Sunday, October 27, 2024

Cosy fantasy with jam and books

The Spellshop, Sarah Beth Durst  (TBR shelves, 2024)

I've been hearing a lot lately about romantic fantasy (especially under the new term "romantasy"), and cosy fantasy has also been getting some attention, particularly with Travis Baldree's Legends & Lattes and Bookshops & Bonedust (both of which I enjoyed). I saw this recommended as both, and I put it on my library list. The other night, I stopped at a newer Barnes & Noble and decided that I didn't want to wait out the long library queue for this. (The B&N near me has been closed most of the year for renovations, which has cut down considerably on my impulse book-buying.)

The Spellshop opens with a library burning. Revolution has broken out in the capital city of Alyssium, and the emperor has been defenestrated "in a rather dramatic display." The staff has fled the Great Library, except for one librarian: Kiela is sure it will be safe, that the revolutionaries will respect the

hallowed stacks [that] were filled centuries-old treatises, histories, studies, and (most importantly in Kiela's opinion) spellbooks. Only the elite, the crème de la crème of the scholars, were allowed to even view the spellbooks, as only the rarefied few were permitted, by imperial law, to use magic.
She has worked and also lived in the library for eleven years, tucked away in a wing with only a sentient spider plant named Caz and the occasional researcher for company. She and Caz have packed some books away, just in case. But the flames have nearly reached her section before Caz can convince her that they have to flee. They move the books down to docks in the lower level of the library, where there is a boat they can use to flee with city with the books. Kiela is intent only on escape, but she realizes they need a plan. She decides to sail back to the island of Caltrey. Her parents (who have since died) moved to Alyssium when she was a child, in search of opportunities and a life beyond their small community. If their old house is still standing, she can hide herself, Caz, and the books there.

What she and Caz find is an island that is slowly dying, because the Empire has abandoned the magics that keep the world safe. With the spellbooks that she has rescued, she and Caz decide to try casting some spells, to try and help. But since magic is still illegal - as far as they know - they will call them "remedies." And they open a shop selling jam, as a cover, because raspberries are growing everywhere, and there is a lack of jam on the island (the fishing on which the economy depends is dying, because necessary spells are wearing out and not renewed). Their research process of trying out spells is delightful, as is the community that Kiela and Caz slowly discover. This is a book that celebrates community, and the power of books and knowledge shared. It celebrates food as well - not just jam, but food shared too. I also enjoyed the magical creatures, particularly "cloud bears" that act as forest guardians. This was a joy to read, and I hope that Sarah Beth Durst has more stories to tell set in this world.

Saturday, October 19, 2024

An unusual female detective, from 1915

The Golden Slipper, and Other Problems for Violet Strange, Anna Katharine Green  (TBR shelves, 2020)

I had seen Anna Katharine Green described as the first women to write detective stories in the U.S. before I found a pristine Penguin edition of her first book, The Leavenworth Case from 1878, on the library sale shelves. I thought it was interesting for its setting in Gilded Age New York as much for the locked-room mystery. After finishing it, I found a couple of her later books in print and added them to the TBR stacks. I was in a strange mood this week when I couldn't settle on a book to read, and I picked this one up almost at random.

The Golden Slipper consists of nine "Problems" that Violet Strange helps to resolve, most set in New York City. She is a woman of fashion, a popular figure, welcome everywhere and showered with invitations. She is described as a debutante in the first chapter, but like some of Georgette Heyer's characters, she has poise and confidence, she is not an ingenue. Though she is the daughter of a wealthy man, she works for the head of detective agency as a confidential agent. We never learn his name. The daughter of a wealthy man, with a limousine at her disposal and outfits for every social occasion, Violet nevertheless needs money, and she must keep her work (and her funds) secret from her father. This need for money forces Violent to accept cases she would rather not be involved in, and it's a thread running through the stories. Eventually we find out why she needs the money, as the final "problem" is sorted out.

The cases that she takes are an interesting mix. Some involve theft, others murder. They become increasingly complex and melodramatic, particularly the last one, which has a secret passageway with corpses whose cause of death I had a hard time taking seriously. Violet falls in love with one of central characters in a "Problem," another thread that runs through the stories. Since he is described as 

"a degenerate in some respects, lacking the domineering presence, the strong mental qualities, and inflexible character of his progenitors, the wealthy Massachusetts [family] whose great place on the coast had a history as old as the State itself, he yet had gifts and attractions of his own which would have made him a worthy representative of his race, if only he had not fixed his affections on a woman so cold and heedless..."
Struck by the word "degenerate," I couldn't believe he turned out to be the love interest (but not the reason she needed the money).

