A late P.G. Wodehouse novel

The Girl in Blue, P.G. Wodehouse  (TBR shelves, 2011)

This book sat unread for many years, in at least three different homes. I think it was moving a shelf of Wodehouse books for the construction project that nudged me to finally pick this one up. It also made me realize how long it's been since I've read anything by PGW.

This novel was originally published in 1970, when Wodehouse was 89 years old. Even without the somewhat jarring references to Dear Abby and Dr. Joyce Brothers, I would have known this was a later work. It doesn't have the energy and fast pacing of my favorites from the 1930s and 1940s. The characters spend a lot of time sitting around, or walking around, and the the story meanders with them.

The "girl in the title" refers to a miniature painted by Thomas Gainsborough, which Willoughby Scrope has just acquired. It is a portrait of his great-great-grandmother and he is delighted to have it. He is in such a good mood that he happily writes a check for more than two hundred pounds, to help his older brother Crispin with repairs to the family seat, Mellingham Hall. Crispin reminded me of my beloved Lord Emsworth, except that he doesn't even have a pig to cherish. He does however have a debt collector in the house, posing as a butler. He also has paying guests, whom he loathes, because he needs their money.

In return for the cash, Willoughby tells Crispin that he will be hosting Bernadette "Barney" Clayborne. Barney's brother Homer Pyle, a wealthy attorney, has brought her over to Britain after she was caught shoplifting in a New York City department store. Pyle was advised to place Barney at some country estate far from temptation and stores, and his good friend Willoughby has suggested Crispin's private hotel. While the siblings are staying with Willoughby, Pyle starts to worry that Barney will steal the miniature, so he takes it himself and hides it away. When Willoughby finds it gone, he assumes Barney stole it, and he tries to get Crispin to search her rooms for it. After that fails, he enlists his nephew Jerry West to go down to Mellingham.

Jerry brings romantic complications to the story. He is engaged to the beautiful but unpleasant Vera Upshaw, but he has just finished serving on a jury with a young woman with whom he has instantly fallen in love. Jane is an air hostess, another modern note in the story, as is their jury service. Of course she ends up at Mellingham, and so does Vera eventually. I felt that the love story was not handled with Wodehouse's usual deft touch, and I think there might be a breach of promise suit in the end, which rather undercuts the happy ending in my mind.

This was a perfectly pleasant story with some comic moments, and I spent most of Sunday reading it. I'm glad to have crossed it off the TBR list, but I don't think this is one I'll read again.

"Scenes from the Life of a Spinster"

Hopes and Fears, Charlotte M. Yonge  (TBR shelves, 2017)

It has been a while since I've read one of Charlotte Yonge's Victorian morality doorstoppers. The last I read, Nuttie's Father, ended with the death of a child who had been lured from home and so badly treated that he did not survive long after his rescue. As I have noted before, death is ever present in Yonge's books, and it is often treated as a happy end to a character's life. On the other hand, it can be a punishment for a character's misdeeds, which is particularly jarring when it is not the doer of the deeds who dies, but someone in his or her orbit, who then becomes a lesson to the misbehaving one. I found it hard to accept the child's death in Nuttie's Father as a happy ending for anyone, and it put me off her books for a time.

I don't know why I thought it was good idea to pick another of her books in the middle of my construction project, but my exasperation with her characters did offset my frustration with the project delays. (It is finally completed, and I am replacing books on shelves and enjoying the downstairs again.) The project was finished before the book, actually, which I attribute to its 569 pages of very small print in my 1899 reprint. Hopes and Fears was originally published in 1864, nine years after Yonge's bestseller The Heir of Redclyffe. She published so many books that I find the lists of her titles a bit overwhelming. I picked this one back in 2017, after finishing The Three Brides, for the subtitle: "Scenes from the Life of a Spinster." As a spinster myself, I am predisposed to read stories that feature single women - and Charlotte Yonge herself remained unmarried all her life.

