A Work in Progress

Teaser Tuesday: Providence

There are times when I wish a character would walk right off the page and into real life.  Or that I could be a fly on the wall and watch what is happening rather than just reading, as if I am looking over someone's shoulder.  I can see it all to some extent in my mind, and often novels play out for me mentally like a play on a stage, but sometimes . . . I just want it all to be real.  It's when I feel like an author can see into my mind and knows what I am thinking and then write about it.  I am sure it is just chance, and everyone must feel like this at times, but it can be uncanny when you see yourself in a fictional character.  At the moment I am experiencing that with André Aciman's novel as well as with Anita Brookner's Providence.

I love Anita Brookner's work.  I can almost always sympathize with her protagonists.  As a matter of fact I can understand them and feel like she is somehow writing what is in my own head. 

"Kitty was artfully put together, manufactured and tutored by her grandmother in the way of presenting herself advantageously, given the names of shoe designers and handbag makers and a special price because of trade connections.  She felt exhausted sometimes by the sheer effort of composing her appearance, and not always sure of the results.  Was she too elaborate?"

***

"To Kitty who lacked extensive diversion, these occasions were ones of pure entertainment [academic staff meetings].  They also gave her the opportunity to look at Maurice, if he were within her line of sight, and to savor the extreme delight of anticipating their next and more private meeting.  Her expression was always rigorously schooled and she was discreet in a way that would have been becoming in a nineteenth-century governess; nevertheless, the Roger Fry Professor, looking up unexpectedly from his cubist design, had once noticed her look and was thus in possession of her secret."

***

"Tea and biscuits at the staff meeting were, for Kitty, the high point of an otherwise socially unadventurous week.  She smiled with genuine pleasure a she accepted her cup; it was the only party she enjoyed these days.  She dressed with extra care for these occasions, at which she said nothing; she thought her amateur status entitled her merely to attendance."

I know.  I guess she sounds kind of average and maybe even a little boring or sad.  Somehow, though, I understand Anita Brookner's characters.  I want to keep reading her books this year, just read through her very prolific oeuvre. 

Exposure by Helen Dunmore

Helen Dunmore was a really very remarkable writer.  It still makes me sad that she passed away last year at far too young an age.  What else would she have accomplished and how many other wonderful books might she have written?  Even now, she is still posthumously winning awards for her books.  She was the inaugural winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, and some of books have been long and shortlisted for a variety of other prestigious awards.  Her work has spanned numerous genres and she wrote both for children and adults.  I have read a handful of her books and they range in subject from a novel about D.H. Lawrence, stories of WWI and Leningrad under siege, a ghost story and other works of historical fiction and likely other topics I have yet to discover. 

I've just finished her 2016 novel Exposure, a story set in Cold War-era London that is ostensibly a spy novel, but is really something far more complex and broader in theme.  If you think you don't like spy stories, you might try this one as the espionage aspects are both on the periphery and deep in the heart, but it is all the flesh parts of the story--the daily lives, the challenges and aspirations that make up what we all call "life" that make this story so very rich and complex. 

What happens when ordinary people get caught up in extraordinary events?  It's like that moment when Tess in Thomas Hardy's novel slides that life-altering letter under Angel Clare's door, but it gets pushed under a rug hidden from the eyes of the man it is meant for.  One small act will throw lives into turmoil.  So, too, one small act in this story sets off a series of life altering and potentially destructive events.  Ordinary lives, honorable people with no ill-intentions snared in a web not of their making and not easily disentangled.

Simon and Lily and their three young children are an average British family leading a quiet middle class life in London.  On the surface they are just like their neighbors, putting away money as they earn to buy nicer things for their home.  Simon and his son spend time train watching and Lily is a teacher helping make ends meet while running a household.  There are some things, however, about them that are perhaps not entirely average, but by no means unusual.  Simon has a government job dealing with sensitive materials.  While he is subject to the Official Secrets Act he is at a lower level and not privy to heavily classified materials.  Lily is British to the core, but not British born.  She emigrated from Germany, but she is Jewish.  A distinction that not everyone understands or makes.  In any other situation these are mere details that make little difference to daily life.  But in the wrong circumstances they are details that can be twisted and used against them by both friend and foe.

