Elizabeth Von Arnim’s VeraVera is a cross between a Daphne du Maurier gothic and a Shirley Jackson thriller, full of mystery and foreboding and a sensElizabeth Von Arnim’s VeraVera is a cross between a Daphne du Maurier gothic and a Shirley Jackson thriller, full of mystery and foreboding and a sense of something sinister lurking behind the curtains.
Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss meet on the day Lucy’s father dies. Everard has also experienced a loss, that of his wife, Vera. Lucy is young and alone and Everard steps in and takes charge of the practical matters that she is emotionally unable to handle. What we are made aware of immediately is that there is something very suspicious about the death of Vera and there is a growing concern for the safety and well-being of Lucy as the story progresses.
In the 1920’s men frequently ruled households. They were not just husbands, they were masters. Women, particularly those who had no male relatives to protect them, were vulnerable.
Strange how tightly one's body could be held, how close to somebody else's heart, and yet one wasn't anywhere near the holder. They locked you up in prisons that way, holding your body tight and thinking they had got you, and all the while your mind—you—was as free as the wind and the sunlight.
There is something sad and haunting about this passage for me, because you cannot help wondering how long any person, imprisoned completely, can hold on to the “you” that exists only in the mind. How long before the sunlight is blotted out completely by the abusive behavior and the darkness.
Everard Wemyss is one of the most frightening characters I have come across lately, because he is so thoroughly manipulative and psychologically cruel. He would be poison to anyone, but more so to a girl as naive and unworldly as Lucy. And then there is Vera--what really happened to Vera?
Elizabeth Von Arnim is such a versatile writer. I thought The Enchanted April was sweet and hopeful; her Elizabeth and Her German Garden is full of humor, beautiful description and easy, calming prose; and this a look into a darker side of her nature. One cannot help wondering what Von Arnim’s experiences with husbands and men must have been. I have a biography of her on my TBR and I’m betting that is going to be an interesting read. ...more
I was warned by more than one person that this book was not equal to Cutting for Stone and might disappoint me. That was not the case. I found it had I was warned by more than one person that this book was not equal to Cutting for Stone and might disappoint me. That was not the case. I found it had the same depth, the same magical quality, and the same ability to put me in a particular location and in the skins of the characters. IMHO, Verghese has done it again.
The Covenant of Water follows three generations of an Indian family who have a “condition” that makes them unable to tolerate water and susceptible to drowning. Once more, Verghese brings his medical expertise to bear on a very human story. He immerses his reader in the culture of India, without ignoring the pitfalls of a caste system and the influence of the British.
One thing Verghese does that might be jarring to some readers is switch between stories as he follows different characters through their lives. He begins with a young girl, unnamed, which I think is very intentional, who at 12 years of age is about to be married to a much, much older man. I became very invested in her story and suddenly found myself in what could be another book entirely as Verghese takes up the story of Digby, a young doctor from Glasgow, on his way to India to get the surgical experience he is being denied in Scotland.
Again, I was completely drawn into Digby’s story when I was transported back to the original set of characters. It was necessary to trust Verghese to run these two parallel lines together at some point, and he was entirely worthy of this trust. I personally found both stories so compelling that the switches from one to another were only momentarily startling.
This book is replete with profound themes, including the nature and purpose of suffering, the role of religion in coping with life, the ties of family, the question of fate vs. free choice, the danger of secrets, and the importance of love.
“Forgive me, Lord.” She thought her prayers were unanswered. But God’s time isn’t the same as hers. God’s calendar isn’t the one hanging in her kitchen. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
What’s fur ye won’t go by ye, Digby thinks. It was a phrase his mother would use: whatever is in his destiny will come to him, regardless.
I found much of the book to be about this balance: trusting and waiting for God to intercede and finding the destiny you cannot avoid, the one that gives you purpose, the one that makes your life meaningful. Sometimes the destiny we want is not the one that is meant for us; but the one that is meant for us can be richer than we imagine.
There is also the sense of loneliness and isolation that comes from being different. Yet, it is the difference that makes each of these characters so extraordinary. It is the sorrows and tragedies that inform their talents and what they give back to the world in which they live. They do not leave the world as they found it.