The spinster in question is Honora Charlecote, who to my surprise was not the heroine of the book. The daughter of a clergyman with an old historic house in a commercial district of London, she often visits her cousin Humfrey Charlecote. He lives at his beautiful estate, Hiltonbury, where he conscientiously carries out the duties of a country squire, doing much good in the neighborhood. A decade or more older than Honora, he proposes to her one summer day when they meet in his woods. She tells him she has an understanding with Owen Sandbrook, one of her father's curates who is going out as a missionary to Canada. Waiting patiently for him at home, she later learns that he has married the daughter of an army officer. He returns with her to England, becomes a popular city preacher, and then loses his wife and infant daughter, leaving him with a daughter and son. And he himself has developed one of those ominous coughs that means he must leave England for the warmth of Italy. Honora eagerly volunteers to take charge of his children, Lucilla and Owen. His daughter is devastated when he dies abroad, and she resents and blames Honora, who has fallen under the spell of the younger Owen. We are told more than once that she made a idol of him, and moreover, her faith is not true trust and reliance on God. All of this happens in the first three chapters.

Over the following 32 chapters, we follow Honora and the two young people as they grow older and make a lot of mistakes, and several more people are written into their story. After the death of Humfrey, Honora inherits his estate and responsibilities, but in trust for his heir (when located). There are rumors of a Canadian branch of the family, but no one actually goes looking for them. The younger Owen grows up with expectations, despite being told pretty clearly that he is not a Charlecote and cannot inherit. Lucilla prefers her mother's family, the worldly Charterises. They also becomes friends with the neighboring Fulmort family, whose wealth comes from their distillery business in London, where their "gin palaces" in Honora's neighborhood are turning it into a slum. One of the Fulmort children, Robert, gives up his inheritance to become a priest (High Anglican of course), building a mission church and school in the area, to offset the evils his family is perpetrating there.

Robert is in love with Lucilla, and she inclines to him. But when she decides to go on a fishing holiday in Ireland with only her cousin Horatia Charteris, he decides that he cannot marry a woman who would act so inappropriately. She assumes her influence over him is strong enough to draw him back to her, but she learns her mistake and has many, many pages to regret it, not to mention the miserable trip among the uncouth Irish. Owen meanwhile makes a secret and imprudent marriage that leaves him with a child and a very unsuitable mother-in-law. Yonge takes several swipes at her evangelical faith along the way. Their father left very little money. Owen squanders his, so Lucilla uses hers to pay his debts and then becomes a governess. Eventually she develops that significant little cough. Owen meanwhile goes off to Canada to become a surveyor. From the first hint of that, I was waiting for him to meet the North American Charlecotes.

In every one of Charlotte Yonge's books that I have read, there has been at least one character with a physical disability, who lives a full and complete life, with their physical conditions handled very matter-of-factly. I was still surprised to find a character here, Maria Fulmort, who is mentally challenged. Her older sister Phoebe is devoted to her, and Maria has made great progress under the latest governess, Miss Fennimore, who accommodates her limitations. Unfortunately, the governess has infected the middle of these three sisters, Bertha, with her science-based agnosticism. Maria is presented quite sympathetically, with interests and abilities that her sisters and Miss Fennimore encourage. Besides Lucilla's unhappy years as a governess, and Miss Fennimore's career, there is a third governess, Miss Wells, who becomes Honora's companion and chaperone, living out a comfortable retirement with a beloved former pupil.

In the end, I enjoyed this long, drawn-out story for the characters, which I think is one of Charlotte Yonge's strengths. The number of deaths in this book was surprisingly low in the end. Most of those with the consumption coughs were still alive when the story finally ended with a wedding, and several pages of moralizing about the proper way to raise a child in godliness, wherein Honora admits her errors. I was a little startled that the drawing of blood through cupping occurs more than once. I didn't realize doctors were still prescribing that in the 1860s. There is also a reference to a cholera outbreak, which the breezes will cure by dispelling the miasmas. I had to check the date of John Snow's discovery of the infected pump in London (via The Ghost Map), which was in 1854. Maybe Charlotte Yonge hadn't yet accepted the new science.

Unlike my experience with Nuttie's Father, this book of Charlotte Yonge's has left me more inclined to read the four others I still have stockpiled on the TBR shelves.

Reading in a construction zone

I am in the middle of having foundation work done on my house. I live in the middle of three townhouses, and my neighbor to the right has had issues with his foundation that are dragging my house down on his side (literally by about three inches). We have finally been able to coordinate the work. The delays have been beyond frustrating, with big cracks in my walls and a leak in the garage/downstairs every time it rains (this is Houston, it rains a lot even when we aren't hit by hurricanes).

