A Work in Progress

New Books, Part 1: Mysteries and Crime

I've been binging on new books so much lately that I'm going to have to share them all over the course of two or three posts.  I have one errant book still somewhere in the mail, but I expect to receive it soon.  Hopefully I have more or less appeased the book buying gods for a little while and rather than order more I can maybe read some of these fora while?  In some cases I admit to giving in to the generous discounts for pre-ordering books over at The Book Depository, but otherwise it's just your basic book lust that has lured me into getting more new books. 

I've already given lots of enthusiastic praise for the books I've read or am reading published by Bitter Lemon Press, and when I said I'd like to read more from their backlist I really wasn't kidding.  To that end I've added Alice Ferney's Angelina's Children and Leonardo Padura's Havana Fever to my growing collection (I wish they published more books more frequently, but why be so greedy?).  I've mentioned the Padura, which is set in 1950s Cuba, as it was something I borrowed from the library, then later decided I needed to own it. The Ferney seems an unlikely crime novel, but Bitter Lemon's authors have been so consistently good, I don't even care.  By the way Ferney is a French author and the story is about a family of gypsies, and the protagonist happens to be a librarian!   

I received a Darren Craske novel in the mail by chance recently only to discover it is a second book in what appears to be a series.  I decided I wanted to read them in order so I now have The Equivoque Principle.  Unfortunately reading reviews after the fact I see it has received mostly lukewarm praise.  Still, it's a bit unfair not to give a book a try and judge it myself, so I will see how it goes.  I do like the idea of a Victorian romp.

Esther Verhoef is a new to me author who I came across in the Felony & Mayhem's online catalog.  Close-Up is another Dutch crime novel, and I'm really looking forward to this one!  I seem to be on a roll with Dutch authors lately.  She has been compared to Ruth Rendell, so I'm hoping it's as good as it sounds.

Gladys Mitchell is a mystery author who wrote at the same time as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers and has come recommended to me.  She wrote something like 60 mystery novels during her lifetime and Vintage UK is bringing them back into print though not in the order they were originally published (I should mention that Rue Morgue Press here in the US also publishes some of her books, but I will admit to utter shallowness in saying I like Vintage's book design a tad bit more...).  The Saltmarsh Murders features Mrs. Bradley a part-time detective and full-time Freudian.  Someone kindly pointed out to me that the Mrs. Bradley Mysteries that aired on PBS were one in the same with Gladys Mitchell's sleuth.  I've seen a few of the episodes and think Diana Rigg is smashing in the part.    

I've yet to read the first Camilla Lackberg mystery (have it on my pile of course), but I couldn't pass up the price for her second book, The Preacher, as it had a nice pre-pub discount.  Lackberg is a popular Swedish crime author who is finally going to be published here in the US in June (she already has three books available in the UK!).

New books, part 2 coming soon.  And maybe in the interim I'll write about what I'm reading.  Now there's a novel idea (sorry, no pun intended, though I often feel like I only ever talk about books I want to read!).

Teaser Tuesday: Vertigo

For once I am going to start the next Slaves of Golconda read, W.G. Sebald's Vertigo earlier rather than later.  I always feel like I am rushing, but maybe I can avoid that this time around.  Besides, when reviewers throw around words like genius, greatness, remarkable, thrilling and original I feel like I have my work cut out for me and had better take things slowly and thoughtfully.  I've been looking forward to reading Sebald and am glad I'll be doing so in a group situation, as I always appreciate other reader's insights when it comes to challenging books/authors. 

Usually I like to go into a new book not knowing too much about the story or style and let it all open up before me, but in this case I feel like it might not be such a bad thing to know a little bit about how Sebald worked.  He was born in Germany in 1944 and died in 2001 in England.  It's amazing what you can glean from an obituary, but they often touch on the important aspects of a person's life.  I'm interested in learning about Sebald the man, as I think his personal life experiences really shaped how he wrote.  I think being born in Post-WWII really had an impact on how he viewed the world, and he was interested in how to express himself through literature but not in the conventional ways, which really couldn't work for him and what he wanted to say.  "He wanted to find a literary form responsive to the waves and echoes of human tragedy which spread out, across generations and nations, yet which began in his childhood."      

