psychological. Some of the things that he has to say are necessarily stimulating. I find it a bit of a relief to have it related without emphasis added. But much more than this, to me, is that I think he is a very good prose stylist. I found, after reading about 100 pages, that I was composing in my head in a much simpler style. I find that to be evidence of his skill as a writer. I suspect that he really likes words and chooses them carefully and artistically.

For instance, he tells the story of how his mother came to push him out of a speeding car in a matter-of-fact way, as he also tells the story of his first Valentine when he was twelve. On the other hand, he tells the story of how, to save money on gas, his mother used to make him push the car when it was stuck in heavy traffic on the way to his school. That is dramatically told.

One of the things that I like about Born A Crime is that much of it is a portrait of his mother. His mother is a very interesting person. She was farmed out to a relative as a small child, and when that relative could no longer take care of her, she took a secretarial course. Then she worked in an office in Johannesburg, but her mother insisted that all of her salary go to supporting her entire family. So, she literally ran away to Johannesburg, sleeping in public toilets until she could find a place to live that she could afford. She enjoyed going out in Johannesburg, and met a German-speaking Swiss, Noah's father. After some time she announced to him that she wanted to have a child with him. Although initially resistant, he eventually supported her decision. Because of apartheid laws in South Africa, they could not marry or live together: their relationship was illegal. 

Another thing I like about this book is that Noah talks a lot about language and how it can be used as a barrier and a bridge. Language was actively used by the apartheid government as a way to separate people and Noah learned that speaking a variety of languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and other native languages) could give him entree to a variety of people, and that interested him.

And, of course, language is his business. His career began when his friends pushed him to try standup because they thought that he was so terrifically funny. Noah talks a bit about risk-tasking here, and he says that he feels that taking risks is ultimately rewarding and what he regrets is the risks he didn't take.

This interview Trevor Noah did to help promote the book gives an overview of Born A Crime, and conveys Noah's extremely pragmatic worldview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfMNTnBM4I&t=3893s

Time Team

A great comfort to me during lockdown was the British program on YouTube, Time Team. Time Team is an archaeology program, broadcast on Channel 4 from 1993 to 2013. Numbers of episodes for each year varied, but there were generally 9-12 episodes a season, and they are all on YouTube. And, I guess the reason that all of the episodes are on YouTube is that there are a number of people who were so passionate about Time Team and archaeology, that they copied all of the episodes off live TV back when VCR technology was new.

In a sense, it's a reality show. Archaeologists swoop down on a site, and they have just three days to do enough research to answer a question. I suppose that unlike most reality shows, it really is "real," not non-scripted make-believe, although the extensive set-up and take-down all occurs off-camera, before and after the famous three days.

For instance, in the case of the manor house Hooke Court, in Dorset, now a school, the question was, "What did Hooke Court look like before it was burned during the English Civil War?" and accompanying questions, like who owned it and how was it used? And given that there's a small moat, extending around about 30% of the school site, another question is, did the moat once go all the way around the school site?

Like other reality shows, Time Team raises suspense for its viewers by creating a false (in this case, real) crisis: can they find the answer in three days? And, mostly, they do, but not without some bumps along the way.

The central idea of Time Team is that the advent of geophysical radar mapping of a few feet immediately below the ground permits a team of archaeologists to descend on a site, use the ground radar maps to choose sites to dig, and uncover meaningful information in just three days.

Presenter Tony Robinson sometimes seem like he's on the verge of hysteria: the threat that the posed question might not get answered, or, the lost item the team has come to uncover might not be found, has him raising his voice, gesticulating, and in great danger of failing to be entirely polite. He asks the questions, often about terminology, that the audience would ask if they could.