Yes, old man, yes, eyes open to this precious land and its people, to the covenant of water, water that washes away the sins of the world, water that will gather in streams, ponds, and rivers, rivers that float the seas, water that I will never enter.
This is a very weak review for a very marvelous book. I cannot match the inspiration or convey the exceptional depths of thought this book stirred in me. I believe Abraham Verghese is one of the great writers of his time....more
The first thing I have to say is that this book touched too closely on recent events in my own life not to feel almost oppressive at times. I had to rThe first thing I have to say is that this book touched too closely on recent events in my own life not to feel almost oppressive at times. I had to read it slowly, because I could only handle it in small doses and because I was frequently unable to see the printed page because my eyes were flooded with tears. When the book opens, Ettie has just lost her husband of 55 years, Vince. I could relate so well to her loss and her feeling that reality had slipped away with the death of this man.
It was the first time in her life she felt the earth was round, not flat; that it was slowly but unmistakably turning under her feet. How could Vince’s tiny and ever more wasted body represent such security for her? She stood there, leaning against the gatepost that hadn’t seemed quite real to her for days, as if Vince had taken the reality of the stones and planks away with him and left only a ball of white noise, a mere fog behind.
Vince and Ettie have lived a simple life in the country, surrounded by people they have always known, and careful to be frugal with their money and respectful of those who have less than they do. Life has had difficulties, some of it severe, but they have been contented, and life has had meaning. Their only daughter, Iza, is a well-respected doctor and has a flat in Budapest and all the material trappings that reflect her position. The parents have lived through her vicariously, and they are extremely proud of her accomplishments. When her father dies, she disposes of her mother’s life and things with the snap of a finger and takes her back to live in the cold, sterile flat in Pest, where she is treated like a houseguest and deprived of any sense of purpose.
Maybe she was already dead and hadn’t noticed? Could a person die and not be aware of it?
What Szabo does so well in all her novels, is to view the interior workings of human beings, the desire to be generous and the failure to do so, the mistaken concept that money and things will feel the void in a soul. Iza is not entirely bad, she is emotionally stunted, and she has learned all too well to hide her feelings and her needs. Because she pushes away from her own needs, she fails miserably to understand her mother’s.
For the first half of the novel, I felt I was reading Ettie’s story; for the second half, I was reading Iza’s. There could not have been less understanding or more misunderstanding between two people, and the result is as sad a tale as I have ever encountered.
I will not say anything more, at the risk of revealing too much of the plot, but I felt the angst of Ettie, Iza, and Antal (Iza’s ex-husband). Vince makes only short appearances in the book, and those in retrospectives from other characters, but I loved him so much, and like Ettie, I felt his presence tying all these characters together and leaving them at loose ends when he was gone.
This is my fourth Szabo, and perhaps my favorite. She has a singular ability to plumb the depths of the human mind and soul. ...more
The vale, poets say, is set like a pearl between the mountains, a pearl of water and flowers; the water comes from the glaciers on the far snow peaks The vale, poets say, is set like a pearl between the mountains, a pearl of water and flowers; the water comes from the glaciers on the far snow peaks and runs through high alps and valleys where gentian and primula and edelweiss grow, through forests, down rapids till it falls to the vale floor and flows into its lakes and river and waterways.
Kingfishers Catch Fire is set in the beautiful mountain area of Kashmir, a place Godden knew well and one she used all her marvelous powers of descriptive writing to bring to life. If I had to name one thing that made this novel sparkle, those descriptions would be the thing!
The main character of the story is Sophie, a young widow with two children, who finds herself in rather tight finances and decides to take a house called Dilkhush in a Kashmir village and live a simple and inexpensive life. Unfortunately, Sophie has little to no understanding of what life is like for the people of the village she joins. She sees herself as poor, but the people see her as wealthy, so what ensues is a comedy of errors, but absent the laughter.
Sophie felt crushed. More than that. She was beginning to feel she was ringed round by something she did not understand.
Sophie’s biggest flaw is that she never listens to anyone, she just forges ahead. Others, both native and British, Hindu and Muslim, try to give her advice, and even her young daughter observes and learns about the customs and interactions of the village and tries to warn her mother, but Sophie is doggedly unheeding. This can lead to nothing but trouble, and it does.
