A Work in Progress

Young Bess by Margaret Irwin

Oxford educated Margaret Irwin was noted for her historically accurate and well researched novels, which she began writing in the 1920s.  If there is such a thing as 'canonical' works in genre fiction, I get the feeling from my meanderings out on the web, that Irwin's would be high on the list of titles with her popular trilogy of historical fiction novels covering the early years of Queen Elizabeth I's life.  The books seem to have been many a young girl's introduction to Elizabeth's world, and they are currently being reissued by Sourcebooks.  Irwin's area was Elizabethan and Stuart history on which she was a noted authority.  Her familiarity and knowledge of the period, particularly the political machinations of the Tudors and those close to them are made abundantly clear in her writing.

Before I started reading Irwin I thought I had a fair idea of what Elizabeth's life was like, but in thinking about it, I realize the scanty facts at hand have been gleaned from movies and a very few novels (and those read ages ago), which are of questionable accuracy, and most of what I know is about her reign rather than youth.  Young Bess: The Girl Who Would Be Queen (published in 1944), the first book of the trilogy, covers Elizabeth's life from roughly the ages of 13 to 20.  There are glimmers of the woman she will become--very bright, assured, at times petulant (even teenage princesses could be difficult sometimes), but even at an early age able to handle tricky situations with diplomacy.  Elizabeth's upbringing was at the mercy of her father's whims.  After her mother was beheaded she was declared illegitimate and was banished, often forgotten for long periods by her father King Henry.  At the beginning of Young Bess Elizabeth is again in favor and at court.  Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr becomes something of a surrogate mother to both Elizabeth, or Bess as she is affectionately called by her father, and Edward, the King's son by Jane Seymour (wife number three if you're counting).  

Considering how often modern representations of the Tudors deal in lurid details I shouldn't have been shocked to read about Elizabeth's girlish flirtations with Tom Seymour who was 25 years her senior.  The Seymours were an ambitious family.  After Henry's death Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, became the Lord Protector of newly crowned, nine-year-old Edward VI.  Tom was already Lord High Admiral when he took Henry's widow Catherine as his wife and became Elizabeth's guardian.  Tom Seymour was said to enter Elizabeth's bedchamber in his bare feet early in the mornings before she was up and dressed, roughhousing with the princess by tickling her and slapping her on the buttocks.  Certainly to modern sensibilities there's something a little lewd to this sort of behavior which would eventually be one of the causes of his downfall.  It became all the stranger when Catherine joined in, though no doubt she was trying to stifle rumors of inappropriate behavior by acting as a sort of chaperon.  It was hard to tell whether Elizabeth welcomed the attentions.  Tom Seymour was said to be a handsome and charming man, so attraction on both sides may not have been entirely surprising.

What is obvious from the story is that Tom Seymour was hungry for power and not content with his role in the government.  Although Edward as Lord Protector was probably the most powerful man in the realm he felt a constant threat from his younger brother with whom he had shared a rivalry (and jealousy of) since their childhood.  Poor Edward VI, since he was but a boy had little chance of helping shape the monarchy.  This is terrible, but I felt especially sympathetic towards Barnaby, Edward's whipping boy.  There's nothing like a beating thanks to the King's use of poor Latin syntax in a royal letter!  But it's Elizabeth who survives intact and by the end of the story knows where her future lies.

While Elizabeth is meant to be the star of the show, this novel is much more about her milieu than about her thoughts and dreams.  Irwin paints a broad picture of the Tudor world and all its courtly inhabitants from lowly Barnaby to the Lord Protector and even his shrewish wife.  This is Tudor history in vivid detail with the many players scheming and jockeying for position.  While you won't necessarily learn how the common man lived, you will get a view of him through the eyes of the royal court.  It was an unstable time fraught with economic problems and fears of invasion yet also a time when the Lord Protector tried to push through reforms.  This is historical fiction that is heavy with historical detail--there's lots about politics and religion.  Irwin tells her story in simple, clear prose with smatterings of actual letters and songs interspersed in the story to give it all color. 