As I've not yet read more than the first few pages of the book I don't want assume anything more, but I read this in the obituary and will keep it in mind as I make my way through the book:

"It was necessary, he found, to approach this subject obliquely, and to invent a new literary form, part hybrid novel, part memoir and part travelogue, often involving the experiences of one 'WG Sebald', a German writer long settled in East Anglia. He was reluctant to call his books "novels", because he had little interest in the way contemporary writers seemed to find all meaning in personal relationships, and out of a comic but heartfelt disdain for the "grinding noises" which heavily plotted novels demanded."

So, now that there is a little background I should share my teaser, which is just the first paragraph of the book.

"In mid-May of the year 1800 Napoleon and a force of 36,000 men crossed the Great St Bernard pass, an undertaking that had been regarded until that time as next to impossible.  For almost a fortnight, an interminable column of men, animals and equipment proceeded from Martigny via Orsières through the Entremont valley and from there moved, in a seemingly never-ending serpentine, up to the pass two and a half thousand metres above sea level, the heavy barrels of the cannon having to be dragged by the soldiery, in hollowed-out tree trunks, now across snow and ice and now over bare outcrops and rocky escarpments."

I should mention a couple of other things, one which is pertinent and the other just interesting.  Sebald's novels aren't really straightforward novels.  As noted in the quote above his books tend to defy genre labels.  The obituary also mentioned that Sebald was an "inveterate walker", which as a fellow walker I can appreciate!

You are, as always, welcome to join in the discussion, which will be March 31!

The Scarlet Lion by Elizabeth Chadwick

I've been immersed in the Medieval world for the last week or so reading Elizabeth Chadwick's The Scarlet Lion.  Whenever I find myself thrust so far back into the past it's almost a little strange to reorient myself in the present and try to reconcile the two times.  I take so much for granted in the way I live now and how many conveniences there are at my fingertips and more importantly how the world is so completely and thoroughly connected.  I can get in touch with someone half a world away in a matter of minutes and I can see world events happening in real time.  Somehow that makes the world as it was in the 13th century all the more fascinating because people quite literally did without.  Chadwick paints a convincing portrait of this feudal society and it's quite easy to get wrapped up in her characters, nearly all based on actual people, and their colorful lives.

The Scarlet Lion continues the story of William Marshal and his family begun The Greatest Knight.  William Marshal lived an extraordinary life by any standard, but considering his humble beginnings, he became one of the most powerful and successful men in England and was known throughout Europe.  Chadwick based her books on a translation of L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal which was written at the request of his son shortly after his death.  He's considered the greatest knight that ever lived and whilst the original biography might have been embellished somewhat (his prowess on the tourney circuit being without rival) it's noted that his impact on the history and politics of England is still remembered today.

The Greatest Knight, which I wrote about here charts William Marshal's early life from his boyhood when he was hostaged to King Stephen as assurance of his father's loyalty (as it turns out his father wasn't so loyal but lucky for him his life was spared) through his years as a knight in the service of the Crown.  He served King Henry II, his son Young King Henry (who co-ruled but balked at having so little freedom to make decisions independently), Richard I, and finally John.  Marshal was a consummate diplomat and he would have to be considering the amount of discontent and antipathy that coursed through the early House of Plantagenet.  When Marshal swore his oath of loyalty his honor was unshakable.  In the end it was to his benefit as he was generously rewarded, becoming the first Earl of Pembroke and being awarded the hand of Isabelle de Clare in marriage.  Isabelle was a wealthy heiress and of noble lineage in Ireland some twenty years his junior (don't worry, he was already in his forties when they wed and it ended up being as much a love match as a profitable union between all parties involved). 

William and Isabelle's story is picked up shortly after their marriage and the birth of their first son in The Scarlet Lion.  Richard is dead and John has succeeded the throne.  King John wasn't an especially notable ruler earning the nickname "Bad King John" later in history.  His rule was marked by military defeats, religious conflicts and general unrest amongst his barons, though it's during his reign that the Magna Carta was signed in order to appease his followers (Chadwick makes only a cursory nod to it in the story).  To say he was a rather ignoble individual is probably being generous (just take a look at the number of bastards he fathered).  Certainly Chadwick does not characterize him as being very honorable.  When they were of age to act as squires John took Marshal's two oldest sons as hostage, and while William used his time at court to his benefit when he was the same age, living at John's court was an entirely different kind of education.  If William Marshal was an honorable man he was also an intelligent one and knew how to work the system to his best advantage and dealing with King John was always like playing a very dangerous game of chess, which he more often than not, won. 