There is a sense of mounting tension in the book that is remarkably well-done. Godden takes seemingly innocuous events, piles them atop one another, and escalates, while the reader feels a growing tightening of the throat.
I found it hard to like Sophie, and indeed hard to sympathize with her past a point. She is well-intentioned, but we all know which road is paved with those. At several points in the book I thought she lacked self-awareness and I abhorred her inability to understand her effect on others. At other times, I thought her the definition of selfish, not as she would have said, independent. I did have a grudging respect for her toward the end. She tried to learn from her mistakes and she took responsibility for them. Morals and a sense of justice go a long way with me.
I have rapidly become a fan of Rumer Godden. I have completed five of her novels this year and will continue to read them into 2024. I’m pretty sure she is going to be one of those authors about whom I will lament when I have exhausted the canon and know I will not ever again hear any new whispers from her voice. ...more
Set in Cornwall, the land of Daphne du Maurier and Ross Poldark, China Court is a novel about five generations of the Quin family and the house they live in. I have never known anyone, except Charles Dickens, who could make a building such a major character in a novel. China Court is, itself, alive; teeming with the history of all it has seen and heard over the years.
As she did in A Fugue in Time, Godden manages to tell the story of all five generations simultaneously, and she does it with such aplomb that there is no confusion, no interruption to the flow of the plot, and a satisfying conviction that you know each and every one of the characters well.
I have been happy in food,’ Mrs Quin is able to say. How ridiculous to find consolation in food, but it is true, and when one is taking those first steps back, bruised and wounded, one can read certain books: Hans Christian Andersen, and the Psalms, Jane Austen, a few other novels. Helped by those things, life reasserts itself, as it must, even when one knows one will be stricken again: Tracy, Stace, Borowis, those are her private deepest names.
We meet them as names, we come to know them as individuals.
Her descriptions are often mesmerizing as she weaves a picture of the gardens, the grounds and the house itself. There is such a sense of place.
Home, too, is in the sight of curtains opened every morning, drawn at evening; in the light through windowpanes; light on polished doorknobs, on the letter box and knocker; it is in cuttings and seed-plots in the garden, and in cats. The China Court cats inherit, one after the other, the sunny windowsill outside the morning room. In spring, the bed below it is planted with wallflowers; the cats lie there half drugged by the heavy sweetness.
The generations are tied together through Mrs. Quin, the current occupant of the house. We look back to her youth, when she is Ripsie, a straggly waif who comes and goes, befriended by the Quin boys and barely tolerated by their mother, Lady Patrick. We also meet her granddaughter, Tracy, displaced by the divorce of her parents and wishing only to have the permanence of “home” that she feels with her grandmother at China Court.
‘Then, is being young wanting what you haven’t?’ asks old Mrs Quin. ‘And being old, accepting what you haven’t? Oh, just for once,’ she cries, ‘I should like to make it come true for somebody young, while they are young,’ but, ‘Crying for the moon,’ Polly would have said and, almost always, ‘Want must be your master,’ says Polly.
Mrs. Quin–Ripsie–is a totally unforgettable character, but not the only one found between the pages of this novel.
For me, the other unforgettable character in this novel is Eliza Quin, a woman trapped by society in a role she resents, but too clever and passionate to fade into the wallpaper as she is expected to do. How she manages to make a life when she has been denied everything necessary to the enrichment of her soul is one of the magical secrets the novel reveals.
Of course, a family of this size and a house of this size do not exist without the staff to keep them running smoothly. One might think that secondary, but even the servants are real and fleshed out and the contrast between the family and the staff adds to our understanding of these lives.
Bursts of laughter sometimes come through the baize door at the end of the passage, bursts instantly hushed; they cannot quite be hushed because the kitchen wing teems with a heady life of talk, gossips, quarrels, laughter. On the house side of the door is silence.
It seems important to me that Ripsie straddles the bridge between the classes–she begins with the servants, barred from entering the house through the front door and never allowed on the front staircase, and she progresses to being the sole master of the house and the servants who remain.