But here's my confession.  I wanted to love this book and as a fan of historical fiction had high expectations, some of which were met, but ultimately I couldn't warm up to it.  I just couldn't quite engage with the story and the characters.  The storytelling felt dry and I was disappointed that Elizabeth was often in the background.  I realize these are superficial criticisms and fear it is more a case of the right book at the wrong time, as the vast majority of people who've written about the trilogy seem to love the books.  The story continues with Elizabeth, Captive Princess, and Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain.  I think that with this first book Irwin has created the backdrop for Elizabeth's story/history and in the later novels she will flesh out her character more.  I may have to investigate them at some point, but I think I'll wait until I'm in more of a Tudor history mood!  Many thanks to Sourcebooks sending the book along to me.    

Teaser Tuesday: Wild Romance

So far this year I've finished only one very slim, very short (it was actually abridged from a larger work) nonfiction book.  I love nonfiction, but I'm a slow nonfiction reader and always feel like I need to spend quality time with it, and when my reading comes in fits and starts that means I don't tend to pick up  a nonfiction book very often.  At least not lately.  I'm not sure where I came across Chloe Schama's Wild Romance: A Victorian Story of a Marriage, a Trial, and a Self-Made Woman, but the premise attracted me so much I requested a review copy from the publisher.  As they kindly sent me one, I've settled down to start reading.  The book is based on a true Victorian case of a clandestine marriage that was later denied when the man left to marry another woman.  The trial caused quite a scandal and Wilkie Collins even based one of his books on it.  The woman is something of a feminist heroine as she went on to lead quite an independent life.

But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start at the beginning.

"For Theresa Longworth and William Charles Yelverton, the 1850s would be consumed by their romance, the 1860s by its unraveling.  The public disintegration of their relationship before the courts of Ireland, Scotland, and England would bring to the forefront several  of the Victorian era's most disconcerting matters: the inadequacies of female education and upbringing, the struggles of and prejudice against single women, the inequalities of marriage and marital law.  When the story became known, Theresa and Yelverton became unwitting emblems of the turmoil of their era at the same time that they evoked timeless fears and fascinations: the fantasy of infatuation, the grip of obsession, the plight of unrequited love, the despair of abandonment.  They were ordinary people caught up in an extraordinary affair, forced to deal with the consequences of fame and notoriety, and forcing contemporary society to confront some of its most unsettling preoccupations."

This sounds fascinating and as this is another slim volume I think I might even manage to read it fairly quickly.  Not so long ago I did another teaser of a different nonfiction book, which I have not forgotten and it sits patiently by my bedside.  Yesterday I mentioned I had to juggle a few books, and that was one of them.  Hopefully it will get shuffled back in soon, as I have lots of nonfiction reading to catch up on.

March 29: A Few Reading Notes

Guess what I was able to do yesterday.  Something I've not done in months and months.  I sat on my porch in the warm afternoon sunshine and read a book!  Spring is finally making an appearance and I can't say how happy I am about that!  (And to think This is what it looked like here on Christmas Day!).   Spring where I live usually last for about five minutes (and then it turns hot and humid...ugh), so I plan on enjoying each and every ray of sunshine.  Unfortunately there was no lemonade (I have this thing about sunny afternoons on porches drinking lemonade and reading a book)--it was not quite warm enough, but I feel it's coming. 

I've had to do some juggling of books lately--library books with due dates in the near future and the odd review copy means they take precedence over other books.  Some books have been languishing through no fault of their own (I need more sunny afternoons on the porch to make a serious dent in my reading pile...but then don't we all!).  And then sometimes I'm just bad and pick up a book that is calling out to be read and let it cut in line.  So as usual my reading is all over the place. 