The "mission" at Hooke Court was to discover if all of the manor house complex had burned during the English Civil War or if some remains, either above or below ground, are older, and to find out if the moat once encircled the manor house. By the end of the dig, the archaeologists and the architectural historian disagreed on the location of the great hall, and there just wasn't any more time to dig. Further, Hooke Court's appearance in the Domesday Book shows that there was some kind of Anglo-Saxon settlement at Hooke Court, and the Anglo-Saxon who owned it survived the Norman Conquest and was named a thane of William the Conqueror. 

In the case of Hooke Court, the architectural historian found that a building a Hooke Court that was pulled down (or fell down) in the recent past, was the former gatehouse of the manor. The archaeologists used the ground-penetrating radar, or "geophys," as it's called on the show, to see that that there were extensive traces of buildings under the ground. It seems likely that there were successive buildings on the site given that its history goes back to the Norman Conquest and likely earlier. 

John Gater, the man in charge of the geophysical mapping, shows the archaeologists some readouts of his crew's mapping work, and the outlines of a large building are seen. The archaeologists start digging, to prove this thesis, and . .  confusing evidence emerges. Several large trenches are dug, and several walls are uncovered, but the archaeologists don't have enough time to find all the "returns," that is, to find all of the corners that belong to these walls that would allow the archaeologists to see the outline of the Great Hall and possibly other buildings.

And Hooke Court is a little bit of a failure. In three days, an architectural historian shows that the last remaining building of Hooke Court, which used to be manor house with multiple buildings like a gatehouse, a great hall, outbuildings like a kitchen, a stables, a dairy, a brewery, was originally a 15th century tower house, to which additions were made in the 16th, 17th, and 19th centuries. While Hooke Court is not unusual in this respect, it's a fine illustrative example of how manor homes evolved over the centuries.

What is true of this episode, as of many episodes, is that Stewart Ainsworth, a landscape archaeologist,  swoops in and decides some question late in the program by offering an analysis of the landscape--the height of the site and its surrounding area, nearby rivers or streams, and the presence of natural defenses. All of the Time Team experts have many fans, but I think that Stewart Ainsworth's work had the greatest impact on changing my understanding of archaeological sites. Also, there's this interesting tension between the expertise of Ainsworth and the archaeologists. Perhaps Hooke Court is not the most interesting Time Team episode, but it's a fine example of how Ainsworth would present a view based on his expertise that would change your view of the site, or the problem, or explain why what was found by the archaeologists (or not found) differed from what was anticipated, late in the episode.

And, a typical Time Team episode features a host of visiting experts: archivists and historians, pottery experts, Anglo-Saxon experts, nautical and aviation experts, Roman experts, Phillippa Gregory on the history of the War of the Roses when Time Team visited Groby, the ancestral home of Elizabeth Woodville's in-laws, and the list goes on. 

The architectural historian argued for one position, one of the archaeologists argues for another, and super-digger and enthusiastic flint expert Phil Harding opines that there's a large building, it appears, heading off in another direction, so that the episode ends with uncertainty. On camera, Tony Robinson asks Phil Harding is there's anything that can be done to settle the question: possibly some test pits (small trenches one meter by one meter in dimension or perhaps a little larger), and Phil shakes his head. There is, finally, a limit to how much can be done in three days, even on Time Team.

Research of soil samples shows that the moat did not go all the way around the school site, and Ainsworth steps in and explains: the site, which held a manor house (or the Anglo-Saxon version of that, just a timber building) going back to before the Conquest, sits on a ridge and was chosen for being a high place, making it harder to attack and easier to defend. Ainsworth shows an early nineteenth-century tithe map which shows that in the past, the moat was actually smaller than it is now, and he conjectures that it was expanded to heighten its decorative effect, and that the moat/ditch was originally built when defense was a real issue, to prevent attack from that direction.

My favorite episodes on Time Team are the medieval episodes, where written history is often an important component of the archaeological investigation. I think my three favorite episodes are the very first episode, an exploration of Aethelney, in Somerset, the site of Alfred the Great's guerilla camp, where no digging but other investigative techniques are used; Much Wenlock, where the development of a medieval town outside the gates of an abbey is investigated (Norman economic development); and Hooke Court, a somewhat (but not perfectly!) typical manor house.