Much of The Greatest Knight is spent on the battlefield or in far more adventurous knightly exploits, but The Scarlet Lion concentrates more on the domestic side of William and Isabelle's life.  They had ten children together and lands in Normandy, along the Welsh border and in Ireland.  They had to split their time between their estates and court, and William was always at John's beck and call.  Isabelle proved herself a most competent administrator in William's absence, however, and stood her ground in more than one volatile situation.  Chadwick covers a lot of ground in both novels, some events more than others covered in depth, but you still get a feel for what life was like for this family in the early 1200s.

Chadwick is very talented at bringing her characters and the Medieval world alive in the pages of her books.  After such an action packed story as The Greatest Knight was, I thought I might be disappointed with The Scarlet Lion, but even with a slowish start Chadwick knows how to push the reader to the edge of her seat and offers a hard to resist story.  The author notes that while she bases much of the story on factual research she binds it all together with her imagination.  There are some aspects of history that are simply open to conjecture and she makes her best guess as to what really happened.  Chadwick is obviously fond of William Marshal and his character shines through the pages.  I suspect he was far more flawed in real life, but this is fiction so I am happy to accept him in such an heroic light.  I'm a little sorry to leave the Marshal family behind, but the story comes full circle so the story is done.  I've got two more of Chadwick's novels to read and I'm already looking forward to them and considering the number of books on her backlist I should be kept busy for quite some time if I keep reading her work.  For now, though, it's back to the modern world, at least for a while.   

Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream

When I decided to undertake my essay reading project I knew I would read Joan Didion and have been eagerly looking forward to it.  Didion is an acclaimed American essayist and witness to and chronicler of some of the more tumultuous decades in American history.  Slouching Towards Bethlehem, published in 1968, was her first nonfiction work and is my starting point.  The essays in the collection were published in various magazines during the mid-1960s and deal primarily with life in California, where Didion had been living.  In her introduction Didion writes:

"It was the first time I had dealt directly and flatly with the evidence of atomization, the proof that things fall apart: I went to San Francisco because I had not been able to work in some months, had been paralyzed by the conviction that writing was an irrelevant act, that the world as I had understood it no longer existed.  If I was to work again at all it would be necessary for me to come to terms with disorder."

I'm very curious to see how she deals with this theme of atomization and disorder.  Certainly the world of the 1960s seems ripe with the overturning of the ordinary and conventional and I suspect many of her essays will deal directly with the counterculture movement of the 1960s.  I'm also keen to get a taste of her prose as I've heard she is a concise and pared down writer.  Her work is included in both the anthologies I've been drawing from and Philip Lopate calls her a "fastidious prose stylist."

"She has produced work that has grown in syntactical complexity and intellectual density over the years, sometimes to the point of mannerism."

When she was a teenager she would type out Ernest Hemingway's short stories "to learn how sentences work" and was heavily influenced by his style.  I'm not at at surprised after reading the first essay of the collection, "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream", which deals with a suburban murder.  There's not a wasted word in the essay yet she tells a vivid story.  What I like is her ability to narrate yet not judge.  "New Journalism" is the term applied to her style of writing (also called literary or creative nonfiction), which combines "reportage with personal, subjective disclosure."  

"This is a story about love and death in the golden land, and begins with the country.  The San Bernardino Valley lies only an hour east of Los Angeles by the San Bernardino Freeway but is in certain ways an alien place: not the coastal California of the subtropical twilights and the soft westerlies off the Pacific but a harsher California, haunted by the Mojave just beyond the mountains, devastated by the hot Santa Ana wind that comes down through the passes at 100 miles an hour and whines through the eucalyptus windbreaks and works on the nerves."

On the night of October 7, 1964 Lucille Miller drove with her husband Gordon "Cork" Miller to the market for some milk.  Cork had been tired and complaining of a migraine so he brought along a pillow and blanket.  He let his wife drive while he fell asleep in the passenger's side.  Sometime between the hours of 12:30 and 1:50 a.m. Lucille reported that she skidded off the road on to an embankment, a gas can fell from the back seat and set fire to the car.  She was unable to rouse her husband and extract him from the vehicle (his door was locked).  That stretch of road had no houses and almost no traffic.  She finally was able to get someone to call the sheriff, but by then it was too late.  Her story was not believed and riddled with inconsistencies.  Within twelve hours she was booked for the murder of her husband.