"It isn't what you know or don't know; it's what you allow yourself to know.  I understand this now.  I'm on my way home, in a second-class smoker from Victoria.  I stare out over the network of roofs, shining with rain.  The train wheels click into a canter.  I have to change on to the branch line at Ashford, but that's a long way yet."

"It turns out that I knew everything.  All the facts were in my head and always had been.  I ignored them, because it was easier.  I didn't want to make connections.  I've begun to understand that I've been half asleep all my life, and now I'm waking up.  Or perhaps I am kidding myself, and it's like one of those nightmares where you push your way up through sticky layers of consciousness and think you've woken.  You sweat with relief because it's over.  You're back in the waking world.  And then, out of the corner of your eye, you see them coming."

It takes just one small act.  An old friend and a work colleague has taken something home from the office.  A file he should not have removed.  One he is not even meant to see, but he takes it home.  Then in a moment of disorientation, a moment of befuddlement due to a little too much whiskey and too many things in his hands, he stumbles and falls down a set of stairs and everything comes, quite literally collapsing down around him.  He has something he should not and so he calls the one man he thinks would be willing to help him get out of this scrape.

Simon knows he should not.  Normally he would not.  But Giles is someone from his past, so against his better judgement he goes to pick up the file from Giles's rooms, but already the wheels are set in motion.  There is someone else in the apartment, but he gets the classified file and puts it into a briefcase and brings it to his home.  Things have not come off as easily as Giles thought they would.  He is away now in hospital and Simon has hidden the briefcase behind the household wellies to be dealt with as soon as he can.  But Lily finds the case as she is cleaning.  She sees the file and the initials and the sensitive documents.  She knows just enough of Simon's work to know what trouble this can cause.  Unknown to Simon she buries the case and documents inside deep in the garden.  But it's too late to cover things up.  And then comes the knock at the door.

This is one of those stories that you watch partly in fascinated horror and gripping suspense. It is like an accident that you see happening but can do nothing at all to stop.  Contrary forces put it all in motion, forces that are meant to right those actions causing the accident, but all those well-meant intentions just dig that hole deeper and deeper.  Layer on to it all secrets from the past, thought long and well hidden.  This is an exceptional story, very carefully and subtly constructed.  It's a story about human folly and all the things we keep so well hidden inside that cause us to stumble when they are meant to be kept locked away.  I'm glad I have not read all of Helen Dunmore's work as that means there are still stories left to discover. 

This was my January prompt and off to a good start.  Although I am ready for something more by Helen Dunmore, and another spy novel, too, I'm turning my attention to February's prompt and will be sharing my potential reads later this week.

State of the Nightstand: January 28

Only one finished.  A little shifting and one book missing--Eileen Chang is not being neglected but she is staying temporarily in my locker at the gym.  Nothing new officially started.  Yet.  Expect some new books next weekend.  Ah, February.  Just a little bit closer to the official start of spring.

The Day of the Triffids, John Wyndham

I  may never look at my houseplants the same way again after reading John Wyndham's 1951 classic, The Day of the Triffids.  I thought, going into the story, that I knew what it was about, but it managed to stretch my imagination nicely in a few different and occasionally unexpected directions.  It elicited just enough dread to make it a good end-of-the-world sort of story, yet not send me totally off the edge.

"For the short time the scene was on I stared at it, fascinated.  There was our mysterious rubbish-heap plant grown to a height of seven feet or more.  There was no mistaking it--and it was 'walking'!"

That's Bill Masen, our trusty narrator and biologist who had been studying triffids in the days when they were just a curiosity and potentially useful little plant. The day of the triffids should really be, if we're going to think about how the story actually begins, the day of the shooting stars.  A spectacular event, so bright they were lighting up the sky, that everyone was in awe watching.  Everyone but Bill who was in the hospital for surgery on his eyes, which were covered, so he managed to miss the entire show--the light from those bright green stars cast a hue on those faces looking up a ghastly green.  And then promptly blinded everyone.  The triffids just took advantage of the situation. 