Sometimes you might be reading something that at some other time might be a wonderful read, but at the moment it's just not the right fit.  In that case I will quietly set the book aside and wait for later inspiration.  That's happened to me with two books just this past week.  In one case it is a review copy, so I will keep going, but I am reading it with reservations (will write about it properly very soon), and the other I've set aside.  This latter book I feel bad about as it is the current Slaves of Golconda read that I shared an excerpt from recently.  Although the form is unusual for a novel, it isn't that it's hard going.  I just found that I would spend my lunch time reading it and then notice I had only managed to read about three pages and couldn't quite remember what it was that I had read.  I really think it is a timing thing.  I just wasn't engaging with the narrator and it seemed unfair to try and read a book that way.  I'll be very curious to hear what everyone else's thoughts are and hopefully having a bit more insight into what W.G. Sebald was doing will help when I pick up the novel again. 

I've not had much luck at all this year with book group books.  I've wanted to read several (and even bought some in anticipation), but not had the chance to get them read.  Still, they are in my pile waiting for just the right moment for me to pick them up. I do have my postal book group book ready to start.  I've actually been getting on well enough with my postal books, but as I don't write about them here (I don't want to spoil the surprise for anyone in the group who may happen along), I don't get to share them with you!

I will be sharing a recent finish, however.  Last week I read E.M. Forster's A Room with a View.  I loved, loved, loved it.  I love E.M. Forster in general and read this and several others of his novels years ago, but I think I appreciated it far more this time around and would find myself rereading passages with pure delight (this is how I want to feel about all my books).  I want to write about it but have a book of analysis that I'd like to skim a bit first.  I was ready to pick up another Forster book, but then thought I should be getting back to John Galsworthy.  But in the end I've picked up The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley.  It is a book on this list that I made last year.  You probably already know I am an inveterate list maker and sometime challenge-joiner, who promptly ignores said books as soon as the virtual ink is dry on my posts.  If I pay attention to just one list, I would like to read the books (or most of them anyway) on that list.  I've finished one and have three others in progress.  There may be hope for me yet.

As for this week's reading (I seem to be on a steady program of finishing two books a week, which means I will not read as many as last year, but who's counting right?) I plan on spending time with Blackout by Connie Willis--if you have any interest in WWII, you should check this out as there is lots of description of London during the war, and don't worry if you are not into fantasy reads as this is really very straightforward and fun actually; Savage Lands by Clare Clark--historical fiction on the Orange Longlist, you have to like that; and Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda--cozy mystery with an exotic setting.  And I suspect I will dip into a few other books here and there as well.

Can you believe it is already a quarter of the way through the year?  I really need to stop wishing for the weekend to come so quickly as I seem to be wishing the year away!       

When It Rains, It Pours: Library Loot

A while back I was complaining about a new book I was watching for at my library which when I asked about it was told the cataloging department was very behind in processing new books, so it might be a bit of a wait.  Okay, if I can't have the really new books I am watching for, I'll just request some older books that only need to be sent over from other branches.  Well, the Fates have a way of working against unsuspecting library users and no doubt are enjoying wreaking havoc on my reading as every day this week I checked into my account and saw not just one but sometimes two or even three new books appear as being on hold.  Apparently their cataloging department must have caught up quite a bit last week! I brought so many books home with me after work on Friday that not only do I need to split the piles in two, but I had to bring an extra bookbag along with me to carry them all.  And they were really heavy--it was a long walk home!  I'll never get through all these, so will have to prioritize, and I've already got two previously requested library books underway.  So to help me decide, rather than telling you a little what each is about (I'll leave it to you to click through on the links to read about them if you're curious), I'll share the first sentence and see which one(s) grab me!

The Beachcomber, Josephine Cox - "'What the hell does he think he's doing!'  As the car lurched forward, Tom fought to keep control."

Lady Eugenia's Holiday, Shirley Marks - "It occurred to lady Eugenia Abbott that had she not taken her aunt Rose's offer, she would have been the one left home, again."