Like so many others who hear the siren call of distant places, Lucille came from somewhere else.  "Of course she came from somewhere else, came off the prairie in search of something she had seen in a movie or heard on the radio, for this is a Southern California story."  Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, she was the only child of school teachers and devout Seventh-Day Adventists.  Lucille wanted to see the world.  She met Cork in Washington at college and eventually moved to California where he became a doctor and Lucille took care of their three children.  And they had it all, or at least wanted it all--bigger houses, better streets, revolving credit.  And they achieved it, but it didn't bring happiness.  So what happened?  What makes a woman look out her window and calculate how to "burn her husband alive in a Volkswagon."

"Unhappy marriages so resemble one another that we do not need to know too much about the course of this one."

Conventional is a word Didion uses often in this essay and conventional is what Lucille and Cork's life was, though perhaps that's not what Lucille wanted and maybe that was enough for her to do the unthinkable.  "The conventional tensions of love and money had reached the conventional impasse."  Lucille had applied for a divorce, but shortly thereafter they were trying to work things out and considering having another child.  There were rumors and accusations of infidelity and denials by other interested parties.

"What was most startling about the case that the State of California was preparing against Lucille Miller was something that had nothing to do with law at all, something that never appeared in the eight-column afternoon headlines but was always there between them: the revelation that the dream was teaching the dreamers to live."

So you see, the center will not hold. 

This was an exceptional essay and I'm sure it's not even her best.  I do love her style, though I'm not sure it's only her prose style or what she writes about that captures my attention and imagine so, and I can't wait to read more.  And I plan on moving on to The White Album next. 

You might be interested in seeing Lucille Miller yourself.

March 6: Reading Notes

Where've I been for the last few months?  I thought I had subscribed to The Classics Circuit in Google Reader, but it seems I didn't, so I missed signing up for any of the great upcoming circuit tours.  Technically I can just read along on my own, but somehow it feels sort of outside of things.  Every time I pop in there I seem to come between sign ups, though that's not entirely true as Alexandre Dumas is in the works for April.  I loved Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo when I read it a few years back--all 1400+ pages of it (talk about a thumping good read).  It's my "desert island" book.  If I was ever stranded I would be quite happy to take it with me!  It's probably too long to read again by mid-April, so maybe I'll just watch for the next tour.  I would have loved to join in on reading Georgette Heyer, and even have one of her earlier novels lined up to read, Helen, but it was only chance that I happened to pick it up at the same time.  If nothing else I can enjoy everyone else's posts on her books (as well as Zola's as he's on circuit tour, too!).

I have another group read lined up, however.  It's quite a chunky book and I wasn't sure I would be able to manage it at 800 pages.  Edith Pargeter's The Brothers of Gwynedd is a forthcoming release from Sourcebooks and when I was asked if I'd like a review copy I was hesitant.  Such a large book seems like it would mean a little pressure getting it read by a certain date.  This time around, however, a group of us are reading it over the course of four months beginning in May.  Two hundred pages a month seems far more doable.  I love historical fiction, but I'm getting a little bit picky about it.  As I've heard many good things about Edith Pargeter, who also wrote under the pen name Ellis Peters, I think I should be in safe hands.  She's quite well known for her Brother Cadfael mysteries.  The Brothers of Gwynedd is a quartet of novels set in 13th century Wales.  As this is a period she knew well, I'm hoping this will be a good read.

This weekend, though, I hope to finish Elizabeth Chadwick's The Scarlet Lion.  It's funny as The Scarlet Lion ends with the reign of Henry III, who will feature prominently in the Pargeter book.  They line up nicely though I think the stories will be told from vastly different perspectives.  I'm also nearing the end of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat, which is a humorous novel of misadventures.  You can't but help shake your head at the antics that go on in its pages.  I hadn't really planned on reading it, but did so in anticipation of reading Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog, which it spoofs.    

Maybe I'll sneak in a few other books this weekend, too. 

Library Loot: The Pile Grows

The good news is that many of these books don't have a line of people waiting for them, so I'll be able to renew them.  The bad news is I'll still never get them all read.  That doesn't mean I won't try or at least flip through them and read a bit to get a taste.  Two of the books are from the library where I work (one being an interlibrary loan book, so I should turn my attention to that one fairly soon).  I tend to binge either on library books or on books that I buy myself.  I'm being doubly bad lately as I am binging on both.  It's a bit like a kid in a candy shop--which should I pick up first.  

I've already seen Casanova, but it's such a fun romp of a movie I impulsively requested it again.  I know what I'll be watching this weekend.

