A Work in Progress

The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

I like Josephine Tey's Inspector Alan Grant.  As a matter of fact I think he is worthy of inclusion into my own personal 'crushable' favorite characters hall of fame (crushable being--the sort of fictional character on whom I will admit to having a little crush).  The Man in the Queue, published in 1929, is Grant's first mystery.  Tey (really Elizabeth Mackintosh) only wrote six of them along with a small handful of standalone novels and a few plays.  The blurb on the cover of the book is "The Classic Mystery Writer" and I think I have to concur with that categorization.  This is a very traditional, well plotted, good old fashioned detective story.

Inspector Grant?  Where to begin.  He reminds me a little of P.D. James's Adam Dalgliesh--a private, cerebral person, thought rather tall, dark and handsome by some.  Inspector Grant has a good supply of devotion and duty along with brains and courage.  Four years on the Western Front and many more in the C.I.D. has led him to develop an acute sixth sense which serves him well when working on a murder case or general crime solving.  The last thing he looks like, however, is a police officer.  He's of mid-height, slight build and on the dapper side (though not of a "tailor's dummy type" Tey informs her reader).  He has a half-careless thoroughness about him and is efficient and practical.  He's brisk and always thinking and speculating on his work.  Some years before he came into a considerable legacy and easily could have retired, but he's got quite a knack for his job and no desire to give it up.  Oh, and he's a good judge of a horse.

He'll need every bit of that efficiency and thoroughness for London's latest murder.  Not only must the murderer be sussed out, but the identity of the victim isn't even known until well into the story.  It's a March evening and the long running play "Didn't You Know" is coming to an end.  The star, Ray Marcable, is taking her success to America.  She's much loved and the crowd outside the theater is thick with fans waiting to see her one last time.  The crush of people is so intense that no one even realizes that a man in the queue has been stabbed in the back.  The sheer number of people packed together has kept him upright, and it is only when the line begins to move and he slumps forward and falls does anyone realize that something dark and deadly has just occurred.

There is very little on the man's body to help identify him.  Despite so many people so close together no one seems to have seen much of anything.  The forensic evidence points to a left handed man, and definitely a man and not a woman, who yielded enough force to drive the weapon in at such close quarters.  It's determined that the murderer used a very thin, sharp stiletto to commit the murder.  And Grant is sure that the murder was planned with much ingenuity and and executed with great subtlety.  And he believes that this is a most un-English crime.  Between the way the murder was executed and the particular weapon used Grant has formed in his mind a picture of just who might have committed it.

It's by a combination of supposition and plain everyday detective work--pounding the pavement and asking questions over and over that Grant pieces together who the man murdered was, and who is likely to have been the perpetrator.  He is hot on his heels when the suspect, a step ahead of Grant, flees to Scotland where an arduous and adventurous chase ensues.  And when he tracks the suspect down Grant must reassess all the clues he's gathered and the picture he has in his mind of the murderer.  Things rarely are what they seem, and when all the clues stack up and point directly at the individual who Grant was certain did the deed, he begins to second guess himself fearing he's caught the wrong man.  Circumstances put him in the right place at the wrong time, but did he really do it?

And the picture Grant paints at the start of the story based on the murder?  A so very un-English type of crime?  Well, there are lots of red herrings and turns down streets with no outlets to create doubt and leave questions unanswered.  There are a few twists and turns but nothing shocking, just good, plain detective work by a man with admirable talents.  I'll just say that Tey has created a very human and likable character who is not without faults or shortcomings but is mostly very good at his job. 

I want to know him more.  Grant's next mystery is A Shilling for Candles which I see that Alfred Hitchcock filmed as Young and Innocent.  With only six Grant mysteries I am thinking I could easily read them in almost one go, though I will likely pick something different for my next Vintage Mystery.  For Bingo I need to read six mysteries (and fill six slots--so far I have read one book with a 'color in the title' and one 'set in the entertainment world').  I think I like Josephine Tey very much and especially her dapper detective.

Short Story Sunday: Ms. Found in a Bottle

This weekend's story from the anthology Fifty Great American Short Stories is by Edgar Allen Poe and it's one entirely new to me, one I had not even heard of, "Ms. Found in a Bottle".  It's a wonderful seafaring sort of story, a ghost story.  No, one better, a ghost ship story!  Poe, writer of the gruesome and macabre is always a reliably good storyteller.  And while "Ms. Found in a Bottle" hasn't quite toppled my favorites by him, this was a good story indeed.

The story was published in 1833 and I read it was written at a period when he was writing stories of a  more humorous nature.  It may have meant to be a parody or satire of sea tales in general but specifically, too, of a popular theory at the time that the earth was hollow and could be accessed via either of the two poles.  Tongue in cheek or not, he masterfully captures the dread of a sinking ship well, and it brought to mind Maupassant's The Horla, which is one of my most favorite novellas ever.