The Rapture, Liz Jensen- That summer, the summer all the rules began to change, June seemed to last for a thousand years."

If the Dead Rise Not, Philip Kerr - "It was the sort of sound you hear in the distance and mistake for something else: a dirty steam barge puffing along the River Spree; the shunting of a slow locomotive underneath the great glass roof of the Anhalter Station; the hot, impatient breath of some enormous dragon, as if one of the stone dinosaurs in Berlin's zoo had come to life and was now lumbering up Wilhelmstrasse."

The Naked Chef, Jamie Oliver - As this is a cookbook, I've no quotes to share.  I believe Jamie Oliver is very famous in the UK?  Well, he's arrived on US shores in case you've not heard.  I don't watch much TV, so I've mostly only seen snippets or ads for his show, but I'll be curious to see if he has an impact on American cooking (if he can do anything about the deplorable state of school lunches or change minds over processed, nasty foods that are so ubiquitous in stores--and everywhere else here, I sincerely applaud him).  He seems like a very genuine person and somewhat endearing even.  I caught the tail end of a preview episode and he was actually crying as his message had gotten twisted in the US press (gee, no surprise there) giving him a bad if not insincere reputation with the people he is working with in his "food revolution".  Anyway, I had to check him out.  Does anyone use his recipes? 

 

Dancing for Degas, Kathryn Wagner - "Imagine the lines he is drawing are causing me to dance."

Lullaby, Claire Seeber - "It was the kind of say so hot you feared another's clammy touch -- a sticky August afternoon that me me long for cool, cool, sliding rain, and I was quietly cursing Maxine as I tried to rid the bag of all the sand, the eternal grains that tumbled softly from the folds of muslins and stained-forever bibs."

The Game of Opposites, Norman Lebrecht - "The coffeemaker was Paul's dearest possession, his defining object."

False Mermaid, Erin Hart - "Death was close at hand, but the wounded creature leapt and twisted desperate to escape."

Ruby's Spoon, Anna Lawrence Pietroni - "Cradle Cross was locked in tight by land, as far from sea as you could be."

I think I've actually now gotten all the books off my request list that I was expecting to get anytime soon.  And I'm pretty sure the rest of the books I am waiting for I'm well down to the back of the line and don't think they'll be showing up in the next few weeks anyway, which is a good thing.  There's nothing like the rush of a big stack of new books, until you realize they all have the same due date!

The Mapping of Love and Death - Winners!

I wish I could be like Oprah and give a copy of Jacqueline Winspear's new Maisie Dobbs novel to everyone who left a comment (and many thanks for sharing your favorite cozy mystery sleuth--I have lots to choose from now!), but unfortunately Oprah and I are in slightly different tax brackets, so I will just say thanks to HarperCollins for kindly allowing me to give three copies of the book away to readers here!

 

Drum roll please....here are the names.  I decided to do it the old fashioned way!

 

Shuffle things about a bit.  Eyes closed.  And the winners are: Nathalie, Rebecca, and Tara. 

If you could please email me with your mailing information I will ask HarperCollins to send out your copy of The Mapping of Love and Death.

Many thanks to everyone!

What Good is a Story?

Isn't that a great title?  It's not mine I'm afraid, but the title of the essay I read this week by Barbara Kingsolver in her collection, Small Wonder.  It's hard not to like Barbara Kingsolver.  She has such a chatty, genial voice.  Her subjects always have weight and heft, yet you never feel bogged down by it all.  I've read some of her earlier work but never managed to pick up any of her nonfiction books or essays.  I'm not really sure what made me go in search of Small Wonder, but as much as I'm enjoying The Best American Essays of the Century and The Art of the Personal Essay (which surely must be the best of the best) I have been in the mood for something a little more current and something with a different feel to it.  I think I've found that with Barbara Kingsolver's writerly voice.