Spring is slowly starting to show signs of arriving, and I am ready for it.  I was thinking this past week how nice it would be to go to the beach and relax, which I won't be doing any time soon, but a beach read is still open to me.  I think Cathy Kelly is possibly in chick lit territory, something I really don't read anymore, but Lessons in Heartbreak seems like a perfect beach book.  It's basically a glitzy family drama set in New York and Ireland.

I found Kirk Farber's Postcards from a Dead Girl on my library's new book list, and it seemed funny and quirky and is another total impulse choice.  

After reading Fleur Fisher's tantalizing post on P.D. James's Talking About Detective Fiction I knew I had to read it.  It's a tiny bit of a book, but I bet it's still chock full of wonderful things.  I can't wait to read it.  It looks like it's the sort of book you could read over a weekend, so I might just try and do that! 

Ever since I read a biography of Georgette Heyer and discovered she had several early novels that were autobiographical in nature--not at all what she would later be known for--I knew I had to get my hands on them some way.  She never wanted them reprinted, but there are still old copies in libraries (yay for libraries!!).  I'm starting with Helen, and I'm very curious to see what it's like and how it compares to her later books.

Both Mary Swan's The Boys in the Trees and Octavia Butler's Fledgling are read-along books, though so far my track record of reading along has not been good.  Still, I love the look (and sound) of the books so may get to them on my own schedule (reading along in spirit if a little late).

James Thompson's Snow Angels is a crime novel set in Finland (in the Arctic Circle no less).  It looks good and seems to have gotten good reviews.  The author is American, however he's lived in Finland for the past decade.  Alas, this is one of the few books that does have a line of people waiting for it....I wonder how many books I can possibly read at once.

When I first saw Madeline Goold's Mr Langshaw's Square Piano I thought this looked like just the sort of nonfiction read I would like--cultural history, though somewhat specific in this case.  Now, however, I'm wondering if it might be too specialized (for someone who isn't very musically inclined).  Has anyone read this one?

I've already started Katharine McMahon's The Crimson Rooms and am finding it hard to put down.  It's set just after WWI and the protagonist is a lawyer at a time when women weren't welcomed into the profession. 

And last but not least is Patricia Falvey's The Yellow House, which covers the first quarter of the last century in Ireland's very tumultuous modern history.  It seems like I really read something Irish in the month of March. 

You won't be surprised that I am going to try and get in lots of reading this weekend!

They All Just Went Away by Joyce Carol Oates

I've read very little of Joyce Carol Oates's work, but there is something haunting about the stories she tells.  "They All Just Went Away", collected in The Best American Essays of the Century and edited by Oates has that same eerie quality to it even though (maybe especially so) she is writing from experience.  In the biographical section of the collection she is quoted as saying "As I am not drawn to art that makes me feel good, comfortable, or at ease, so I am not drawn to essays that 'smile', except in the context of larger, more complex ambitions."  Even though I've not read much by her, this doesn't surprise me in the least.  Her writing isn't comfortable, and that's not a criticism, just an observation.

"I must have been a lonely child.  Until the age of twelve or thirteen, my most intense, happiest hours were spent tramping desolate fields, woods, and creek banks near my family's farmhouse in Millersport, New York.  No one knew where I went.  My father, working most of the day at Harrison's, a division of General Motors in Lockport, and at other times preoccupied, would not have asked; if my mother asked, I might have answered in a way that would deflect curiosity.  I was an articulate, verbal child.  Yet I could not have explained what drew me to the abandoned houses, barns, silos, corncribs.  A hike of miles through fields of spiky grass, across outcroppings of shale as steeply angled as stairs, was a lark if the reward was an empty house."

In her essay Oates notes the difference between a house and a home--the house contains the home and may remain long after it's been abandoned by those living in it, "for only when there is life can there be a home", but when empty it reverts back to simply being a home.

"Where a house has been abandoned--unworthy of being sold to new tenants, very likely seized by the county for default on taxes and the property held in escrow--you can be sure there has been a sad story.  There have been devastated lives.  Lives to be spoken of pityingly.  How they went wrong.  Why did she marry him, why did she stay with him?  Just desperate people.  Ignorant.  Poor white trash.  Runs in the family.  A wrong turn."

