With today's BBAW theme of promoting a book that in my opinion needs more recognition, my first thought was to write about Anthony Trollope. Before I started blogging, I didn't know anyone else who read him, and I felt like I was alone in a world obsessed with Charles Dickens. But now I've found a wonderful community of fellow Trollopians, some long-time readers and others just falling under his spell.
Instead, I chose someone born almost a century later, Betty MacDonald. Many people know her as the author of the beloved Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories, which I read growing up and which are still on my shelves. Much less-well known are her four autobiographical works, the first of which is The Egg and I. Published in 1945, it became an immediate best-seller and the basis for a movie starring Fred MacMurry and Claudette Colbert. No film could possibly do justice to this book, because it couldn't capture MacDonald's unique voice:
Along with teaching us that lamb must be cooked with garlic and that a lady never scratches her head or spits, my mother taught my sisters and me that it is a wife's bounden duty to see that her husband is happy in his work . . . [This] philosophy worked out splendidly for Mother for she followed my mining engineer father all over the United States and led a fascinating life; but not so well for me, because although I did what she told me and let Bob choose the work in which he felt he would be happiest and then plunged wholeheartedly in with him, I wound up on the Pacific Coast in the most untamed corner of the United States, with a ten-gallon keg of good whiskey, some very dirty Indians, and hundreds and hundreds of most uninteresting chickens.
Unfortunately all of these books include unflattering stereotypes of drunken and dirty Native Americans.
Before she got to the chicken farm on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula, MacDonald described her childhood in mining camps across the west and later in Seattle. In addition to her parents and her four siblings, the family included her paternal grandmother Gammy, "who wore her corsets upside down and her shoes on the wrong feet and married a gambler with yellow eyes." Each of the four books includes stories from her childhood, and it's a wonder she survived it. Her older sister Mary was constantly leading her into temptation, not to mention mortal danger, like the time she convinced Betty to slide down an old mining flume, which nearly dumped her headfirst into the mine itself.
When her marriage to Bob the chicken farmer ended, MacDonald took her two daughters back to the family home in Seattle. This was in 1931, in the deepening Depression, a bad time to be looking for work, but Mary convinced her that finding a job would be easy. In Anybody Can Do Anything, MacDonald related her adventures looking for, and then losing, job after job. Mary told her, "I'll always be able to find us jobs doing something, and whatever it is I'll show you how to do it." Mary's other motto was, "Just show me the job and I'll produce a sister to do it." MacDonald dedicated the book "To my sister Mary, who has always believed that I can do anything she puts her mind to." It's a fascinating picture of Seattle in the early 1930s, and of the working world. Like all four of her books, it's also a lovely portrait of a family:
It's a wonderful thing to know that you can come home any time from anywhere and just open the door and belong. That everybody will shift until you fit and that from that day on it's a matter of sharing everything. When you share your money, your clothes and your food with a mother, a brother and three sisters, your portion may be meagre, but by the same token when you share unhappiness, loneliness and anxiety about the future with a mother, a brother and three sisters, there isn't much left for you.
Seven years later, MacDonald was living in the family home with her daughters when she was diagnosed with tuberculosis. She spent the next ten months in a sanitarium, which she chronicled in The Plague and I.
By the time I had gone through my sixth cold, I noticed that I seemed much more nervous, that I slept badly and that I had a heavy feeling over my heart and occasional sharp pains in my lungs. I attributed the heavy feeling and the pains to my indigestion and my indigestion to my nervousness and my nervousness to my job . . . It never occurred to me that my complaints were symptoms of tuberculosis. (Actually they all were.) From Gammy's training, the movies I had seen and the books I had read, I thought that the only real symptoms of tuberculosis were a dry hacking cough and a clean white linen handkerchief delicately touched to pale lips and coming away blood-flecked.
She wrote in detail about the treatments she underwent and the condition of other patients, and this is not a book for the medically squeamish. I would not have thought there was anything funny about TB, but Betty MacDonald proved me wrong. Like her other books, it has truly laugh-out-loud moments, but it is also the most serious of her books. In the sanitarium she roomed with a young Japanese woman named Kimi. This was actually Monica Sone, who later wrote a book, Nisei Daughter, about her experiences with the Japanese internments during World War II. MacDonald apparently accepted Asian and African Americans without the prejudice that she showed toward Native Americans.
The final book of the four is Onions in the Stew, which tells of MacDonald's second marriage to Donald MacDonald and their life on Vashon Island. It is the most domestic of the books, and I think the quietest. Her daughters Joan and Anne were growing up, as were her nieces and nephews. Part of the fun of these books is seeing the connections with the later Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books, which are dedicated to them, "who are perfect angels and couldn't possibly have been the inspiration for any of these stories."