Rumer Godden knows people, inside and out, and she knows what it is to not have choices, to make poor choices, to want what you cannot have, and to love and have that love ignored or rejected. She knows that money is not the answer, and that people can be lonely, even when they are with others.
Homes must know a certain loneliness because all humans are lonely, shut away from one another, even in the act of talking, of loving.
I have found so far that Rumer Godden, even when treating much the same subjects, writes vastly different books. I have not come across a more versatile or skilled writer. It would have been a major accomplishment to have written one such book; I have now read four of them. I am a bit in awe of her and very, very happy that I have many more of her books yet to enjoy.
A fugue is a musical movement in which melodic lines run independently but also merge to create a harmony. In an amazingly adept and perfect way, RumeA fugue is a musical movement in which melodic lines run independently but also merge to create a harmony. In an amazingly adept and perfect way, Rumer Godden has created a fugue in her novel, telling individual stories, with individual voices, but layering them atop one another to show both the passage of time and the continuity of time, simultaneously.
Our main human character is Roland Ironmonger, an elderly retired soldier, who finds himself about to lose the lease on the family home the Ironmongers have occupied for the last one hundred years.
‘Even a little boy like you has a past, a present and a future. You were a baby, you are a boy, you will be a man.’ ‘And then dust,’ says Roly. ‘But I am always here, Lena. Like they say at school “Present.” I am always present so why not only one?’
I say he is our main “human” character, because the house itself is a character of the novel, holding the human history and echoing it back through shifts of past, present and future. Roland is Roly as a child, Rollo as a young man, and Rolls as an elderly gentleman, and his lives are lived concurrently through the auspices of the house.
In the house, the past is present.
It sounds complicated and strange, but it is done so skillfully that it is neither; it is seamless and natural. There are multiple symbols and themes: the plane tree outside the door that represents the family tree as well as the force that roots one to a specific place; the recurring number threes that recall to us the constant changing of time from past to present to future and back again; the chiming clocks that begin outside the house in the world at large and then narrow down to the chimes from the hallway, the bedrooms, the nursery, telling us that time is on the march whether it is acknowledged or not, and that it can be viewed from any given perspective, but it can never be reversed or life relived.
But … said Rolls looking at the picture. But I do remember, and I experience what happens; not only what happens when I was not there, but what was not there at all. What did not happen. What only might have been. Might have been. At the very words this new revivifying warmth crept into his veins again. He could not repress it. He had to let it come. The house is a repository of secrets, he excused himself. Then can’t mine repose here too?
It is these secrets, held by each of the characters, defining who they are behind the masks and roles they assume, that are revealed to us as the book progresses. Griselda, Selina, Rolls, Lark, Pelham, even Eye, are not exactly as they seem to the others, and the struggle is real for them between what they are expected to be, have been molded to be, and what they are.
It is a story about life, about loss, and about the nature of life itself. It begs the question of how much we are allowed to choose of the life we lead and how much is beyond our control. It is a story of generations, interactions and continuation beyond the self, through others.
Your death is a part of your life. Heads and tails on a coin that you spin every day; any day; not only this day. To be born and to live and to die is quite usual. Perfectly fair.
This book was so captivating for me that I stopped reading it two chapters in, went online and bought a Kindle copy so that I could mark the dozens of passages I wanted to preserve, and began it again. I have found in Rumer Godden another of those writers that I believe wrote just for me; one of those who speaks directly to my heart when she writes; one I want to share with the world and yet wonder if the world will be able to understand what I do when I read her words. I loved Greengage Summer and knew I wanted to read all she had written. This book exceeds Greengage Summer by miles. I am excited for what might lie ahead....more
Another Henry James novel scratched off my list, and perhaps the last. I might like to re-read The Turn of the Screw at som3.5-stars, rounded down up.
Another Henry James novel scratched off my list, and perhaps the last. I might like to re-read The Turn of the Screw at some point, but I don’t think I will tackle another. This one is quite adequate in both the story and the characterization, but I suspect I read him more because he was admired by Edith Wharton (I keep trying to discover what she found), than that I fully appreciate him myself.