Joyce Carol Oates grew up in a happy, close-knit family on a farm whose principle crop was Bartlett pears.  But there is always that threat of happiness being only temporary.  "For the abandoned house contained the future of any house."  One in particular, the Weidel's house, loomed close by over all the others.  Mr Weidel was a violent drunk who "did things to his daughters."  Of the six children there was something not quite right with the two daughters.  The Weidels were a dysfunctional family doomed to scatter to the wind someday, and after a fire that devastated the house, scatter they did.  Mrs Weidel, despite being roughed up by her husband with regularity, stuck by him tenaciously and wouldn't hear of accusations being made about her husband and the fire.    

"For so many years the Weidel house remained standing.  There was something defiant about it, like someone who has been mortally wounded but will not die."

This abandoned house and its former inhabitants seems to stand as a metaphor for who we are or what we're capable of.  Joyce Carol Oates isn't an author I will pretend to understand, but she asks difficult questions, or at least meets her reader full face on and with images and ideas, uncomfortable they may be, that demand attention.  This essay with a house in such a sorry state of affairs and a family so violent and broken reminds me of the stories I've read by her and her ability to completely unsettle her reader.  Some of these same motifs, fears she has will show up in her stories.  Joyce Carol Oates is such an interesting author, but one I think I can only take in small doses--she certainly knows how to through you off balance.  

The Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers

I've already heaped all sorts of praise on Clare Chambers's books (here and here), so how do I approach her most recent novel, The Editor's Wife?  Her prose is still smart, witty and stylish.  She has a great knack for storytelling, and not just a simple, straightforward story but one that weaves in and out of time seamlessly.  In a way her novels are modern day social comedies presented in a light-hearted manner though they usually have some weighty issue or turn of events at the heart of them.  And I still consider her my favorite comfort read, and an intelligent one at that.

In The Editor's Wife Chambers trains her keen eye on the literary world telling her story from the vantage point of an aspiring young writer.  Christopher Flinders is the younger son from an average, middle class family.  His parents are nice but staid and his older brother somewhat eccentric.  In his final year at university he decides to quit his studies and write full time, which will prove to be a more difficult and less romantic task than he envisioned.  Living in a grotty bedsit with a communal kitchen he discovers it's not so easy to make ends meet so takes odd jobs to get him by.  He works long enough to save a bit of money so he can spend time writing and then starts the process all over again.  Over the course of the next couple of years he begins novel after novel finishing none of them.

"When I reached my twenty-fourth birthday, I had a sort of crisis.  I suppose I had set myself that date as the deadline by which time I would be a successful writer, and yet I was still living in one room in Brixton, operating this schizophrenic three-month-shift system, and no one--apart from the girl whose indifference had killed off Ask Your Mother to Pass the Salt--had read a line of my work."

"I knew nothing about publishing, and no one who could advise me of the protocols of submitting manuscripts, but I was desperate for some professional feedback.  My own conviction and self-belief were no longer sufficiently nourishing to sustain me."

So he sends off the first few chapters of his novel to a few publishers leaving his future in their hands.  When he receives a positive response from an editor at a small publishing firm his life will be well and truly changed.  Owen Goddard takes Chris under his wing and becomes a sort of mentor to him, inspiring him to work furiously on his story.  By extension he comes to know Owen's family, his charming wife Diana and two small daughters.  The Goddards are a cultured couple leading a happy, comfortable existence.  Diana, always smartly dressed yet down to earth stays at home with her children yet was once a part of the publishing firm as well and misses the work.  Always down at heel Chris takes to dropping by the Goddards for lunch and conversation and somewhere along the way finds himself falling for Diana.

"Diana always appeared happy to see me, and as I got to know her better I decided her pleasure was genuine, and not just practiced politeness.  Her other confidantes were all mothers of young children: their conversation, though reassuring, held few surprises.  It was so interesting, she said, to talk to someone whose circumstances and outlook were so different.  We fell into complementary roles, as new friends often do, seizing on a characteristic and exaggerating it.  She was the sensible one; I was the feckless one.  She was sophisticated and cultured; I was an ignoramus.  Much of this was put on, for our own amusement, because it was pleasant to play up our differences when they were no barrier to friendship, and to pretend conflict when there was none."

When the Goddards realize Chris will never finish his novel living in the dismal circumstances he lives, they make a very generous gift to him of enough money so he can spend his time writing and not worrying about paying bills.  He finishes his book, but an impropriety on his part and worse an indiscretion by his well meaning though clueless brother causes a devastating rift between the Goddards and Chris that ultimately ends in tragedy and will rack him with guilt for years to come.