What follows is the realization that the world as we know it, is no more.  Bill eventually removes his bandages to find out what the fuss is all about--he has been left alone in his hospital room, aware of the meteor shower/star show yet not knowing the result of everyone's gaze upon it.  He can hear something but it isn't until he leaves the hospital that realization dawns on him--everyone is stumbling about unable to see, save a few who were in places or situations where their eyes were not exposed.  Bill meets up with a few fellow survivors including Josella Playton, a young woman who is something of a socialite and the pair try and find a way to survive the disaster encountering various groups of people with vastly different ideas of how to manage the situation. 

I read The Day of the Triffids along with Stefanie at Weeds (formerly known as So Many Books), and we decided to share our chat about the story using a few questions as prompts.  The first half is below and you can find the rest of the discussion over at Weeds.

*****

Let’s talk about triffids and the green stars. Even though the book is called Day of the Triffids, the triffids are not the disaster. It’s the green stars that cause everyone to go blind and is proposed to be a space weapon accident. The triffids are an escaped science experiment that take advantage of the disaster. What’s the point of even having triffids? 

(Me): I found this a bit confusing, but it does make the story nicely multilayered.  A catastrophe on top of a catastrophe.  One you might manage to escape, but then a second one that is so seemingly mundane it becomes the threat that can wipe out humanity--they just need to sit and wait us out, those triffids!  Talk about taking advantage of a situation. 

A comet shower causes the blindness but maybe it is not those green flashes but a satellite throwing out radiation damaging the sight of anyone who happens to be watching the spectacle from earth.  It’s a nice case of what-ifs and a combination that might just seem plausible.  Then throw into the mix humans messing with nature and trying to teach the triffids tricks that in the end quite literally just snaps back at them.  It is a cautionary tale that seems even more possible now that we do so much genetic engineering than it would have back in the 1950s.   

The comet makes an interesting story, but the triffids makes a pretty unsettling and scary story--even better.  What harm can a little plant do anyway, right?  I’ve only been thinking, though, that why would a triffid (learned behavior?) want to lash out at humans?  I guess flesh for them was food?  Curious and scary thought of a plant being a carnivore! 

(Stefanie): I think of the triffids as giant walking venus flytraps and humans are the flies!  

I kept waiting for there to be a direct connection between the green stars and the triffids--alien invasion!--there was definitely an H.G. Wells War of the Worlds vibe going on. But it turns out they are both results of human folly, which is and is not more frightening. I have to admit that the triffids lurking in the hedges was pretty creepy! 

What I found most curious was how Bill, our narrator, exonerates humans for the triffids because the triffids were useful for oil and cattle feed. But whatever caused the blindness, that was the horror and the true example of human stupidity. The triffids were just doing what came naturally even though they weren’t natural at all! So I found Bill’s reasoning a bit problematic. 

(Me): I hadn’t thought of that--I guess I glossed over his appreciation of the triffids in light of all the rest of the craziness that was going on.  He seemed to have a love/hate relationship with them.  He was stung once--so twice shy, but you’re right he still saw their value, which after all was said and done was pretty crazy.  Once they started learning for themselves at the cost of killing humans, you’d think he would be less enamored.  He certainly knew how to get rid of them, but too little too late and by then they had to think about re-inventing the wheel--for pretty much everything.  You do wonder how they possibly could get by.  Do you think they would have actually succeeded in surviving in the end?  (Did you know there is actually a sequel?  But I think this is a story that, for me, is best left finished here).

(Stefanie): Yes, a sequel, Night of the Triffids! It sounds absolutely terrible.  

Yup, given everything I was surprised that Bill was so "triffids will be triffids" about it all. I may have yelled, "what’s wrong with you?!" at the book. But he still understands them as a threat in the end, maybe, since when he gets to the island his job is going to be doing research to figure out how to get rid of them. He’ll probably come up with some devastating pesticide. I think the humans will survive in the end, though I don’t think it will be as easy as the book makes it seem. 

(Me): Job security?!  (Just kidding!).  I wonder if in the sequel they do get rid of the triffids?  Now I am curious, but sometimes it is best to let a story end where it has ended.   

*****

Bill encounters a number of different attempts at building a new society based on different ideas and values. What did you think of this? Is Wyndham making a statement? 