These books are classics, with some of the funniest episodes I have ever read. They remind me of Shirley Jackson's Life Among the Savages and Raising Demons, and also of the Gilbreth family of Cheaper by the Dozen, but MacDonald's voice is uniquely her own. Unfortunately only the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle stories and The Egg & I are still in print, but it's well worth tracking down library or used copies. These are books to be re-read and treasured, and they deserve to be better known.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
R is for Rediscovering Sue Grafton
R is for Ricochet, Sue Grafton
I've been culling quite a few books from my overflowing shelves lately. I seem to be clearer about which ones I'm never going to read again (or in some cases for the first time). I've been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is let these books go, and how good it feels to clear them out. There are some, though, that I have waffled over. I just can't decide about Martha Grimes; I'll probably have to re-read one of them before I can make up my mind. I felt the same way about Sue Grafton. I've been reading her series featuring Kinsey Millhone, a PI in Santa Teresa, California, for many years, but somehow I got stuck at this book, her 18th. I bought it back when it was published in 2004 but never got around to reading it, nor any of the books that follow (the series is now up to V for Vengeance).
The first book, A is for Alibi, was published in 1982. Grafton has chosen to keep the books' internal timeline consistent, so while 30 years have passed in the real world, only five have in Kinsey's world. Grafton doesn't overwhelm her stories with what's now period detail, but you can catch something of the timing in passing, when Kinsey uses a pay phone instead of a cell phone, or when she mentions graduating from high school in 1966 - or when she enters a bar where "Eighty-seven per cent of those present were smoking, the air as gray as morning fog."
When this book opens, Kinsey is on her way to meet a new client, Nord Lafferty, wealthy and socially prominent. To her surprise, the job he offers involves his daughter Reba, who is being released on parole after serving twenty-two months in prison for embezzlement. She pleaded guilty to stealing $350,000 from her employer Alan Beckwith, a local real estate developer. The only child of an elderly father and an absent mother, Reba has been in trouble for much of her life, addicted to both drugs and gambling. Mr. Lafferty wants Kinsey to keep an eye on her for the first few days following her release, as she makes the transition to freedom again, and Kinsey agrees.
Spending time with Reba, Kinsey soon realizes that she and the married Beckwith were having an affair before she went to prison, which they are quick to resume. Then Kinsey is approached by a local police officer, Cheney Phillips, who tells her that the FBI and IRS are interested in Reba, because Beckwith's real estate business is just a front for some serious criminal activity. They are hoping to turn Reba, and they want Kinsey's help. Cheney is also interested in Kinsey, in a completely different way of course, and the two begin seeing each other. Reba, who has her own plans, manages to drag Kinsey along and into trouble with both the cops and the bad guys. For much of the book Kinsey plays an atypically passive role, following Cheney and Reba's leads. She acknowledges this in the last line of the book: "So here's what I've learned. In the passing drama of life, I'm usually the heroine, but occasionally I'm simply a minor character in someone else's play."
I did enjoy this book. It was interesting returning to this series after so many years. Much of it felt familiar: Kinsey's essentially solitary life, the dull routine of much of her work, her passion for junk food (she regularly eats two Quarter Pounders with Cheese at a time), and her Paul Newman-esque landlord, the sexy 87-year-old Henry. Other things I'd forgotten, like Kinsey's history with Cheney, but Grafton is good at dropping clues and details to fill in what's now a complicated backstory. Her story here is complex and twisty, with scams, betrayals and counter-plots. Beckwith's criminal activities include money laundering, which means Kinsey (and the reader) get lectures from the cops and the FBI not just about how the laundering is done but also about the laws meant to prevent it, and that did slow the story down in places. There is also a subplot involving Henry, his slightly annoying brothers and a woman he is interested in, which balances the Kinsey-Cheney pairing and the Reba-Beckwith. As Kinsey announces on the first page, "This is a story about romance - love gone right, love gone wrong, and matters somewhere in between."
So Sue Grafton is staying on the shelves (she'll be relieved, I'm sure), and I'll probably be looking to catch up on the books I've missed as well.
I've been culling quite a few books from my overflowing shelves lately. I seem to be clearer about which ones I'm never going to read again (or in some cases for the first time). I've been pleasantly surprised at how easy it is let these books go, and how good it feels to clear them out. There are some, though, that I have waffled over. I just can't decide about Martha Grimes; I'll probably have to re-read one of them before I can make up my mind. I felt the same way about Sue Grafton. I've been reading her series featuring Kinsey Millhone, a PI in Santa Teresa, California, for many years, but somehow I got stuck at this book, her 18th. I bought it back when it was published in 2004 but never got around to reading it, nor any of the books that follow (the series is now up to V for Vengeance).
The first book, A is for Alibi, was published in 1982. Grafton has chosen to keep the books' internal timeline consistent, so while 30 years have passed in the real world, only five have in Kinsey's world. Grafton doesn't overwhelm her stories with what's now period detail, but you can catch something of the timing in passing, when Kinsey uses a pay phone instead of a cell phone, or when she mentions graduating from high school in 1966 - or when she enters a bar where "Eighty-seven per cent of those present were smoking, the air as gray as morning fog."