Most of the first floor is in the construction zone, though the kitchen has been spared.

Getting ready for this work meant packing up five bookcases of books (there are four bookcases in that pile of furniture). Much like moving houses has in the past, taking the books off the shelves has made me realize that I don't need all of these books. I was much more of a "completist" in the past, I collected the complete works of my favorite authors. I've come to realize that other than Jane Austen, there are no authors whose entire body of work I like or will want to re-read in the future. (And even with Austen, I rarely re-read Northanger Abbey). I've been culling my bookshelves over the past year or so, and this will give me another push. When it's time to put the books back on the shelves, I'm guessing a few more will go to the library sales.

In the past I also collected more than one edition of some authors' books, Dorothy Dunnett in particular. I had already decided to let some of those go. And speaking of Jane Austen, I might not need all the books about Jane Austen that I have. The same might be true for the many, many books about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. This will be an ongoing project.

The cats and I are living upstairs while this is going on, with forays down to the kitchen. I know people who've lived out of their second floor after hurricanes, while waiting for repairs downstairs. It's an odd, unsettled feeling. Despite the days of free time (NOT how I wanted to blow through my accumulated vacation days), I have had trouble focusing on reading, between the noise of the drilling and the other work. As usual in times of stress, I have turned to re-reading favorite authors: Georgette Heyer (The Talisman Ring), Becky Chambers (Record of a Spaceborn Few), Lois McMaster Bujold (Cryoburn), Helen Dore Boylston (Sue Barton, Rural Nurse). I did give up on one new book, Sarina Bowen's Golden Touch. It is a suspenseful romance, with a woman on the run from a violent drug-dealing ex, who runs a motorcycle gang. I wasn't in the place for violence or the level of suspense in this book, or for a MMC who keeps making decisions for the FMC. I may come back to it later. It's a sequel to her Good as Gold, which I did enjoy.

Hopefully, the project will be completed early this week.

Exploring religious faith in 19th century America

Lincoln's God, by Joshua Zeitz  (from my TBR stacks)

I am always looking for book discussions and book recommendations. For the past several years, I have found podcasts to be a rich source of both, particularly the history-related ones like the "BBC History Extra Podcast" (I also subscribe to their print magazine, which is a delight), the "Historic Royal Palaces Podcast," and lately "The Rest is History Podcast." All three are British, though the BBC and "The Rest is History" regularly cover world history topics. (I am currently listening to "The Rest is History" series on the outbreak of the Great War.) If I am listening while walking, I frequently hit pause so that I can check the library catalogue for a book that is mentioned. Sometimes I just can't wait for a library copy.

Lincoln's God came via the only U.S. history podcast I follow. "With the Bark Off," produced by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. I was familiar with Joshua Zeitz from his book Lincoln's Boys, about the presidential secretaries who became his biographers and the guardians of his legacy. In reading many books about Lincoln, I have learned something about his personal religious beliefs (or lack of them). I have also studied the role of religion in US history, especially in the 19th century. So I had some background in reading this book, which as the subtitle says explores "How faith transformed a President and a nation."

The author says in his Preface,

"What follows is the story of Abraham Lincoln's religious transformation, set against the backdrop of a nation's spiritual awakening and transformation. . .This is not a comprehensive biography of Lincoln or a broad account of the Civil War. Instead, it is a story of how religion and, more specifically, the rise of evangelical Protestantism, influenced the familiar political, economic, and military narrative. . . Abraham Lincoln's own spiritual journey was distinct from that of most Americans, but he understood better than most the organizing and galvanizing power of evangelical Christianity. His faith, and his appeal to the faith of others, in no small way determined the outcome of the war."

That lays out three main themes woven through his book. First, he charts Lincoln's religious beliefs through his lifetime, arguing that Lincoln was never a conventional Christian. By the end of his life, he might have identified as a Unitarian. Second, he tracks the rise of evangelical Protestantism and the growth of new churches and religious movements, particularly the revivals that swept through America. Church members became involved in campaigns such as temperance and most crucially, abolition of slavery (while holding racist attitudes toward Black Americans). This would split some of the mainline churches into northern and southern branches, as with the Southern and American Baptists. Zeitz also explores the role that Black churches played, particularly in the North, where they argued against slavery and for emancipation long before many white Christians. (Zeitz also acknowledges the presence of Roman Catholics and Jews in America in these years, but his focus is on Protestant Christians.)