The unnamed narrator of the story has set off from the port of Batavia (modern day Jakarta) after some years traveling abroad.  He has no ties to family or country any longer thanks to "ill usage" by one and the other.  It's a beautiful vessel he travels on and all seems well until one evening he observes "a very singular isolated cloud", the first he has seen since setting off.  It's quite eerie.  One moment all is well and the next the ship is plunged into a torment known as a simoon (which is a cross between a hurricane and sand storm).  By some strange fate he and an elderly Swede are the only men left alive when the rest of the crew and passengers are swept overboard.  There's really very little hope of survival as the ship is taking on water and two men alone would be unable to sail the ship alone in any case.

At a moment when all seems most dire the men see on the horizon the glare of a red light.  It would seem that the ocean has become a watery hell and the storm has awakened the slumbers of the fabled kraken.  Rising out of the depths is a massive ship, much muck larger than any he had ever known.  The two ships meet, the smaller now broken and sinking throwing the narrator alone over to the larger ghost ship.  As if things weren't bad enough, the crew seems to go about their business unseeing of anything about them.  They seem elderly and perhaps infirm with unsteady gaits.  The narrator does not understand the language they speak and neither has he ever seen the odd navigational instruments or charts they appear to by sailing by. 

Completely undetected by this odd crew he begins to write of his experiences--the Ms. which he will throw into the ocean in the hopes someone will know what happened to him.  He understands there is no hope of rescue . . .

* * * * *

I've long thought that short stories were a perfect way to be introduced to a new (new-to-me that is) author.  And how many times now have I read a New Yorker story and then added the author to my list of writers "I must investigate further"?  I have yet another author to add to that list, Lyudmila Ulitskaya.  My library has a few of her books, so I'll be pulling them from the shelves for further perusal.  She's won all sorts of awards (none here in the US).  Her story "The Fugitive", set in the Soviet Union of the early 1970s, follows a dissident artist who travels outside of Moscow as he attempts to avoid arrest.  It's an insightful and provocative look inside a country which has long fascinated me.  Interestingly it is the works he paints while living in the rural countryside which the state will deem pornographic rather than the political works he painted in the past poking fun at the Soviet government.

You can read "The Fugitive" online here.  And be sure to check out the Q&A with Lydumila Ulitskaya here.

* * * * *

This weekend has been a very short story weekend for me (which is actually always a treat).  I have read a few of Jane Gardam's many books--enough to know she is one of my "must read everything by her" authors.  I have been slowly collecting her work (even even more slowly reading them).  So when I was offered a copy of her soon-to-be-published The Stories of Jane Gardam by Europa Editions I couldn't resist.  I think I will give this book a proper introductory post this week, so I don't have to rush through what I've read this weekend.  I will just say I've liked what I've read so far and will be incorporating the stories into my weekly reading.

I think, too, it's time to pick up another of her novels.  Maybe the second book in her Old Filth trilogy, The Man in the Wooden Hat (I loved Old Filth by the way when I read it several years ago).

* * * * *

And one more short story reading note.  The CWA has announced the shortlist for the 2014 Short Story Dagger.  Last year I read the stories on the shortlist that I could get my hands on.  Stella Duffy won with her story, "Come Away with Me".  (I thought I wrote about all the stories I read, but now I can't find all the posts--must find a better way of tagging my short story posts).  This year's list:

"Judge Surra" by Andrea Camilleri in Judges (UK edition).
"Reconciliation" by Jeffrey Deaver in Trouble in Mind.
"In Our Darkened House" by Inger Frimansson in A Darker Shade of Sweden.
"Fedora" by John Harvey in Deadly Pleasures.
"Night Nurse" by Cath Staincliff in Deadly Pleasures.

I found Deadly Pleasures and A Darker Shade this weekend at the library and have put in a request for Trouble in Mind, but I think I won't easily find Judges (why are translated works always so late in getting published in the US--we either lag far behind the UK or simply never get the same books translated . . . a pet peeve of mine--the same thing happened last year).  I'll be reading the stories this week and will write about them as well.  The winner will be announced June 30.

Have you read a short story this week?  Go on, go pick one up.

May 15-16: Reading Notes

I'm beginning to wonder if French Literature is not entirely my thing.  I know I am a fairly devoted Anglophile (I read more British authors than any others), but reading French Literature, classics in particular, seems to be a mixed bag for me.  I feel guilty admitting this, but Victor Hugo's Les Misérables was a bit of an uphill battle.  I rarely (pretty much never) would choose to read an abridged version of any book, but I think I might have gotten on better with Hugo had I done so.  Don't get me wrong; I am glad I read it and recognize it for being the classic it is, but I don't have quite the fond memories of it as say Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo (brilliant!) or The Three Musketeers (would happily reread either--full versions only of course).  And I have read Flaubert's Madame Bovary not just once but twice.  Émile Zola's Thérèse Raquin was a good choice for me, too.  I guess I like either a good tragedy, a little seduction followed by more tragedy or pure swashbuckling adventure.

So you would think Honoré de Balzac's Père Goriot would be right up my alley, too.  I want to love it, but I find myself only feeling tepid about it.  I like it when I pick it up to read, but I find that when I am reaching for a book Balzac is not who I am reaching for.  It has elements I like--a Parisian boarding house filled with interesting characters, intrigue, scheming, a young man climbing the social ladder whose intentions aren't exactly straightforward and not usually admirable, high Parisian Society, a criminal living amongst the honest French citizens chez Madame Vauquer, poisoning, duels . . .  Normally I would be caught up in the story and happily turning pages.  I have just about 75 pages left to go.  Most of my reading attention for the coming days will be on Balzac, less for the fact that I can't wait to find out what happens, but more because I am ready to pick up some other classic.