This is a shorter novel, which I think contributes to its being one of his better works. When he writes shorter pieces, he maintains a kind of discipline and focus that he seems to lose in his longer ones. Catherine, our heroine, is an interesting female character. She is a bit naive when the story begins and remarkably stubborn in the face of her father’s strong dislike of her choice of beaus. As it would happen, we know almost immediately that her father is right, but that does not make his treatment of her palatable in the least.
Her second family member, Aunt Lavinia Penniman, is even worse, in my estimation. I cannot remember when I have disliked a character more. She is thoughtless, self-centered and manipulative; and it delights me that Catherine does not make a model of her behavior.
James is adept at character studies, and Catherine is both interesting and unusual. Like Wharton, he knows the New York upper-crust and I suspect does not like them very much. At least he fails to think their money is their salvation and he knows the dangers that threaten the heart when money becomes the motivation....more
Patrick wiped his eyes. ‘They say that Goya lived ten lives,’ he said. ‘I’ve lived half a one, and found it too much.’
Lord preserve us from the kindnePatrick wiped his eyes. ‘They say that Goya lived ten lives,’ he said. ‘I’ve lived half a one, and found it too much.’
Lord preserve us from the kindness of someone like Flora Quartermaine. She breezes through her life always intending the best for people (and of course, she knows exactly what the best is despite what they may think to the contrary). What she does, in reality, is leave a trail of hurt, discontentment, and destruction wherever she goes.
I made an immediate literary reference to Flora, that reference being Austen’s Emma. But, given the choice, I believe I would opt for Emma’s brand of meddling–just as misguided, but far less destructive.
Early in the novel, we are treated to Mrs. Secretan's hurt reaction to a letter left for her by her daughter. The letter is hurtful in a very careless way. It is our first inkling of what is to come.
She read the letter through again, telling herself that Flora had meant well, meant very well, poor girl. In fact she had always meant well. That intention had been seen clearly, lying behind some of her biggest mistakes.
In exposing Flora to us, Taylor offers us a menagerie of characters, all of them very true to life, and all of them carrying their own burdens. Along with her mother, there are her beleaguered husband, Richard; best friend, Meg, in love with the wrong man; Meg’s younger brother, Kit, who idolizes Flora and places too great a weight on her opinions; Patrick, a man struggling with a secret that is all too well known among his friends; Percy and Ba, Richard’s father and his mistress, whose lives are upended; the neighbor, Elinor, who simply needs a friend; and Mrs. Lodge, who is held captive from the life she longs for by Flora’s self-centered attachment to her.
Everything, for these characters, must be done in Flora’s interests, not their own. She must never be upset or allowed to see the damage she does, for she always “intends” so much good. We are given only one character who is allowed to see Flora without sentiment, and that character is Liz Corbett, who does not know Flora at all and clearly sees the true impact she has on others and despises her for it.
Flora is not the only clueless character in the novel, of course. All the others have blind spots where they wish to. Not one of them is facing the truth head-on, and they are as clueless about one another as they are about themselves. Still, in the midst of all this, Taylor’s cutting humor makes you laugh.
He could leave me in the morning lying stretched dead on the floor. And if anyone later in the day asked him how I was, he’d say, “Fine. Fine. Thank you”; and then he might suddenly remember and say, “Well, no, as a matter of fact, she’s dead.”’ Richard, carving off another chop for himself, laughed loudly. He was deeply relieved that the conversation had taken a lighter tone.
Like each of her other novels I have read, The Soul of Kindness is a subtle glimpse into almost every aspect of the spectrum of human nature. Flora’s lack of self-awareness and her lack of empathy for others is a major theme, but we also see the damages of misplaced love, bad marriage, loneliness, guilt, jealousy, and the desperation that comes from feeling worthless or unable to measure up to expectation.
Clearly, for me, Elizabeth Taylor has done it again. How ever does she weave such depth into plots that seem so simple and unassuming on the surface? When I have reached the end of her canon, I suspect I will cry and miss her terribly....more
There is an afterword in my edition of this novel, written by the daughter of Elizabeth Taylor, explaining why she feels this is Taylor’s most personaThere is an afterword in my edition of this novel, written by the daughter of Elizabeth Taylor, explaining why she feels this is Taylor’s most personal novel and detailing a few elements of true experience contained within. This novel was written as Taylor was dying. She knew she was dying. She fought hard to complete it before she did. That alone, her emphasis on being sure it was finished, tells you the importance she put in what she was trying to say.