The third theme details how northern Evangelical Christians came to ally themselves with Lincoln and with the Republican party in ways that broke down the familiar separation of church and state. Most northern Protestant churches came to embrace abolition of slavery as a war aim but also as a moral good. Like Lincoln himself, many came to view the war as a divine punishment on the United State for the sins of slavery - in which the North had been complicit. Recognizing the power of the churches, Lincoln courted their support, both financial and political. He also began to see himself as an instrument in a divine plan to eliminate slavery. I had not understood just how deeply the Protestant churches cooperated with and identified with Lincoln's administration and with the Republican party. It is easy to see parallels in our political situation today.

I have a lot of books about Lincoln and about the Civil War on the TBR stacks. I am determined not to buy more until I read some of those already on my shelves. We'll see how that book resolution goes.

Moon of the Turning Leaves

 Moon of the Turning Leaves, Waubgeshig Rice

I don't read many apocalyptic stories, I find them too bleak and too stressful (and sometimes too prescient). I read Waubgeshig Rice's first "Moon" novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, about a Native American community in Ontario, where the phones and power going out is first seen as a nuisance. Gradually it becomes clear that something very serious has happened, and the community leadership tries to organize resources and ensure everyone gets what they need to survive until the power is restored. But that never happens, and as stores dwindle, outsiders arrive, asking for sanctuary and help, and the community begins to fracture. A group led by a young man, Evan Whitesky, returns to their Anishinaabe traditions and older ways of life to try to hold the community together. He is also trying to protect his family, including his two young children.

Soon after I read that book, I learned there would be a sequel, and I immediately put it on my reading list. The second "Moon" book takes place twelve years later. The survivors have left their small town and built another community on the shores of a lake. The story opens with the birth of a child, Evan and his wife Nicole's first grandchild. But the small settlement is under strain. There are fewer of the animals and fish that they depend on, and the plants they harvest for food and medicine are failing. One member points out that their people were not meant to settle permanently, that to do so wears out the land and its resources. He challenges the community to seek out a new home, perhaps to the south, near the Great Lakes, from where their ancestors were removed.

Evan volunteers to make the journey, as does his daughter Nanghons. Four others join them on the trek, on foot, for which they have only outdated maps and people's memories. From their travels, they learn more about what happened twelve years ago, and how it is affecting the land and the people left behind. It is a difficult and dangerous trip, and I did have to set the book down at one point, when the two women in the party are threatened with sexual assault (which does not happen). This book has a high body count, including one suicide, both on-page and off.

The book ends with another jump forward in time, eleven years this time. It does give a sense of closure to the story, but I would have liked to read more about how the characters got to and through that time. It felts like I had walked with them on their long journey, which ended abruptly. I wanted to know more about them. I did see this labeled as "Moon Book 2," which made me wonder if the author has stories to tell of those eleven years. If so, I'll be reading them.

"A Memoir of Surviving India's Caste System"

Coming Out as Dalit, Yashica Dutt (library book)

"Born into a 'formerly untouchable manual-scavenging family in small-town India,' Yashica Dutt was taught from a young age to not appear 'Dalit looking.' Although prejudice against Dalits, who compose 25% of the population, has been illegal since 1950, caste-ism in India is alive and well. Blending her personal history with extensive research and reporting, Dutt provides an incriminating analysis of caste's influence in India over everything from entertainment to judicial systems and how this discrimination has carried over to US institutions. 

"Dutt traces how colonial British forces exploited and perpetuated a centuries-old caste system, how Gandhi could have been more forceful in combatting prejudice, and the role played by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, whom Isabel Wilkerson called 'the MLK of India’s caste issues' in her book Caste. Alongside her analysis, Dutt interweaves personal stories of learning to speak without a regional accent growing up and desperately using medicinal packs to try to lighten her skin." (Overview from my library's catalogue.)

I was really struggling to sum up this searing memoir, because it covers so much, about India's history and its current social systems, interspersed with the author's experiences growing up - and most of what I read was completely new information to me. I don't remember when or how I learned about the country's caste system. I knew about the class of people considered "untouchable" (a term now considered offensive). I had the vague idea that particular status was part of the country's history and had no place in modern India. This book taught me just how wrong I was.

