A Work in Progress

Beaufort by Ron Leshem

If you think about the sorts of books I tend to pick up and love, Ron Leshem's Beaufort (translated from the Hebrew by Evan Fallenberg) is sort of an unlikely candidate for a read I am going to lose myself so thoroughly in and then think fondly of after I turn the last page.  But I did love it when I first read it last fall.  I have just revisited it for the class I am taking this spring and it only reinforced how impressed I am by it--the writing, the storytelling, the translation--the whole package in other words.  The story is about a group of young Israeli soldiers in the last days of their occupation of the Beaufort fortress inside the border of Lebanon just before the country's withdrawal in 2000.  Of course perhaps it is not so surprising at all considering one of my all-time favorite books is Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, to which Beaufort bears a strong resemblance.

"Yonatan can't see us growing ugly anymore.  'We'll never be as handsome as we are today,' he would always say, and I would ask if that was meant t make us feel better, because it didn't."

"What?  Are you totally out of it?  How could you not know this game?  No way you don't know it.  It's called 'What He Can't Do Anymore,' and it's what everyone plays when a friend is killed.  You toss his name into the air and whoever's there at the time has to say something about what he can't do anymore.  Sometimes it goes on for hours.  Like on the soccer field, in the middle of a penalty kick.  Late at night, too, for no good reason, you wake everyone up about half a minute after they've dropped off to sleep.  Or when you're at home, working on your girlfriend, not thinking about us at all, when the last thing in the world you want is to play the game, well, BAM! the phone rings and it's us on the line.  'Yonatan can't . . . ' we say, and you have to--everyone has to--reel off some association, that's the rule, and you can't repeat what's already been said." 

If you follow the narrative arc of (mostly war) fiction published in Israel since its founding, which is what I did (loosely) last fall in my class, it's interesting to see how the attitudes/tone change over time from being very optimistic and patriotic to something increasingly less so.  That naivety is shed and the idea of the righteous hero dims.  Cracks begin to appear on the surface, the characters become less convinced of their motivations and the country's justifications for their actions.  Life and war become far more complex and complicated.  And that is the tone that you find in Beaufort. 

Beaufort is a Medieval fortress that was taken and occupied in 1982.  Initially this was retaliation for an attack, but which turned into an occupation that lasted eighteen long years.  The fortress was held with the idea of creating a security zone to prevent further terrorist attacks.  But what was initially seen as a military action due to provocation became a long drawn out occupation that divided Israeli society for the first time and resulted in protests, particularly by the mothers of the soldiers who were sent to Lebanon.  People began questioning just why their sons were there, what the occupation was really meant to accomplish, why young men were dying for seemingly futile and meaningless reasons (please note I am only trying to offer a little context for the story not give any opinions on the history or politics--only on the novel). 

Beaufort is high up on the rugged, mountainous terrain of Lebanon where it is bleak and the enemy is mostly invisible.  The young men who are guarding the fortress are doing their job, believing they are there for the right reasons, though those reasons become less and less clear.  While they are mired in the Lebanese mud, often not admitting to their families they are in a danger zone for fear of worrying them, they know some guy is drinking coffee with whipped cream back in Tel Aviv clueless that a fellow soldier has just been blown to pieces.  And so the questioning begins.

The story is narrated by Erez, a young soldier with occasional anger issues who almost by default becomes the squad commander.  He's barely older than the soldiers he leads yet they look up to him to keep them safe and alive.  The men sit up on the mountain, disconnected from the rest of the world, drawing rockets and mortar shells and explosives, their lives endangered.  It's an intense state of being--like bungee jumping only to have the rope cut.  But deep friendships form, a camaraderie that will see them through their time there.  There is bantering and arguing and joking.  They talk of their lives and dreams and what they look forward to when they finish their tour of duty.  And then there are the moments of pure adrenaline and fear, when they are bombed or must defuse explosives and anguish when they see someone die. 

Ron Leshem was not a combat soldier, but it's uncanny how well he has captured the atmosphere of Beaufort and the men who must protect it.  The voices of the characters are impressively authentic you feel he must surely have been there himself, but the novel was written out of a series of conversations he had with men who were stationed in Lebanon.  As you might imagine the text is peppered with slang and the common language of ordinary young soldiers, all of which comes through seamlessly in the English translation. 

This is not a warm, fuzzy story, but it's an important one.  And not just for the time and place, Lebanon and Israel ca. 2000, but the circumstances of these young men can be applied to almost any soldier anywhere, which is why this story has stuck with me and why I find it so well done.

"Yonatan can't know anymore the feeling of renting an apartment with his girlfriend.  Yonatan can't know anymore what it is to go with her to Castro clothes and come out with the new winter collection, or to Roladin Bakery in the middle of the night, when it's raining, because all of a sudden she wants a doughnut, and anyway you're a jerk, you never knew how to say no to her.  And here I am thinking how lucky I am that I've already had the chance to run out for doughnuts in the rain."

"There are lots of things Yonatan can't do anymore."

Tristana by Benito Perez Galdos

I don't remember now who introduced me to Benito Pérez Galdós, but it was enough for me to add his Fortunata and Jacinta to my classics shelves.  Galdós is a Spanish author who has been compared with Charles Dickens, Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert.  I've read (and liked to differing degrees) all of the latter three so it was only a matter of time before I got around to reading their Spanish compatriot.  In terms of classic Spanish literature I think Galdós is right up there with Cervantes, and had Fortunata and Jacinta been a bit shorter (it is a hefty 800+ pages) I might have read it by now.  How serendipitous then that NYRB Classics decided to reissue his shorter work, Tristana, and send it as the last book of the year as part of my subscription.  I even managed to read it before the end of 2014.