Blaming is about loss, guilt, and responsibility–the responsibility we have one toward another as we go through life. As is the usual case with Taylor, it seems such a subtle and ordinary tale in so many ways. Amy, Nick, Martha…they are not extraordinary people, they are in many ways mundane, but Taylor seems to tell us repeatedly in her work that no individual is mundane, we simply fail to see beneath the surface and observe what is unique about them.
The interesting dynamic in this tale is between Amy and Martha, two women who are thrown together by circumstances, and who are seeking such different things from one another. Having recently become a widow, I felt Taylor excruciatingly accurate in painting what it is to lose a spouse, to navigate the way your own life changes, but also the manner in which it changes the way others see you.
But the worst of all was when she simply dreamed the truth – that she had lost him, came with relief from such a nightmare to realise bleakly that it was not. It was a bad way in which to face a day.
I found this passage particularly poignant, for it often still happens to me and I suspect it might be so for years and years into the future. Amy is speaking to Gareth, both of whom have lost spouses:
“Last night I was watching the telly, and I suddenly took it for granted that he was sitting there, too, in his chair; like old married things, we always sat in the same chairs… well, you also know that… and I turned to him. I almost saw the shape of him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What rubbish!’ I said aloud, meaning the television. Can you imagine it?” “Yes.”
The title is both clever and telling. There is a lot of blaming that goes on in the novel. Thanks to the resident servant, Ernie, some of it is delightfully humorous. (This is another of Taylor’s skills–she treats depressing subjects, but she sprinkles humor in just the right places and in just the right amounts.) While Ernie's blaming is completely for others, most of the blaming here is self-directed and sadly justified, because we are all so self-absorbed and often downright selfish that we forget to be attentive to others, when perhaps we should.
Amy began to think that we all leave everything too late.
Perhaps this is what Taylor most wants to say. We leave it too late–all of us. There comes a moment when we will no longer be able to say or do what is generous, kind, thoughtful, or deserved; when we will regret our pettiness, our tendency to take things for granted, our selfishness–a time when we will have to live with the blame....more
Elizabeth Taylor saved her best for last. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is nothing short of perfection.
Only 63 when she passed away in 1975, Mrs. TayElizabeth Taylor saved her best for last. Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont is nothing short of perfection.
Only 63 when she passed away in 1975, Mrs. Taylor obviously was a keen observer of the elderly around her or feeling symptoms of her own age prematurely. The group of elderly people living at the Claremont, trying to squeeze a last drop of life from their waning years, are as believable and real as any you will find in any retirement home near you. Mrs. Palfrey is mesmerizing in the accuracy of her feelings. If you have crossed that invisible line that leads toward old age, you will feel akin to her almost immediately.
She realised that she never walked now without knowing what she was doing and concentrating upon it; once, walking had been like breathing, something unheeded. The disaster of being old was in not feeling safe to venture anywhere, of seeing freedom put out of reach.
I am not quite at that stage of life, but I will admit to feeling more cautious about so many things that I used to think nothing of at all. Stepping on a ladder to change a light bulb, doing a job that requires getting down on the floor and rising again without anything to hold to, trimming trees and hauling the limbs out–all jobs I now approach with less confidence and more vigilance.
Mrs. Palfrey’s reflections on her husband and her marriage felt like blows to me, as well, having just lost my own. Coupled with the pain of that reflection, was a clear and poignant feeling of kinship. I will be finding out what it is like to not have the support and love of the man you have shared your life with. I can already tell you, I feel what Mrs. Palfrey feels.
She could picture his hands with the tongs – a strong, authoritative hand, with hair growing on it. If I had known at the time how happy I was, she decided now, it would only have spoiled it. I took it for granted. That was much better. I don’t regret that.