When this book opens, Kinsey is on her way to meet a new client, Nord Lafferty, wealthy and socially prominent. To her surprise, the job he offers involves his daughter Reba, who is being released on parole after serving twenty-two months in prison for embezzlement. She pleaded guilty to stealing $350,000 from her employer Alan Beckwith, a local real estate developer. The only child of an elderly father and an absent mother, Reba has been in trouble for much of her life, addicted to both drugs and gambling. Mr. Lafferty wants Kinsey to keep an eye on her for the first few days following her release, as she makes the transition to freedom again, and Kinsey agrees.
Spending time with Reba, Kinsey soon realizes that she and the married Beckwith were having an affair before she went to prison, which they are quick to resume. Then Kinsey is approached by a local police officer, Cheney Phillips, who tells her that the FBI and IRS are interested in Reba, because Beckwith's real estate business is just a front for some serious criminal activity. They are hoping to turn Reba, and they want Kinsey's help. Cheney is also interested in Kinsey, in a completely different way of course, and the two begin seeing each other. Reba, who has her own plans, manages to drag Kinsey along and into trouble with both the cops and the bad guys. For much of the book Kinsey plays an atypically passive role, following Cheney and Reba's leads. She acknowledges this in the last line of the book: "So here's what I've learned. In the passing drama of life, I'm usually the heroine, but occasionally I'm simply a minor character in someone else's play."
I did enjoy this book. It was interesting returning to this series after so many years. Much of it felt familiar: Kinsey's essentially solitary life, the dull routine of much of her work, her passion for junk food (she regularly eats two Quarter Pounders with Cheese at a time), and her Paul Newman-esque landlord, the sexy 87-year-old Henry. Other things I'd forgotten, like Kinsey's history with Cheney, but Grafton is good at dropping clues and details to fill in what's now a complicated backstory. Her story here is complex and twisty, with scams, betrayals and counter-plots. Beckwith's criminal activities include money laundering, which means Kinsey (and the reader) get lectures from the cops and the FBI not just about how the laundering is done but also about the laws meant to prevent it, and that did slow the story down in places. There is also a subplot involving Henry, his slightly annoying brothers and a woman he is interested in, which balances the Kinsey-Cheney pairing and the Reba-Beckwith. As Kinsey announces on the first page, "This is a story about romance - love gone right, love gone wrong, and matters somewhere in between."
So Sue Grafton is staying on the shelves (she'll be relieved, I'm sure), and I'll probably be looking to catch up on the books I've missed as well.
BBAW: What blogging means to me
When I asked myself what blogging means to me, the answer came immediately: finding my voice. Reading isn't something I do, it's part of who I am. I don't remember learning to read, I don't remember a time when I couldn't read, a time when reading hasn't been (in the words of Anna Quindlen) "my home, my sustenance, my great invincible companion." But I've found it frustrating to talk about reading and books, other than with a few book-minded friends. So many people just don't read, they're not interested in books, they may even find reading a bit suspect. And then I find it hard to talk about books, to verbalize how enthralling or amusing or unsettling I find the book I'm reading, let alone reading itself. And I swear, the more passionate I am about a book, the less I'm able to convey that. It's the Mr. Knightley syndrome: "If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more." So I stumble and stutter along, as people start to back politely toward the door, and I usually end lamely with "It's just such a good book!"
But when I sit down at the computer with a blank post, I am finally able to put into words why it's such a good book. I don't write easily, but as I wrestle with words I'm able to name what I think about a book, how I feel about it, how it relates to other books I've read, or to something in my life. I can muse on my history with the author, or on reading itself. I can identify what I see as a book's strengths or its weaknesses (though I am not the most critical of readers). There is a freedom in knowing that anyone reading my post who gets bored will simply move on. And I can talk about whatever I'm reading. I do tend to be an eclectic reader; often when I finish a book, I want to read something completely different next. Whatever I'm reading, though, I'm sure to find someone else who has read it too.
Which brings me to a most amazing thing about blogging: not just that I've found a voice, but that I am heard. While I don't want to sound like Sally Field at the Oscars, I'm still sort of amazed and grateful that with all the blogs out there, all those great voices, people spend time here reading and commenting (of all the gin joints...). Again, thank you all for that. As wonderful as it is to have found my voice, conversation is much more fun than monologue!
But when I sit down at the computer with a blank post, I am finally able to put into words why it's such a good book. I don't write easily, but as I wrestle with words I'm able to name what I think about a book, how I feel about it, how it relates to other books I've read, or to something in my life. I can muse on my history with the author, or on reading itself. I can identify what I see as a book's strengths or its weaknesses (though I am not the most critical of readers). There is a freedom in knowing that anyone reading my post who gets bored will simply move on. And I can talk about whatever I'm reading. I do tend to be an eclectic reader; often when I finish a book, I want to read something completely different next. Whatever I'm reading, though, I'm sure to find someone else who has read it too.