NYRB has yet to steer me wrong.  While I have liked some books better than others and some have been quite challenging, most of the time I love whatever they send me as part of their subscription (am now just in to my third delightful year) and time and again I discover a new-to-me and very memorable author or book (which often ends up on my best of the year list).  I can formally add Galdós to the list.  He writes about the Spanish bourgeoisie with just the same insight and panache as the writers he was so fittingly compared with.

Tristana.  Oh my, what a story.  You should see my copy of the book.  Dog eared, underlined, starred, exclamation marks and even a few remarks in response to the characters and situations left in the margins.  You know it's a good book when you begin not just having mental coversations with the characters but feel the need to write them down, too.  In a way this is a simple story, one told over and over really in literature, yet it's still a little on the quirky side (or how I think of the characters perhaps) and I have yet to decide what I think of how things turned out.  It's the sort of story that continues to niggle even after you have turned that last page.

It's Don Lope who is causing the problem for me.  What a paradoxical and maddening yet still garnering the tiniest bit of sympathy character I've come across in a long time.  To say Don Lope is a Don Juan is putting it mildly.  One reviewer called him "dubiously gallant" and what a perfect description.  What do  you make of an older, distinguished gentleman who is known for his endless conquests, seducing his young charge.  Smarmy, right?  The thing is, he is not in the least diabolical or machiavellian (or not too much anyway) in his actions.  He is a gallant and I think he thinks he really does love each and every woman he charms.  Yet you still want to throttle him for the things he says and does, but he's wholly convinced in his actions, which he thinks are morally upstanding (just as the rest of us are shaking our heads thinking the man hasn't an ounce of morality in him).  Be careful, the reader is warned, not to judge Don Lope to be either better or worse than he actually was.

Tristana is little more than a naive young woman (barely out of the classroom--keeping in mind the book was written in 1892) when she comes to Don Lope, an orphan after having lost both her parents.  Don Lope showed her family the greatest of kindnesses and courtesies when they had financial difficulities.  He gave of himself so much even that he lost part of his own fortune.  And not with his eyes on the prize at the end.  But in the end Tristana is alone and friendless in the world.  What does she know.   It's only natural then that her guardian would be more than a guardian?

"Tristana was neither daughter, niece, or wife, in fact, she was no relation of the great Done Lope's at all; she was nothing, and that was all there was to it, for she belonged to him as if she were a tobacco pouch, an item of furniture, or an article of clothing with no one to dispute his ownership; and she seemed perfectly resigned to being nothing but a tobacco pouch!"

Yes, I know, ouch. Completely maddening.  But, of course, there is much more to the story than that.

"She was twenty-one when, along with doubts filling her mind about her very strange social situation, there awoke in her a desire for independence."

And this is when the story begins getting really good as you might imagine.  She decides she wants to live and be free and falls in love.  She senses "her potential".  The man she falls in love with is a painter, an artist with an artist's sensibilities.  And their love affair is passionate and fulfilling.  It's filled with poetry and literature.  Had I had the time and energy I would have read Dante alongside this book, so often does their romance parallel and riff off of Dante's creations.  You do know, though, happiness and romantic fulfillment, at least not in the conventional way, are not to be had by our heroine? 

Galdós doesn't make it easy for the reader.  The story doesn't end in a 'happily ever after' manner and I am still not sure what to make of how the story ended.  How do I feel about it?  Galdós doesn't tell us what to think, and he doesn't even judge his own characters.  This is a short novel and a thoughtful one, like all the best books are.  It's one that beckons for a second (or third or . . ) read.  And now I do want to go pull Fortunata and Jacinta from my bookshelves.  If only to look . . .  And then there is the January selection just arrived this week to turn my attention to as well: The Door by Magda Szabo.  I don't know if I will be able to keep up with my subscription books, but if I can, I know I will be in for lots of treats if Galdós is anything to go by.

Before the Poison by Peter Robinson

If my reading of Peter Robinson's Before the Poison had not been so disjointed it may well have ended up on my favorites list last year.  I started it for last fall's RIP reading, but then had to set it aside a little longer than I had hoped and only finished it at the very end of the year.  It won the Arthur Ellis Award for best Novel and is just the sort of book I enjoy reading most.  I may have been interrupted in my reading, but it was such an engaging story that I never lost the thread and when I picked it up again I fell easily back into the story.  It's the sort of book that when you are reading it the rest of the world falls away and you lose yourself in the lives of the characters.

Before the Poison is not exactly a crime novel, though there is the possibility of a crime having occurred.  Actually the premise involves the execution of a woman believed to have been a murderess.  But did she really do it?  She was hanged for the crime half a century before the events that take place in the novel.  At the heart of the story is a mystery, one which becomes an obsession of the main character and now fifty years later he tries to get at the truth of the matter.  Only he finds there is perhaps more than one truth and nothing is quite so cut and dry. 

Chris Lowndes has spent most of his adult life in California where he worked composing music scores for films in Hollywood.  After the death of his wife, a woman he was deeply in love with, he decides to return home to Yorkshire.  His children are grown and have families of their own, but his mother still resides in the neighborhood.  He buys a mansion that has long sat empty, a home that has quite a colorful history attached to it. 

Kilnsgate House was once the home of a much respected country doctor and his wife.  This would have been during and just after the war when a doctor's opinion was like that of God himself.  Ernest and his beautiful wife Grace had one son and were thought of as pillars of the community.  Well, at least he was.  Grace was younger and beautiful and had a much younger lover, a local artist.  None of her secrets would have come out and she would never have been accused of murdering her husband had not the pair been spotted in a hotel.  The proprietress brought this fact to the police's attention and with much glee. 