Okay, so that was a bit of a sweeping statement I made at the start of this post, and I think I have had far more good experiences in my reading of the French classics (and there is the lovely and marvelous Colette and most excellent Georges Sand), and it is only because I am feeling the tiniest bit bogged down at the moment . . .  I suspect when I turn those last pages I will feel much kinder towards the book than I am feeling at the moment.  And likely it is just me and my mood at the moment, timing maybe, than anything Balzac is doing.  But are there moments when reading that you think you should really feel more enthusiastic about a book than you do in reality?  I won't give up on Balzac by any means (I bought Cousin Bette not too long ago by the way--should I give her a go, or perhaps some other of his novels?), and certainly not on French Literature, but I think I will be happy to finish Père Goriot. 

And now for something completely different.  Did you hear that yesterday Mary Stewart passed away at the age of 97?  It made me sad to hear.  She lived a long life and is much loved and admired and has certainly given me (and no doubt many, many others) much pleasure in her books, though it had been a number of years since she had published anything new.  I own quite a few of her novels--both her Arthurian stories and those of romantic suspense) and have read a number of them and loved each and every one.  In her honor I thought I should pick up one from my TBR pile and so have started Wildfire at Midnight which is set in the Coronation year of 1953 in the Scottish Highlands.  It was a little bit of a quandary of deciding, but I think I picked just the right story as only a chapter in and I am already hooked.

I finished reading Josephine Tey's The Man in the Queue (will write about it soon), and while I groused about a few things in the story along the way, I must say in the end I enjoyed it very much.  I am almost ready to pick up the next Inspector Grant mystery, but I am as yet undecided which vintage mystery to choose.  In my pile of possibilities sits Edmund Crispin, Vera Caspary, Ngaio Marsh, Patricia Wentworth and Margery Allingham.  Unless, of course I pick something entirely different).  Ah, the sweet agony of deciding on a new book.  I only have two slots filled on my Bingo card--a mystery with a color (Agatha Christie's Man in the Brown Suit) in the title and one set in the entertainment world (the Tey).  I have four more books to read to call Bingo.  Surely a doable goal?  In any case you never need to twist my arm to read a mystery.

Case in point?  I shouldn't have but I did.  I have started reading The Cuckoo's Calling by Robert Galbraith (aka J.K. Rowling).  So far, so good, but it's early days yet.  Part of the draw was the blurbs to be honest--more than one reviewer called the London setting vivid and a good London setting is very appealing to me at the moment.  I won't be doing anymore traveling for the rest of the year (I'm all about paying bills for the foreseeable future), so expect lots of armchair travel.  I guess London is my first destination.  I will be taking days off from work, however, as I have quite a few vacation days racked up and if I don't start using them I will lose them.  You might just find me lazing on the porch, lemonade in one hand (if it ever gets warm here) and a book in the other.

But this weekend?  It's me and Balzac all the way.

(Not) Moving Along in a Century of Books

I had hoped that my "Century of Books" reading wouldn't actually take a century to complete, but at the rate I am moving, it would appear that that just might be the case.  (Shh--I won't mention how I am doing with book challenges or other planned reading this year . . . I'm trying not to disappoint myself too much with this post).  It was January last time I 'counted'  books.  My, how time flies.  A quarter of the year gone and how far have I come?

1905: Doctor Glas by Hjalmar Söderbeerg, tr. Paul B. Austin

1912: Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather
1915: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka

1922: Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
1924: The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
1928: Grey Mask by Patricia Wentworth
1929: The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

1932: Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey
1933: Flush by Virginia Woolf
1935: Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder

1941: Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie
1942: The Lieutenant's Lady by Bess Streeter Aldrich
1943: The Last of Summer by Kate O'Brien

1950: There's No Home by Alexander Baron
1951: Transit by Anna Seghers
1953: Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton
1958: My Face the World to See by Alfred Hayes

1961: Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman
1965: Airs Above Ground by Mary Stewart
1968: The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

1974: Cashelmara by Susan Howatch
1975: Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
1977: The Wars by Timothy Findley

1981: A Countess Below Stairs by Eva Ibbotson
1983: Pitch Dark by Renata Adler
1984: Testing the Current by William McPherson
1985: Crampton Hodnet by Barbara Pym
1986: A Summons to Memphis by Peter Taylor
1989: The Quincunx by Charles Palliser

1991: Letters from Constance by Mary Hocking
1992: At Weddings and Wakes by Alice McDermott
1993: A Grave Talent by Laurie King
1995: Total Chaos by Jean-Claude Izzo
1996: Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes
1997: The Black Flower by Howard Bahr

In October of last year I was at twenty-four books, then in January of this year was up to thirty-two.  Now I am up to the grand number of thirty-five.  I've added books for the years 1929 (just finished and will write about it soon), 1935 and 1997. 