(Me): I sort of think Wyndham is always making a statement of some kind--or raising possibilities (mostly the type that backfire on people messing with science and nature) both good and bad.  And of course it makes for interesting storytelling.  I do think he had a way of subtly (or maybe not so much) making his own opinion known by the ways certain groups come and go--their ideas on how to make a better world and how it succeeds, or not.  The potential solutions are presented but Bill and Josella discuss, don’t always agree, and then go their own way in the end.  It seems he gives the gamut of new societies--from the two extremes (one a very moral one and one completely lawless) and something in between.  The extremes ultimately don’t work, but we don’t know how or if Bill and Josella’s group survive either.   

I was really curious and am not sure quite what I thought of Josella’s 'sex book' for which she so famously (infamously) is noted to have written.  Where did that come from and why?  Women characters are always interesting in Wyndham’s books, though Josella plays a much better role (and I especially like Susan) than some of his earlier female protagonists.

 (Stefanie): I have not read Wyndham before and I was surprised by all the literary references. With Bill experiencing several different possible social structures it felt kind of like Gulliver in a way--here are the religious dogmatics, here is a police state, etc. We don’t know how the society Bill and Josella eventually move to survives, but I got the feeling Wyndham was telling us their approach was the best one. Bill’s stated desire was to build a new world in which there was no war and humans were more practical and tolerant, which makes sense given the book was published in 1951 and the world was still recovering from the war.

 I’m not sure what was going on with Josella’s racy book either. Women in the book are rather stereotypical and Josella comes from a wealthy family, so I wonder if her book was a way to portray her as liberal and free-thinking? But for all that, her job ends up being taking care of the babies. I liked Susan too, she was a sassy little orphan girl. But it bugged me that in thinking of the future, Bill worried about his son getting an education and Susan having a husband and children. Then there was Coker telling women at Tynsham that they have to be useful and can’t be parasites anymore! Sigh.

 (Me): Yes, that Coker scene was an eyebrow-raiser for me, too.  I know I made a nice little notation in the part where they had the discussion women were meant to just breed in their new society.  Oh lord, really?  Maybe the sex book was meant to placate all sorts of readers and give the story a little excitement?  It did feel a little dated/of the time it was written.  Do you think any contemporary novel with this sort of story would have characters who felt the need to actually leave money for the food they were taking, like Bill did initially.  I know he didn’t want to jinx himself, that he was still moral by paying for what he was taking, but it kind of seemed a little too silly for me. 

(Stefanie): Oh my gosh, Bill leaving money at the store! It cracked me up. Really? The world as you know it has just ended and you are concerned about paying for the food you just took? He didn’t seem all that worried about paying for the alcohol he kept drinking at the pubs!

 (Me): Yes, as time went on his morals in terms of being a good member of society did become rather elastic, though certainly nowhere near as lawless as other folks.

You can find the rest of our conversation at Weeds.

*****

I really like John Wyndham.  This is the third book I've read by him, following on the heels of Chocky, The Midwich Cuckoos and Stowaway to Mars.  I might read H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds as a companion piece as Wyndham is said to have been influenced by it.  Just a note on the Modern Library edition I read, (via a very good online reading guide here), the US version has actually been slightly changed and abridged.  Had I known that I would have bought the complete UK version! 

There have been at least three movie adaptations of the book, which I think I might try and locate and watch.  And Stefanie offered some very tempting readalikes, too:

Read alikes, been thinking about this. Definitely War of the Worlds. Also Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller (a classic, but I haven’t read it yet), The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch.

Locked Rooms by Laurie R. King

Before I move on to the next adventure of Mary Russell and her husband Sherlock Holmes I should really catch up on where I have been and all the interesting escapades she has been involved in.  Actually this last mystery, Locked Rooms, set in 1924 San Francisco, was tinged in sadness and goes a long way to sorting out some mysteries of Mary's past and laying to rest a few old ghosts and bad memories. 