Which brings me to a most amazing thing about blogging: not just that I've found a voice, but that I am heard. While I don't want to sound like Sally Field at the Oscars, I'm still sort of amazed and grateful that with all the blogs out there, all those great voices, people spend time here reading and commenting (of all the gin joints...). Again, thank you all for that. As wonderful as it is to have found my voice, conversation is much more fun than monologue!
Monday, September 10, 2012
BBAW: Appreciation
I've so been looking forward to this, to joining in Book Blogger Appreciation Week, and particularly to expressing my own appreciation of some favorite blogs and bloggers. Reading your posts, I am entertained and informed and challenged and inspired - and reminded how many books are still out there waiting to be discovered.
Like the Oscars, I'm going for categories with my own Appies:
First of all, really the first blog I discovered (via a Google alert), and the one that inspired me to start my own, and as far as I'm concerned sets the standard for book blogs: Shelf Love. I am honored to be included on Jenny & Teresa's appreciation list today.
Blogs that expand my reading horizons: Both Shelf Love and Read, Ramble remind me of the world of literature and history beyond my comfortable American and English zones.
Blogs most likely to send me straight to the library catalogue, or to add to my TBR stacks, besides the two above: Books and Chocolate, books as food, The Captive Reader, Gudrun's Tights, Lakeside Musing, Pining for the West, and She Reads Novels. Thanks to all of you, there is very little chance of changing this blog's name to "TBR Less Than 100" anytime in the foreseeable future.
Blogs that challenge me: With the Classics Challenge, Katherine at November's Autumn encourages us each month to look at a particular aspect of a classic work; this month it's music. With the TBR Double Dare, James at Ready When You Are, C.B. really made me think about the stacks of unread books I already own and those I continue to acquire. Sign me up for the Double Dog Dare! Of course the challenges are only one part of their great blogs.
And finally, blogs that I have recently discovered: Tell Me a Story, Read Around the World, and Secluded Charm (I enjoy the reviews of classic films there as well).
A last word of appreciation, to all of you who read and who comment. Sharing books with you, here and on your blogs, is the best part of my day. Thank you!
Like the Oscars, I'm going for categories with my own Appies:
First of all, really the first blog I discovered (via a Google alert), and the one that inspired me to start my own, and as far as I'm concerned sets the standard for book blogs: Shelf Love. I am honored to be included on Jenny & Teresa's appreciation list today.
Blogs that expand my reading horizons: Both Shelf Love and Read, Ramble remind me of the world of literature and history beyond my comfortable American and English zones.
Blogs most likely to send me straight to the library catalogue, or to add to my TBR stacks, besides the two above: Books and Chocolate, books as food, The Captive Reader, Gudrun's Tights, Lakeside Musing, Pining for the West, and She Reads Novels. Thanks to all of you, there is very little chance of changing this blog's name to "TBR Less Than 100" anytime in the foreseeable future.
Blogs that challenge me: With the Classics Challenge, Katherine at November's Autumn encourages us each month to look at a particular aspect of a classic work; this month it's music. With the TBR Double Dare, James at Ready When You Are, C.B. really made me think about the stacks of unread books I already own and those I continue to acquire. Sign me up for the Double Dog Dare! Of course the challenges are only one part of their great blogs.
And finally, blogs that I have recently discovered: Tell Me a Story, Read Around the World, and Secluded Charm (I enjoy the reviews of classic films there as well).
A last word of appreciation, to all of you who read and who comment. Sharing books with you, here and on your blogs, is the best part of my day. Thank you!
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Tutankhamen and his tomb
Tutankhamen, Joyce Tyldesley
In 1978, my parents took us to see "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit in Seattle. It was overwhelming and exhilarating, pushing through the crowds of people all intent on the cases filled with artifacts more than 3000 years old. I must have learned about Egypt in school, but I think that's when ancient Egypt came alive for me, not just with the golden artifacts but also with the simpler ones, like a gameboard set with its pieces, or a chair whose back showed the king sitting with his queen. Several years later a friend introduced me to Elizabeth Peters' series featuring the Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson, who in the course of 19 books has excavated up and down the length of Egypt with her husband and extended family. I've learned a lot from these books, as well as the non-fiction the author has written under her own name, Barbara Mertz (Temples, Tombs and Heiroglyphs). I've been lucky enough to see three other exhibits of artifacts, including "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," which stopped in Houston on its recent American tour.
I came across Tutankhamen (the author's preferred spelling) recently at the library. I was not familiar with the author, Dr Joyce Tyldesley, but I've since learned that she is on the faculty at the JNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, and that she has written extensively on ancient Egypt. Based on this book, I'll definitely be looking for more of her work.