Archaeologist Mick Aston was, in a manner of speaking, the star of Time Team, an archaeology professor from the University of Bristol with a committed passion for bringing archaeology to ordinary people, the genesis for Time Team. I have to say I admire Aston's vision, because it seems that there are many fans who are very passionate about Time Team. And, in fact, part of what I love about Time Team myself is that the archaeological excavations often reveal facts about the lives of ordinary people which is what I find most interesting. I think this is what Carenza Lewis studies; I found her analysis of the abandonment of villages after the Black Death so interesting. I've always felt confused about what the social impact of the Black Death on English farmers was and, as you can imagine, watching Time Team has helped me to understand it much better.

Time Team producer Tim Taylor recently spoke to Tony Robinson on YouTube about Time Team's history, and Robinson mentioned that Channel 4 preferred episodes to feature ordinary people and to portray the digging up of their back gardens. In fact, that's my own preference: my favorite episodes all have ordinary people with questions about archaeology and I find that very charming. In the Much Wenlock episode, the "ordinary person" answers the door to Mick and Tony on Easter day and apologizes that the meal is not quite ready yet. The lesson that Mick wanted to impart, about how traders came to the gates of abbeys to provide goods and services to the monks, and then came again for fairs, and then built a house on the back of their stall, and so a small market town was created, was exactly the kind of thing I wanted to know more about--because I'd read Henri Pirenne's Medieval Cities, where Pirenne talks in the abstract about what Mick Aston is here talking about in the particular. And there it is, right on Time Team. 

Today, Time Team producer Tim Taylor is leading an effort to create new Time Team episodes, funded by Patreon. I believe he is planning two digs next year and that one of them will be in Cornwall. Here's a recent video in which he offers up an update: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4_QOBnLEro

 

 

You Can't Touch My Hair: and Other Things I Still Need to Explain by Phoebe Robinson

This book was published in 2016, and I just finished listening to the e-audiobook last night. I have 32 different feelings about this book! I found Robinson's tone of plain-spoken self-assurance refreshing. She's passionate, funny and expressive.

Of course, Phoebe Robinson talks about hair in this book. I already knew that it was socially unacceptable to ask an African-American if you can touch their hair, not that I'd thought much about it before. It's just that I'd read a Facebook post about in which an African-American woman complained about having had this experience--being asked by a white person if the white person could touch their hair--and that it had occurred in a library (which surprised me).

Robinson also talks, optimistically, about the future she imagines for her mixed-race niece. Early in the book she explains that there is no post-racial America. She also talks about the strain caused by being asked, often, by her white friends to interpret African-American culture for them. She also discusses, at length, an episode in which she asked a question of her director, as an actress, and was told to stop "being so uppity." She explained that she, as an African-American, had to make a careful calculus about whether to complain, given that complaining would brand her as an "Angry Black Woman," an common racist stereotype, and hurtful because it would lead people not to respect her, not to take her seriously, and not to listen to her. That's a classic Catch-22: if you use your voice, you risk not being heard, and one way of being silenced or invalidated is being labeled an "angry black woman."

The letter to her niece occurs toward the end of the book. What Robinson had to say about the aspirations of her parents and how they would influence her niece was very moving. She said her parents were hard-working people, and that they would inspire their granddaughter to try to do her very best.

Phoebe Robinson's second book, which was published in 2019, was called Everything's Trash, but That's Okay. Her new book, Please Don't Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes: Essays, will come out in October of this year.

At the time You Can't Touch My Hair was published, she was producing a podcast called 2 Dope Queens, with Jessica Williams, which became a show on HBO and which can now be viewed on YouTube. 

Currently, Comedy Central is broadcasting a show starring Phoebe Robinson and produced by her production company, Doing the Most: with Phoebe Robinson (https://www.cc.com/shows/doing-the-most-with-phoebe-robinson), and it is possible to pay to see it on the Internet. The show was produced by Robinson's own production company.