One holiday season after the war the couple had a dinner party.  The weather was so foul no one could leave and no one get in.  After dinner the doctor complained of heart pains and shortly after was dead.  Grace had been a nurse in the war and so had tried to administer certain drugs in order to try and resuscitate Ernest but to no avail.  The death seemed entirely fitting for a man his age and of the health complaints he had had.  Then again, on closer inspection perhaps something Grace had given him might well have hurried along his death.  Surely a woman who is willing to commit adultery is one who would be willing to kill her husband, too?  Most damning is her lack of what everyone would expect--remorse.  But then she denied having killed him, didn't take the stand at her own trial and worse remained stoical during the entire course of events leading up to her execution.

When Chris learns of what took place in the house coupled with a painting of Grace he sees he begins asking questions out of curiosity--piecing together bits of the story and becomes determined in showing her innocence so sure is he that she was wrongly accused and hanged.  Chris is a man plagued by his own grief, (and there is a story in his history, too) and with the time and money to put towards finding out the truth his obsession grows.  Nothing is ever so easy, though.  How do you find the truth in what was assumed was a crime that occurred so long ago?

Grace never gets to tell her own story, though she is vibrantly alive in the pages of this story through the eyes and memories of others.  For once the cover art with the woman's face only partially shown is actually very fitting.   Red herrings abound and how could they not when Chris is coming up with theories based on his own experiences and desires for Grace to be innocent.  The story is told through excerpts from the trial transcripts, journal entries written by Grace and edited by her granddaughter and conversations Chris has with the people still living who were there at the time. 

The story takes some interesting turns and questions motive and culpability.  This is a story that shows just how many shades of gray there are in life's dilemmas and that rarely is life's questions answered in black and white.  There isn't exactly an 'aha' moment or a tense climactic moment where a twisting plot suddenly releases with a bang.  It's all much more subtle than that and entirely satisfying in just how close to the truth he comes. 

I didn't think I had so much to say about this story, which just goes to show you (since I didn't get even close to revealing all) how complex the lives of the characters are and how much there was to learn about them.  Did she do it?  I'm not going to tell.

I read one of Peter Robinson's mysteries years ago (even still have a vague sense of having liked it very much) and he has always been an author I have meant to return to.  I'm only sorry it took me so long.  That won't happen again since I have decided to embark now on his Inspector Alan Banks's mysteries also set in Yorkshire.  I only meant to give Gallows View a glance, but I found myself getting caught up in the story from the first page so onto the night stand it goes (and into my bookbag as I return to work this week).  Definitely a good find (or 're-find') for me. 

Books Read in 2014: The Catch-Up Post

One of the things I really wanted to do this year (which I did sort of do pretty well actually) is write about all the books I finished reading in some manner or another.  I never feel like I've quite finished with a book until I have written about it.  There were a number of really good reads, as a matter of fact, I wanted to write about this year but didn't get around to.  Now so much time has passed that I think I won't be able to manage a proper post (though I have a few books still set aside that I am going to try and tackle in the coming week), but maybe just to feel like I am starting with a mostly clean slate let me tell you about a few reads that are worth mentioning. 

First up are two NYRB Classics that I received from my year long subscription.  The first goes all the way back to the last days of 2013!  Alfred Hayes's My Face for the World to See was the freebie book I got for renewing my subscription.  Thinking I was going to kick things off the right way, I read it before the old year was even out.  (Too bad I wasn't as ambitious with the rest of the books I received on subscription--but no worries--thankfully books in my own personal collection have neither expiration dates nor due dates!).  This is a Hollywood novel of the 1950s written from an insider's view.  It's the story of an affair between two unnamed (perhaps morally bankrupt) characters.  Slight in length but not in quality.  Maybe I should reread this one and write about it as it deserves.

On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William H. Gass is another slight book, but one filled with lots of depth and meaning.  I think Gass is a formidable writer.  It was with lots of interest and happy anticipation that I approached a book on the color blue, but this was so much more than about a color.  It's all the variations and permutations on the word and what it stands for.  And so eloquently told.

"In a way I've used the words, yet I've quite ignored their content, and in that sense I've not employed them at all, they've only appeared.  I haven't even exercised the form."

But don't worry, exercise he does.  This is a book I did really want to write about but it was a little too challenging for me--I couldn't quite wrap my head around it all and in the end it defeated me.  I have another chance to read him, however, since my subscription included a book of his short stories as well.  I hold that book in reserve.  (Mostly because it scares me in the way James Joyce scares me, if you know what I mean).

Although I am impatiently awaiting my first NYRB of 2015 (I renewed my subscription and am now waiting for my next freebie book as well as January's selection which won't be here for another week or so, I think), I decided to cancel my Art of the Novella subscription.  It pained me to do so, as I love those cool Melville House novellas, but I am supposed to be on a budget and I have fallen far behind in reading all my novellas.  I wrote about most of them (in the case of a couple, it was only teasers but close enough). 

I think Henry James falls into that William H. Gass category of being formidable.  I read The Lesson of the Master this year, which is a story of a young writer being befriended by a famous writer he has for long held in high esteem.  I don't think I'll be giving anything away by saying the two will fall for the same woman and the twist at the end is quite illuminating.  There is indeed a "lesson" here, but I wonder if it is the one the "Master" really meant to teach.