If you've read any of Kingsolver's work you'll probably already know she tends towards topics dealing with social justice, nature, environmental issues, gender, and politics to name a few, which she writes about very thoughtfully.  She's very much an intellectual and it's obvious she has high standards in all aspects of her life.  Not wanting to tackle any particularly sticky issue at the moment, I thought it safe to pick an essay that has to do with reading and literature, and in this case it has to do specifically with short stories.  I used to avoid short stories like the plague but after spending a year reading one each week (as I am doing with essays this year), I found I quite liked them and that done well they could be as compelling and satisfying as longer fiction--a whole, tiny world complete in ten pages or so.      

However, many/most(?) Americans are not short story readers, and even less popular is poetry (must raise my hand for this one as I am not a poetry reader--maybe next year will be my year of poetry?).  She bases her claim on the number of short story collections that sell each year and how few, if any, ever make the bestseller lists.  Although this essay is in a sense an exposition on what makes a good short story, she weaves it together with what was happening in her life when she was asked to edit a short story collection, so it becomes very personal.  In 2000 she was asked to be a guest editor for a special short story collection, which would mean reading well over a hundred stories in a three month period. As it was an interim between finishing a book and its publication, she thought it was the perfect project to keep her busy, but it turned out to be "the most eventful period of her life."

"My ideas of what I would gain from this experience collapsed as I began to wrestle instead with what I would be able to give to it.  How could I read 125 stories amid all this craziness and compare them fairly?  In the beginning I marked each one with a ranking of minus, plus, or double-plus.  That lasted for exactly three stories.  It soon became clear that what looks like double-plus on an ordinary can be a whole different story when the oxygen masks are dangling from the overhead compartment.  I despaired of my wildly uncontrolled circumstances, thinking constantly.  If this were my writing, would I want some editor reading it under these conditions?"

Maybe not she says, but life is like that, and the best tales can stand up to the challenge.  As for what she considers good writing?  "That's easy: the lyrical description, the arresting metaphor, the dialogue that falls so true on the ear it breaks the heart, the plots that winds up exactly where it should."  She writes that she loves fiction, but she loves it for how true it is.  The best stories are the ones that tell her something she doesn't already know or confirms what she might have suspected.  

Kingsolver admits to being a demanding reader and she makes no apologies for it. 

"...it had dawned on me that I may never get through the list of great books I want to read.  Forget about bad ones, or even moderately good ones.  With Middlemarch and Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in the world, a person should squander her reading time on fashionably ironic books about nothing much?  I am almost out of minutes!" 

She gives a book thirty pages and if by that point it's not "talking" to her, a real keeper, then she will put it aside or send it to the charity shop.  And writers should keep this in mind.  "We are nothing if we can't respect our readers."  And short stories should not be what she calls "lit lite", but should "pull off the successful execution of large truths delivered in tight spaces."

I mentioned Kingsolver is an intellectual with very high standards and what she says in her essay bear this out.  She believes "literature should inform as well as enlighten, and first, do no harm." 

"For me to love a work of fiction, it must survive my harpy eye on all accounts: It will tell me something remarkable, it will be beautifully executed, and it will be nested in truth.  The latter I mean literally; I can't abide fiction that fails to get its facts straight."

This was a thought provoking essay, and while I by and large agree with her I do hesitate being dismissive of books that may not be of the sort that are "edifying", which I sort of get the feeling is the only sort that Kingsolver finds acceptable (I could be misinterpreting her, though I get the feeling she is extremely particular in her reading--as I suppose are most of us).  Of course each reader has likes and dislikes and and I think every reader is different and looks for and needs different things at different times in their lives from books.  Reading is very subjective, but there is surely nothing wrong with looking for the very best books to spend our time with.   I also think that there is nothing wrong with a book being enjoyable, maybe even entertaining, along with being beautifully executed and nested in truth.