Before I read this book, I didn't know what a microagression was. But because of some research I'm doing, I recently found out more about it by watching these three videos on YouTube, and I recommend them to you:

Understanding Microaggressions (Wisconsin Technical College System)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4N50b76cZc

Responding to Microaggressions

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=responding+to+microaggressions+WTCS

Microaggressions in the Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZahtlxW2CIQ

An interesting thing happened to me because of YouTube's algorithm. After I'd finished watching Microaggressions in the Classroom on YouTube, YouTube started showing me other videos on related subjects. One was "White Fragility," remarks given by Dr. Robin DiAngelo who works as a consultant, and who has written a book called White Fragility. This helped me to understand so much more about some of the issues that Robinson raises. For instance, Robinson talks about how expensive her hair care is, and how many hours she spends at the hairdresser's when she's getting her hair done. But what she doesn't say and what Robin DiAngelo does say is that it's only for the last few decades that African-Americans have had power over their own bodies. 

"White Fragility"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45ey4jgoxeU

 

 

A Trip to the Library for DVDs

Is there anyone left who doesn't know that you can check out DVDs at your library? I hope not, because DVDs from libraries are a wonderful resource.

I went to the library recently to pick up some DVDs, and I asked both a librarian and a front desk staff member for recommendations, and I had a lovely, lovely time.

Sometime recently I had realized that a personal recommendation makes all the difference. Sure enough, when I asked the librarian for suggestions, and she said not only did she enjoy Portrait of a Woman on Fire, but her husband had also enjoyed it, I found that I was suddenly much more interested in the film. I had, in fact, already checked out Portrait of a Lady on Fire and, could not quite summon up the interest to watch it. When the librarian recommended it, my interest was piqued and I checked it out again. I also checked a bunch of other videos--some because they were recommended by library staff and some for other reasons.

This Beautiful Fantastic is a film about gardening and it has a wonderful cast: Jessica Brown Findlay, as an orphan finding her way in London, Andrew Scott, Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Irvine. Anna Chancellor is delightfully disapproving as Findlay's boss. Findlay is quiet and luminous; Scott plays a character more subdued than the Hot Priest. It's another little jewel box of a film: beautifully filmed, beautifully acted, with a perfect Big Speech from Tom Wilkinson. 

Hope Springs stars Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones play a distressed married couple who go to see Steve Carell for marriage counseling. If it sounds sober, I found it so: I'd describe it more as a realistic drama than a rom-com. But it is ultimately a very hopeful movie, with a happy ending that also seems realistic rather than romantic. The acting is great.

Harriet, starring Cynthia Erivo, is a biography of Harriet Tubman, the slave who led many other slaves to freedom along the Underground Railroad. Now that I've seen the movie twice, it has grown on me. The screenwriters were quite free to make up characters; I suspect Janelle Monae's character was completely fictional. Perhaps that's a big part of my discomfort with the movie; that part of the story does seem false. Cynthia Erivo received an Academy Award nomination for her performance, and I thought the nomination was well-deserved. Erivo is in almost every scene; she has to portray someone who is bright, brave, and really complex and lives in a very complex social situation, and she also has to make Big Speeches. I loved the costumes, the music and the photography, but I felt that the very different parts of the movie didn't hang together very well.