In Tutankhamen, Dr Tyldesley takes the reader from the death of the King around 1327 BCE and his burial in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes (Luxor) through the search for his tomb in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its eventual discovery in 1922 was a world-wide media event, creating a fascination with "King Tut" that continues today, a phenomenon Dr Tyldesley also explores. In addition, she explains how Howard Carter and his team of experts painstakingly emptied the tomb, inventorying its thousands of artifacts and doing the necessary conservation work to preserve them as they were moved for the first time in millenia. Later sections discuss the recovery of the King's body and the autopsies performed on it, as well as the contradictory conclusions that different experts have drawn from them. In the end, so many questions about this pharaoh remain unanswered, including the identity of his parents. Later kings altered the historical record, removing Tutankhamen and his predecessor/possible father Akhenaten from the list of pharaohs. Robbers and early archaeologists, intent only on treasure, stole and destroyed objects that might have provided vital information on the period.
I found this book informative, interesting, and very readable. Dr Tyldesley is clearly writing for the non-expert, taking care to explain and to give context, but she doesn't overwhelm with detail or condescend. I found the chapter on "Family," where she explores the different theories of Tutankhamen's parentage and place within the family, a little confusing, simply because of the number of individuals. I wish I had discovered the "Who Was Who in Ancient Egypt" section at the back of the book sooner. Dr Tyldesley doesn't hesitate to point out the mistakes made by earlier Egyptologists, or to mention points on which she herself disagrees with colleagues, but she is even-handed and fair, even pointing out extenuating circumstances. She has fun with the various "curses" that have been ascribed to Tutankhamen, and with popular culture's fascination with him, with ancient Egypt in general and mummies in particular, over the years. My favorite: a suggestion that "an extension to the London Underground, which passed through Tooting and Camden Town, should be named "Tootancamden." I will also take to heart her suggestion that "As a general rule of thumb, any book that refers to the king as 'Tut,' . . . and any book that includes the word 'truth' on its cover, is best avoided."
In 1978, my parents took us to see "The Treasures of Tutankhamun" exhibit in Seattle. It was overwhelming and exhilarating, pushing through the crowds of people all intent on the cases filled with artifacts more than 3000 years old. I must have learned about Egypt in school, but I think that's when ancient Egypt came alive for me, not just with the golden artifacts but also with the simpler ones, like a gameboard set with its pieces, or a chair whose back showed the king sitting with his queen. Several years later a friend introduced me to Elizabeth Peters' series featuring the Victorian Egyptologist Amelia Peabody Emerson, who in the course of 19 books has excavated up and down the length of Egypt with her husband and extended family. I've learned a lot from these books, as well as the non-fiction the author has written under her own name, Barbara Mertz (Temples, Tombs and Heiroglyphs). I've been lucky enough to see three other exhibits of artifacts, including "Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs," which stopped in Houston on its recent American tour.
I came across Tutankhamen (the author's preferred spelling) recently at the library. I was not familiar with the author, Dr Joyce Tyldesley, but I've since learned that she is on the faculty at the JNH Centre for Biomedical Egyptology at the University of Manchester, and that she has written extensively on ancient Egypt. Based on this book, I'll definitely be looking for more of her work.
In Tutankhamen, Dr Tyldesley takes the reader from the death of the King around 1327 BCE and his burial in the Valley of the Kings at Thebes (Luxor) through the search for his tomb in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Its eventual discovery in 1922 was a world-wide media event, creating a fascination with "King Tut" that continues today, a phenomenon Dr Tyldesley also explores. In addition, she explains how Howard Carter and his team of experts painstakingly emptied the tomb, inventorying its thousands of artifacts and doing the necessary conservation work to preserve them as they were moved for the first time in millenia. Later sections discuss the recovery of the King's body and the autopsies performed on it, as well as the contradictory conclusions that different experts have drawn from them. In the end, so many questions about this pharaoh remain unanswered, including the identity of his parents. Later kings altered the historical record, removing Tutankhamen and his predecessor/possible father Akhenaten from the list of pharaohs. Robbers and early archaeologists, intent only on treasure, stole and destroyed objects that might have provided vital information on the period.
I found this book informative, interesting, and very readable. Dr Tyldesley is clearly writing for the non-expert, taking care to explain and to give context, but she doesn't overwhelm with detail or condescend. I found the chapter on "Family," where she explores the different theories of Tutankhamen's parentage and place within the family, a little confusing, simply because of the number of individuals. I wish I had discovered the "Who Was Who in Ancient Egypt" section at the back of the book sooner. Dr Tyldesley doesn't hesitate to point out the mistakes made by earlier Egyptologists, or to mention points on which she herself disagrees with colleagues, but she is even-handed and fair, even pointing out extenuating circumstances. She has fun with the various "curses" that have been ascribed to Tutankhamen, and with popular culture's fascination with him, with ancient Egypt in general and mummies in particular, over the years. My favorite: a suggestion that "an extension to the London Underground, which passed through Tooting and Camden Town, should be named "Tootancamden." I will also take to heart her suggestion that "As a general rule of thumb, any book that refers to the king as 'Tut,' . . . and any book that includes the word 'truth' on its cover, is best avoided."