Classic Mysteries: A Thursday Thirteen

It's been a while since I've shared a "Thursday Thirteen" but inspired by Jodie's recent post and my excitement over finally being able to participate in a Classics Circuit Tour I'm feeling all in the mood to come up with a list of books I'd like to read sometime (all are on my TBR pile).  The Classics Tour for May/June happens to be authors from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, and yes, I've already added my name to the list.  I'm venturing out a little and choosing an author who is not mentioned in their post and who is also an American.  I've been meaning to read her for ages as she was born in Lincoln, Nebraska and I always feel like I should pay particular attention to Nebraska authors.  I'll be reading Mignon Eberhart's The Mystery of Hunting's End.  The Nebraska Sand Hills are the inspiration for the book's setting, so this should be an interesting read for a variety of reasons.

Anyway, this of course, puts me very much in a mystery mood (though, really, when am I not?).  I agonized over who to read for the Classics Circuit Tour, but I can always pull any other book from my pile to read before or after.  So, here is a list of thirteen classic mysteries from the first half (am not sticking solely to the Golden Age years) of the 20th century, though there might be one or two earlier or later.  I've made other mystery lists--Mysteries with War Settings, Murder and Mayhem, Classic American Crime and Mystery Novels and Around the World in 25 Murders.  Obviously my list is in no way comprehensive and I've left off books I've already read.  In no particular order, here's a few books I'm looking forward to reading:

Malice Aforethought, Francis Iles

The Hollow Man, John Dickson Carr

The Saltmarsh Murders, Gladys Mitchell (this was my second choice for the tour)

Murder on the Orient Express, Agatha Christie (I should really have a Miss Marple book here as I've never read her--only Hercule Poirot!--any Miss Marple recommendations?)

The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler       

The Thin Man, Dashiell Hammett (I've always wanted to read one of his Nick and Nora books)

The Leavenworth Case, Anna Katharine Green

Tragedy at Law, Cyril Hare

The Moving Toyshop, Edmund Crispin

Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers

Strangers on a Train, Patricia Highsmith

39 Steps, John Buchan-

Enter a Murderer, Ngaio Marsh (The second Inspector Alleyn mystery set in the theater world)

I think most, if not all, of these books/authors really are considered the best of or the classics of the genre, though there are so many other really great mysteries out there that I follow. I read quite a few contemporary (or written now with a historical setting) mysteries that much like regular fiction I feel like I need to read more of the"classics".  There are always so many good mysteries to choose from I often feel like a kid in a candy shop when trying to decide on what to read next.

At the moment, by the way, I am reading Suzanne Arruda's Mark of the Lion, which is one of those historical mysteries I mentioned, and is very light and easy going.  I think I may have to pick my next book from this list!

The Crossing Places

Ruth Galloway is an unlikely heroine, or in this case sleuth, which is why I think I like her so much.  She's a forensic archaeologist and university lecturer who's quite content to live in a small cottage on the edge of a rather desolate marshland with only her two cats as companions.  Pushing forty Ruth wouldn't mind being thinner but she's not obsessive about her flaws.  And she's not at a loss for friends or former lovers either.  All in all Elly Griffiths has created quite a refreshing character in her debut mystery, The Crossing Places.  Oh, and did I mention she likes Inspector Rebus mysteries and doctor-nurse romances? 

When the bones of a child are discovered out on the marsh Ruth is asked to lend her expertise and assist in their removal.  It's hoped they are the remains of a child who went missing ten years earlier.  This unsolved case has troubled DCI Harry Nelson from the very beginning, who wants closure for the girls' family.  The bones, however, turn out to be from the Iron Age--some two thousand years old.  Buried in the center of a henge that Ruth helped excavate some years earlier, she's not entirely sure for what purpose they were left there.  As the henge is a sacred place the child may have been a ritual sacrifice, since half her head was shaved and she was bound with mistletoe and honeysuckle rope.  A torque, or necklace, was found near the body.