It's not that I am not reading (however slowly and meanderingly I am going again this year), but that I am reading more books written after 2000 it would seem.  In a few cases, however, I have read books that would easily fit into the list but the years were already 'taken'.  I am also being on the selective side in terms of what I am adding to my century list.  I have by and large not added any novellas (with a few exceptions), I have not counted any nonfiction either, but I did decide that YA novels were okay.  Well, I have added just one of the Little House books.  Maybe I should relax my (own self-imposed) rules a little?    

Of course I started this with the idea that I would take my time and fill in the list when I could with no pressure to finish by a certain date.  I had, however, thought I  might be adding books at a slightly steadier rate, but I guess that is where my periodic updates come in, so I can reassess my reading. 

I'm feeling better, have gotten back into a routine after having been away for work and most importantly the light is getting stronger at the end of the tunnel--I am actually beginning to feel caught up at work, which has meant I can take a small breather and think about things I enjoy when I am at home (rather than feeling in a state of constant stress).  And at the moment I am thinking about books and reading--particularly the books I am choosing to spend time with.  And I am well into and am very close to finishing a small stack of books, so hopefully there will be some progress on my sidebar.

After thinking about books I might read to fill in gaps, I didn't pick up a single one!  That won't, of course, stop me from doing the same exact thing now.  Now, though, I actually have these books sitting right next to me as potential books to start sooner rather than later.  These are books I mostly scoped out from my reading piles close at hand.

1900: The Diary of a Chambermaid by Octave Mirbeau
1901: Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Söderbeerg
1916: Non-Combatants and Others by Rose Macaulay
1923: The Devil in the Flesh by Raymond Radiguet
1927: Tarka the Otter by Henry Williamson (I thought initially this was a work of nonfiction, but it is a novel!)
1937: Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham
1944: Laura by Vera Caspary
1959: The Stillmeadow Road by Gladys Tabor (and this one is nonfiction, but I think I will bend the rules a little bit)
1980: Innocent Blood by P.D. James

Of course reading these particular books to fill those specific slots is not set in stone, just some ideas that sound appealing at the moment.  (When I check back in again in a few months will I have read any of these, is the question).

I am nearly finished reading several books, but only one will fit into my list, Mad Puppetstown by Molly Keane from 1931.  Unfortunately the others are doubles for years already filled.  In the end, it's all good.  It's sort of fun to look at my reading and give my book choices a little shape.  I tend to be a very random reader basing most choices on pure whim.  I am sure I will continue on in the same way, but I might give the list an occasional perusal when reaching for a new book.

Teaser Tuesday: The Country of the Pointed Firs

I've started reading my next novella (from the Art of the Novella Series by Melville House), The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett, and it puts me in mind of May Sarton.  I love May Sarton, so I see this as a good sign indeed.  The Country of the Pointed Firs is just under 160 pages and is made up of twenty-one or so chapters that are loosely connected stories.  Sketches really, as the chapters are quite brief.  In some cases not much happens at all, but Orne Jewett paints a vivid picture in them.

The novella opens with the arrival of a (as yet unnamed) female narrator who has just returned to the coastal town of Dunnet, Maine.  She eventually takes up residence in an empty schoolhouse where she writes.  She is a keen and careful observer of the natural (and social) world around her.  I don't know yet how old she is, but I think she is unmarried.  And I think she must like her solitude to want to live in this schoolhouse with its beautiful view.  Remind you of anyone?  I recently picked up May Sarton's The House by the Sea: A Journal, which is also about Sarton's moving to coastal Maine.  I think I now will need to read the two as companion books.  Serendipity!  I love it when books cross paths like this.

The chapters are almost quick snapshots of a vanished way of life--bits about the place and the people and her experiences.  It is easy to read one or two in a short sitting and I think I will take my time with the book and do just that--one or two sketches each day that will over the course of the coming few weeks create a particular place (and likely time) in my mind.  As a matter of fact I keep finding myself making little squiggly lines in the margins where I note places I want to remember, or underlining to draw my attention back to something especially elegant or picturesque.  Here are a few teasers to give you a little of the flavor of my reading.

"There was something about the coast town of Dunnet which make it seem more attractive than other maritime villages of eastern Maine.  Perhaps it was the simple fact of acquaintance with that neighborhood which made it so attaching, and gave such interest to the rocky shore and dark woods, and the few houses which seemed to be securely wedged and tree-nailed in among the ledges by the Landing.  These houses made the most of the seaward view, and there was a gayety and determined floweriness in their bits of garden ground, the small-paned high windows in the peaks of their steep gables were like knowing eyes that watched the harbor and the far sea-line beyond, or looked northward all along the shore and its background of spruces and balsam firs.  When one really knows a village like this and its surroundings, it is like becoming acquainted with a single person.  The process of falling in love at first sight is as final as it is swift in such a case, but the growth of true friendship may be a lifelong affair."

That's really lovely, dopn't you think, and so very true of places of people.  Now close your eyes and try and imagine the place--the woods and rocky shore the sea.  Can you hear the waves rushing onto the rocks?  Can you smell the salty air.  Or depending on which way you face, maybe you can smell the fresh greenery of the spruce trees.  I can.  It's invigorating (we weird as that may sound).  That's how the novella begins.  That is the first sight of the narrator who has returned to Dunnet, the quietest of seaside villages, late in June.