Antonia White's The Lost Traveller is the second in a quartet of books about Nanda Grey.  I wrote about Frost in May here, and I plan on reading the next two books in 2015.  It's obvious that White drew on her own life experiences to write the books, but after a seventeen year gap between the first and second she decided to fictionalize and invent more and so Nanda became Clara Batchelor.  The story continues Clara's coming of age--her deep friendships much frowned upon in the convent, her difficulties with her parents--especially her father on whom rests so much of her feeling of identity and desire for love and approval.  Perhaps so much so that she leaves school and home to work as a nanny and thinks she falls in love.  What better way to please your parents, well, mostly your father, than make a proper Catholic marriage?  This is the sort of searching Clara does--

"How do people become real?  Does one just change as they get older?  Or did something definite happen to you?"  (She's asking her mother).

I thought I knew the trajectory Clara was bound for, but when I picked up the next book, The Sugar House, I think things are going to move in a different direction after all.  Hopefully I'll find out sooner than later.

I had this idea of reading all of Molly Keane's (M.J. Farrell's) books in the order she wrote them.  I don't seem to be making the best of progress, however.  For so long Mad Puppetstown sat on my night stand that I think I must have started reading it at least three separate times.  The third time was the charm, but it's a pity I didn't write about it right away.  This novel, while not her best, is very much Molly Keane territory in that it is about a great house, and the Anglo-Irish family living there.  In this case, Easter Chevington and her two cousins Basil and Evelyn.  It's a house much loved but this is the period of the Great War and the Easter Uprising and life is tumultuous in Ireland, and so the three cousins flee to England leaving behind an old aunt who's not about to be put out of her beloved home under any circumstances.  Things do come full circle, not without some drama and upheaval.  Next up is Conversation Piece, which I hope to get to sooner than I did with poor Mad Puppetstown.

I can tell you right now that Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being is going to be on my favorites (forthcoming) list.  It was longlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize.  I can see why.  It's an amazing read--multi-layered, well written, thoughtful, and filled with thought.  It's a story within stories, told from varying perspectives in parallel times.  And she pulls it all off perfectly and beautifully.  I'm still undecided whether Ozeki means by the title--a tale for the time being, or a tale for the Time Being--as in a measure of time or someone who has almost magical mystical qualities.  That play on words is just one example of how intricately this novel is structured.  It's the story of a diary written by a Japanese schoolgirl who is being bullied and she sends her diary out into the world--it's found by a woman, a writer living on the Pacific coast of Canada.  Just thinking about it makes me all tingly for what Ozeki did in this book--did I already say it is So Interesting?  There is just so much to it, that even thinking about it months later leaves me with such a feeling of satisfaction and satiation.  When I think of how I really need to read more Good Books, this is exactly what I have in mind. 

So, this is it.  Save for a very few books that I'll talk about soon, this has been my reading year, to be expanded upon in the next couple of days as I make everything all tidy for 2015!

The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith

I wonder if I had not known that Robert Galbraith was in reality J.K. Rowling, if I would have caught on that The Cuckoo's Calling was by her?  I suspect not.  I'm not always the most observant when it comes to writing style, since I tend to get caught up first and foremost in the story.  If a writer can engage my interest in the plot and the storytelling, so much else will simply fall away.  Of course really good writing and styling, and the development of characters will catch my attention, too.  How do you critique someone so famous?  I know other readers can do it, and likely she attracts strong opinions.  Her reputation precedes her and somehow I think it would be hard for her to get a fair shake, so I won't even try.  For me, and this is the case almost all the time in my reading, my guide is how much I enjoy a story, how much it takes me away from life's daily irritations. 

The Cuckoo's Calling was for me an enjoyable read, one I wanted to come back to again and again.  For a mystery it is a fairly long book, over 500 pages, which I think can become a little unwieldy at times if a writer isn't careful.  It's Cormoran Strike  and his temporary secretary, Robin, who make the story.  The mystery becomes a little complicated in the unravelling, and she takes her time getting there with a full cast of characters and lots of little details, but Strike and Robin only grew on me as the story progressed.

Cormoran Strike is an interesting and very quirky character.  If the plotting of this novel is somewhat complicated, Strike's life is even more so.  Let's see . . . where to begin.  He's not what you would consider a swoonworthy leading man.  To say, like the book blurb does, that his life is in a state of disarray is an understatement.  He's a former military man who lost his lower leg in an accident in Afghanistan.  Whatever military physique he must once have claimed has gone to fat, and he's a large man anyway.  He's also lost his significant other, his beautiful girlfriend, and at the beginning of the story is sleeping on a cot in his office.  Now he's a struggling private investigator barely making ends meet and is being hounded to pay back a debt he can't even begin to cover.

And the other curiosity about Cormoran Strike?  He has a famous set of parents, though he doesn't ride their coattails.  Messed up, perhaps, but famous nonetheless.  His father is a musician known far and wide, and his mother was a supergroupie.  She's part of that era that started it all, that sad, messed up phenomenon of those who live off the fame of others.  A sort of shooting star--she shot to fame and then burnt out and 'offed' herself in the process.  Strike doesn't talk about it much, but it's there hovering in the background.

It all comes in handy when he's hired by the brother of a long-dead schoolfriend to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding the death of a supermodel.  Lula Landry was beautiful.  She was famous and wealthy and had everything to live for.  But she fell?  Or, more likely, jumped to her death one cold London night.  But her brother doesn't believe it.  Not when she was on the cusp of something really big.  He hires Strike to investigate and so begins the mystery of if and why she jumped, or why someone would want to push this lovely young woman out of a window.

Lula is everywhere in this story, she inhabits the minds and memories of those who loved her, or those who were enamored by her or just hung on to her fame, but she's never a real physical presence.  She can never speak for herself but Strike forms a picture of her through his investigation.  This is very much a detective story even if Strike isn't a proper detective.  He knows how to handle himself and he knows the questions to ask, how to, or if he needs to lean on a suspect. 