Previously, in The Game, she and Holmes had been in India helping Mycroft sort out the business of Kim, you know--Kipling's Kim and some confusion on where his loyalties lay and where exactly he had gone off to, or if he was even still alive.  It had been quite a rigorous investigation there that included dressing as Bedouins (Mary's skills as a knife thrower came in quite handy), speaking Arabic (or in Mary's case refining her skills in the language), and having attempts made on both their lives not just once but several times.  Unfortunately, maybe more to the disappointment of Holmes than Mary, Mary's fine tresses needed to be cut in order to pass off as a boy.  It was all pretty messy, but exciting, too. 

Anyway, there return journey was by way of Bombay with a stop in San Francisco.  It was only meant to be a temporary stop in order to clear up some remaining financial business that Mary Had been putting off.  Mary's father was American and her mother a British-born Jew, but they spent quite a lot of years in America.  They were in San Francisco when the momentous earthquake of 1906 took place.  Not long after a fatal car crash took the lives of not only both of Mary's parents but also her brother. 

Sure that she was the cause of the accident--those twisty California roads are bad enough but two warring siblings in the back seat taking the attention of her father who was driving was disastrous.  Mary is certain that had she not been behaving like a petulant child and arguing with her brother, her father never would have looked over his shoulder and lost control of the car.  It was not long after her recovery that Mary ended up back in England with her mother's remaining family.  A student with her nose in a book walking those Sussex Downs that she literally ran into Holmes and the rest, shall we say, is history.

As Mary is finally coming of age, duty calls to take care of her inheritance, which includes a house that has long been closed up.  She plans on selling the estate, closing all her finances and investments and returning once and for all to England.  They have not even docked yet in San Francisco before Mary's dreams intensify, becoming darker and more inexplicable, throwing her into a very un-Mary-like state of confusion.  She is absolutely certain she was never in San Francisco during the infamous earthquake, yet Holmes knows (the signs/evidence are there that she was) that whatever is hidden deep in her subconscious is coming out in her dreams and causing her memory loss.

When Mary begins sorting out her estate she discovers that curiously her father had made an addendum to the will in which the house, if anything should happen to them, must be closed up--as is, and locked.  No one, save one of the Russell's immediate family, is to be allowed on the premises.  He even went so far as to pay someone to live across the way and ensure that no one was to enter the property.  However, not once but several times it has been breached usually to be caught and turned away, but once it is a apparent that two people entered and spent some time looking for something in the house.  Just what the object is and whether they found it is only one of the mysteries that surround Mary's family.

Mary is not much like the Mary we know and love.  It's not just her appearance, shorn of tresses, that is so strange.  She is not her usual self, barely conscious of the world around her, moving in an almost dream like state.  If India wasn't bad enough, there is someone in San Francisco who seems bent on harming her, and Holmes begins to wonder if these murderous attempts are related, and if they have been followed and why.  She meets up again with a childhood friend who is a drinks and party girl, a flapper, and it seems just the right distraction that Mary needs.  Her bookishness disappears and she becomes more of a socialite that anyone might imagine.  Holmes knows she is going through something related to what happened so many years ago and while keeping en eye on her from a distance, he begins his own investigation with the help of a local man, Dashiell Hammett.  Yes, that Hammett!

Can you tell this is a rich and complex story?  Mary Russell's mysteries are always multilayered and involved, but in good puzzling sorts of ways.  The last few outings have been full of international flair as the pair go to far flung corners of the globe either on their own, at the behest of friends or clients and sometimes at the direction of Holmes's brother Mycroft, which means business with the Crown, and usually of a secretive nature.  Lots gets sorted out in San Francisco and as usual it is a most satisfying story.  If you know San Francisco (or can imagine it well) you'll get a good dose of those steep hills, twisty roads, and the scents and sounds of Chinatown.  I call this another Thumping Good Read, and now that I have enjoyed a little reminiscence, I think I am ready to embark on the next order of business in The Language of Bees.  Happily the haze that hung over Mary was gone by story's end and she and Holmes will be back on the Sussex coast.  What new adventures lie ahead?