I enjoyed the stories, the earlier ones more than the later. This was apparently Anna Katharine Green's only book to feature Violet Strange. I do have another of her books on my shelves, Lost Man's Lane, whose main character is Amelia Butterworth, an older woman who inserts herself into the mystery and like Miss Silver and Miss Marple, sees more than the police officers do.

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Anne Frank Remembered

Anne Frank Remembered, Miep Gies with Alison Leslie Gold  (TBR shelves, 2019)

Anne Frank was recently featured as a "Person of the Week" on the BBC History Extra podcast, which reminded me that I have had this book on the TBR shelves for a good while. I was also reminded by finding on the library sale shelves Etty Hillesum's An Interrupted Life and Letters from Westerbork, described as "the adult counterpart to Anne Frank."

As far as I can remember, reading Anne Frank's diary was my introduction to the Holocaust, as I think it must have been for others in my generation in the US. I owned a copy of the original edition, and when I visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam after college, I bought the expanded version published later. I wish I could remember more about that visit now.

Though I haven't read the Diary in a few years, the story that Miep Gies told in her memoir was very familiar, but it was so interesting to see that familiar story from the other side of the door into the Secret Annex. This is also the first memoir I have read about life in occupied Holland during World War II. Both Miep and her husband Jan (Henk in Anne's diary) were active in the Resistance, beyond helping those in the Annex. I did not know that Miep was born in Vienna (in 1909) and sent to Holland after the Great War as part of a program to help feed children amidst post-war shortages. She never returned to live in Austria, but when the Nazis invaded Holland, she was classified as a citizen of the Reich, which distressed her and complicated her life and resistance work.

Miep Gies's narrative about the struggles of life in wartime, with the constant shortages, and also the constant small acts of resistance, is compelling. I also appreciated that her memoir covered the years after the war, and the changes in her life and in her country. I have Dutch ancestry through my father's side of the family, which I have only just begun to learn more about. I would like to visit again some day. In the meantime, I am very glad to have this on the shelves next to Anne Frank's famous diary.

Editing this to add: after hitting "publish" I realized I have read another memoir of life in the Netherlands during the war, Corrie ten Boom's The Hiding Place. I might need to read that one again.

Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Returning to Singapore, after the war

 The Angsana Tree Mystery, Ovidia Yu  (TBR shelves, 2024)

This is the eighth book in Ovidia Yu's Crown Colony series of mysteries, this one set in 1946. As soon I saw it was coming out this year, I knew it would be one of my 52 books for 2024. And I see that she has already announced a new one for next year, The Rose Apple Tree Mystery, so there's the first book for my 2025 list.

The first book in this series, The Frangipani Tree Mystery, is set in 1936, with Singapore a British Crown Colony but with Japanese power gathering in the east. The last four books were set during World War II and the Japanese occupation of Malaysia, and they were dark and sometimes difficult to read - not because of the mysterious deaths, though I am sometimes surprised by violent turns in the stories, but because of the brutal treatment of Singapore's residents and the struggles they go through just to survive. Ovidia Yu noted that she drew on her mother's experiences in the war in writing these books.

The Angsana Tree Mystery is the first set after the end of the war. Singapore is again a Crown Colony under British administration, but political change, and upheaval, is in the air with the push for independence from colonial rule in India, Malaya, Burma, spreading across the east. In Singapore, there are tensions as the residents are trying to rebuild from the devastation of the war and occupation, while British administrators reassert their authority. Su Lin has been working with her former boss in the police force, Thomas Le Froy, managing a public health service project. He has been accused of embezzling the funds, so their work is on hold, as is their tentative romance (which honestly, I have a little trouble believing in). Su Lin is bringing some holiday treats for the upcoming Dragon Boat Festival to another family when she finds one of the daughters standing over a dead body. She knows that Mei Mei Pang couldn't have killed the man, and she immediately starts trying both to help her through the shock and to find out who did. Spoiler alert: there are more dead bodies to come.

This is a complicated story, one I sometimes had a little trouble following, but I enjoyed meeting Su Lin and her redoubtable grandmother Chen Tai again. As always I found the Singapore setting fascinating. It is a place I hope to visit some day. This year I also enjoyed Oanh Ngo Usadi's memoir of her U.S family's relocation to Singapore, Hawker Dreams. I look forward to my next fictional visit.