Robin, Strike's secretary sent over from a temping agency, provides the perfect counterbalance to Strike and his methods.  She's calm and efficient and takes the lead where Strike leaves off.  She's savvy enough to pick up the process Strike follows in his investigation.  Recently engaged, her fiancé is less than pleased with her interest in working for a private detective.  And then there's the beautiful Charlotte, the ex, just off center stage. 

This is a story filled with complications.  The sort of complications that make for good reading as you try and piece everything together--see how characters play off each other, how they tell the story, their own stories and that of others all the while trying to figure out the mystery of Lula Landry.  Up until that last climactic scene.  It's the sort of story that is complicated in just the right way making the mystery and the characters interesting and three-dimensional. 

Interesting enough for me to have added the second Cormoran Strike mystery, The Silkworm to my wishlist.

Seven Lives and One Great Love by Lena Divani

Seven Lives and One Great Love: Memoirs of a Cat could only have been written by someone who knows and loves cats.  I thought it would simply by a charming bit of fluff--much like the fluffy white tale of Sugar Zach, he of the many lives and droll humor (and one very perceptive cat you will not be surprised to know).  Greek writer Lena Divani has captured the essence spot on of just what it means to be a cat and be a cat owner.  And I will make a confession.  She had me in tears by story's end.  She wrote the story of my own cats it seemed, down to the bit about going on vacation and . . . well, I don't want to give the ending away.

I mentioned earlier that I was reading a book narrated by a wise little feline.  Wise in that cat way, and if you own a cat you'll know what I mean.  It's questionable just who owns who and who allows who to live in the shared space.  I think we all know who is really master and who is, shall we say, the slave.  

Sugar Zach is owned by allows the Damsel (as he lovingly calls her) to take him home as a kitten.  She is a writer with a live in boyfriend.  She is somewhat distracted and in need of subtle molding by Sugar Zach, a task he is only too happy to take on, though he despairs of his ever shaping her entirely as he would like.  What he wants most of all is for her to give him the ultimate attention and write him into one of her books.  She is actually a historian and must travel for her research and writing and thinks nothing of shipping off Sugar Zach to friends or family on occasion and when she is writing erroneously thinks she must do so in solitude--closing the door on Sugar Zach.  Oh, how much she has to learn.  You never shut the door on an inquisitive and determined cat.

"According to my calculations, I must have thrown myself upon the hateful door handle at least eighty-seven times.  The Damsel met my willfulness with equal amounts of her own."

If he manages to open the door, she slides him back out.  Ignoring him won't work.  He lays his paw on her keyboard and she pushes him away.  Persistence always pays off and we all know who is going to win in the end.

Sugar Zach is a very astute observer.  He understands her relationship with her father and her failing relationship with her boyfriend.  He knows what trouble other boyfriends can make well before the Damsel catches on.  And he reflects on all of it with humor and valuable insight.  He offers bits of wisdom in the form of "meows"--

"Meow No. 667: The Damsel, like all lower animals, responds well to a reward system."

* * *

Meow No. 777: You mustn't let any opportunity to be stroked go to waste.  It's a sinful waste to die unstroked."

Poor Sugar Zach, however, does suffer a number of indignities (willingly mostly) like being called fatso (but she's the one who feeds him) or being swished around the floor by his front paws for amusement sake.  He always knows when she is coming home, especially from her trips, by that trudge of feet on the stairs as she calls out to him.  He loves the Damsel even if she is occasionally indifferent to his wants, needs and desires.  Even if she won't take the hints he so lovingly sets out in order for her to realize the ultimate acknowledgement for him is for her to write him into one of her books. 

Lena Divani surely must have had her own "Sugar Zach".  I could picture him walking out of the pages practicully, nudging my hand to pet him and pushing at the door in order to be let in her inner sanctum.  But does he get his wish?

You'll have to pick up Sugar Zach's story to find out.  But a small warning.  Get ready to be amused and entertained.  But make sure you have a hanky close at hand, too.  Don't worry, though, this is a story that ends on a happy and satisfying note.  Reading about Sugar Zach makes me miss my own kitties.  And it made me appreciate them all the more, too.

The Curious Gardener: December

Finally December!  Or should I really say, sigh, December and now there will be no more?  I am caught somewhere between the two.  I have really enjoyed Anna Pavord's The Curious Gardener while at the same time had moments of frustration when it all felt the tiniest bit over my head.  But I am sad to be done and not have more to read now (though looking forward to my-as yet undecided-new serial read for 2015).  She has such a delightfully chatty and engaging manner of writing as if she was sitting across the table from you, hot chocolate in hand telling you about her garden and giving you bits of advice.  I'm a hopeless gardener, but I do love the idea of gardens.  Who knows, maybe someday I will have a proper one of my own (or my own version of proper anyway).

Since it is the December chapter you won't be surprised that she talks about Christmas (and so I am happy to be reading this and finishing the book before my own Christmas holiday).  I do love this:

"There has to be an orange, an apple and some nuts in the stocking, not because anyone is panting for them, but because there always was in my stocking at home.  I used to crack the nuts by putting them under the leg of the bed and bouncing on the corner."

Hah.  Can't you just picture a child doing that?  Pavord grew up in Wales and she talks about the various traditions of her own family, which when she was a child meant spending lots of time outdoors on Christmas--building up an appetite.  Her family, and a tradition she carries on with her own children, would hang stockings on bedroom doors as the official beginning of Christmas.  My own family doesn't have much in the way of yearly traditions.  We had stockings as children but they sort of faded away over time.

For Pavord, and more childish innocence (chuckling on my part continues) she goes on:

"There was a perfectly good pair of nutcrackers in the dining room.  But to get there you had to jump from the bottom stair to the mat in the hall.  If your foot touched the wood in between you would be pulled for ever into its whorls and seams.  That was a nasty prospect to face at half past four in the morning."