In January 2016, a Dalit university student named Rohith Vemula committed suicide, leaving behind a letter about the discrimination and difficulties that he faced, experiences many of his fellow Dalits have shared. After reading about his death, Yashica Dutt "started a Tumblr page where Dalits who, like [her], were passing as upper caste could anonymously or openly talk about their experiences. It would be a safe space, without judgement from upper-caste commentators, where our voices would be free to shape our stories the way we wanted." She goes on to say, "But I couldn't in good conscience be the provider of that space before I dealt with my own identity." Her page is called "Documents of Dalit Discrimination."

This is the epitome of an "own-voices" story, which is crucial because Dalits have been denied access to education, to basic literacy, and their stories have not been told. Or they have been told by outsiders, in ways that reinforce the stereotypes that are used to justify the persecutions. The technological revolution has changed that, especially the internet, giving the communities ways to connect, to share information and resources, and to make their voices heard. They are also able to focus on the challenges that Dalits face in their daily lives. In the past, Dalits were denied access to water resources like reservoirs if they were used by upper caste people, which remains a problem in rural areas. Sexual assault against Dalit women is common, because of stereotypes that the women are sexually available, and the justice system is prejudiced against the victims. Suicide is sadly common, particularly among university students facing situations like Rohith Vemula's. "Manual scavenging," one of the few jobs open to Dalit women, involves cleaning outhouses by hand and carrying the human waste to dump sites (often in baskets that leak, exposing the women to diseases and a corresponding high morality rate).

I am still processing everything I learned from this book. I want to read more about Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, himself a Dalit, who returned to India after earning degrees in Britain and the US. He was the first Indian student to earn a Ph.D. from Columbia University, which Yashica Dutt learned only after she enrolled there herself as a graduate student. "In March 1927 he organized the first conference for the Depressed Classes in Mahad to alert Dalits to their civil rights," and his book Annihilation of Caste is a foundational text of Dalit identity and resistance. Unfortunately for me, the only works our library has on him are not in English, but I will see what interlibrary loan can do for me.

Romance and alt-history

The House of the Red Balconies, A.J. Demas (2024 TBR)

I very much enjoy A.J. Demas's romances set in an AU ancient world with echoes of Greece and Sparta, rather like the world in Megan Whalen Turner's Thief series. (The gods do not intervene in Demas's world as they do with the Thief and his compatriots.) Her stories usually revolve around a romance between two men, often from different countries who have to negotiate their differences, and sometimes solve a mystery, on their way to a happy ending. My favorite are the Sword Dance trilogy, with retired soldier Damiskos and dancer/intelligence agent Varazda; and One Night in Boukos, set in the city of that name, where an ambassador goes missing during a riotous festival, and two couples set out separately to find him.

It has been a while since A.J. Demas published a new story, because she also writes urban fiction as Alice Degan. I was very happy when her newsletter arrived with an announcement of this new book. It is a different, quieter story than some of her others, and I loved it. Hylas has come to the island of Tykanos to build an aqueduct. But once he gets there, he finds Governor Loukianos rather vague about the details of the project, and about his salary. The Governor is much more interested in the tea houses, which draw tourists to the island and provide important income. The houses are places of entertainment, with geisha-like staff who offer conversation, poetry and music. The houses are not brothels, though the entertainers hope to attract patrons who may become their lovers.

Hylas is from a country that doesn't have tea houses, and he has rented a room in The House of the Red Balconies without knowing what it is. His room shares a garden with a beautiful young man named Zo, one of the entertainers, who suffers from a chronic illness that often leaves him unable to walk. Zo is at first suspicious of Hylas, who is shy and uncomfortable around strangers, particularly one as beautiful as Zo. But they begin to bond over breakfasts in their garden. Meanwhile, since Hylas can't build his aqueduct, he keeps busy with other small projects like fixing the town's plumbing issues, working in what has become their garden, and figuring out ways to help Zo navigate his illness. He quickly endears himself to the house's residents, and to the town at large.

It was fun to explore Tykanos, and to watch Hylas find his way to friendship and love. He takes good care of Zo, and people take care of him in return, and (spoiler alert) he finally gets to build the aqueduct! It was a lovely story, one I know I'll come back to.