Teaser Tuesday: London Child of the 1870s

In keeping a weekly eye on my reading pile, it's meant to keep track of what I have on the go but also rein in too much readerly exuberance in starting new books faster than I am finishing ongoing books.  So, while I started dipping into Maxine Hong Kingston's wonderful The Woman Warrior (she's a very poetic storyteller--it almost feels tinged with magical realism to me), another glance at the pile and Molly Hughes caught my eye.  A London Child of the 1870s has been waiting patiently since before the holidays, so no cutting in line.  Seeing as it is not only a memoir, and a slender one at that, but also a Persephone Books title (which I am determined to read more of this year), I pulled it out and plan on spending time with it this week.  I might even manage to finish it before the month is out.

No better way of whipping up interest and enthusiasm but to share a little teaser of it today.  I started reading the introduction when I initially pulled it from my shelves, but while it was there I discovered it was only the first of three memoirs, Adam Gopnik was giving away a few too many details for my liking.  Sometimes introductions are best saved for later!

It starts:

"A girl with four brothers older than herself is born under a lucky star.  To be brought up in London, in the eighteen-seventies, by parents who knew how to laugh at both jokes and disasters, was to be under the influence of Jupiter himself."

I was curious about the Jupiter reference and had to look it up.  It quite literally means to be born under a lucky star.  Apparently Jupiter's sign is Sagittarius, which is the sign of "optimism, faith and growing through risks others wouldn't dare take."  So that sets a nice tone and we are off to a good start made even better by this teaser (because readers always love bookish references, right?).  I guess when it comes to Victorians I tend to think of Dickens and it is always the poor, eccentric characters he created that come to mind.  But surely not all Victorians had drab, difficult lives?

"We were rich in another way, richer, so far as I can observe, than the average children of today.  Our parents had accumulated a large number of books, which we were allowed to browse in as much as we liked.  Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Lamb, George Eliot, Tennyson, Byron, Coleridge, Disraeli, these were not 'taught' at school, or set as holiday tasks but became part of our lives.  The elder ones discussed them at table, and quoted from them, till the Micawbers and Becky Sharp and Lamb appeared to my childish mind as some former friends of mother's, whom I recognized with delight later on when I read the books for myself.  Rawdon was my eldest brother's favorite, and I new 'same which I shot Captain Marker' long before I had the faintest notion of its meaning."

Any book that references a family who likes to read is going to be a good one.  Even better when I learn more than a few things about the time, place, people and literary references along the way!  That reference, by the way, is from the Thackeray novel, Vanity Fair, and is about a duel, which had become a household word.

Now I need to go to my library find/illustrated omnibus editions and compare--well, mostly peruse all the pictures and put it all into context!

January NYRB: Little Reunions

I didn't do so well with my NYRB subscription last year.  I finished a handful of books and started a few more beyond that.  There were several I wanted to read but just didn't manage.  And a few that might not have been my first choice of subscription book for those titles released in a particular month.  That said, I love this subscription, all those NYRBs that I get are worthy reads, though some will be outside my comfort zone or normal choice of novel.  Part of why I subscribe is to expand my horizon and get a taste of world literature from all different eras.  I also love that they have a good mix of stories, sometimes nonfiction and especially that many of the books are translations.  This one is translated from Chinese.

Perhaps if each month I create a little fanfare with each new selection and post something special about the book I will be able to make more of a commitment to reading it.  I really do want to read all the books, though if it doesn't happen in the month I get it, that's okay, too.  I see the books as an investment and a happy addition to my own personal library.  I can always reach for one of the books later (and in some cases that ends up being 'much' later).

January's book choice is by an author I have long wanted to read as I have heard many good things about her, Eileen Chang.  I am not sure Little Reunions would ever have been my jumping off place for her work, and I do have several of her books already on my shelves, but I'm willing to dive in here.  She sounds like she led an interesting life that straddled several different periods and cultures.  She was born in Shanghai in 1920 and lived in Hong Kong for a time before ultimately ending up in the US.  She's considered one of the most influential modern Chinese writers and I am excited to finally give her work a try. 