Half past four being the hour she would find her stocking.  It's a little weird?  Sad?  that I sort of understand her reasoning.  Even now as an adult I have my own unusual idiosyncrasies and habits about doing certain things.

She wraps up the year with several items of interest to me.  One is her discussion of trees and how to choose one for your garden keeping in mind where you are planting it and what you want it to do.  There is lots of suggestions on how to look for the best tree to plant and just how to plant it.  Did you know that "in its natural state a tree has a root system as big as its top canopy of branches"?  I have two really big trees in my backyard and all of a sudden am envisioning just where all those roots are growing beneath my yard!

Based on her suggestions I think I would find a crab apple tree in my yard most pleasing--"a neat small tree with stiff, markedly upright branches.  Scented flowers grow in great abundance, pink in bud, open white in spring and are followed by yellow fruit flushed with red."  It reaches a height of 16 feet and does well in full sun, which sounds very suitable for my front lawn.  If it is the same tree I am thinking of, there is one on the university campus (well, one I pass by daily) and it is indeed a beautiful tree.  Maybe that will be one of the things I take away from my reading.  What a nice legacy, don't you think?  Every time I would look at my crab apple tree I would think of the Pavord book.

She also offers practical advice (and this I find very helpful) on the "principles of planting".  She talks about soils and how big a hole to dig, what to do with the root system and how to secure them in the ground for best growing conditions.  While this wouldn't work here in the midwest with our cold, snowy winters she says she prefers to plant in fall and winter as plants have so much other work to do in the spring--all those leaves and new buds.  So much to think about.  I had no idea before reading this book.

And she talks about nuts and the trees they grow on.  Personally I like nuts all the time, all year round and happily partake of them on an almost daily basis, but I know they are especially popular at holidaytime.  Like Pavord I think it's silly to wait until Christmas.  "Nuts have acquired a faintly Fabian air (she says): wholesome, of course, but not appealing to gourmands".  Well, a gourmand, I am not.  Did you know this:

"Choose young walnut trees for planting as they resent being moved when they are older.  Do not cut or prune them unless it is absolutely unavoidable.  They bleed horribly when they are wounded.  If it must be done, late summer is the best time."

I had no idea and wonder just what the "bleeding" is like.  Walnuts grow in a husk, which I also did not know.  (Walbuts go into my cereal or oatmeal every morning--and now I will imagine the tree they grew on bleeding.  What a thought!).

So many interesting things Pavord has shared.  I will never remember it all, but somewhere along the line in my later reading I can imagine making all sorts of interesting connections.

Maybe I will end on this note--advice that another gardener gave Pavord: "A garden is a process, not a product".  Now that is something I can take with me in many aspects of my life!

A Florentine Revenge by Christobel Kent

A little murder for the holidays, anyone?  Christobel Kent's 2006 mystery A Florentine Revenge is the story of what came before.  Before what, you ask?  Felony & Mayhem, Kent's US publisher (and a wonderful resource for a variety of mysteries both contemporary and vintage, so do check them out), has so far released only two Sandro Cellini mysteries (there appear to be four with the latter two issued by a different publisher, but beware as some of the titles vary between UK and US editions).  Sandro Cellini is a disgraced former policemen who is working as a private investigator in Kent's first proper Cellini mystery, The Drowning River (or A Time of Mourning in the UK).  But there is a story behind Sandro Cellini's current situation.

I wanted to know that story behind the story, to know what came before.  And that's the story that Kent tells in A Florentine Revenge.  It seems to be marketed as a standalone novel (not in print in the US), and indeed Sandro doesn't make a serious entry into the story until things are well under way.  Florence is the setting, and behind the city's picturesque exterior lurks something dark and sinister.

The story opens with a murder.  Actually there will be two murders fifteen years apart.  Let's go back those fifteen years to one hot, sultry summer when a British family is vacationing in Florence.  It's August and they are in a city emptied of natives who have taken to the countryside.  The heat has taken the tourists by surprise.  It's so hot that the hotel pool the family is staying at has cracked, so the hotel has made arrangements for the family to use the pool at the Olympia Club.

Crimes involving children are always especially disturbing.  But a crime against a small child would have been almost unheard of at the time and in this place.  So the parents of the small girl didn't give a second thought to letting her go for an ice cream at the club bar and even less so when she needed to visit the loo.  "Had they watched her go, smiling at her independence, her determination?  Had they congratulated themselves on not wrapping her in cotton wool?"  Maybe in the moment, but less so when they called after her and there was no reply.

A week later the girl's body was found floating in the river.  Questions were asked, an investigation followed, but no suspect was ever taken into custody and charged with the murder.  That same summer Celia Donnelly is newly arrived from England as well, fresh out of university and watching the story unfold in horror.  Fifteen years later she is still in Florence and has adapted to the city and made it her own--so much so that she now has a coveted job as a tourist guide.  This is a city rich in culture, history and heritage and it takes itself very seriously.  Not just anyone can be a guide to show off the cities marvels.  But Celia has managed it.

This weekend, it's a cold December weekend just before the Christmas holiday, she has taken on as clients a married couple from England.  They are a wealthy couple, he older and distinguished and she a much younger wife.  Lucas Marsh is in Florence on business but has brought his wife Emma along for a celebratory weekend as she is enjoying a birthday.  It's her first visit but a return visit for him.  No holds barred and no expense too great, he wants Emma to see the city's gems and have a smash birthday dinner celebration which will take place in a luxury restaurant in a room complete with a rare painting of a Madonna and child.