The find may be exciting for Ruth, but DCI Nelson is unable to suppress his disappointment.  Nelson is a transplanted Northerner, come to this "godforsaken place" on the Norfolk coast for his job.  His wife Michelle, a stylish hairdresser, has ambitions for him, but he just wants to get on with his work.  Nelson is no-nonsense.  He likes neat lists on clean sheets of paper and attention paid to small details, so he appreciates Ruth's concentration and cautious manner when she's working on a dig.  The two begin working together when Nelson asks her help in deciphering letters that have been sent from someone he assumes is the killer.  The letters are filled with with religious, literary, mythological and even archaeological references to the missing girl, and worse, they heckle Nelson for his inability to find her body.

When another young girl goes missing the similarities between the two cases cause Nelson to believe the murderer is back and the race is on to try and find the girl who one minute was playing with her siblings and the next was gone.  The cast of characters isn't overly large, but Griffiths introduces enough to keep you guessing who the culprit is for a little while at least (though to be honest I fingered someone else for the crime than who it turned out to be!).  Most of the elements of the mystery are tied into the archaeological aspects of the story and the henge discovery with many of the same individuals still around from that first dig.

Ruth and Nelson make a great team, in some ways they are at complete odds with each other but also complementary in their working styles, and each has a respect and curiosity for the other, which makes for an interesting relationship.  And this is a case where the setting almost becomes a character as well, as the marshes are so wonderfully atmospheric--the perfect setting for a mystery.  Ruth's cottage is quite isolated with only one other permanent neighbor and a holiday home for mostly absent Londoners.  Griffiths does an amazing job of making you feel like you can actually hear the rushing of waves that can come in like "galloping horses".  The saltmarsh may be beautiful with its fragile ecosystem but equally inhospitable and maybe even a little dangerous if you're not careful.  But for all its isolation I think I can see why Ruth loves living there.

Elly Griffiths is definitely an author I will be keeping an eye on, and it's taking every ounce of willpower to stop myself from ordering her second book, The Janus Stone (surely I can wait a little longer for the paperback?).  The Crossing Places ends with a slight cliffhanger, so I'm itching to see what happens next.  Make sure you take a look at Elly Griffiths' website as she shares lots of interesting information about archaeology and there are some lovely photos of a Norfolk beach to help visualize what Ruth sees out her window.  This is definitely a mystery to look out for.

The Mapping of Love and Death - Giveaway!

Did you mark your calendars?  Today is the release day for Jacqueline Winspear's The Mapping of Love and Death.  I wrote about it here.  I found it to be a thoroughly satisfying read and my favorite Maisie Dobbs novel yet.  It's been quite a journey for Maisie from her humble beginnings as a maid in the Compton's great house to becoming a successful investigator and psychologist with a war in between.  I like the way the series is moving and how Maisie and the other characters are developing, and I can see many possibilities for Maisie in the future.   That's a bit of a tease, isn't it?

The good news is HarperCollins is letting me give away three copies of Jacqueline Winspear's newly released The Mapping of Love and Death.  The catch is I can only give away the copies to readers in the US and Canada.  So if you're interested in dropping your name in the virtual hat, please leave a comment below.  In exchange I only ask the name of your favorite cozy mystery and/or sleuth.  I'll pull three names on Saturday March 27.  Good luck and drop me a comment!    

The Crimson Rooms

Katharine McMahon's The Crimson Rooms is easily one of my favorite reads so far this year.  I loved this book.  There's no indecision over this one.  And I'll admit to some bad behavior.  I couldn't put it down, but I didn't want it to end--not only for the reason it was so totally absorbing that I had to make it last, but I was afraid of the story ending badly.  So.  I flipped to the back of the book to see if I could peek at the outcome.  I rarely do that, only with books I become so wrapped up in that I feel some weird emotional connection to.  I often wonder if that is a failing on my part as a reader (distance is good, right?), but I can't help it.  From the first page I was totally engaged with the characters and their world, which in this case is 1920s London. 