Thursday, September 6, 2012
The House in Norham Gardens
The House in Norham Gardens, Penelope Lively
I saw a review of this recently that intrigued me, reminding me that Penelope Lively wrote children's and young adult novels before turning to adult fiction. I have only read one of those early books, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, which I enjoyed. It's about a boy, James Harrison, living in an old cottage in an Oxfordshire village, who discovers that it is being haunted by the ghost of the title, accidentally released from a magical confinement and wreaking havoc. I was expecting something along the same lines with this book, but it is very different, closer I think to her adult fiction.
In this book, published in 1974, Clare Mayfield, aged fourteen, lives in an old Victorian house in Norham Gardens, in Oxford. An orphan, she has been raised by her great-aunts Anne (aged 78) and Susan (aged 80), in a warm, loving home. The aunts, born in the Victorian era, rejected the traditional roles of wife and mother to make independent lives for themselves as scholars and tutors, and they have high hopes for Clare. Retired now to quiet lives in Norham Gardens, they are growing frail, particularly Aunt Anne, who is often ill. At a young age, Clare has now become their caretaker. With the daily help, Mrs Hedges, she does the shopping and the cooking, and the two conspire to eke out the family's dwindling funds. One of their solutions was to take in a lodger, Maureen, an office worker. This is no Sarah Crewe story of drudgery and poverty, though, but one of loving care and service.
The house, which has been their family home since the 1890s, is constantly in need of repairs. Too many rooms are unused, full of now-antique furniture, and the attics are crammed with generations of clothes and books and family albums. The attics also contain artifacts brought back to England by Clare's great-grandfather, an anthropologist, who was among the first Europeans to travel deep into New Guinea and study its most isolated native peoples. One day, looking for an extra blanket for Maureen, Clare finds a piece of wood, carved and painted, an abstract-looking human figure. She learns that it is a tamburan, a stylized representation of the ancestors who guard a village in New Guinea, which her great-grandfather acquired in 1905.
That night, Clare dreams of a village and its people. The dreams continue, growing increasingly vivid and urgent. The figures in the village, who initially seemed to be waiting, now seem to be demanding something. Mixed in with these dreams are others, equally disturbing, where her home has changed or been abandoned. The aunts, Clare's friends and teachers, all notice that she seems tired, stressed, not her usual self; she loses interest in her school work.
I don't know how I would have read this book at Clare's age. Even then, I think I would have loved the setting, the old family home with its history and its treasures, and even more the family itself, Clare and her wonderful aunts. I might have read the story of the tamburan simply as a magical one, of a tribe that lost its ancestor and reached across time to seek for it. Maybe that is what's happening; in the end Penelope Lively doesn't tell us one way or another, though she suggests that there is something eerie about the tamburan. But maybe Clare's dreams are less about the native peoples than about herself, maybe this is the only way that she can face the changes, the profound losses that are coming. She is only fourteen, with a tiny inheritance from her parents. Her aunts will not live forever. What will happen to her, what will happen to their home, to the family treasures that she loves? Again, we are given no answer. But Clare, who copes so capably with so much, will cope with that too when it comes.
I think this is an amazing book, with the multiple layers of stories that Penelope Lively weaves together. I want to be adopted by the Aunts, free to wander around that amazing house. But I would take care what trunks I opened.
I saw a review of this recently that intrigued me, reminding me that Penelope Lively wrote children's and young adult novels before turning to adult fiction. I have only read one of those early books, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe, which I enjoyed. It's about a boy, James Harrison, living in an old cottage in an Oxfordshire village, who discovers that it is being haunted by the ghost of the title, accidentally released from a magical confinement and wreaking havoc. I was expecting something along the same lines with this book, but it is very different, closer I think to her adult fiction.
In this book, published in 1974, Clare Mayfield, aged fourteen, lives in an old Victorian house in Norham Gardens, in Oxford. An orphan, she has been raised by her great-aunts Anne (aged 78) and Susan (aged 80), in a warm, loving home. The aunts, born in the Victorian era, rejected the traditional roles of wife and mother to make independent lives for themselves as scholars and tutors, and they have high hopes for Clare. Retired now to quiet lives in Norham Gardens, they are growing frail, particularly Aunt Anne, who is often ill. At a young age, Clare has now become their caretaker. With the daily help, Mrs Hedges, she does the shopping and the cooking, and the two conspire to eke out the family's dwindling funds. One of their solutions was to take in a lodger, Maureen, an office worker. This is no Sarah Crewe story of drudgery and poverty, though, but one of loving care and service.
The house, which has been their family home since the 1890s, is constantly in need of repairs. Too many rooms are unused, full of now-antique furniture, and the attics are crammed with generations of clothes and books and family albums. The attics also contain artifacts brought back to England by Clare's great-grandfather, an anthropologist, who was among the first Europeans to travel deep into New Guinea and study its most isolated native peoples. One day, looking for an extra blanket for Maureen, Clare finds a piece of wood, carved and painted, an abstract-looking human figure. She learns that it is a tamburan, a stylized representation of the ancestors who guard a village in New Guinea, which her great-grandfather acquired in 1905.