So where does Sandro come into all this?  A murder has been committed, seemingly unrelated to anything else in the story.  The body of a man has been discovered in the empty pool at the old Olympia Club, which is long stood vacant and is in a state of dilapidation and neglect.  The Italian policeman's path will cross with those of the Englishman, his wife and the tour guide.  Of course it is the unravelling of the deaths that the story concerns itself with, but there is more to the story than just mystery solving.

This is a slow burn story and one where the relationship of Lucas and his wife, Celia's history in the city and Sandro's failing marriage all help form the story and solve the crime.  It's how Sandro handles the murder of the man in the pool, and why he ended up there in the first place that sends him into early retirement, just saved from the ignominy of dismissal. 

A Florentine Revenge is an enjoyable story, but a slow moving mystery.  I think I can understand why it sits off on its own as surely the books that come next likely come into their own storywise.  Sandro doesn't take main stage until well into the story and the mystery in some regards seems almost secondary to what else is happening.  Most interesting is the relationship between Sandro and his wife Luisa, which is revealed in bits and pieces--scenes from their past, their sorrows and failures.  Not altogether unexpectedly the mystery will bring them together and sets things up nicely for the real mysteries to take place.

I'm not sure if Celia, who enjoyed such prominence here, will have a place in the next book, but I am sure Luisa will be there and I look forward to seeing how the pair get on and learning more about their lives.  And more mystery with such an elegant setting.  The Florentine descriptions, with the softly falling snow, was at times magical.  It's hard to pass up such a destination, and if I weren't already in the middle of two other mysteries, I would greedily snatch up The Drowning River for more of Sandro and Luisa.

Fear by Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig's 1920 novella Fear (Angst in German, translated by Anthea Bell) is the story of one woman's torment when she becomes the victim of a blackmailer.  The catch is she's married and has been enjoying an affair with a pianist.  One day she is seen leaving her lover's apartment by his former mistress.  The woman begins gradually demanding ever larger amounts of money.  The fear of being caught out by her husband causes such agony that she despairs losing everything in her life that is comfortable and happy.  This is a morality tale of sorts, and a gripping one at that.

What is it that makes a woman who appears to have everything take a chance like Irene Wagner takes by having a fling with a man she doesn't even love?  The thrill of the chase?  The idea of an adventure?

"Satiety can be as much of an incitement as hunger, and it was the very safety and security of Irene's existence that made her feel curious and ready for an adventure."

Irene is happily married to a successful lawyer, one of the best known and regarded in the city.  She has two lovely children and a beautiful home.  She leads a completely comfortable middle-class, bourgeois existence.  Her life is, apparently, too calm and contented.  Her life it not unlike other famous heroines--Emma Bovary maybe, or Eline Vere--who glimpse a world of romance in the books they read and the plays they see at the theatre.  A world unlike their own and peopled with romantic figures who lead lives of extravagance.  Into the mixture of this comfortable boredom add one young man filled with "ardent and obvious desire" and a new and exciting passion is sure to ignite.

"Perhaps all that really attracted her to him was a touch of grief lying like a shadow on his rather too interestingly arranged features."

This is not the stuff of her usual mild but meaningless flirtations with other men.  Irene has a certain something and the men of her class pay her "respectful court".  But perhaps it is the added danger attached to this artist.  They meet, they chat.  He pays her attention and shows interest in what she has to say.  Interest moves from curiosity to the sensual sphere, and then all is lost for Irene.  Into her orderly, middle class life she adds a weekly tryst with this young man.  He becomes just one more of her normal pleasures.

It becomes a dangerous game to Irene.  Her life, which was so full of routine, takes on an added and exciting hue.  She begins pushing the boundaries.  Like a top whirling around and around she herself begins to spin out of control. 

"Not since girlhood had she felt so light at heart, with all her senses so animated.  Nothing like it had sent sparks flying through her body, not in the first days of her marriage or in her lover's embrace, and the idea of wasting this strange lightness, this sweet frenzy of the blood, on well-regulated hours seemed unendurable."

And then it happens.  It all comes to a head.  There's a woman waiting in the stairwell.  A knowing look in her eyes.  She knows Irene's name.  Knows what she's been up to.  The threat now, to her placid bourgeois existence is obvious.  In one blink of an eye she can lose everything she took for granted.  The woman bars her way, she has scorn in her eyes and a fierceness in her tone. 

"That's right, oh yes, what they call a real lady, every so respectable!  Not satisfied with her husband and all his money and that, no, not her, she has to go stealing a poor girl's fellow too!"

And so it begins.  The demands for money.  For more and more money.  Irene tells her the affair is over and she will not return to her lover's apartment, but the damage is, of course, done.  And now she is at the mercy of her blackmailer.  Irene feels hunted by this woman who seems to know all about her.  Where she lives.  Where she goes.  Irene now only feels safe outside the house and in the company of her friends and it is a frenzied existence she begins leading.  Again, like that top spinning out of control.

What is most eye opening to Irene is that she realizes how little she actually knows her husband and understands his feelings.  Despite their years together and their intimacies, she finds she cannot even imagine how he will respond to the knowledge of his wife's betrayal. 

Zweig quite brilliantly uses the idea of crime and punishments as meted out by Irene's husband to cast light on the characters.  Irene begins really seeing what her husband is like and his beliefs and how he will regard her own pitiful transgressions.  Will he understand that she was never in love with this other man?  It was only the idea of an adventure which lured her into straying.  Like a demon sitting on her shoulder at all times, this fear eats away at her until she is ready to pull an "Emma Bovary".  And if you've read Flaubert you'll know what I mean.  And if not, I'll just say a trip to the pharmacy and a small purchase of something powdery and lethal is one way out of her troubles.