North & South: A long-standing favorite, the BBC's four-part, four-hour adaption of Elizabeth Gaskell's Pride & Prejudice-like love story set amid labor unrest in Manchester's cotton mills. Richard Armitage plays John Thornton, a sensitive man frustrated by an unattainable love. Also starring Daniel Denby-Ashe, Leslie Manville, Brendan Coyle (Mr. Bates in Downtown Abbey), and Sinead Cusack as the formidable Mrs. Thornton, the film has good acting, but I think what is best is the script. It's lively, dramatic and fast-paced. There are a few ways in which the screenplay might even be an improvement on the novel (which is certainly unusual), both in setting the scene at the beginning and in creating a more decisive and dramatic ending. As Mrs. Thornton, John Thornton's mother, Sinead Cusack is wonderful. There's a wonderful scene where she reaches out and tousles Richard Armitage's hair, and he grins, sheepishly. It's so true to the characters. A four-week strike occurs during the course of the novel, and it's the spark for a series of tragedies. (As in the novel, the body count here is high.) Brendan Coyle plays the leader of the strike, and he and his daughter befriend Daniela Denby-Ashe's Margaret Hale, creating tremendous dramatic tension as her father is friends with John Thornton, one of the mill owners.

The Happy Poet. An "independent" film, this film is about an idealistic liberal arts major who is struggling to find his place in the world and decides to try opening a healthy food stand with a hot dog cart. There follows a series of humiliations from the bank's loan manager, the man who sells him the hot dog cart, and the many potential customers at the park who are disappointed to learn that he's selling "eggless egg salad sandwiches" and other healthy food, not hot dogs. After bumps, mistakes, embarrassment, and even betrayal, he succeeds when a venture capitalist volunteers to loan him the money to expand his business and he succeeds in winning the girl in the end. I found the pacing glacial, but that didn't interfere with my enjoying the film. (According to the DVD cover, Chuck Wilson of LA Weekly opined that the film was "cut so brilliantly that one can imagine Woody Allen and Albert Brooks feeling envious." Guess I should have taken more film classes in college.)

The LunchBox is a film by Ritesh Batra, starring Sajan Irfan. Irfan has the most wonderful face. It’s capable of transmitting 32 different kinds of melancholy. This charming film begins with a view of how lunch boxes are prepared by housewives, picked up by couriers, and dropped off at husbands’ workplaces. The story begins when one lunchbox, with delicious food, and an interesting note, goes astray. A neglected wife and a lonely widower on the verge of retirement begin a correspondence in which they confess their true feelings.

Mississippi Masala is an “oldie but goodie,” directed by Mira Nair (who also directed “Monsoon Wedding”), and starring two real “charmball” actors, Sarita Choudhury and Denzel Washington. Mina is a young Indian woman in her 20’s who was raised in Uganda, and after political upheaval for the Indian community there, was forced to flee with her family and settled in a small town in Mississippi. Demetrius is a young man who owns a rug cleaning business and has just been dumped by his girlfriend. He meets Mina when they’re both involved in a car accident, and he’s intrigued by her. It’s been years since I saw this movie in the theaters, and I’d forgotten about the subplot. Mina’s family’s property in Uganda was seized when they were expelled. Mina’s father has been writing to the Ugandan government for years, trying to get his property back. Finally, after the government has changed, he’s invited back to Uganda to try his case in the courts. It’s a very bittersweet homecoming for him as he realizes that his dear friend has been killed in the intervening years.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a New Zealand comedy I picked up because it had Sam Neill. It was directed by Taika Waititi. Julian Dennison is a foster child with some behavioral problems, and the only family willing to give him a home is a childless couple living on the edge of the bush. Things settle quickly and continue until, suddenly, the wife dies. A series of misunderstandings see the young man and his “foster father,” take it on the lam in the bush. Hijinks ensue. All the performances in this film were very good, and the scenery is breathtaking. It’s kind of like the "Blues Brothers" in New Zealand, and it’s charming and engaging.

Portrait of a Woman on Fire is a recent French period drama, set on an island off the coast of Brittany in the 18^th century. It’s a woman’s film (only two men, briefly, appear) and it is about women’s concerns. At the core of the story are two very different young women. One young woman has just been pulled out of the convent where she was living to make an arranged marriage with a Milanese man she has never met. Her older sister was originally to make the match, but appears to have killed herself rather than proceed. The other young woman is a professional painter and art teacher, who has been hired to pose as a companion to the other woman while surreptitiously painting a portrait of her that will be sent to the Milanese man.  The film is very quiet, and moves very slowly. The island where much of the film is set has a beautiful beach with unusual rock formations in spectacularly varied colors. The interiors were filmed in a sparsely furnished 17^th century manor house. The costumes are mostly very subdued. The actress who plays the betrothed woman’s mother is Valeria Golino, who played Tom Cruise’s girlfriend in Rainman.