As for Little Reunions the blurb reads in part:

" . .  .a dark romance opens with Julie, living at a convent school in Hong Kong on the eve of the Japanese invasion.  Her mother, Rachel, long divorced from Julie's opium-addict father, saunters around the world with various lovers.  Recollections of Julie's horrifying but privileged childhood in Shanghai clash with a flamboyant, sometimes incestuous cast of relations that crowd her life.  Eventually, back in Shanghai, she meets the magnetic Chih-yung, a traitor who collaborates with the Japanese puppet regime. Soon they’re in the throes of an impassioned love affair that swings back and forth between ardor and anxiety, secrecy and ruin. Like Julie’s relationship with her mother, her marriage to Chih-yung is marked by long stretches of separation interspersed with unexpected little reunions. Chang’s emotionally fraught, bitterly humorous novel holds a fractured mirror directly in front of her own heart."

There is a character list in the back of the book which is eight pages long!  Should that make me nervous?  There is nothing for it, but to just start reading!  Is anyone else a NYRB Classics subscriber?  Or have you read Eileen Chang before?

State of the Nightstand: January 21

A little shifting, but in a good way.  if you see a few new books this week, note that there are a few books gone (finished and soon to be written about).  Once again, mostly (though not exclusively), the books in front and on top have been traveling with me wherever I go).  I am hoping two more of these will shift there way out of the pile by next Sunday!  Moving right along . . .

Reading & Book Piles Notes: January 19

I think my 'reading diet' of the last few years has been deficient of enough nonfiction, because this year I seem to be especially drawn to it.  I am hoping to finish two books by Jhumpa Lahiri this weekend, so naturally my thoughts turn to what I will pick up next.  I pulled a very few books that have been on my mind, but I am trying not to open the field too much as I tend to get bogged down in choices.  And I have lots and lots of good choices.  High on my list is MFK Fisher, whose prose is absolutely gorgeous, a diary from WWII and beyond (the Wyndham), and Maxine Hong Kingston memoir!

I rarely have more than on nonfiction read on the go at once, but this year is probably going to be different!  I pulled Molly Hughes's A London Child of the 1870s mostly from my pile as I am determined to read more of my Persephone Editions.  I was reading the introduction when I discovered that this is only the first of three memoirs by her, though I think the other two are harder to come by.  I was searching on WorldCat and came across what looked like an omnibus edition.  I thought it might be all three memoirs in one, so I interlibrary loaned it.  It came in yesterday, but as it turns out it is a lavishly illustrated compendium of sorts of Victorian Life with parts of her three memoirs excerpted.   I'm not sure I will sit down and read the complete text, but I will enjoy reading the Persephone edition side by side with it.

Oh, and then the draw of the new!  Both books are recent acquisitions for me.  The cold of winter is truly starting to get me down now (too many very very cold mornings standing waiting for late buses in the early morning dark are dashing my spirits lately--too cold and dark even to read), so I think I need something frothy and fun and family drama-driven with a dash of romance and a satisfying ending.  Who better but Beatriz Williams or Adriana Trigiani perhaps?  Wicked City is actually the first book in a #Beatriz Binge that is going on for the first half of this year.  I have been collecting (and slowly reading) my way through the books so no more urging needed on my/their part.  And Kiss Carlo was just released and how can you beat a story set in Italy and America post-WWII about an Italian-American family.  Plus look at that gorgeous cover!  For me, it just screams 'pick me up, open my cover and start reading now'!  How ever will I decide between the two.  (Now that is a nice weekend dilemma to have, yes?).

So there is my bookish weekend set out.  I will be reading my New Yorker short story and getting on with a few books on my sidebar.  Hopefully finishing the Lahiri books.  And ignoring the forecast of freezing rain and then snow on Sunday.  Brr.

There are a few links I came across this week, too, that are notable and worth sharing to help kick the weekend off:

Check out the first official trailer for The Great American Read coming in May from PBS.  I know I mentioned this last year, but it is finally getting closer!

It makes me happy to see that in the UK female writers dominated the bestsellers last year.  Out of the top ten only one was a man.  Of course despite that great news out of the top fifty less than half were women, so there is still disparity.  I wonder how the US market compares?

More books to movies on this list. I already knew about some of them (and have plans to read some of those books first), but I was thrilled to see a novel by Sarah Waters on the list!  (And shouldn't she have a new book in the works by now?  Am I missing something?).

If you are curious about Eileen Chang, you can read an excerpt from the January NYRB Classics book club selection here.  I need to get going on my copy, too!