This could have ended all too predictably.  A woman stumbles.  She has an affair.  She pays.  But Zweig is too much a master of his art to leave the reader with such an expected ending.  This is what I love about Stefan Zweig.  Aside from being an assured storyteller and careful observer of human foibles and shortcomings, he gives the reader something more.  I won't say Irene doesn't pay in her own way.  But there is a stunning twist at the end which leaves something more for the reader to think about when all is said and done.

I have loved everything I have read by Stefan Zweig.  And Fear is yet one more example of why I will keep returning again and again to his work.  He truly is a master of the short story and novella.  His works, slender though they may be, always pack a punch.

I read this last month for Caroline and Lizzy's German Literature Month.  I had hoped to read more of Zweig's short stories and more books translated from German in general, but there never is enough hours in the week to squeeze in all I want to read.  In this case, quality certainly trumps quantity. 

Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

In Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles there is a pivotal scene where Tess slides a letter under Angel Clare's door.  She thinks he's read it and has forgiven her for past transgressions but the letter was actually slid under a rug on the other side.  Not only has he not read it, but he didn't even know it existed.  I don't know much about Hardy (only recently did I learn that he was a farmer, which explains a lot, since farming seems to feature largely in the few works I've read by him--I think it is referred to as the "pastoral"), but he must have been a fatalist (or, at least there is something else at work in his stories). 

In Far From the Madding Crowd (which was written before Tess), there is yet another pivotal scene where Bathsheba, the main character, is handed an anonymous note giving her information about her husband.  She is inside a tent, has the note held loosely in her hand and someone outside the tent reaches under and pulls it from her fingers.  Another missed opportunity for our heroine to, in this case, learn something of importance of her husband who has gone missing.  Is it fate or sheer bad luck?  Or something else?

At about the moment that the note was slid from the heroine's hand, things began to heat up in the story.  I must admit my feelings towards it and the main characters ran the gamut.  Beginning with high expectations, lulling into something a little more routine or mundane, and then reaching a low point where nothing anyone could do in this story would make me sympathetic towards them.  Hardy pulled it off, even with a "happy" (happier for some more than others . . . ) ending.  I quite like the Bathsheba who finds some modicum of happiness at the end.  She's a wiser and more humble woman.  It was an interesting journey getting there, however.

But let me go back to the beginning.  Far from the Madding Crowd is the story of beautiful Bathsheba Everdene and the three men who fall for her.  One is the practical suitor, one a little bit silly and the last a complete rogue.  Bathsheba is an interesting character, too,--by turns maddening and sympathetic.  She's an independent woman, a farmer in her own right, a landowner and manager of men and property.  She's never quite ready to give up her heart, or maybe she just doesn't know her own mind when it comes to love.  But then she does the oddest and most unexpected thing.  She makes the mistake of offering one of the men a proposal of marriage, and on the eve of St. Valentine's Day no less.

"Of love as a spectacle Bathsheba had a fair knowledge; but of love subjectively she knew nothing."

The story opens with farmer Gabriel Oak, an eminently practical and intelligent man, who owns a flock of sheep and by all appearances will be a successful young man in his trade.  He crosses paths with Bathsheba, a rather haughty young woman on first introduction.  Of course he falls for her.  She's on her way to take over a family farm and when next the two meet, his circumstances have changed considerably.  He's willing to take on nearly any job so long as he finds employment and eventually he finds it on Bathsheba's farm.  It doesn't take long before he proposes to her and is turned down. 

Residing in the same neighborhood is William Boldwood, an older, established and successful farmer who seems quite content on his own despite his high potential as a marriage mate.  I'm not sure what possesses Bathsheba to make the mistake of sending to him a playful Valentine.  But the moment she does, he really 'sees her' for the first time and sets his sights on her.  As a matter of fact he becomes almost obsessed by her.

And then there is Sgt. Troy.  Let's throw him into the mix, too.  He's a handsome, devil-may-care young man.  He looks good in uniform but you can tell a mile away just how loyal he's going to be towards any woman.  As a matter of fact he already has one love interest who he is ready to throw over for someone else.  Why are women always so attracted to the 'bad boys' rather than the stalwart young men when given a choice?  Excitement and thrills?  Pure orneriness?

Bathsheba truly is headstrong.  She doesn't like to lose and she doesn't like to appear incapable of taking care of herself, though on more than one occasion Gabriel Oak (despite her rejection) comes to her aid.  And she doesn't always think beyond herself either.  She plays about with the men's emotions (perhaps not in any malicious way, but certainly not very considerately) and then chooses the worst partner of the bunch.  What's the saying?  Marry in haste and repent in leisure?  She's played a fool, but over time she subtly changes.  Her hard edges are softened and her place in the world perhaps not solely in the center. 

Can I describe this story as both a tragedy and a romance?  I was a little shocked by a few of the things that took place--I just wasn't expecting them, though really I shouldn't have been too surprised.  Hardy is known for his bleak outlooks and plotlines but this is considered one of his happier stories.  And while the road is rocky indeed, (and there is the drama, I guess), the destination is actually a pleasing one. 

I'm glad I read Far from the Madding Crowd and am always happy to have another Hardy novel under my belt.  I will let you in on a little secret, however.  I read this along with Stefanie at So Many Books, and had I not had a reading partner, I fear (though don't read anything bad into this--there is a reason Hardy's works are classics), this might have remained half read on my reading pile and quietly shuffled out of the stack at some point.  She does a terrific job discussing the story, so do check out what she has to say about the novel. 

I'm now contemplating a new classic read.  I think I have the choice narrowed down to Willa Cather, William Dean Howells and Evelyn Waugh.  I think I am ready for something a little different now.