By July she hires a little white schoolhouse, which sits on the brink of a hill "much wind-blown and weather-beaten" and which has a most beautiful view of sea and shore from its door".

"Selfish as it may appear, the retired situation seemed to posses great advantages, and I spent many days there quite undisturbed, with the sea-breeze blowing through the small, high windows and swaying the heavy outside shutters to and fro."

If I click my heels together three times do you think I can wish myself there?  No, probably not.  I will have to content myself with continuing on with my reading and let it all play out in my imagination.  This is going to be perfect beginning of the summertime reading, I think.  This is going to be a book to read slowly and savor, I think.  Now I must compare with May Sarton's journal.  I think I may have to share more from the pair of books later.  I have (very long) had a copy of this novella in a larger collection of stories by her, and now I realize this is going to be a 'why did I ever wait this long to read' sort of book.  See what treasures await you on your (rather await me on my) bookcase shelves?

The Girl is Murder, Kathryn Miller Haines

New York City, circa 1942.  Iris Anderson is an ordinary teenager.  As ordinary as any teenager is whose father is back from the war having lost a leg and whose mother killed herself, that is.  The three used to live in nice digs on the Upper East Side and Iris used to attend a posh all-girl's prep school.  But they've lately come down in the world and now the pair live together on the Lower East Side renting space from a widow whose son is off fighting.  Iris's father is a private detective doing his best to make ends meet and now Iris must brave the rougher halls of P.S. 110 where the kids speak their own language and seem to run in close packs.

Kathryn Miller Haines's YA mystery The Girl is Murder was nominated for an Edgar Award in 2012 in the Best Young Adult Mystery category and caught my eye with its NYC WWII setting.  It has all the trademark YA features you expect in the genre--a strong young woman trying to make her way in the world, whose parents are either dead or largely absent.  In Iris's case, she's left slightly adrift not understanding why her mother, seemingly so in love with her father and happy in their small family circle, decided to commit suicide.  Her father is having a hard time running his business, which consists largely of tracking down unfaithful spouses, with a prosthetic leg that slows him down, tires him out and causes pain.  Even before the war she felt he was something of a stranger.

On her first day at her new school Iris sticks out like a sore thumb in clothes none of the other girls would be caught dead in, a class schedule she can't find the classrooms for and not a friendly face in sight.  Handsome Tom Barney, surely one of the school's more popular boys, points her in the right direction.  When worst comes to worst, though, Iris retreats to the girls' lavatory to hide out from all the cold, hard stares and crosses path with cigarette-smoking Suze.  Suze and Tom are both part of a group of kids known as the Rainbows that the rest of the school is both awed by and a little afraid of.  It's with a curious indifference that Suze strikes up a conversation with Iris. 

Maybe it's self-preservation, or the desire to try and fit in but Iris finds herself embellishing the truth with Suze.  Suddenly she lives with an aunt as her Pops is still risking his life in the South Pacific like Suze's older, soldier boyfriend.   By day's end she's received advice on how to fit in, had her purse stolen and watched Tom being led away to a cop car with his hands in cuffs.  Her new life is nothing like her old, and by story's end Iris will have changed and matured and be all the happier for it.

For now, though, Iris and her Pop have an amicable if uneasy relationship.  It's Mrs. Mrozenski, the landlady, who keeps an eye on Iris, feeds her and offers her kindly advice (or on occasion covers for her).  Iris watches her father struggle to run his business independently from his brother who also owns a (much more) successful investigative agency.  Both Iris and her father have the same tenacity of spirit, and its likely that desire for independence that inspires her to do a little investigating on the sly to help her Pops out.  He's none too pleased when he finds out and forbids her from nosing in anymore.  But when Tom's parents hire her father to search for him (he's gone missing after being released from police custody for theft), Iris is sure she can find out more from her classmates than her Pops can.

And so begins Iris's own personal odyssey to find out the truth behind Tom's disappearance.  She finds herself embellishing the truth more and more often, going to Harlem's dance clubs with the Rainbows, wearing lipstick, drinking and digging herself into a deeper and deeper pit as she tries to make sense of her friends, both former and current, actions and motivations.

While this is indeed a very typical YA novel in much of the plotting, it was also quite surprising and unexpected in many ways, too.  Miller Haines is very creative in her storytelling and in not giving Iris an ending that is formulaic, and I liked it all the better for that reason.  Iris is quite likable, and while she finds herself doing things she knows she shouldn't, it's always with the best intentions at heart.  She does change over time and finds out some hard truths about her parents, her friends and most importantly herself. 

One of the best things about the book is there is a distinct sense of time and place.  It's filled with the right sort of period detail and 'teen speak' that made it fun to read.  The story is peppered with slang from the era that made the glossary in the back of the book quite useful (the title by the way has a double meaning, too, since "murder" has more than one meaning).  Kathryn Miller Haines has written a second book featuring Iris Anderson called The Girl is Trouble, which I look forward to reading (she also writes a mystery series for adult readers set in WWII NY featuring Miss Winter (which I have heard good things about). 

