A Work in Progress

The Lady Agnes Mystery by Andrea Japp

If you like your mysteries rich in detail and characterization, historical in nature, with smart female leads and with a substantial story that requires a bit of effort and a little time to play out--but one by which you will be generously rewarded, I have one I can happily press into your hands right now.  When Gallic Books offered me a copy of Andrea Japp's The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume I (La Dame Sans Terre 1: Les Chimens de la  Bête, translated from the French by Lorenza Garcia) I instantly thought-Yes!-when I read the description.  Then I considered the length and my enthusiasm was tempered just a little bit.  With longer books, there is just more to love, right?  But my track record of late with chunky books is spotty and so I tend to be hesitant before embarking on a really lengthy read, and this mystery weighs in at just under 600 pages.  I'm so glad I took the leap, however.  I loved Lady Agnes (and you can read that as Lady Agnes the character and Lady Agnes the novel) and can't wait to begin reading the second volume which sits next to my bed.  

So, rich in detail and characterization.  The story is set in early 14th century France.  Now you'll know that with a setting like this and with a female lead there are only so many avenues open to her if you want to keep the story as close to reality as you can.  Lady Agnes is a young widow with a daughter and a stepson of sorts.  She is titled but not wealthy and has a half brother, Eudes, of questionable morals and a lascivious eye.  Lady Agnes is smart.  She is both smart and intelligent as well as compassionate--meaning she has book smarts as well as the innate ability to process knowledge as well as the ability to deal with the difficult situations that arise in her life with tact and aplomb.  Mathilde is her daughter by marriage and she has a step son named Clément who she raises almost as her own.  He is the bastard son of one of one of her serving maids who died.  Mathilde is much loved but has a selfish streak.  Clément, however, has the same intelligence as his step-mother, maybe even more, and is fiercely loyal and utterly adoring of Lady Agnes.

The novel is peopled with religious nuns, religious fanatics, Lords and Ladies, a French king, Knights Hospitaller, Knights Templar, other notable figures taken from history as well as made up and one very wicked and malicious Inquisitor.  This book has three appendices one of which is pages of notes referring to to references in the story.  But wait, don't let this put you off or scare you.  You needn't worry too much about the historical references.  They are indeed helpful as background information and shedding light on the story and the period in which it takes place, but I didn't spend most of the book flipping back and forth.  This is, in a way, a history lesson, but one you will appreciate and never need worry about becoming a dry exposition or litany of facts.   It all meshes together nicely so you don't actually 'feel it'.  Actually it didn't take long before I found myself lost in the storytelling and had to remind myself I could read more about a character or an event or some little detail that piqued my curiosity. 

Mostly I just got caught up in Lady Agnes's life, which is relatively happy if she can keep Eudes at bay.  So, yes, Lady Agnes is a smart female lead.  Being a widow, and a respected one with a good name, she has a little leeway, to live as she pleases.  Unfortunately someone, more than one someone actually, is complicating her life.  A murder occurs on her land and by the body, carved into the ground is a letter A.  And then another.  A rather modern term, but it applies here--Lady Agnes is being framed.  She is savvy enough to use her wit and her tongue, she is exceedingly articulate, to smooth things over.

So-detail, interesting and believable characters, historical, smart women and maybe the most important element--a substantial story.  This is a story to chew and to ruminate on. It is not a simple murder mystery, which was my first impression.  The impression is correct, but the story is much, much richer than that.  Japp works within the framework of the period.  And then there is a little something else that comes in the way of a prophecy--keeping in mind that the world at this time was guided by religion.  It involves Lady Agnes, birth charts, star charts, power struggles and changes within the Church which could change the world as the characters know it.  This is a world where a drop of poison could remove from power someone and change the course of the world.  A world filled with fear--of the Inquisition.  And Lady Agnes is about to get caught up in it all. 

This is a novel that might not be for everyone but if you like juicy historical novels--juicy in details and storytelling that is--that are literary in nature and ooze historical detail (no worries--this is not a story that 'wears historical facts' like a burden) you might find yourself swept away by the story just like I was.  Think Umberto Eco and Jean-François Parot (must get back to those books as well) with maybe a dash of Judith Merkle Riley.  There is nothing fluffy about The Lady Agnes Mystery.  It does call for a little bit of effort by the reader, but you'll be well rewarded for it.  It has just the right amount of suspense to keep the pages turning. 

And now on to The Lady Agnes Mystery, Volume 2.  The first book came to a satisfying end, but there was also promise to more of the story, of which many threads still dangle.  I'm ready for another good story (or in this case, a continuation . . .) to take me far away. 