His novel is published but it fails to make a splash.  He takes himself off to the wilds of Yorkshire and finishes his education as he knows the life of a writer is not meant to be his. Twenty years on he ends up living a life about as staid and ordinary as his parents, though perhaps not even so happy.  After a failed marriage and then redundancy from the Inland Revenue he ends up in an unrenovated cottage on a sheep farm on the edge of the moors (though actually that sounded rather appealing to me).  There's always a twist to Clare Chambers's stories and in this case it will come in the guise of a young and very pregnant woman doing research on Owen Goddard that brings up to the forefront all the miserable business from Chris's early adulthood.

I think what I love about Clare Chambers's novels, aside from the marvelous storytelling, is the fact that her characters always get second chances at happiness.  No matter how imperfect they are, they are all very real and find themselves in situations that are entirely believable even though they might verge on the outrageous (truth is stranger than fiction you know).  The Editor's Wife contains all those elements that I've come to enjoy so much in her work, though this one had a slightly different feel to it.  I have to admit there was (is) something magical about Learning to Swim and In a Good Light that was lacking here, but that doesn't mean I liked it any less.  It might be simply that I read (and reread) the other two books first, or perhaps because they have female narrators as opposed to Christopher (likeable though he may be).  I still found this an immensely enjoyable read, particularly with its literary setting (and will add it to  my list of books to reread).  I wonder if she's working on anything new (this was published in 2007--surely it's time for another novel?).  Happily I still have three unread books by Clare Chambers to look forward to this year, though I don't expect them to remain unread very long.

Teaser Tuesday: Uncommon Arrangements

Although I was leaning heavily towards reading about Mrs Beeton I have to admit that a glance at those 400+ pages and the tiny print made me hesitate.  Since I've not read any nonfiction this year, I should probably start with something a little shorter that I know I can finish in a reasonable amount of time.  So Katie Roiphe's Uncommon Arrangements: Seven Marriages in Literary London 1910-1939 it is, and from the comments that I received on my previous post I think I made the right decision.  I'm reading the introduction at the moment and it's fascinating.  I'm familiar with at least some of the people Roiphe is going to talk about, but even if I'm not she has such an engaging style that it should be interesting irregardless.

"Out of a slew of possible 'marriages à la mode', I have chosen as my subjects writers and artists, and one hostess with artistic leanings--in other words, those inhabiting the fringe of respectable citizenry--in part because their marriages are interesting, and in part because they obsessively record and narrate their inner lives in ways that some people may find bizarre, and even distasteful.  I have chosen some figures who are still quite well known, like the writer and social critic H.G. Wells, and the painter Vanessa Bell, who was Virginia Woolf's sister, and others, like Vera Brittain and Elizabeth von Arnim, who are less well known now but were bestselling authors and influential figures of the time.  In the end, many of the couples in this book raised their personal lives to the level of philosophy.  They felt that their love affairs and marriages were themselves creative acts."

The couples she is going to talk about are: H.G. & Jane Wells, Vanessa & Clive Bell, Ottoline & Philip Morrell, Radclyffe Hall & Una Troubridge, Vera Brittain & George Gordon Catlin, Elizabeth von Arnim & John Francis Russell, and Katherine Mansfield & John Middleton Murray.  In the introduction Roiphe talks about the attitudes of the period, which were conducive to these sorts of experiments in unusual relationships.  Coming out of a strict Victorian mindset and the devastation of WWI it's not surprising that couples were rewriting the rules of marriage, or at least trying something different.  I want to share one more passage, which is pretty lengthy, but sets the tone of the book.

"I was drawn to the period spanning the two world wars in part because it was as richly conflicted as our own.  The lives of the writers and artists emerging from the Edwardian period bridged an enormous gap in attitude: their earliest education was infused with the exquisite restraint of the Victorians, and they came of age amidst the seductive freedoms and sexual frankness promised by the new century.  Reading their own accounts, one almost feels that they carried lodged within them two complete worlds.  They watched streets fill with the first automobiles.  They listened to the gossip about King Edward VII and his mistress, Mrs Keppel.  They visited the first Post-Impressionist Exhibition, which scandalized the art world with paintings of Matisse, Gauguin, Cézanne, and Picasso.  They read the first navy blue editions of Ulysses, which were printed in Paris.  They watched as the novels Lady Chatterly's Lover and The Well of Loneliness were banned for obscene content.  They jettisoned the clutter and the wallpaper and heavy drapes of the Victorian interior and created fashionably stark spaces in their homes.  And the clash between the two very different sensibilities, the Victorian and the Modern, would be written into their most personal decisions, their marriages subject to the same tensions, the same electric contradictions.  They were destined to construct their personal lives on that highly unstable spot, poised between an intense nostalgia for traditional ways of doing things and great hunger for equality and progress."