The Edgar Award longlists are always chock full of good books that I like adding to my reading lists.  Also from the 2012 list I read The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson.  It's thanks to books like these that prompted my subscription to Soho's Teen Crime series.  This month's book is Escape Theory by Margaux Froley, which I think I am going to read next.

Short Story Sunday: Young Goodman Brown

This weekend's short story from Fifty Great American Short Stories (edited by Milton Crane) is Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown".  I've not read much of Hawthorne's work (save perhaps the odd short story and The Scarlet Letter), but I know going into any of his work that it is not going to be without depth and meaning.  And most likely meaning of the religious kind.  As a matter of fact I think you can barely turn around in one of his stories without having a little (or a lot) symbolism hit you in the noggin.  As for young Goodman Brown, who sets off for a journey into a dark and dreary forest one night--he should have listened to his wife and stayed home!

"Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife.  And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown."

"'Dearest heart', whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, 'prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night.  A lone woman is troubled with such dreams  and such thoughts that she's afeared of herself sometimes.  Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all the nights of the year'."

He must undertake this journey, the purpose of which is never revealed, tonight, and it must be between dusk and dawn and so he sets off.  It's a strange surreal sort of journey and he soon meets up with a man dressed similarly to himself in decent attire and dark clothes who chastises him for arriving late.  But his wife, Faith, he tells him detained him.  It's deep dusk and the two are far into the forest but they still have many miles to travel.  Goodman Brown seems tired already and his fellow traveler offers him his staff, which quite oddly is in the shape of a serpent.  But he resists saying he has met the man as promised and is going to return home this night.  Goodman Brown tells him, "I have scruples touching the matter thou wot'st of".

They meet others in the forest and strangely they are people Goodman Brown recognizes from Salem.  People of worth and value and good Society.  They meet an old woman called Goody Cloyse who does take the offer of the staff and seems to fly away (maybe like a witch on a broomstick).  Even stranger Goodman Brown sees the lovely pink ribbon of his beloved Faith.  Time and again he tells the man he is going to resist the Devil ("With heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" he cries).

The murmurings in the forest go on and on and seem to drive him mad.  He believes his wife is there somewhere.  He is in desperation and shouts "Faith! Faith!".  And then something comes fluttering down from the trees above, and he seizes it--the pink ribbon. 

"'My Faith is gone!' cried he, after one stupefied moment.  'There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name.  Come, devil; for to thee the world is given'."

So, he loses his Faith, which I think is not really his wife, of course, but his faith.  The people of Salem, the people of his church are in the forest and whatever it is they are doing (some sort of witchery?), he is the lone who is brought forth as the Convert.

But is it all real?  Or did he only fall asleep in the forest and dream this dark dream?  If it was only a dream, it was an "ill omen" as ever after he lost his youthful happiness, and "shrank from the bosom of Faith". 

So this was not what you would call a happy story.  So, our Good Man has lost his Faith.  Hawthorne wrote this in 1835 but the setting is 17th century Salem which brings to mind the witch trials and perhaps what was happening in that dense dark forest was a witches' Sabbath?  It does make me curious at what was going through Nathaniel Hawthorne's mind.  I really must read more about him (and by him, too).

* * * * * *

This week's New Yorker story is "The Naturals" by Sam Lipsyte.  You can read the story here, and read about the story here.

Next week it's Edgar Allen Poe's turn at the podium with "Ms. Found in a Bottle".  Poe is always good for a short story (I've read and enjoyed a number of his stories--my all-time favorite being "The Cask of Amontillado"!

End of the Week Mishmash (in pictures)

Ooh, look what I found!  Sarah at Reading the Past has one of her most excellent historical fiction book lists up and here it is, the book I am waiting for: Sarah Waters's forthcoming novel!  The Paying Guests is due out in the US September 16 (so far away it seems, but it will come sooner than I think!).  Here's the blurb:

"It is 1922, and London is tense. Ex-servicemen are disillusioned, the out-of-work and the hungry are demanding change. And in South London, in a genteel Camberwell villa, a large silent house now bereft of brothers, husband and even servants, life is about to be transformed, as impoverished widow Mrs Wray and her spinster daughter, Frances, are obliged to take in lodgers. For with the arrival of Lilian and Leonard Barber, a modern young couple of the 'clerk class', the routines of the house will be shaken up in unexpected ways. And as passions mount and frustration gathers, no one can foresee just how far-reaching, and how devastating, the disturbances will be. This is vintage Sarah Waters: beautifully described with excruciating tension, real tenderness, believable characters, and surprises. It is above all a wonderful, compelling story."

Vintage Sarah Waters.  It has been "sold" in my mind since I heard she was writing a new book.  According to Sarah 500 galleys are being given away at BEA.  I wish I could go.  Sigh.  It is being released August 28 in the UK, but for once I think I like the US cover design more than the UK design.  Surely I can wait an additional three weeks (biting fingernails as I type that) for the US edition?     

Okay.  Patience.  I have plenty to keep me busy while I wait.  And lots of new reading goodies even.  Here's a bit of 'ready for the weekend' randomness (I don't know about you, but I am very ready for the weekend!).  All in pictures, too.  This is the stack of books I have read that I have not yet written about.  One of my goals this year is to write about the books I finish (in some way or other).  I have a few to catch up on.  Seeing as I am reading so slowly and finishing fewer than in previous years, the stack is actually not too out of control.  My most recent finish is the Chekhov on the top of the pile. 