 

 

 

The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

I found the Ghost and Mrs. Muir to be so charming. I'd seen it once or twice before years ago, and I wondered if I really wanted to see it again. I'm so glad I did. I'd forgotten how, for all its fantasy (it is, after all, the story of a widow who falls in love with a ghost), it seems to hold a kernel of psychological reality. 

Two things I found very interesting in the Wikipedia entry. The score, which I love, was considered by its composer, Bernard Herrmann, to be his best. And Whitford Kane, who played the publisher who agrees to publish Mrs. Muir's book, was not only Irish (from Lane in Antrim) but was director of the Goodman for several years. He became one of Orson Welles' Mercury Players. 

Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth by Oliver Jeffers

Another darling picture book, dedicated to Jeffers' son Harland: "This book was written in the first two months of your life as I tried to make sense of it all for you. 

"These are the things that I think you need to know."

 

Underneath Jeffers' dedication, there's a quotation from J.M. Barrie: "Shall we make a new rule from tonight?: always try to be a little kinder than necessary?"

This book explains everything (well, just about). An illustration of the solar system begins the tale (with a little note in the lower left corner: "probably not to scale").

The "quick tour" continues with an explanation that earth is made up of two things: land and sea. Further, mountains are pointy, hills are bumpy, prairies are flat and marshes are wet. An illustration of the sea follows, complete with deep sea diver and sunken galleon.

Next: the sky, human anatomy, and the importance of dressing warmly when you're eating pizza around a campfire with your friends. People may look different, but they're all people. Animals are even more various in their appearance and they can't talk; but that's no reason not to be nice to them. 

When the sun is out, we do stuff and when it's dark, we sleep (Please?). There's an illustration of the Atlantic Ocean, with New York on one side and London on the other. (You know it's London because you can see St. Mary Axe and the BT Tower, and the fast train to Avignon. Ireland has moved to somewhere slightly west of New Jersey, as that's where the castles are.) 

 Jeffers sums up: "Well, that is Planet Earth. Make sure you look after it, as it's all we've got."

 The illustrations are so magnificent.

 The book ends with epigrams: Dr. Sally Ride reporting how fragile the Earth looks from space, R. Buckminster Fuller noting that just as we maintain our cars to keep them running smoothly, we must care for the machine called Earth; and Oliver's own Dad, an "All round good human," who says: "There are only three words to live by, Son: respect, consideration, and tolerance." 

 

 

The Great Paper Caper by Oliver Jeffers

This is a darling picture book by Oliver Jeffers. 

It's the story of some forest animals who gradually notice that some of their tree limbs are missing.

And then, later, one whole tree.

The forest animals are pretty upset. They're definitely in the "What is Happening!!?" mode.

They accuse each other.

But everyone has a watertight alibi.

One day, one of them sees a bear shooting paper airplanes. He tells the others. They all go down to the phone booth to phone the police.

The bear is arrested. When he testifies from the stand, he breaks down and confesses that he did it, and all because he comes from a long line of paper airplane champions and another big competition was coming up, he wasn't doing well in his preparation, and he'd run out of paper.

He promised he'd plant new trees to make up for what he'd done, and he did. The other animals helped him.

Perhaps the tragedy of losing a big paper airplane competition is not immediately apparent, but what makes it is the illustrations. They're amusing, whimsical and complicated. 

 My favorite illustration is of the face-down plant the owl makes when he comes in for a landing and "Oops!" his branch isn't there.