That night, Clare dreams of a village and its people. The dreams continue, growing increasingly vivid and urgent. The figures in the village, who initially seemed to be waiting, now seem to be demanding something. Mixed in with these dreams are others, equally disturbing, where her home has changed or been abandoned. The aunts, Clare's friends and teachers, all notice that she seems tired, stressed, not her usual self; she loses interest in her school work.
I don't know how I would have read this book at Clare's age. Even then, I think I would have loved the setting, the old family home with its history and its treasures, and even more the family itself, Clare and her wonderful aunts. I might have read the story of the tamburan simply as a magical one, of a tribe that lost its ancestor and reached across time to seek for it. Maybe that is what's happening; in the end Penelope Lively doesn't tell us one way or another, though she suggests that there is something eerie about the tamburan. But maybe Clare's dreams are less about the native peoples than about herself, maybe this is the only way that she can face the changes, the profound losses that are coming. She is only fourteen, with a tiny inheritance from her parents. Her aunts will not live forever. What will happen to her, what will happen to their home, to the family treasures that she loves? Again, we are given no answer. But Clare, who copes so capably with so much, will cope with that too when it comes.
I think this is an amazing book, with the multiple layers of stories that Penelope Lively weaves together. I want to be adopted by the Aunts, free to wander around that amazing house. But I would take care what trunks I opened.
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Three clerks & three sisters
The Three Clerks, Anthony Trollope
As thrilled as I am with my recent trove of Trollope novels, I do want to read them, not just collect them. I picked The Three Clerks for my next read, after I saw a reference to it as a young man's novel, which piqued my interest. The sixth of Trollope's novels, it was published in 1857, the same year as Barchester Towers, when he was 42. It is a fast-moving story, set in London, where the three clerks of the title work in Civil Service offices. Harry Norman and Alaric Tudor are in the prestigious but staid Weights and Measures, while Alaric's scapegrace cousin Charley is in the rackety Internal Navigation (he fits right in with the rambunctious young men who have earned the nickname of "Infernal Navigation"). Trollope draws on his own career in the Post Office to show both inter- and intra-office rivalries, and the effects of the newly-instituted reforms, like examinations for candidates that were replacing a patronage system (he owed his own place to family connections).
The work of the Civil Service is tied to parliamentary politics, and it is fascinating to see here themes that Trollope would develop on a much grander scale in the later Palliser novels, and to compare them with the church politics of Barchester Towers. While there is not a single clergyman in this novel, which may make it unique in the Trollope canon, he actually wrote more about faith and practice in this book than in some of the "church" books of the Barchester series. The Civil Service and parliamentary settings also allow Trollope to bring in elements of finance and industry, such as when one of the clerks is sent to Devon to investigate a tin mine whose production might fall to the Crown. While there, he is maneuvered into secretly buying stock in the mine, the first step on a path of insider trading, which will lead to ever-greater fraud and eventually to his downfall.
But the three clerks and their work are only half of the story. There are also three sisters, Gertrude, Linda and Katie Woodward, who live with their widowed mother in a river-side cottage at Hampton. (I had never thought of "Linda" as a Victorian name.) Soon after the story opens, their mother's uncle, Captain Bartholomew Cuttwater, retires from the Royal Navy to live with them. This Uncle Bat introduces a naval element that I don't remember in any of Trollope's other books. His grumblings over the sins of the Admiralty reminded me of Patrick O'Brian.
The Woodwards are related to Harry Norman, who introduces them first to Alaric and then to Charley Tudor. "To a habitual novel reader," as Trollope says at one point, it will hardly come as a surprise to find that the three young men match up with the three young women, but it is still fun watching how it happens. The youngest daughter, Katie is only thirteen when the story opens, still a child who likes messing about with boats, with drawers longer than her skirts (I didn't know respectable Victorian novelists were allowed to talk about young ladies' drawers). She grows up into a delightful young woman, who dances her slippers to pieces one night, and I suspect that Trollope had a bit of tendre for her, as he did for Glencora Palliser.
I can see in this book some unevenness, some rough edges that I think show Trollope still perfecting his skills as a writer. His narrative voice becomes quite sentimental at times, addressing his reader as "thee" and "thou" (and at least once as "dear lady"), and admonishing, even scolding his characters. The illness of one character skirts the edges of bathos, complete with a death-bed farewell, though he has already told us that the illness isn't that serious. And the last chapter of the book, which brings some serious family news, ends in broad, almost farcial comedy, with most of the characters chasing around a garden. Then there are the names, some of the worst puns I've found in any of his books: Mr Gitemthruet, a defense lawyer; Jabesh M'Ruen, a predatory moneylender; and Victoire Jaquêtanàpe, a French fortune-hunter. I can't forget Thomas Snape, the chief clerk of Charley's office and his perpetual victim.