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Finally a thriller that is not the 'Next Gone Girl' or a pale imitation of The Girl on the Train.  I'm quite impressed by Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girls.  I wasn't entirely sure starting out that it would live up to the cover blurb of "a tense, compelling thriller", but in the end she won me over.  Not only was it a good thriller, but it had a little extra substance and best of all-it is a fresh and unusual story with a plot ploy that I'd not come across before.  That says a lot in a genre that is flooded by stories.  Lots and lots of stories that are the 'next best thing' but often the stories are very 'samey' if you know what I mean.

I don't tend to pick up stories that involve serial killers.  I read lots of crime novels and mysteries and like suspense but I prefer to avoid stories that are overly graphic or gruesome.  A little bit goes a very long way with me.  It seems that whenever you pick up a book involving a serial killer it is an automatic flag that there will be lots of blood involved and nasty, messy crimes that are twisted with descriptions that are far too vivid for my  tastes. 

Well, The Shining Girls does involve a serial killer.  There is some description of murders, a few scenes that are unpleasant and somewhat graphic, but nothing was too over the top or gratuitous.  The killer is nasty and beyond reproof but Beukes doesn't 'glamorize' him, if that makes sense.  The crimes are nasty is every sense of the word, but it's how the author handles all this that I can appreciate.

So, yes, Harper is a serial killer.  Oh yes, one more thing, you will need to suspend disbelief just a tad to really appreciate the story, which begins in 1974 with a young girl playing outside by herself and is approached by a man who only talks to her.  He gives her a plastic toy pony and tells her (or thinks it anyway) that she 'shines' and that he'll meet her again someday.  That's what he tells all the girls. 

Rewind time all the way back to 1931 and again we meet Harper.  He's not a nice person in 1931 and less so over the decades, through which he can slip into and out of almost at will.  Thanks to the House.  It's all down to a run in with a blind woman wearing a man's coat.  And those men he's trying to get away from.  The men who work him over and leave him.  That's why he finds the House.  The coat, the men, the violence, the House. 

"Everything happens for a reason.  It's because he is forced to leave that he finds the House.  It is because he took the coat that he has the key."

The key to time.  The key that enables him to slip into and out of time.  The perfect way to commit the perfect crime.  Crime undetectable.  He meets the women as their childhood selves and then later when they are young women he goes into the future and and murders them.  He always takes a trinket and leave a trinket from someone he has murdered.  No matter that the trinkets are anachronistic.  To Kirby he gives a pony, which has not actually been manufactured yet. But who knows.  Who looks so closely.  It's not too far out of time.  He gets better as he goes.  He knows what to do and how to do it and how not to get caught.  You see the girls have this light about them.  They shine--just like the constellations in the sky.  It's almost predetermined that it is going to happen.  It's like a self-fulfilling prophesy.  He can't not do it.  And he would have gotten away with all of it had it not been for Kirby.

Kirby is the little girl who Harper meets in 1974.  And then again in 1992.  He kills her, he finishes the job.  Or at least he thinks he does.  But maybe Kirby's light shines just a little too brightly.  She manages to save herself with the help of her dog.  Harper must make a quick get away and jump back through time to avoid getting caught.  He thinks he covers his trail.  He thinks he completed the job.  He really messed Kirby up and he almost finished her.  But she survives.  And she becomes obsessed with him.  She fears him but she can't live the way she lives--with a scar across her neck where he slashed her and she almost died. 

I'm not giving anything away by telling you that The Shining Girls is a story of a murderer who travels through time leaving behind him a trail of bodies.  I think it quite clever and Beukes handles it well.  It is something of a stretch of the imagination, but it really works.  The story is not told in a linear fashion and it is not just Kirby's and Harper's stories.  The other women are victims but also not 'just' victims.  They are characters who have their own stories to tell.  Initially I was wary of how much detail of the lives of these women was given.  You start to become attached to them knowing their lives will not have happy outcomes.

Is this really what I wanted from a story that is suspenseful and knowing how things would end?  It felt almost like being punched in the gut each new time.  But this was purposeful--Beukes didn't want to show the women as a "sexy dead body, with her tousled blonde hair and one discarded stiletto, lying in a pool of blood."  Thank you.  This is why I avoid most novels featuring serial killers.  Almost always the victims are women and the crimes are not pretty.  And sometimes it does feel like they are nameless and faceless but they are beautiful and something sadistic happens and it is meant to be entertainment.  And that makes me uncomfortable.  Beukes's novel sometimes made me a little uncomfortable, too, but in an entirely different way.  A way, on reflection, which I think is good.  And yes, it is a page turner, too.  It did take me a short while to feel the rhythm of the story and see where it was going, understand what was happening.  By then, of course, I was well and truly  hooked.

I'll be looking for her other novels now.  This was my last RIP read (I managed three this year plus lots of good stories).  I'll still read a couple more stories to fit in with the season, but The Shining Girls was the perfect way to end my RIP reading.  By the way, which cover do you like better?  I read a UK edition of the book (second cover--on the left of this post), which I think worked nicely with the story. 

Short Story Monday: Florinda

Not much reading went on this past weekend--short stories or otherwise, but I did manage to squeeze in Shamus Frazer's "Florinda" from Twelve Tales of the Supernatural edited by Michael Cox.  It was originally published in the London Mystery Magazine in 1956.  I'd never come across Shamus Frazer before this.  He only published a couple of novel and it sounds like later in life he wrote supernatural fiction, of which "Florinda" would be a great example.  He died in 1966.

Much like John Wyndham's Chocky, which I recently read and very much enjoyed, this is another example of a child who has an imaginary friend.  In this case, however, the friend is not here to make friends and study a different life form, but she has much darker and destructive intentions. 

Jane is a very average little girl who lives with her mum and dad and has a kind nanny named Miss Reeve with whom she goes in daily walks around her parents estate.  That sounds like much more than it really is.  Her father inherited a family home that is in a state of disrepair, a "sombre peeling house" called Fowling Hall and park and woodland that are in a shambles with overgrown bushes and paths that need to be cleared.  Roger, Jane's father, has an obstinate notion of settling there much to the chagrin of his wife Clare.   Also typical of the time and the class no doubt, Jane, though much loved by her parents, finds them quite distracted.  She'll talk to her mum but find she can say almost anything without her actually "hearing" her.

So when Jane tells her mum about Florinda, she is only half hearing her.  Chatting about Jane's afternoon walk she talks about Florinda, and when asked who Florinda is, Jane replies--a doll, or she thinks she is anyway.  By then her mum is lost again looking in the mirror, already her thoughts a mile away.

"Mummy, I've told you.  She's a doll, I think, only large, large as me.  And she never talks--not with words anyway.  And her eyes can't shut even when she lies down."

Jane first spotted Florinda on one of her walks with Miss Reeve.  She saw her in the lake--the part not covered and blocked by brambles.  She looked into the water to see her reflection--only there were two Janes looking back.  Only it wasn't Jane.  The face was smiling back.  But she's shy, Florinda is--shy and a little sly, too.

On this particular day, when Jane's mum was so distracted, Miss Reeve hadn't had a nice walk by the lake.  Her stockings had a "rather beautiful ladder" according to Jane--she had stumbled in some brambles--the ones in the woodland that really need to be cleared away.  When Jane says that the brambles must be left as they are, of course no one listens to her.  They mustn't be cleared away as Florinda wouldn't like it. 

"If Daddy has the bushes cut down what will poor Florinda do?  Where will she play?  There will be no place  at all for the little traps and snares she sets; no place to creep and whistle in, and tinkle int laughter when something funny happens--like Miss Reeve caught by the leg and hopping."

Poor Miss Reeve and her laddered stockings and there's only one way to make sure this doesn't happen again.  Cut back the brambles, and clear the paths.  Too bad no one else knows about Florinda, or they might have just left well enough alone.  And when the grounds are tidied up, it will put Florinda in a wicked mood.  And it will disrupt everybody.

"Florinda" is a wonderfully creepy story.  It would make a terrific movie--just a little devastating but very dark and unsettling.  Now I must see of I can find any other stories by Shamus Frazer.  He is perfect RIP reading.  I just stumbled upon his story--much like Miss Reeve stumbled on those brambles.  Oh, just thinking about what comes next sends a few shivers up my spine!  If you come across this story, I heartily recommend it.

SNB and other Weekend Notes

Yay for the weekend.  It's that time again.  There is a new issue of Shiny New Books ready for your perusal.  I have already spotted several titles that are being added to my mental wishlist.  I was kindly asked to come up with a reading list, which you can find here (you have to click on over if you want to know what the theme of the list is . . .).  You know I always like making reading lists and this is one I especially enjoyed as it meant I could revisit a few favorite recent reads.

I have a number of books I need to write about and that I am anxious to share with you, but I have to put most of my bookish endeavors on hold this weekend as I am having a new ceiling put in in my living room.  At the moment the room is completely empty and the beams open to the world.  The skeleton of my house is showing and I can see the underside of the floorboards of my bedroom from below.  It is a little weird.  And it is a lot messy.  There is a fine layer of dust on every surface.  It is amazing how all that dust can get into every nook and cranny.  And I mean every nook and cranny.  I thought I had prepared for it, but I didn't and now I will be doing a lot of scrubbing of every surface (even upstairs!) this weekend.  (Ahem, if the workmen actually finish sometime soon . . .).

I have my short story all planned out and will hopefully be reading it, but I may not be able to tell you about it until next week.   And I have a number of New Yorker stories to catch up on (as well as other interesting articles that have been calling out to me).

If I can spend time with just one book, I am nearly finished with Lauren Beukes's The Shining Girl.  It is my last RIP read of the season (though I will finish out my Sundays of ghost stories for October).  To be honest I was undecided about it--with all the provocative blurbs on the cover I was expecting tense excitement from the get go, but it has taken a while to get really rolling.  I have pretty much hit that moment of 'don't want to set the book down until I finish', which is always frustrating when it comes at a time when you really should be doing something other than reading.   

 * * * * *

While I am busy scrubbing let me leave you with some interesting links to tide you over. 

If you don't have much reading time this weekend, here is a list of books you can read in two hours or less.  Unless, of course, you are a very slow reader like me and they might be reads to keep you busy for a few afternoons.

I've been trying to not buy so many books and to continue to read from my own stacks, but I must say I am totally lusting after these.

Next weekend is the Omaha Litfest, which I am really looking forward to.  I went last year and really enjoyed hearing the author panel discussions.  This year Emily St. John Mandel is one of the featured speakers, and I'm excited to hear her after thoroughly enjoying Station Eleven earlier this year.  I had hoped to read some of the other authors ahead of time this year, but as usual my plans and desires always exceed my reading time.

It is going to be unseasonably warm this weekend (we are having summer now after a weird July and August, it would seem).  However you spend your weekend (hopefully not scrubbing!), have a great time.  And I hope it includes a book or two (and maybe even a short story).

Choosing a New Classic, or how I dither

I wasn't going to do this, but half the fun of reading is the choosing and chatting about and the choices.  I was going to make a quiet selection and just get down to it, but I seem to be dithering about the titles, which I at least have narrowed down to only four.  I was going to keep the choices reasonably short in length and nothing too close to the storyline of the James novel.  I have at least succeed on the latter count.  I think the four I have are all very different even if they are mostly a little longer than I was planning.  But, hey, with a good story, sometimes you just don't want it to end, right?

Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert -- "Based on his own youthful passion for an older woman, Sentimental Education blends love story, historical authenticity and satire to create one of the greatest French novels of the nineteenth century."  It begins:

"On the 15th of September 1840, at six o'clock in the morning, the Ville-de-Montereau was lying alongside the Quai Saint-Bernard, ready to sail, with clouds of smoke coming from its funnel."

Monsieur Frédéric Moreau has just matriculated, age eighteen, and is returning to his home in Nogent-sur-Seine from Paris. 

Ragtime by E.L. Doctorow -- This is one of the titles on the Modern Library 100 best list.  "In this extraordinary chronicle of an age, such real-life characters intermingle with three remarkable families, one black, one Jewish and one prosperous WASP, to create a dazzling literary mosaic that brings to life an era of dire poverty, fabulous wealth and incredible change."  It begins:

"In 1902 Father built a house at the crest of the Broadview Avenue hill in New Rochelle, New York.  It was a three-story brown shingle with dormers, bay windows and a screened porch.  Striped awnings shaded the window.  The family took possession of this stout manse on a Sunny day in June and it seemed for some years thereafter that all their days would be warm and fair."

What do you think--this must be the wealthy WASP family? 

The Knight of the Maison-Rouge by Alexandre Dumas -- I really love Dumas.  I would pick one of the musketeer sequels but they are pretty hefty tomes.  "Paris, 1793.  The onset of the Terror.  A brave Republican named Maurice rescues a mysterious and beautiful woman from an angry mob and is unknowingly dragged into a secret Royalist plot involving the Queen of France, Marie Antoinette, and her enigmatic, fearless champion, the Knight of Maison-Rouge."  It begins:

"It was the night of the tenth of March, 1793.  The bell at Notre-Dame had just struck then, and each stroke rang out clear and distinct, one after the other, before flying off into the ether like a night bird soaring from some bronze nest, sad, monotonous, and resonant."

I wonder if there is any swordplay?  Hmm.

The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald -- I had first pulled The Great Gatsby out for a potential reread, but I want to read it alongside one of the nonfiction books that has come out recently as it would make such a perfect pairing.  I don't have any of the other books, so another look at the pile netted me this one.  "Fitzgerald's second novel, is a largely autobiographical depiction of a glamorous, reckless Manhattan couple and their spectacular spiral into tragedy." It begins:

"In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him."

With each new book on the pile and that first glance I think, yes, this is the one!  And then I pick up the next book and think, yes, this is the one!  So you see my dilemma since they all sound really good and I want to read them all.  So now I will dip into each story and flip through the pages and read little bits here and there and then agonize over the choice a little more.  Not that that will make the decision any easier, but I should be able to whittle a book or two from the pile.       

Whichever I choose, I am determined not to take the next four months to read!

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Was it really all the way back in June that I began reading Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady?  It feels like just yesterday, but really--how long ago it feels that I first met Isabel Archer.  So, back in June I was a little intimidated by Mr. James, but found as I began reading that his prose was not so terribly impenetrable after all.  Okay, yes, some pages are edge to edge solid print.  And some of those sentences are real breath-fulls.  But I have made it through one of his longer novels, perhaps one of his very best and am feeling quite pleased with myself.  Four months on and I am finished and know Isabel's outcome.  Or do I? 

Isabel Archer.  She's an interesting character.  She reminds me a little of Dorothea Brooke from Middlemarch.  Like Dorothea, Isabel is independent though poor at the story's outset.  She vows not to marry, to maintain her independence but then makes a poor choice from her multitude of suitors, though on the surface he seemed so promising.  At the story's outset Isabel is invited to England to visit her aunt after the death of her father.  Her cousin Ralph and his father are quite taken with Isabel.  Her aunt Lydia is rather formidable (and opinionated).  She's a curious woman who leads her own life.  I think one of Henry James's strengths is how he portrays his characters, showing their strengths and weaknesses setting them off against each other and skewering them on occasion in the process.

It is going to be hard to write about the book 'properly' (though I've not given the story thought enough to write a really, really proper post--this is just a few impressions) without giving away spoilers, so be warned--you may read more detail than you would like, so feel free to jump to the very bottom of the post if you'd rather not know the outcome.

Isabel is beautiful but poor, but that doesn't stop the marriage offers.  First up is Lord Warburton and friend and neighbor of Ralph's.  She turns him down, at which her aunt can only shake her head in dismay--how could one turn down an English Lord?  Next is Caspar Goodwood, an acquaintance from America who is quite smitten with her.  Time and again, however, she dismisses her suitors no matter the intensity of their attraction to them.  It is most perplexing actually though I respect a woman who prefers to stand on her own two feet.  Hold that thought a moment!  Isabel has charmed both her cousin and uncle and there is a true affection between the three. They think so well of her that Ralph asks his father, who is ill and knows he is dying, to leave her enough money to make her truly independent.  With a healthy bank account Isabel will be able to do as she pleases and all on her own without the need to marry, since that is what she seems to want most.

A newly minted heiress, Isabel goes off to the Continent to travel and there she meets up with the odious Madame Merle in Italy who she had met back in England.  Such a lovely woman, mentor-ish and willing to take Isabel under her wing.  Warning bells should be going off about now.  Madame Merle comes across as someone who is only looking out for the benefit of her youthful friend, a totally innocuous woman living abroad--past her 'sell-by' date but showing a helpful interest in Isabel.  While working the situation on one side, she is whispering into the ear of even more odious Gilbert Osmond.  He is an American expatriate who appears interested in the arts with his beautiful collections of paintings and porcelains and whatever else a man of his stature collects.  He seems the cultured man, a widower with a daughter who is away at convent school.  The two are plotting of course, but they never quite come across that way in the story--at least initially.  Osmond is cool and collected and seems not to be especially interested.  But Isabel is young and fresh and has a well-formed mind with many interests and, did I mention, that very healthy bank account?  Just imagine the sorts of knicknacks he might acquire with those sorts of financial reserves.

So, back to that thought--of Isabel standing on her own two feet--needing no one but wanting to be independent.  I must say, I shake my head even now in wonder, she agrees to marry Osmond after turning down two honorable and eligible young men who practically worship her.  Need I tell you what happens next?  He turns out to be a vindictive husband.  He thought he might take her and mold her into the shape he wanted, but Isabel has a mind of her own.  She may make poor choices when it comes to suitors, but she will not bend in other ways.  She is never overtly argumentative.  She could be shrewish, but she loves her stepdaughter and she seems to always do what Osmond wishes.  Seems to that is.  Pansy, Osmond's daughter by his first wife falls in love with a young man with no fortune.  He is studied and articulate and appreciates the art and cares for nothing more than to have Pansy as his wife.  Unsurprisingly Osmond, maybe just to be contraire, but mostly because he is greedy, wishes Pansy to marry Lord Warburton.  Rich and a Lord into the bargain.

And then things get really messy and Isabel knows the fix she is in.  And do I tell you what happens next?  Maybe I won't give the rest of the story away--I will leave a few succulent details for you to discover on your own.  I will just say that the ending is quite intriguing.  It could be quite infuriating if you look at it too closely.  Isabel makes a few choices knowing full well that Osmond is as odious as I knew all along.  She was treated to some additional interesting information about her husband and some extracurricular activities.  She has a choice to make.  I'd like to think that given the same choice I might choose differently, but I'll just say that Isabel made a promise she perhaps was not willing to break.  If I keep telling myself I can almost think the ending is not so bleak.  And there is a chance that given a little time she might create a new and different life for herself later.  At least that is what I hope.  Henry James doesn't make it easy and tell us what happens next. 

So, I've given you no real insights into the story.  Just what was it all about?  Why put Isabel through so much pain and trouble?  What is he trying to tell us about a loss of independence?  Or it is a loss of naivety?  I didn't read James's introduction to the novel, and maybe he shed some light on things (but I have a feeling that is not the case?).  Now that I have read the novel I feel like I finally know enough to really Read the novel, if you know what I mean.  This is what Turn of the Screw was like.  You are left with more questions than answers.  I knew what I was in for.  So now, the full disclosure.  I was so enthusiastic when I began reading, but as the story progressed I will admit that my enthusiasm was tempered somewhat.  I was put off by two such odious characters and perplexed by Isabel.  Now that I have finished and have had a little time to let the story settle, I can appreciate the story.  If it had not been for Stefanie, with whom I read the book, I am not sure I would have persevered so diligently (if reading the book in four months can be considered diligent?).  (Make sure you check out Stefanie's post to get another perspective!).  But I am happy to have done it.  Henry James under my belt, a proper long Henry James novel.  I think this is a story best left to simmer a while and then read again someday and likely it will have mellowed in my mind.  This is why the novel is a classic--to be challenged by a story and its characters and reflect on why they (we . . . I . . .) do the things they do.  So, thank you Mr. James for stretching my mind for a while. 

Normally I have a new classic all ready to go in my mind, but I think I need a little break.  What to pick up next?  Something very different perhaps.  Maybe no heiresses or aristocrats.  A different country and a different view.  Maybe a male protagonist.  The possibilities are endless!

1924 Club: So Big by Edna Ferber

I think I have a winner!  A closer look at my shelves netted me a copy of Edna Ferber's Pulitzer Prize wining novel, So Big.  I've always meant to read her and I can't tell you how long I've had this book on my shelves.  I think the stars have aligned in just the right way, don't you think?

Here's a little teaser to give you a taste of her writing and what I'm in store for story-wise.  This is a description of Selina, of whose "travails" the novel follows:

"She read absorbedly books found in boarding-house parlours, in hotels, in such public libraries as the times afforded.  She was alone for hours a day, daily.  Frequently her father, fearful of loneliness for her, brought her an armful of books and she had an orgy, dipping and swooping about among them in a sort of gourmand's ecstasy of indecision.  In this way, at fifteen, she knew the writings of Byron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte Bronte, Felicia Hemans.  Not to speak of Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth, Bertha M. Clay, and that good fairy of the scullery, the Fireside Companion, in whose pages factory girls and dukes were brought together as inevitably as steak and onions.  These last were, of course, the result of Selina's mode of living, and were loaned to her by kind-hearted landladies, chambermaids, and waitresses all the way from California to New York."

Motherless and with a father fond of gambling that is how Selina is raised--on the road.  I do like her upon our first meeting.  I especially understand that ecstasy of indecision.  Oh, how I suffer from it, too.

All in all, a very promising start I will say.

Short Story Sunday: The Face

Sometimes dreams do come true.  Only sometimes it's better that they don't--especially when the dream is really more of a nightmare.  Nightmares make for good fodder when it comes to creepy tales, and tales of the supernatural, however.  E.F. Benson's "The Face". written in 1927 and collected in Twelve Tales of the Supernatural (edited by the late Michael Cox) is 'autumnally' creepy and very much on Daphne du Maurier terrain and even has similarities to Elizabeth Jane Howard's short story from two week's ago.  It felt familiar in a way, though he gives his own spin to the waking-nightmare tale.

While the story is a perfect one to read in fall (imagine a sunshiny day, though brisk with crisp crunchy leaves underfoot), it takes place in the sultriness of summer.  As a matter of fact, it is not only from bad dreams that Hester is trying to get away from, but from the heaviness and oppressiveness of the heat. 

"Hester Ward, sitting by the open window on this hot afternoon in June, began seriously to argue with herself about the cloud of foreboding and depression which encompassed her all day, and very sensibly, she enumerated  to herself the manifold causes for happiness in the fortunately circumstances of her life."

Why such ominous feelings have been overcoming her she is unsure since she has an adoring husband and adorable children.  She is young and leads a comfortable life and is in want of nothing special.  But she has been plagues with a recurring dream.  The dream began in childhood.  First a dream that isn't particularly threatening, but always the dream is followed on the next night by another which "contains the source and core of the horror."  From this she would awake screaming.  It's been ten years at least since she was visited by it, but just the previous night it once again invaded her sleep.  On the surface the dream seems harmless.

"She seemed to be walking on a high sandy  cliff covered with short down-grass; twenty yards to the left came the edge of the cliff, which sloped steeply down to the sea that lay at its foot.  The path she followed led through fields bounded by low hedges, and mounted gradually upwards.  She went through some half-dozen of these, climbing over the wooden stiles that gave communication; sheep grazed there, but she never saw another human being, and always it was dusk, as if evening was falling, and she had to hurry on, because someone (she knew not whom) was waiting for her, and had been waiting not a few minutes only, but for many years."

As her dream continues she comes upon a clearing and a derelict church that seems almost to be falling into the sea so close is it to the edge of the cliff.  After a hiatus of so many years all of a sudden the dream begins recurring as if a warning, as if time all of a sudden is pressing on her--like an hourglass tipped over and the sand has nearly run out of the top. 

More horrifying, her dream had always been only of the path and the sea and the cliffs and the church.  But all was empty.  It was a place inhabited by non one.  Her dream was as if looking on to an empty scene.  And then the dream comes again and with it, a face.  Out of the haze of her dream--"a pale, oval light, the size of a man's face, dimly luminous in front of her and a few inches above the level of her eyes."  The face is perfect on one side, but the other is deformed and seems to look at her with a sneer and lust.  And she imagines him saying "I shall soon come for you now."

Dream and reality come together when at an exhibit of portraits painted by Vandyke she sees the face.  Not in the crowd of people in attendance but hanging on the wall.  A portrait of Sir Roger Wyburn looks back at her.  The same face of her dreams.  A portrait of a man who has been dead for more than two centuries.  Now she has a name to put to the face.  And the dreams seem to come even more frequently.  So much so that her husband begins worrying and sends her to a doctor. 

"To give way to this evermastering dread, would have been to allow nightmare to invade her waking life, and there, for sure, madness lay."

The doctor suggests time away--in the country away from the heavy heat of the summer which can be doing her and her restlessness no good at all.  A complete change is needed and so to the coast with brisk sea air--coolness and complete idleness.  Plenty of sleep and no nightmares and after a week alone her husband will find her a new woman.  And it does work.  The village lay on a lip stretch of land reclaimed from the sea.  The nightmares cease and she begins to reclaim her health and vitality.  And she even finds that she has a new energy to perhaps explore and see lies beyond this ridge . . .

But oh dear.  The coast means the sea is near.  And with the sea there are usually cliffs. 

If you want to know what happens next . . .  read for yourself!  Honestly it is October and you should really treat yourself to at least one good, creepy story!  And then come back and let me know what you think.  I really liked this one a lot.  Minimum creepiness from the man who created the Lucia stories!

I think I am going to return to this collection next weekend and give Shamus Frazer's story, "Florinda" a go.  Your homework this week?  Tell me about one good ghost story you have read--recently or even not so recently.  Was it really scary, or just nicely creepy?

The 1924 Club: Novels, in search of

Because I just don't have enough books on the go (and just when I thought perhaps I had whittled the reading pile down to a manageable number . . .), and because I am always up for a good project and even more so a good book hunt--I couldn't pass up Simon's 1924 Club.  Curious what it is?  For more details click on over to Simon's blog, but in a nutshell he is organizing a community read around books published in the year 1924.  He chose the year somewhat arbitrarily and perhaps there will be another year to read from later, but for now it's the 20s, but each reader choose whichever book they life.   He has a short list of potential titles but I am going to dig around and see what else I can come up with (that's what happens when you work in a library--it's like a challenge to dangle something like this in front of me . . . I can't help myself). 

The only catch (for me anyway) is the reading needs to be done sooner than later since he is asking for blog posts in whatever format you like between October 19-31.  No hemming and hawing, no indecision, so I will have to make a choice this weekend and start reading right away (since I am a slow reader and have a number of other things going on . . .  RIP reading is wrapping up and German Lit reading on the horizon). 

Scanning my own shelves very quickly last night netted Pink Sugar by O. Douglas, which several other bloggers (including Simon) have read and enjoyed (and isn't my copy a sweet little hardcover--you can just see it there on the top of the pile?), Edith Wharton's The Old Maid, Mary Webb's Precious Bane (which I read before and very much enjoyed and very recently thought it was time to read again), and Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp. 

I'm actually quite keen on reading Radclyffe Hall, but I have read that this novel is fairly bleak and on the heavy side.  Perhaps I will read a few pages and see how it goes.  I would happily reread Mary Webb, and I have a feeling it is the book that will rise to the top of the pile in the end, even though it has been satirized (is that the right term?) by the likes of Stella Gibbons due to its rustic setting and tragic tone.  But I liked the story of a woman who has a harelip--a physical deformity which might normally preclude her from romantic overtures, but whose beauty nonetheless shines through and she attracts not just any young man but one who is not only handsome but attractive to many women.  I can't help but liking a good 'underdog' sort of story.

But you never know.  Let me do a little searching and see what other books I might come up with.  Suggestions, you know, are always welcome!  I'll report back tomorrow if I find something worth sharing!

German Literature Month 2015

Now that it's October is it too soon to think about November's reading?  You know what I always say, the next thing to reading is thinking about reading.  Sometimes reading requires a little advance planning and as Caroline has announced the fifth annual German Literature Month in November that she and Lizzy are hosting, I might as well start giving it a little thought so I can clear my piles a bit and maybe start one of my potential reads since it is a chunkster.

You can do as little or as much as you'd like and there are plans for themed reads each week in November.  The only 'requirement' is that the books be originally written in German.  I will likely just try and read one or two books, but I might try and tailor my choices to coincide with their schedule, if I can.

So here's the fun part--looking through my piles and scoping potential reads.  I do have the first choice all ready to go as it is a review copy of a novel I have been looking forward to reading:

The Vienna Melody by Ernst Lothar -- "All Vienna knows that the inhabitant of number 10 Seilerstatte is none other than Christopher Alt, piano maker, the best in Vienna, probably in all of Austria, and possiblly the world over. His piano keys have given life to melodies by Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and many more. On his deathbed, moved by the wish to keep his children united, he leaves a will specifying that his descendants, if they are to get their inheritance, must live together in the family home."  I lived for a year in Austria and traveled often to Vienna so I am very much looking forward to this portrait of a family, a home and hopefully a city.  The novel was written in 1944 and has just this summer been reissued by Europa Editions.

Another "Vienna" book I have long wanted to read (had to have it in hardcover when it first came out--and now I think it might even be out of print--yikes) is Eva Menasse's Vienna.  "From this tale's very beginning—the birth of the narrator's father in the middle of a bridge party—the reader is plunged headlong into a novel crowded with voices, characters, tragedy, and joy."  It sounds like it might be a rather circuitous family tale through the twentieth century, but what's one more challenging book to add to my in progress collection?

Something by Stefan Zweig.  Maybe short stories as I have his Collected Stories, which I have dipped into in the past.  Or maybe one of his many novellas.  Something by him, because he is really good and it has been far too long since I have read his work.

If I do read along with the group I might pick up The Ghost-Seer by Friedrich von Schiller.  "For a rich young prince and his loyal companion, Venice promises nothing but unfettered pleasure—until they encounter a mysterious masked Armenian who delivers them a strange prophecy. And when his words prove true, this enigmatic figure develops a deeply sinister influence over them, drawing them into darker forms of 'magic.'  As the narrative progresses, it become increasingly unclear whether the apparitions the prince sees are the manifestations of a troubled spirit world or simply an elaborate hoax."

I should really read something by a woman writer, too.  I might pick up something by Christa Wolf, and I have The Quest for Christa T.  "Christa is a young girl in Hitler's Germany; she survives to embrace the new order but her idealism withers as crass materialists corrode its dream. Her story is the story of a whole generation, and a celebration of the unique value of each human being and all human life."  She seems, however, a very formidable writer, so it might not work to read her as well as the Lothar novel.

So, maybe Herta Müller would work?  I have several of her novels, including The Hunger Angel and The Passport.  The first novel might be a tad too heavy: "In The Hunger Angel, Nobel laureate Herta Müller calls upon her unique combination of poetic intensity and dispassionate precision to conjure the distorted world of the labor camp in all its physical and moral absurdity."  The Passport is "a beautiful, haunting novel whose subject is a German village in Romania caught between the stifling hopelessness of Ceausescu’s dictatorship and the glittering temptations of the West."

"Before Sex and the City there was Bridget Jones. And before Bridget Jones was The Artificial Silk Girl."  I find that a most intriguing statement and wonder if it is anywhere near the truth.  It makes it sounds as is the novel is quite light-hearted, and I might need something lighter amongst all these other heavy reads, so I will be pulling Irmgard Keun's novel The Artificial Silk Girl out to round out my pile.

Of course you never know what I might come across between now and November.  A good mystery or crime novel perhaps?  Surely you would think I have something on my shelves.  Maybe you have read a good German novel this year?  Please, do tell, if you have.  Last year there was quite a turn out of readers.  Will you be reading along, too?