Katharine McMahon's writing is sophisticated and her storytelling complex, creating characters who are fully formed yet whose personalities elicit varying responses from the reader as the story unfolds.  It's not just that she tells this interesting story set in an interesting period of history with lots of little bits to make it feel authentic, but you really inhabit the space and are exposed to the not always pleasant attitudes of the era.  Characters you might have disliked upon introduction morph into something else entirely as you go, because nothing is black and white, and the people in this story rarely are so obvious that you can see through them.    

Much of the story is bound up in events that occurred during WWI.  Nearly every character carries with them some weight from the war--sadness, grief, shame, remorse.  Evelyn Gifford feels both immense sadness at the loss of her beloved younger brother, James, but also guilt as it was only through his death was she able to study and work towards becoming one of England's first female attorneys.  It's a bittersweet position to be in and not a day passes that she doesn't think about him and cherish his memory.  It's a memory that becomes ever so slightly tarnished when a young Canadian woman arrives on the Gifford's doorstep late one evening with a young son in tow who is the spitting image of her brother.  Unknown to Evelyn James had a wartime romance with a nurse, so everything she thought to be true at once comes into question with the arrival of Meredith Duffy and her son Jamie. 

The death of her father means what's left of the family--Evelyn, her mother, grandmother and aunt Prudence are left in straitened circumstances.  And suddenly there are two new mouths to feed as the family feels a responsibility to the mother and child.  Though impressive in the accomplishment, being a female attorney hardly means a reliable income, and hers is the family's only income.  Actually the opposite is the case as women attorneys are granted little respect or help and are more often treated as anomalies and a threat to proper society.  With no family connections she has little luck finding work and ends up in the firm of Breen and Balcombe, Breen being one to take on hard cases with a "passion for proving everyone else wrong." 

The more tedious affairs of the firm end up in Evelyn's lap but she does become involved in two very different cases, which will test her mettle.  A woman with three small children has entrusted them into the care of an orphanage, not realizing that by signing papers she couldn't read she was giving up her rights to.  She asks Breen to represent her and help get them back, but he passes on the case to Evelyn much to the unhappiness of the woman who doesn't believe in Evelyn's abilities.  But it's a murder case that Breen has taken on that Evelyn gets completely wrapped up in, and a successful young lawyer representing the client's employer who she falls for that will trip her up and turn her life upside down.  The man accused of murdering his wife is likely to hang for a crime he didn't commit, but he's unwilling to talk about the events leading up to the murder.  As Evelyn pokes about in the circumstances surrounding the crime she discovers lies and deceits that she may not be able to prove but knows to be true and discovers people close to her are involved.

As you can see there is a lot going on here.  In less talented hands this would be a mess of a story, but McMahon truly handles it with aplomb and each thread of the story will eventually merge with the others creating an intricate piece of storytelling.  Evelyn is such an interesting character, strong willed and independent yet uncertain in her feelings, too.  Meredith's enthusiasm shows her how entrenched she and her relatives are in their staid lifestyle so long overshadowed by grief.  The war may be long over but it still has a grip on the character's lives.  This is a story filled with betrayals, but also one filled with a certain amount of hope, too. 

As for flipping to the back of the book?  Well, let's just say that while it might not have ended exactly as I'd have wanted it to, those last hundred pages made a difference in how I felt about the story and its outcome (meaning you should never flip to the back of the book).  It was a completely satisfying ending despite my own uncertainties, and I could almost flip back to the front of the book and start all over again--that's how much I liked it.  Although this is the first novel I've read by McMahon, I did listen to The Alchemist's Daughter and it was one of the best audio books I've come across (I'm very picky about the person reading the story, and this one was very well done).  I don't seem to see much written about Katharine McMahon, which is a pity as I've been very impressed by her work.  I'm already looking forward to picking up one of her other books and might just have to see if my shelves have anything else to offer.