My next novella?  One of these three, I think.  As yet undetermined, but I'll decide this weekend.  And if I can write about at least one of the books in the photo up above, it will be an industrious sort of weekend, too.

And, hey, while I'm at it I have been thinking about the book by Pat Barker I just finished and had heard that her previous book was a companion of sorts.  When I read the description in the dust jacket it sounded as though the stories run almost concurrently, which intrigues me so I have added it to  my pile as well.  Why not, right?  I can at least dip into it this weekend.

After feeling so miserable last weekend, I think I am finally getting my equilibrium back (thankfully) and am settling back into a routine where I can sort of keep up with things.  I am greatly looking forward to reading some short stories again.  Strange as it sounds, I missed them last weekend.

It's about time, too, for me to pick up the next Little House book.  And while I was in Texas I discovered a new-to-me artist whose work I am trying to track down.  I found that she had illustrated a children's book written by James Thurber.  More about her, the book, and her work next week.

And maybe this weekend I will finally have a chance to browse my Persephone Biannually that greeted me when I came back from my trip? 

Since I am sharing photos, here is my progress this week on my Bee sampler.  I am working on the hive and should have it finished tonight.  I'm making slow but steady progress and enjoying every stitch.

I think I have sufficient reading material to keep me busy this weekend (and then there are the books on my night table--see sidebar--to fall back on . . . just in case).

Have a happy and reading-filled weekend everyone.

The Story of Color: A Thursday Thirteen

Have you ever thought of the meaning we assign colors?  They can describe how we feel and how we look.  They can explain our moods.  Intense color and even lack of color all has significance.  And then there is the history behind colors.  Where they come from, how we make them.  And the social aspect.  Colors have prompted men to voyage far and wide for the most rare.  Some colors were so prized that only kings can wear it.  I collect colors, or rather the meaning of colors.  Well, I collect books about colors and have a growing shelf of them.  I don't think I've ever shared a list of colors before, so here are thirteen of them.

The Story of Colour in Textiles by Susan Kay-Williams -- "From pre-history to the current day, the story of dyed textiles in Western Europe brings together the worlds of politics, money, the church, law, taxation, international trade and exploration, fashion, serendipity and science."

On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry by William H. Gass -- "On Being Blue is a book about everything blue—sex and sleaze and sadness, among other things—and about everything else. It brings us the world in a word as only William H. Gass, among contemporary American writers, can do."  (I read this not too long ago, and I swear I am still going to write about it . . .).

The Primary Colors: Three Essays by Alexander Theroux -- "A fascinating cultural history, these splendid essays on the three primary colors--blue, yellow, and red--extend to the artistic, literary, linguistic, botanical, cinematic, aesthetic, religious, scientific, culinary, climatological, and emotional dimensions of each color."

The Secondary Colors: Three Essays by Alexander Theroux -- "A collection of three erudite meditations on purple, orange, and green--the second volume in a trilogy including The Primary Colors and Black & White--encompasses poetry, song, fable, gossip, and a gallimaufry of trivia."

Colors: The Story of Dyes and Pigments by Bernard Guineau -- "From the painted caves at Lascaux, 40,000 years old, to the medieval cloth industry to today's computerized chemistry, this engaging book surveys the history of dyes and pigments-in a work as rich, varied, and colorful as a box of crayons."

Color: A Natural History of the Palette by Victoria Finlay -- "Journalist Finlay travels the world in search of ancient sources of natural colors, recounting along the way the surprising chemical processes by which everything from stones to insects to mummies have been transformed into precious pigments for paint, dyes, and varnish. In pursuit of art's first color, ochre, Finlay goes to Australia, offering, as she does in each location, an agile and entertaining then-and-now look at a place, a people, and a color and its uses and acquired meaning" (Booklist)

Interaction of Color by Josef Albers -- ". . . a masterwork in art education. Conceived as a handbook and teaching aid for artists, instructors, and students, this influential book presents Albers’s singular explanation of complex color theory principles.

The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone, and Sky by Susan Melloy -- "In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise—the color and the gem—to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape."

The Alchemy of Paint: Art, Science and Secrets from the Middle Ages by Spike Bucklow -- "The Alchemy of Paint is a critique of the modern world, which Spike Bucklow sees as the product of seventeenth-century ideas about science. In modern times, we have divorced color from its origins, using it for commercial advantage. Spike Bucklow shows us how in medieval times, color had mystical significance far beyond the enjoyment of shade and hue."

A Perfect Red: Empire, Espionage and the Quest for the Color of Desire by Amy Butler Greenfield -- "In the sixteenth century, one of the world's most precious commodities was cochineal, a legendary red dye treasured by the ancient Mexicans and sold in the great Aztec marketplaces, where it attracted the attention of the Spanish conquistadors. Shipped to Europe, the dye created a sensation, producing the brightest, strongest red the world had ever seen. Soon Spain's cochineal monopoly was worth a fortune. As the English, French, Dutch, and other Europeans joined the chase for cochineal -- a chase that lasted for more than three centuries -- a tale of pirates, explorers, alchemists, scientists, and spies unfolds."

Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans by Jenny Balfour-Paul -- ". . . tells fascinating stories from the history of the dye, such as the recent discovery of 17th-century Spanish galleons in the Caribbean carrying hundreds of chests of raw indigo, which the author successfully used to dye 21st-century fabrics."

Mauve: How One Man Invented a Color That Changed the World by Simon Garfield -- "In 1856 eighteen-year-old English chemist William Perkin accidentally discovered a way to mass-produce color. In a "witty, erudite, and entertaining" (Esquire) style, Simon Garfield explains how the experimental mishap that produced an odd shade of purple revolutionized fashion, as well as industrial applications of chemistry research."

Colors: What They Mean and How to Make Them by Anne Varichon -- "Archaeologist and ethnologist Anne Varichon takes the reader on a fascinating journey that examines not only the variety and use of natural colorants—and how to reproduce them today—but also their symbolism and mythology. From Confucian China to medieval Europe, from the Papuans to the Inuit, she travels across the centuries and around the world in this absorbing, and often surprising, cultural history of the sources and meanings of color."

I really do find reading about colors fascinating and am always on the look out for books on colors.  I work with hand dyed fibers and textiles when I can with my needlework.  And if I had a dream job that I could do and make a living with--it would be working with textiles, maybe dyeing fibers or linens.  How cool would that be?  I guess I will settle for reading about them.  If you have a book about color (or color in relation to textiles or fibers) please do share!

Toby's Room by Pat Barker

The more I think about Pat Barker's novel, Toby's Room, the more I like it.  What felt at first like a story lacking in much narrative tension and with odd and very disparate strands, despite being a war story, has on closer thought to be much more complex and layered in meaning.  At least I have been thinking about it a lot lately.  Toby Brooke, about whom the story is about, is actually absent during most of the book which puts me in mind of Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room.  (Now I am wondering if it is coincidence or how many of the similarities are on purpose?).  Toby is the thread that connects the characters.  What happens to him in the war is the motivation and reason for much of what takes place in the novel, though for me the focus felt at least as much on his sister Elinor.

(I'm afraid I have to give a spoiler or two away, so please be warned).

The story begins in 1912 but quickly moves on to the later years of WWI.  Elinor is an art student at the Slade and appears to be on the periphery of the Bloomsbury set.  Her family seems the typical middle class repressive sort and it's obvious she's trying her best to assert herself.  She goes so far as to make up a boyfriend, another Slade student, who she will later be intimate with.  Her brother Toby with whom she shares a close relationship is studying to become a doctor and at his urging she takes a course on human dissection obsessing over the identity of the man who is the subject of the students' scalpel.  As a matter of fact Elinor worries and picks at many of the things that happen in her life.  She's not one to let unanswered questions rest.

When war breaks out she wants to have nothing to do with it, to support it in no way though she will later become involved in sketching the wounded soldiers, those men who have been horribly disfigured on the battlefield.  Toby, who serves as a stretcher bearer and medic, is one of many who is listed as 'missing and presumed dead', which is a status that is unacceptable to Elinor.  It essentially means there was nothing left of the man to recover from the battlefield, but she has trouble believing there isn't more to the story.  Either he's still alive but wounded, or later when she finds an unsent note in his army tunic claiming he knows he won't return, feels something more happened that no one will tell her about.

As a Slade student she was intimate with several men, including (to be frank) her own brother.  Perhaps it's this indiscretion (what a nice way of putting it, yes?) that makes her so cold even somewhat callous.  Although she was a willing participant, as much as a young girl is in such a situation, it's obviously affected how she reacts to other men.  Although a loose circle, the group of friends such as they are, go to war together.  What happens to Toby on the battlefield (which I won't give away) makes more sense in light of his relationship with his sister.  One man has the key to the mystery and another prods him for it at Elinor's urging.

This is a story without any heroes.  There is no glory to war in these pages.  As a matter of fact Pat Barker tells a story completely unsentimental even a little mundane and ordinary.  Real life is messy even without a war.  Bad things happen in families and sometimes people are simply cold and even a little nasty.  It's not just Elinor who seems heartless.  Her former lover returns with a damaged face, but it's not just his face that is damaged.  Perhaps he stands for that generation who came home from the war in body but with wounded souls.  He doesn't look for pity from others and even confronts them with his own cruelties. 

I mentioned recently that books with unlikable characters were often some of the most interesting.  It's hard to warm up to any of the characters in Toby's Room, but I didn't like the story any less for their flawed characters.  Even Toby is referred to as both "compassionate" and "inhumane" at the same time.  I think, though, this is a very "human" story--albeit humans filled with all sorts of inadequacies and inconsistencies.  And while there was no glory, I think that in their ways the characters do try and do their best.  Even Toby, inhumane though his contemporary may have called him, tried in the end to choose the honorable path in light of the choices he made in how he chose to live his life.

I think this is not Pat Barker's best work--I still must read the Regeneration trilogy, but I found this to be an intriguing and satisfying read.  Toby's Room is one of Caroline's Literature and War Readalong books.  You can read her thoughts on it here (and she links to more reviews as well).  Next up is Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo.