A Work in Progress

I Know I Own That Book . . .

This is the nerdiest of bookish nerd habits, but sometimes I just like to peruse my bookshelves.  Maybe this is not so weird and maybe you find this to be true as well, but I think I think about books far too much.  I get on these kicks where I am in the mood for a particular kind of story (and I know I have talked about this before--probably far too much as a matter of fact) and then I will think of a book that might well be a perfect fit.  And I know I own just that book.  But, where is it on my shelves?

Guess what I spent a good hour of my night last night doing?  Shifting books looking for three books in particular.  I found those three books.  And you won't be surprised to hear that the pile of books I walked away with was three times the size I started with.  The three books in question?

Barbara Wood's Dreaming was in the back of my mind when I first started planning on my Australian Bookcation.  I was dreading having to move books around in the closet where I knew it was stored.  But I have it now, and how can I pass up a book that is described as "a spellbinding novel of Australia--and one woman's love and daring in a land of unfathomable mystery."  And I am assured that it is a "great summer book".

I read Joan London's Gilgamesh well before my blogging days, but I kept it and it remains vaguely in my mind as a story I enjoyed.  I wouldn't mind revisiting it.  Thankfully it was the easiest one to locate.  It won or was nominated for a number of awards when it was published back in 2001.  "Gilgamesh is a bewitching saga of family, lost love, and the power of storytelling."

I know what brought Armistad Maupin's More Tales from the City to mind.  I happened to watch Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo over the weekend, which was made in San Francisco (and this is so typical for me--I will see something and think how much I would like to read a book set in the same place).  I read Maupin's Tales of the City back in 2012 and had the second book at the ready.  Maybe now is the time to pick it up?

And I mentioned a few other books caught my eye?

I have wanted to dig out my copy of Maya Angelou's I know Why the Caged Bird Sings for ages, too.  It was in the same plastic bin that held the Barbara Wood novel, so of course I looked for Maya Angelou, too.

The other books were in the same piles as the London novel.

World of Pies by Karen Stolz -- Hah.  I found another baseball novel and this one sounds like fun and one I might have (or might still) read with pleasure.  "In this remarkable debut work from author Karen Stolz, readers follow the arc of a girl's life as she grows to womanhood. From crushes to surprise baby sisters to nail polish to a devastating death, Roxanne is our guide through a life that has moments of tenderness, poignancy, sorrow, and great humor, as well as some wonderful baking memories. A sumptuous novel--though like the best pie, tart in all the right places."

The Turk and My Mother by Mary Helen Stefaniak -- "Every family has its secrets. But toward the end of his life, George decides to tell his daughter the story of his mother and the Turk. This initial revelation leads to a narrative tour de force that follows a family through four generations and around the world―through love, marriage, and betrayal, through illness, death, and war. Mary Helen Stefaniak's charming and flawed characters and the warmth of her prose will stay with readers long after they close the book."

Orchids and Diamonds by Rosalind Laker -- Ah, Rosalind Laker, favorite author of my youth.  She is pure, unadulterated escapist pleasure reading for me.  I read this when it first came out and held on to it all these years.  I am sort of in the mood for just this kind of "guilty pleasure".  "Working in the high fashion world of early twentieth-century Paris, lovely Juliette Cladel falls in love with a young Russian count and sculptor, Nikolai Karsavin, but the young lovers soon find themselves separated by family duties, war, and revolution."

The Spare Room by Helen Garner -- Another one for my Australian lit reading pile.  "In her first novel in fifteen years, Helen Garner writes about the joys and limits of female friendship under the transforming pressure of illness."

Crescent by Diana Abu-Jaber -- This is another book I have been thinking about on and off for a while but have been too lazy to go in search of.  Happily it was one I came across as I was shifting books!  "Sirine, the heroine of this "deliciously romantic romp" (Vanity Fair) is thirty-nine, never married, and living in the Arab-American community of Los Angeles. She has a passion for cooking and works contentedly in a Lebanese restaurant, while her storytelling uncle and her saucy boss, Umm Nadia, believe she should be trying harder to find a husband. One day Hanif, a handsome professor of Arabic literature, an Iraqi exile, comes to the restaurant. Sirine falls in love and finds herself questioning everything she thought she knew about Hanif, as well as her own torn identity as an Arab-American."

I want to start one of these just to start one--because it's summer and reading should especially be a pleasure in the summer!  The next dilemma is deciding which one to choose!

Teaser Tuesday: The Farm in the Green Mountains

I have already hinted at how much I am enjoying my current NYRB book, Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer's The Farm in the Green Mountains.  She is such an engaging writer and I love reading about Vermont in the 1940s through the eyes of an immigrant.  I have learned how they came to Vermont and how they decided to settle where they did.  I've read about how they celebrated Christmas and now she is painting a picture of that titular farm.  This isn't just a picture postcard cozy farmhouse that city folk take over and inhabit, but the Herdan-Zuckmayer's literally turned it into a working farm.

It all starts with a hen and a duck, and reading about these first rather eccentric animals puts me in mind of Stefanie's (at So many Books) Dashwoods!  You wouldn't think chickens could have such distinct personalities, but it appears they very much do.  In this case it is Elise the hen and Gussy the duck who are the first of what will be many farm animals.  Elise actually belongs to a neighbor, but soon will be acquired by the Herdan-Zuckmayers.

"In one of the huge modern chicken houses was a chicken that appeared uncommonly miserable, thin, and haggard.  It was not being attacked by other hens, but as soon as it wanted to go to the feeding station they made a game of forcing it away."

"'It will die,' explained the owner.  'It is a healthy chicken, but it can't survive here'."

"'Can I buy it?' I asked.  'I'd like to begin with a difficult chicken so that I can get used to having difficult animals before we get a flock'."

"'You don't need to give me more than fifty cents for it,' said the owner.  'It doesn't lay eggs because it is too scared.  But there is also a duck,' he continued, ' that you can have for nothing.  She is too tough to kill and eat, and she disturbs the entire duck pen'.  Thus we got to know Gussy, the antisocial duck."

***

"Elise blossomed.  She made up for everything which had been denied her in communal living.  After three weeks we had to put her on a diet so that she wouldn't burst."

"Later, when the regular farm hens arrived, she held the top position in the chicken house.  She was, so to speak, the headmistress and assigned nests, perches, and feeding spots to the newcomers.  She was not intelligent, but her mental capacity fit comfortably in the chicken community."

Apparently Gussy's case was quite different.   Gussy was a bit of a shrew but she turned into a very independent mother duck.  Somehow somewhere I feel like there is an important lesson to be learned in animal-keeping.  Sometimes it's thought humans are so very superior, but I think watching the animal world can be a little like looking in a mirror!  It's just as entertaining to read about the animal dynamics in this book as the human dynamics.  And I swear I came across a reference somewhere in this book (and maybe a few other places outside the book, too) that Vermont has a fair few eccentrics. 

Maybe that is where I need to go next!

The Dark Circle by Linda Grant

I wonder what the inspiration for Linda Grant's Baileys Prize shortlisted novel, The Dark Circle was.  It is not the first book that comes to mind that uses the setting of a sanatorium for a story, but it is perhaps the first that I have read.  Who would have thought that a book about consumptives could be so interesting.  For me the setting isn't what drives the story, but it's the characters that makes it so fascinating--in particular the treatments and how those with TB were treated.  Certainly it was an eye opening read.

It's the two "Hebrews" at the heart of the story that move things along and provide the impetus for change at the sanatorium at the end of the story.  Brother and sister of London's East End, Miriam and Lenny are not the sort of client-rather patient-that the Gwendo was built for.  Not so long ago the only people who could even afford to take up residence at the Gwendolyn Downie Memorial Hospital for the Care of Chronic Cases of Tuberculosis were middle class or better.  But it is 1949 and National Health means that when the pair are diagnosed with TB, it's down to the south of England and the Gwendo they go.  The ambulance driver, used to a better class of patient thinks to himself that these two are common as muck.

Lenny is the one who has been rejected for Army service (and here his uncle had a plan to get him out of it but his worst nightmare comes true, since Lenny really is sick).  He is the one with the serious case and it seems as though Miriam only has the sniffles but she'll be the one who flounders in the treatment.  Inseparable are the two, but upon arrival they are split up (much to their chagrin) and thus does the story begin.  The patients are an odd assortment from a very distinguished and titled lady to, arriving on scene much later, a colorful and very opinionated American serviceman caught and diagnosed on his way home after the war.

I found most engaging the character sketches (one woman described as: ". . .if it hadn't been for the war she would have become one of those unhappily married women who had read everything in the local lending library and drank too much sherry before her husband came home from work.  Then war had given her something decisive and important to do."), and the character dynamics as well as what seems such frightening and (maybe?) antiquated treatments such as the collapsing of a lung to "let it rest" or the removal of ribs, which I still don't think I understand the purpose of. 

Lenny and Miriam do cause quite a stir--class and religion aside--even their dress and behavior, but it's even more exacerbated by Arthur's American-jazzy-pop-culture arrival.  Well, that and the possibility of a new drug that might well cure  most of the Gwendo's TB cases.  It's only a pity that there are a limited number doses available for trial and the doctor in charge must select a very few patients on whom to give the drug.  Life at the sanitarium is thrown into an upheaval the likes of which will send it spinning out of control.  This is what happens when the patients stage a subversive, clandestine revolt.

You wouldn't think that a story set in a sanatorium could have all that much of a narrative arc.  I mean the patients are put on severe bed rest, but the lives of the core group of characters are followed through well into their middle ages taking the story into the Millennium.  There is not so much of a climactic moment of revelation as an explanation of why they end up where and how they do and how their relationships with each other intermingle and ultimately play out.

I've long been curious about Linda Grant and this novel finally gave me the nudge to try her work.  I have at least two more novels by her on my reading stack that I am even more eager now to try.  I enjoyed The Dark Circle, but I have a feeling I might like her other novels a tad bit more.

Last Month, This Month: My NYRBs

I'm having a so-so NYRB reading year.  Not in the selections they are sending, which are always somewhere between really good and pretty amazing.  My so-so is just in how well I am keeping up with reading them as they come out.  Some year, I swear I am going to make good and read each and every NYRB that comes through my door via subscription including the freebie.  But for now I guess I shall just continue to chip away at them.

I really enjoyed April's book, Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon, which is this interesting melding of fact/memoir and fiction.  She hints at not wanting to bother with straightforward memoir, so the book falls somewhere in the realm of literature/fiction.  It certainly reads like a memoir, but surely coming at a life's history is tricky and you have to fill in the gaps in some way.  Calling it fiction must give you the freedom to perhaps embellish a little.  I hope to write about it next week some time (still need to read the afterword which I expect will be quite illuminating).  I wrote a teaser to the book here.

I am reading May's selection now (it took the long, circuitous route to my mailbox so arrived quite late in the month).  NYRB has a knack for choosing and publishing interesting memoirs--quite often those memoirs are reissues of older books that were perhaps forgotten but should not have been!  I am quite thoroughly enjoying Alice Herdan-Zuckmayer's The Farm in the Green Mountains.  The book was originally published in 1968 and came about from a series of letters home.  The Zuckmayer's were German and lived and flourished in Weimar-era Berlin but had to flee--first to Austria, then Switzerland and finally they landed in the US.  LA didn't suit them so they moved to the east coast and ultimately took up residence in Vermont.  I love these kinds of books where I get a different perspective on my own country through the eyes of immigrants.  This has that layer of nostalgia about it as she is writing about WWII era Vermont.  I am trying to read a chapter/letter a day and hope to make steady progress and finish it well before the end of the month so I can get to June's book.

As a side note I have to say I have had a really good run with nonfiction/memoir-ish selections from NYRB--there has been Eleanor Pereny's More Was Lost and Teffi's Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea from last year and both of which I recall still with fond memories.  And several years back when I first started subscribing I discovered Vasily Grossman's An Armenian Sketchbook.

Ah.  June's book looks like it might be challenging (not least due to the 400 pages that make up the text--more to love, right?), though I see some very good reviews about it.  This month's book is a reissue of the 1968 Arabia Felix: The Danish Expedition 1761-1767.  It chronicles the expedition made by six men from Copenhagen traveling by sea to Arabia Felix (what we know as Yemen today).  It sounds like quite a cutthroat expedition, which took seven years and only one survivor returned to Denmark.  "Based on diaries, notebooks, and sketches that lay unread in Danish archives until the twentieth century, Arabia Felix is a tale of intellectual rivalry and a comedy of very bad manners, as well as an utterly absorbing adventure."   

If it ends up being more challenging than I can manage in the summer heat, I plan on going back to February or March's books, which have fallen through the cracks--Guy de Maupassant's Like Death or Henry Green's Living.  Any time I pick up a NYRB I know I am in good hands, so wherever I end up at the end of the month, I know I will be in for a treat.

Their Finest Hour and a Half, Lissa Evans

So, I've read the book and seen the movie.  Not quite in that order, but sort of.  Lissa Evans's Their Finest Hour and a Half (published in the US as Their Finest ) was longlisted for the Orange Prize (back when it was still the Orange Prize) in 2009.  I think I have owned my copy (the UK edition below left) since it came out in paperback, and best intentions and all that--it took the adapting of the story to the big screen for me to finally give myself the excuse to read it. 

I really liked the book, which I read about half of before breaking down and seeing the movie (since it was in the theater for only a short run), which I really loved.  It was sort of a strange read since it was interrupted halfway by seeing the film.  Probably not the best way to do either, but maybe it somehow made me appreciate both a little more and in different ways, I think.

I don't ever like to give away spoilers, but I am going to share a few details (no worries, not all of them or anything really climactic).  I think I appreciated the relationship between Catrin and Buckley more in the movie than in the book.  Ambrose (played by the wonderful Bill Nighy) has most of the best lines in both the book and the movie.  He was especially appealing in the film and totally brought to life by Nighy, snobbish curmudgeon though he was.  But oh my, that wonderful dry wit.  There was far more to the book than the movie, but isn't that always the case.  That said the film was pretty true to the story, there were simply a few storylines and quite a few characters left out.

Now let me backtrack just a little to fill in the story in case you're not familiar with Their Finest: A Novel.  It's WWII and Catrin Cole's work writing advertising copy puts her in good stead to take on a job writing propaganda for the Ministry of Information.  (Forgive me if I overlap details from the movie onto the book--it has all started to jumble together now).  Her help in writing dialogue for films is what Buckley calls, or what is commonly known as writing "the slop", or the women's dialogue.   Yes, I know.  Maddening, but here we are in the 1940s. 

Now Catrin a most likable young woman from Wales could not wait to leave home.  Leave home she did, by following an artist back to London.  Ellis Cole works for one of the ministries painting.  They have an interesting relationship, not quite mutually beneficial, but that's a detail I think I'll leave unremarked upon.  So Catrin works across from Tom Buckley, who has an opinion about everything.  He's whip smart and fast on the draw when it comes to witty comebacks.  To be honest I had to look a bit harder after seeing movie previews for their budding romance, which seems more obvious in the movie than the book.  They work together writing a script to be filmed to help shore up support for the war and maybe even help influence the Americans to join in the effort.  They banter back and forth but ultimately come to respect one another.

Ambrose Hilliard is an aging actor who refuses to accept that he is no longer wanted for those dashing young heroes parts and he makes miserable the life of his agent Sammy Smith (and pretty much everyone else around him).  What happens to Sammy and subsequently Ambrose's association with his agent's sister Sophie is changed quite a lot from book to movie.  Softened shall we say.  Curiously it works in both book and movie, though I can see why it was changed in the movie--(rather like those propaganda films, I suppose, to please and influence the audience).  Some of my favorite scenes were with Ambrose.  And Cerebus the dog.

The story arc is essentially that this group of screenwriters and actors have come together to make this film.  They decide to base it on the true story about two young women, twins, who took their father's fishing boat out and over the Dunkirk to help save the soldiers stranded on the beach.  Only things get more than a little twisted as in reality the girls never quite made it over there, the boat having broken down and they had to be towed back.  Still, a tiny morsel of the story is true but highly embellished in the end.  In the book there is the addition of several characters who feature fairly prominently--Arthur, a young man on loan from the army to serve as the film's "special military advisor" and Edith a seamstress from London who was bombed out in the Blitz and has come down to Cornwall to settle her nerves.  There is a nice little romance in this corner that is left out entirely in the movie.

I really enjoyed the book, which was more serious than I expected, though with plenty of humorous relief.  There are scripts and dialogue interspersed and the chapter headings/section breaks give hint to what is coming (kind of like a feature film).  There was a lovely sense of time and atmosphere and I thought it was a story that translated well onto the big screen.  Evans has a knack for writing well about this era.  A couple of years ago I read Crooked Heart by Evans, which I think I liked even more than Their Finest.  Both book and movie are worth taking in and I look forward to whatever Lissa Evans comes up with next.

Coming Soon: Books to Make Note of

It's already toasty warm where I live.  The heat of summer has arrived early it would seem.  I definitely need a few good distractions to keep my mind off it.  Of course my reading pile is offering a number of wonderful diversions.  And then, there are new books forthcoming.  As is they are something to look forward to when the heat begins to subside (I don't want to wish time away, but I don't do well in really hot weather so it is nice to look ahead and new books offer a sort of place marker).  So here's a handful of books that I will be looking forward to that will help get past those upcoming hot and humid days.  The dates preceding the title are release dates.

July 11 (still hot, but oh well): At the Table of Wolves by Kay Kenyon -- "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy meets X-Men in a classic British espionage story. A young woman must go undercover and use her superpowers to discover a secret Nazi plot and stop an invasion of England."  This sounds like fun so maybe it will be a nice escapist read.

August 3: Midwinter Break by Bernard McLaverty -- "A retired couple, Gerry and Stella, travel to Amsterdam for a holiday to refresh the senses, do some sightseeing, and generally take stock of their lives. Their relationship seems easy, familiar—but over its course we discover the deep uncertainties between them.  Bernard MacLaverty is a master storyteller, and this is the essential MacLaverty novel: compassionate observation, elegant writing, and a heartrending story. It is also a profound examination of human love and how we live together—a chamber piece of resonance and power."

August 15 (But the end of summer is getting closer): Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by Chiara Barzini -- "An Italian teenage girl shows up in 1990s Southern California in this culturally astute, strong-voiced novel. Barzini, truly a writer to watch, positions herself astride both American and Sicilian cultures, and packs this visceral book with strong sensations from both. The novel and its heroine, Eugenia, are deeply seductive (NYT)."

September 5: The Ghost Orchard by Helen Humphreys -- I really love her writing, though I have only read novels so far.  This one sounds really interesting.  "With her signature insight and exquisite prose, she brings light to such varied topics as how the apple first came across the Atlantic Ocean with a relatively unknown Quaker woman long before the more famed “Johnny Appleseed”; how bountiful Indigenous orchards were targeted to be taken over or eradicated by white settlers and their armies; how the once-17,000 varietals of apple cultivated were catalogued by watercolour artists from the United States’ Department of Pomology; how apples wove into the life and poetry of Robert Frost; and how Humphreys’ own curiosity was piqued by the Winter Pear Pearmain, believed to be the world’s best tasting apple, which she found growing beside an abandoned cottage not far from her home."

September 12: The Madeleine Project by Clara Beaudoux -- I love the sound of this and can't wait for it!  "A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung twentieth-century figure. Along the way, she uncovers a Parisian life indelibly marked by European history."

September 12: We Were Strangers Once by Betsy Carter -- "On the eve of World War II Egon Schneider--a gallant and successful Jewish doctor, son of two world-famous naturalists--escapes Germany to an uncertain future across the sea. Settling into the unfamiliar rhythms of upper Manhattan, he finds solace among a tight-knit group of fellow immigrants, tenacious men and women drawn together as much by their differences as by their memories of the world they left behind."

September 12: Forest Dark by Nicole Krauss -- " . .  . an achingly beautiful and breathtakingly original novel about personal transformation that interweaves the stories of two disparate individuals—an older lawyer and a young novelist—whose transcendental search leads them to the same Israeli desert."

October 3 (Just in time for RIP season--can you already smell the apple cider and pumpkin aromas in the air?): Colonial Horrors: Sleepy Hallow and Beyond by Graeme Davis -- "This stunning anthology of classic colonial suspense fiction plunges deep into the native soil from which American horror literature first sprang. While European writers of the Gothic and bizarre evoked ruined castles and crumbling abbeys, their American counterparts looked back to the Colonial era’s stifling religion and its dark and threatening woods."

Brr.  January 9, 2018: The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey -- "Inspired in part by a real woman who made history by becoming India’s first female lawyer, The Widows of Malabar Hill is a richly wrought story of multicultural 1920s Bombay as well as the debut of a sharp and promising new sleuth, Perveen Mistry."

January 23, 2018!: The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn -- This looks like one of those voyeur-looking-out-the-window and seeing something you should not books.  "Twisty and powerful, ingenious, and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock."

A few books to take us through the summer and well into fall. 

Teaser Tuesday: Wait Till Next Year

Well, I think I have found a keeper of a book that fills a number of bookish desires, so thanks to all (especially Linda who first recommended it) who shared baseball-related reading suggestions!  I am reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Wait Till Next Year for this month's reading prompt.  I am happy that I managed to find a book that I will enjoy and am sticking with my original list of themes.  And I have a complementary list of other books that I have saved for later as well.

I've only just started to read, but I am already caught up in the world of the author.  Nonfiction or not, she is a very good storyteller.  Although there is more than a smattering of baseball, she writes about her family with much affection and their story is so interesting that the baseball just feels like an interesting detail.  NYC in the 1950s, what's not to love.  NYC, while I have never properly visited there (have only been so far as one of the airport terminals at JFK airport) is one of  my favorite cities to read about.

I am sure my teaser is going to endear the author (and her mother) to you as much as it did to me!  She doesn't just love baseball, but she loves books as well.  It is a love passed on to her from her mother, whose health issues left her housebound.

"Whereas my father's interest in reading was confined mainly to newspapers and magazines, my mother read books in every spare moment: books in the middle of the night, when she had trouble breathing; books in the morning, after she cleared the breakfast table; books in the early afternoon, when she finished her housework, shopping, and ironing; books in the late afternoon after preparations for dinner were completed; and, again, books in the evenings."

And then she goes on to describe not just her mother's love of books, but what life was like in this particular time and place, which is what helps bring this all to life for me visually.

"The corner drugstore had a lending library where current best-sellers could be rented for several cents a day.  And in the center of our town stood the cramped public library she adored, an old brick building built before the town had a high school or bank.  With linoleum tiles on the floors, a massive receiving desk, ladders reaching the top shelves, and books spilling out from every corner, our library held a collection begun more than a decade before the village itself was incorporated in 1893.  The books my mother read and reread--Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, Tales of the South Pacific, David Copperfield--provided a broader, more adventurous world, an escape from the confines of her chronic illness.  Her interior life was enriched even as her physical life contracted."

And here is the best bit of it--what utterly resonates with me.

"Is she couldn't change the reality of her situation, she could change her perception of it; she could enter into the lives of the characters in her books, sharing the journeys while she remained in her chair."

Amen to that!  That is just where my own reading is at right now even if our circumstances are very different.  Is this not a great teaser or what?  Perfect June reading.  Perfect anytime reading. 

In This Grave Hour, Jacqueline Winspear

Finally back in familiar territory and a most enjoyable and satisfying read.  Maisie Dobbs, a little older, always wiser, not quite as grief stricken and ready to face yet another war.  Storm clouds had been on the horizon for the last couple of books, and now they have arrived.  Jacqueline Winspear's thirteenth Maisie Dobbs mystery, In this Grave Hour, opens on that fateful day, September 13, 1939 as Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declares war on Germany.  Somehow this book feels like a circuitous but circular route has finally ended in a sort of completion even as we open a new chapter on world history.  While this mystery is steeped in the events of the Great War, Maisie and her friends and colleagues realize that they really must face yet another terrible conflict.

While I do love a good novel of suspense and espionage and spy stories are always welcome, the last few years have been particularly rocky ones for Maisie.  The last two books definitely have taken her out of the realm of mystery/detection and even several books prior to those hinted at another path that Maisie would take.  Perhaps not at all surprising considering her late mentor, Maurice Blanche had a secretive past involving work with HM's government and the Secret Service, that she would also one day get involved in spy work.  Her work as a psychologist and her sharp and intuitive mind and years of training means she is a natural for such work.  She is a brave and capable woman but the work has been dangerous, and she has done her work mostly on her own.  This has been a Maisie very different than the one so familiar during her more routine investigative work.

I hate to give any spoilers away, so I won't mention much about her personal life, but she had love and then lost it tragically, and it left her reeling.  So the last few novels had been quite a departure from the Maisie I've known and loved as her life has had some very major upheavals.  It feels good to get back to business and see all those familiar faces peopling the pages of this story once again.  Maisie is known to have been a little prickly and very much the perfectionist.  I've always loved the character of Maisie Dobbs, but it feels like her edges have finally softened.  That impenetrable wall that has existed around her has begun to crumble and I see glimpses of a very human woman who maybe doesn't always have all the right answers or make the best decisions but she always makes them with her heart in the right place.

Anticipating the announcement Maisie is invited to the home of her much loved best friend Priscilla Partridge to hear Chamberlain's radio address.  She and Priscilla met at Girton and then went through the Great War sharing experiences that would forever tie the two together.  Although they come from vastly different backgrounds they have always complemented and supported each other.  Priscilla's three sons refer to Maisie as Tante Maisie and they form a tight-knit extended family.  The support will be needed now more than ever as Priscilla's husband is called up to do government war work and her sons are just on the cusp of adulthood.  Already the war fervor has started and it's not hard to imagine the boys' desire to join up and become involved.  Priscilla lost brothers in the first war so she's pained at the thought of another war and the danger her sons may soon be placed in.

The mystery of the novel hearkens back to the First World War even as the Second one begins in earnest.  Francesca Thomas, formerly of Belgium but now working clandestinely for both the British and Belgian governments asks Maisie to look into the murder of a Belgian immigrant.  A man who had come to England as a refugee from the First World War has been murdered in what appears to be an assassination style.  He was shot in the back while kneeling.  Although Maisie has given up any sort of espionage work, she agrees to help Thomas with her inquiries since this appears to be a "straightforward" murder.  Of course rarely does murder turn out to be straightforward and things become more complicated the deeper Maisie digs to find answers.  And one murder soon turns into two and then three.  But once again Maisie is back at Fitzroy Square and in her old digs with Billy and Sandra back at work helping the investigation.

Maisie's personal life may have (happily) settled down but Winspear has opened up new possibilities for her and for Priscilla.  The murder is not the only thread that weaves through this story.  When war was declared London's youngest citizens began flooding the countryside to get them out of harm's way (the Blitz has not yet started but the fear of German bombs is palpable).  Among the evacuees to come stay in Maisie's home village is one small girl who seems abandoned.  She won't let her suitcase out of her sight and won't remains mum as to who she is, so there is a bit of a mystery involved there as well.  Lots of old faces return in this story including a former friend (there was a hint of the chance of something more so many many years previously), Richard Stratton.  So many old faces return as the war calls them all to take on new roles.  I can already foresee lots of new avenues for Winspear to explore as both Priscilla's and Billy's sons all are coming of age.  And Maisie's and Priscilla's previous war work and the fact that both women are capable drivers (Maisie has an Alvis!) likely will give them opportunities to do their part.

Needless to say I am already looking forward to Maisie's next adventure and am happy that she will be joined with family and friends who have been too far in the background in recent books.  It's a testament to how much I admire Maisie that I have read each and every book.  The Maisie Dobbs series in order consists of: Maisie Dobbs, Birds of a Feather, Pardonable Lies, Messenger of Truth, An Incomplete Revenge, Among the Mad, The Mapping of Love and Death, A Lesson in Secrets, Elegy for Eddie, Leaving Everything Most Loved, A Dangerous Place and Journey to Munich. I've linked the titles to my own reviews.  And now the wait for the next book begins.

A Little Aussie Lit Update: New Reads

After a brief interlude spent with Maisie Dobbs (I finally finished her latest mystery--very enjoyable and am very happy to see the story back on track--more about it next week) I am ready to return to my Australian adventures.  As you can see by the photo above I have added a few more potential reads to the pile.  These are all just possibilities mind you (wishful thinking I could read more than I know I will in reality manage), though I do plan on starting one of these this weekend.  I wonder if you could guess which . . . As I am looking forward to checking out a new book that just arrived at the library where I work (it is in processing at the moment) and it will be the perfect companion read to one of the books in this stack. 

For now, however, I am returning to three books which I have missed picking up every day.  I did make a little progress in Mary-Rose MacColl's Swimming Home.  It would seem there is something of a mystery under the surface that is intriguing me.  Young Catherine is an orphan living with her aunt Louisa.  Her father has recently died of a sudden heart attack, but her mother died under slightly mysterious circumstances.  There is a housekeeper back in Australia (Catherine is now in London) who is a Native Australian, unwed but with a son, who is much loved by Catherine.  She practically helped raise her and she and Michael grew up together--often spending more time in the water than out of it.  They share a special bond and I wonder how things will play out.

I had been reading A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute on my tablet, but it had to be 'returned' as another reader requested it, so I am back in line.  I do have a very old mass market copy (with very small print that is on the hard side to read).  Jean had only just met up with a couple of Aussie soldiers, including Joe Harmon, who has just stolen petrol off the Japanese soldiers to use to barter for medicine for the English ladies.  This perhaps is what he will end up "paying for", which I am not looking forward to reading about.  Perhaps once I get past that bit it will be easier going.  For now, though, the group of women and children is dwindling as they march back and forth realizing that their captors don't really have a place for them to go at all and this seems to be their solution for these foreign ladies.

I had just met "the Authoress" in Kate Morton's The Forgotten Garden when I had to set the book down.  She is the lady who brought Nell to the ship that will ultimately carry her to Australia all by herself.  When I get back to the story it is the Authoress's history that I am going to be filling in.  The story moves back and forth between characters in and time.  There is even stories interlaced into the narrative that the Authoress wrote.  It is this book that was in Nell's suitcase when she was found.  Definitely lots of mystery here to try and piece together.  Nell is certainly a prickly character, but I think I am going to like her granddaughter Cassandra as I get to know her better.

I am hoping to start reading a book that will be lush with descriptions of the country.  Perhaps I will peruse my pile here for something up that alley . . . in addition to my pair of books that should complement each other nicely.  I could happily be on Catherine's island right now.  Sitting on the beach watching her swim!

June Prompt: Play Ball

Well, it would seem as though I am not drawn to books about sports (that deal directly with them or just touch on them).  That is probably not really surprising, but I still expected to find more than four books on my shelves!  Stories I thought had something to do with sports in reality didn't.  Funny how memory can be so unreliable.

Still, maybe it is better not to have too many to choose from?  I did, however, find a few and have one on the way in the mail even now as I type.  I'll save that "official" June read for last.

Laura Lippman's sleuth Tess Monaghan came to mind right away as she is a rower.  No balls per se, but still sports.  I read the first book in the series a few years ago and often think it is time to pick up the second, Charm City.  Serendipity since this is how the book description begins: "Reporter-turned-p.i. Tess Monaghan loves every inch of her native Baltimore--a quirky city where baseball reigns, and homicide seems to be the second most popular sport."  I really like Tess, she is a little quirky and reminds me of Stephanie Plum a little bit.

Josephine Tey's Miss Pym Disposes is set at a Physical Training College.  "Miss Lucy Pym, a popular English psychologist, is guest lecturer at a physical training college. The year's term is nearly over, and Miss Pym -- inquisitive and observant -- detects a furtiveness in the behavior of one student during a final exam. She prevents the girl from cheating by destroying her crib notes. But Miss Pym's cover-up of one crime precipitates another -- a fatal "accident" that only her psychological theories can prove was really murder."  I want to read more of Tey's work (and have a biography of her as well).  Surely you can't beat a nice Golden Age mystery for a little summer reading, too.

The Break by Pietro Grossi has long been on my reading pile and I remembered it involved billiards.  Aside loving the cover illustration for this book, it sounds really, really good.  I have a feeling it is a novel that perhaps many have not heard of.  "Dino is a placid, unambitious man. Living in a small provincial town, he and his wife spend their time planning journeys to faraway places - journeys they never take. Dino's only passion is billiards, and he spends his evenings in the local billiards hall honing his technique. One day, however, Dino's quiet life is interrupted - his wife falls pregnant. This the first in a series of events that shake him from his slumber and force Dino to test himself for the first time."  It sounds like a 'real life' sort of story--the beauty of the everyday, which I know I sometimes forget to look for.

And Brittany Cavallaro's YA novel, A Study in Charlotte features a rugby scholarship student in Connecticut.  I think the second book in the series is out, and this one sounds quite delightful, so if I can get moving on it, I will have to get my hands on the second book as well.  "Jamie Watson has always been intrigued by Charlotte Holmes; after all, their great-great-grandfathers are one of the most infamous pairs in history.  But the Holmes family has always been odd, and Charlotte is no exception.  She's inherited Sherlock's volatility and some of his vices--and when Jamie and Charlotte end up at the same Connecticut boarding school, Charlotte makes it clear she's not looking for friends."  But when murder ensues, the two find they have to rely on each other.  I only wonder what her vices are . . .

I will pick one of these to start now, but I think (thank you Linda!) I have found the perfect June prompt, and without 'cheating' or changing my theme.  Doris Kearns Goodwin's Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir comes highly praised and is considered a 'keeper', which by the sounds of it I think I need to own too.  "Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans."  I can already feel the nostalgia, and coming off seeing the movie about Jane Jacobs, NYC is fresh in my mind, too.  Even better, I might just learn something more about the history of baseball to make me appreciate it more!

I seriously have my reading cut out for me this month.  I am going to make a very grand attempt at 'getting caught up' with languishing books (there are a few . . . ahem) and my reading projects (there are a couple now in progress).  Maybe metaphorically speaking, but . . . time to 'Play Ball'!