Happy reading everyone!  Feel free to drop by and let me know what you'll be pulling from your book pile this weekend to read and/or peruse!

The Cellars of the Majestic, Georges Simenon

I've not read a lot of Inspector Maigret mysteries, but the more I do the more I like them and the more keen I am to reach for a new one.  With each new story I like to fill out my mental picture of M. Maigret just a little more.  I know Georges Simenon wrote literally hundreds of books and probably a good lot of them were Maigret stories, so I read them randomly and maybe a little haphazardly since I am not sure how many are in and out of print, but it seems not to matter at all that I choose without rhyme or reason and based solely on the appeal of a certain setting or event.

In the case of The Cellars of the Majestic (originally published as Les Caves de Majestic in 1942 and this Penguin Classic reissue translated by Howard Curtis) it is the setting of a glamorous Parisian hotel that made me pick up the book.  It's interesting that the war would have been in full force yet you would have not a clue to that fact in the text.  The world Simenon writes about is really quite insular.  While you get a sense of the social mores of the time and a good sense of setting, it could almost have been set in any period really.   

First, the crime.  The wife of a wealthy industrialist, a guest of the Hotel Majestic, has been found strangled and stuffed in a locker in the cellar of the hotel where the staff work.  The cellar is a beehive of activity.  Staff coming and going from the outside world and preparing for their shifts or resting in between busy moments.  You are aware of a full hotel above by the constant comings and goings of maids and waiters and everyone who serves the guests.  UP and down the trays go filled with food and drinks moved by pulleys between floors.  The woman is not just wealthy but she is American.  And she has no reason to be in the cellars where the staff work and spend their time.  Or does she?

"'In the basement, but not among the staff . . . that's the troubling thing about this case . . . Try to imagine a guest, a wealthy woman, staying at the Majestic with her husband, her son, a nurse and a governess . . . In the suite that costs more than a thousand francs a day . . . At six in the morning she's strangled, not in her room, but in the basement locker room . . . In all likelihood, that's where the crime was committed . . . What was the woman doing in the basement?  Who could have lured her down there, and how? . . . Especially at an hour when people of that kind are usually fast asleep . . .'"

It's Prosper Donge who finds the woman and much is made about his living situation.  He lives with a woman/wife named Charlotte though the two seem like two ships passing in the night-she arriving home when he is ready to leave.  Much is made about his journey to work on that particular damp, cold morning, and the flat tire that he discovers and is noted by a policeman just as he is turning the corner at the Champs-Élysées.  Prosper Donge is fairly remarkable in his looks with his flaming red hair and the ruddy complexion so easy to blush in people of his coloring.  Much is made about the fact that thanks to the flat tire he arrives ten minutes later than normal.  It is his job to prepare the guest's coffees and send them up and down on the dumb waiters. 

For some odd reason, and what exactly made him do it, he happened to open a locker not his own.  Number 89.  It is inside that locker that the body of Mrs. Clark is found.  Enter Inspector Maigret who now must interview all the staff who might have seen something significant, or had a chance to commit the crime.  Odder still, though, M. Maigret seems to ignore Prosper Donge.  All day long Maigret is observing and questioning in those cellars.  And all day long Prosper prepares the coffees, going about his work, and all the while perplexed why he, the man who found the victim, has not yet been questioned. 

This is a curious case, one that will take Maigret all the way from damp, cold Paris to sunny Cannes, filled with the scent of mimosas and surely it must be February as some festivities happen to be going on when he arrives.  Carnival?  It was never explicitly noted, but it was quite inviting despite Maigret's business with a murder investigation.  As always, lots of potential suspects, a fair few red herrings and a very satisfying resolution of the crime.  It was all there laid out for the reader, but I didn't see it coming.

As for Maigret?  His wife likes to call him Monsieur Maigret, which she often does when joking.  I like that quite often while he is investigating and he runs into a wall of difficulties he takes himself off to a bar for a drink.  Something new I didn't know about Maigret?  He and Madame Maigret have no children, something that he finds very regrettable.  The last Simenon book I read was The Saint-Fiacre Affair a couple years back, which I quite enjoyed (I need to tally up my Maigret reads).  I want all these lovely new Penguin reissues.  Now, which one to read next?