This book was originally published in the traditional three-volume format. When it was reprinted two years later, the publisher insisted on major cuts to bring it down to a single volume. The edition I read, an Oxford World's Classics, included the most substantial cuts in an appendix, keyed to their original place in the remaining text. Reading the excised material in some cases changed my understanding of a scene or a character. I learned from the introduction that Trollope fought to keep one of my favorite chapters, where one of the young clerks, who hopes to make some extra money from journalism, brings a story he has written to the Woodwards. Mrs. Woodward reads it aloud to the group, who interrupt her constantly with a hilarious running commentary. The story, whose heroine is named "Crinoline," is ridiculously funny, though its young author is very proud of it.
I really enjoyed this book. As always, Trollope made me care about his characters, and their stories, clearly grounded in his own world, and even drawing from his own life.
As thrilled as I am with my recent trove of Trollope novels, I do want to read them, not just collect them. I picked The Three Clerks for my next read, after I saw a reference to it as a young man's novel, which piqued my interest. The sixth of Trollope's novels, it was published in 1857, the same year as Barchester Towers, when he was 42. It is a fast-moving story, set in London, where the three clerks of the title work in Civil Service offices. Harry Norman and Alaric Tudor are in the prestigious but staid Weights and Measures, while Alaric's scapegrace cousin Charley is in the rackety Internal Navigation (he fits right in with the rambunctious young men who have earned the nickname of "Infernal Navigation"). Trollope draws on his own career in the Post Office to show both inter- and intra-office rivalries, and the effects of the newly-instituted reforms, like examinations for candidates that were replacing a patronage system (he owed his own place to family connections).
The work of the Civil Service is tied to parliamentary politics, and it is fascinating to see here themes that Trollope would develop on a much grander scale in the later Palliser novels, and to compare them with the church politics of Barchester Towers. While there is not a single clergyman in this novel, which may make it unique in the Trollope canon, he actually wrote more about faith and practice in this book than in some of the "church" books of the Barchester series. The Civil Service and parliamentary settings also allow Trollope to bring in elements of finance and industry, such as when one of the clerks is sent to Devon to investigate a tin mine whose production might fall to the Crown. While there, he is maneuvered into secretly buying stock in the mine, the first step on a path of insider trading, which will lead to ever-greater fraud and eventually to his downfall.
But the three clerks and their work are only half of the story. There are also three sisters, Gertrude, Linda and Katie Woodward, who live with their widowed mother in a river-side cottage at Hampton. (I had never thought of "Linda" as a Victorian name.) Soon after the story opens, their mother's uncle, Captain Bartholomew Cuttwater, retires from the Royal Navy to live with them. This Uncle Bat introduces a naval element that I don't remember in any of Trollope's other books. His grumblings over the sins of the Admiralty reminded me of Patrick O'Brian.
The Woodwards are related to Harry Norman, who introduces them first to Alaric and then to Charley Tudor. "To a habitual novel reader," as Trollope says at one point, it will hardly come as a surprise to find that the three young men match up with the three young women, but it is still fun watching how it happens. The youngest daughter, Katie is only thirteen when the story opens, still a child who likes messing about with boats, with drawers longer than her skirts (I didn't know respectable Victorian novelists were allowed to talk about young ladies' drawers). She grows up into a delightful young woman, who dances her slippers to pieces one night, and I suspect that Trollope had a bit of tendre for her, as he did for Glencora Palliser.
I can see in this book some unevenness, some rough edges that I think show Trollope still perfecting his skills as a writer. His narrative voice becomes quite sentimental at times, addressing his reader as "thee" and "thou" (and at least once as "dear lady"), and admonishing, even scolding his characters. The illness of one character skirts the edges of bathos, complete with a death-bed farewell, though he has already told us that the illness isn't that serious. And the last chapter of the book, which brings some serious family news, ends in broad, almost farcial comedy, with most of the characters chasing around a garden. Then there are the names, some of the worst puns I've found in any of his books: Mr Gitemthruet, a defense lawyer; Jabesh M'Ruen, a predatory moneylender; and Victoire Jaquêtanàpe, a French fortune-hunter. I can't forget Thomas Snape, the chief clerk of Charley's office and his perpetual victim.
This book was originally published in the traditional three-volume format. When it was reprinted two years later, the publisher insisted on major cuts to bring it down to a single volume. The edition I read, an Oxford World's Classics, included the most substantial cuts in an appendix, keyed to their original place in the remaining text. Reading the excised material in some cases changed my understanding of a scene or a character. I learned from the introduction that Trollope fought to keep one of my favorite chapters, where one of the young clerks, who hopes to make some extra money from journalism, brings a story he has written to the Woodwards. Mrs. Woodward reads it aloud to the group, who interrupt her constantly with a hilarious running commentary. The story, whose heroine is named "Crinoline," is ridiculously funny, though its young author is very proud of it.
I really enjoyed this book. As always, Trollope made me care about his characters, and their stories, clearly grounded in his own world, and even drawing from his own life.
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