I wanted a book that would really grab me and I think I've found it in this one.

Back to the Coast by Saskia Noort

Saskia Noort's Back to the Coast is another cracking good read from Bitter Lemon Press.  Similar to Claudia Piñeiro's Thursday Night Widows with its contemporary setting and examination of social attitudes and societal ills, it's more of a classic psychological thriller type story than the Piñeiro, however.  The protagonist in Back to the Coast, Maria Vos, is a stalking victim and Noort knows how to ratchet up the tension as she unravels her story.

Maria, a single mother of two, is leading an independent and unconventional life in Amsterdam.  She scrapes by as the lead singer in soul band doing mostly covers.  It's been her dream since she was young to become famous for her singing, but she finds herself getting mixed up with the men in the band and both the men and the music are second rate.  When she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant she knows she has neither the finances nor the moral support to take care of yet another child.  The father of her older daughter left after knocking her about a bit, and her current boyfriend has issues of his own and Maria can't deal with his bouts with depression. 

She decides to terminate her pregnancy, which she does on her own without telling Geert, the father of the baby.  When it's over she's not entirely relieved and feels the loss acutely, but believes she had no other choice.  Almost immediately she begins getting vicious letters in the mail making accusations and threats, and the writer seemingly knows all about her.  Maria's first response is to blame Geert for the letters, and while he denies any involvement, she can't help but be unsure of his intentions considering his unstable behavior.  Her stalker goes so far as to send a dead rat to where she is performing with the band, victimizing her psychologically if not physically, yet she fears for herself and her children.  The police are unable to do anything without an actual crime having been committed, which angers her and makes her aloneness all the more conspicuous.  Is her stalker an unhinged fan or perhaps an anti-abortion activist?  She doesn't know who to trust or where to turn.

In the end she flees back to the coast, to her childhood home and her estranged sister Ans.  She couldn't wait to leave Bergen aan Zee, a small seaside town on the edge of the Netherlands.  Her home, Guesthouse Duinzicht, doubled as a bed and breakfast growing up.  She and her sister were relegated to sleeping under scratchy blankets during the summers while strangers slept in their rooms under comfortable duvets, their mother constantly struggling to keep the sand out and everything clean.  Although her father was raised in Bergen her mother came there only as an adult and could never quite accustom herself to the windswept dunes and loneliness.  She was always an outsider, and in the end the isolation drove her mad.  Her father loved her mother to distraction but could never adequately care for her.    

Maria's older sister welcomes her back, though she is dealing with a failed relationship herself.  While Maria has always been laid back and willing to strike out on her own and take risks, Ans was left behind to care for her parents.  She's rigid and uptight and critical of Maria's choices and actions, her own life being a perfect picture of orderliness.  What should have been a haven, returning home, only brings to the front all the secrets and bad feelings she thought she had left behind.  And rather than being a respite she finds her life spiraling out of control as she and others around her begin questioning her sanity.  Bad things continue happening and soon the finger begins pointing towards Maria herself--is she a victim or the author of this mess she's in. 

Narrated in the first person I wondered at times just how reliable Maria was and whether to believe her story.  As more and more is revealed it's not hard to figure out just who is behind the threatening letters and disturbing actions.  The ending might have been a little too pat, the solution a little too perfect, but really that didn't detract from the chilling story Noort tells of Maria's paranoia, fear and helplessness.  This is a quick read full of tension that makes you want to keep turning pages.  It reminded me a bit of fellow Dutch author, Simone van der Vlugt's The Reunion, another tense, suspenseful thriller.  Back to the Coast is Noort's first novel, which was a bestseller in Europe.  I guess now I'll have to look for her second novel The Dinner Club also available in English.  By the way Back to the Coast has been made into a film, which I would love to get my hands on (though I expect that will be unlikely). Check out the film website here (where you can see the movie trailer...looks good!).  I think I might happily make my way through Bitter Lemon's backlist and am currently reading Petra Hammesfahr's The Lie.