I can imagine children wanting to discuss and ask questions about the illustrations, especially the illustration of everyone's "airtight" alibi (they're all alone: one is sleeping, one is watching TV, one is doing the laundry).

 

Geek out: Maigret and Montalbano

 

Starting in the 1930s, Georges Simenon wrote 75 novels and 28 short stories about the fictional French detective Jules Maigret. Simenon may not be so well known in America today, but in his lifetime he sold about 550 million books worldwide.

Simenon was himself an interesting character. He wrote more than 400 novels, usually in 8 to 10 days. He claimed to have slept with 10,000 women, including the famous dancer Josephine Baker. 

Early in his life, he enjoyed spending time with bargemen and other working class and even criminal types. I think this is what makes his stories so colorful. These mysteries are less about whodunnit, or even why, but about revealing these colorful characters and their hidden world.

Simenon’s Maigret books have often been adapted for films and TV. In the early 1990s, Francophone TV got together to produce a series of shows starring Bruno Cremer as the famous detective. Bruno Cremer played Maigret as a very low-key, patient, and slow to come to conclusions detective. When the famous Maigret is asked about his method, he says, “I like to listen.” Maigret observes the scene with a twinkle in his eye; a furtive smile often dances around the corners of his lips. One fan commented that this detective was never vulgar, despite the fact that the stories are pretty lurid. 

When Andrea Camilleri, a retired director and filmmaker, began writing his Inspector Montalbano novels in 1994, the Maigret novels were his model. Camilleri’s Montalbano novels were also adapted for television. 

Alberto Sironi, director of the Montalbano TV shows, said, “What’s different (from other cop shows) is the ability Camilleri has to tell a story, to present Sicily, a marvel that I myself saw when I was 20. This Sicily is in my memory, a little like the memory of Camilleri in his youth. ...These two things are the most important. First, the idea of story, where the plot’s not so important, but the atmosphere is. . and characters, especially the minor characters.”

Sironi pointed out that Camilleri, who had himself directed a TV series based on the Simenon novels, was deeply influenced by Simenon. Like Simenon, Camilleri’s Montalbano novels feature many colorful Sicilian characters; director Sironi spent months visiting Sicilian theatres, scouting for Sicilian actors to portray these roles. One of my favorite examples of these “real Sicilians,” is the mistrustful housekeeperMontalbano is trying to interview. She mentions that she is a monarchist, and has never supported any of the republican governments. Montalbano slaps his chest. “You’re a monarchist! I’m one, too!” 

The Montalbano stories, although set in northwestern Sicily, came to be filmed in southwestern Sicily. The fictional Vigata, where Camilleri’s stories are set, was based on Camilleri’s memories of his hometown, Porto Empedocle. Porto Empedocle has changed so much over the last few decades that it wasn’t suitable for filming these stories set in the world of Camilleri’s memory. The production needed a beach with sand, rare in Sicily, and a Baroque plaza. 

Luciano Ricceri, the Montalbano production designer, found these things in the Ragusa -Scicli-Modica area. 

This area boasts a fantastic collection of Baroque architecture, through a series of accidents. In 1693, a massive earthquake destroyed many buildings and monuments which were then rebuilt in the Baroque style. In the nineteenth century, various social factors contributed to poverty and unrest in Sicily, which had once been the breadbasket of Europe. Ongoing economic depression preserved the architecture and environment of southwest Sicily. 

The TV shows take full advantage of Sicily’s white sunlight, and its striking shadows; the cinematography has a ghostly, painterly quality of a Sicily unchanged by time. 

The Montalbano TV show became a huge hit in Italy, and its architecture and spectacular scenery sparked a tourist boom. Over the years, I’ve talked to people working in economic development, and the fact that the Inspector Montalbano TV show sparked a 40% rise in tourism in the southwest of Sicily, is an incredible achievement, even if entirely unintended. 

It’s the “atmosphere,” the entree to a mysterious unknown world, that attracts me to both TV shows.