They became more and more to one another and, in the end, the perfect marriage they had created was like a work of art. People are sorry for brides who lose their husbands early, from some accident, or war. And they should be sorry, Mrs Palfrey thought. But the other thing is worse.
And this one that was almost too hard to bear for me at this moment in my life:
The silence was strange – a Sunday-afternoon silence and strangeness; and for the moment her heart lurched, staggered in appalled despair, as it had done once before when she had suddenly realised, or suddenly could no longer not realise that her husband at death’s door was surely going through it. Against all hope, in the face of all her prayers.
Then there is Ludo, the young man who rescues her from a fall and becomes a part of her life and her old age–a balm from the unavoidable loneliness. Finding Mrs. Palfrey is as important an event to Ludo as it is to her, whether he realizes it or not, for he learns so much from the relationship, and each of them fills a void in the other. He comes to understand old age in a much different light than he has initially.
For the first time, he saw that one might live long enough to be grateful for the Claremont.
As a writer, his interest in her begins as almost a character study, but the kindness in him is instinctive and his feelings become genuine over time. He is a good man at heart, and the awkwardness fades, while the relationship builds. I think what he gets from Mrs. Palfrey is priceless.
Perhaps one of the themes I loved the most in this novel is that of family, how we lose them or never have them, and how they can be fashioned from outside our traditional views. Ludo and Mrs. Palfrey form one kind of family, and the group of old people at the Claremont form another kind of family. While the “real” families here leave much to be desired, these non-traditional families do not, because they choose to care for one another in the best way that they can.
I hope I have not said too much about the plot of this book. I try very hard not to spoil anything for an upcoming reader. It is, as all Elizabeth Taylor’s novels are, a subtle examination of the human soul, with a quiet plot to propel it forward. I hope that anyone who has not read it already will feel compelled to do so. It is a marvelous read that will leave you laughing and crying and very grateful for the glimpse of humanity it contains.
I must not wish my life away, she told herself; but she knew that, as she got older, she looked at her watch more often, and that it was always earlier than she had thought it would be. When she was young, it had always been later....more
It is 1969 and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is now a sadly ordinary print linotype worker, earning enough money to keep his family under a roof and to sharIt is 1969 and Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom is now a sadly ordinary print linotype worker, earning enough money to keep his family under a roof and to share an occasional drink at the local pub with his Dad, and not much more. The times are a turmoil, both personally and politically. There are black men working in the plant with him and riding on the buses, the TV airs skits that seem to ridicule his wholesome view of his childhood, Nelson wants the material things his friend has and that Harry cannot afford, and Janice is screwing her co-worker, information which is supplied to him from his mother via his dad.
He doesn’t really know what to do with any of this upheaval, but he does know his world is neither fulfilling nor peaceful. Being Harry, he goes about living his strange life in some almost incomprehensible and destructive ways.
I had to keep reminding myself that this book is a reflection of the time in which it was written and at times is almost a parody. Updike is hitting his reader in the face with all the prejudices, untruths, dirty truths, propaganda and confusion that real people were dealing with. I was there in 1969 when the book is set and 1971 when it was written, and I can attest that there were literally two worlds operating one on top of the other and some of us only got glimpses of the one we did not live in. This book is raw because life was raw in 1971 and, while we are viewing Vietnam and LBJ and Civil Rights from a safe remove, Updike is staring it smack in the face while he is writing. Even the hippie movement gets an unvarnished look, with Jill being almost a perfect encapsulation of all that was wrong and right with it.
There are moments in this book when I just want to close the covers and walk away. I truly hate the over-emphasis on sex as both a driver and a definition of people. I truly hate the way these characters reach for the slimiest and least fulfilling side of life. I truly hate the lack of concern Rabbit and Janice have for their son, Nelson. And yet, there is something beneath the surface that draws me in, that reminds me of how often we struggle to be better than our circumstances or ourselves will allow us to be. I cannot, somehow, truly hate Harry and I cannot stop myself from feeling sorry for Janice.
I am going to take a whole heap of showers and wash some of this grime off of me, and I am going to read some really wholesome novel that is sweet and hopeful. I am probably going to take a long, long break and then inevitably come back to Rabbit Angstrom again for more of Updike’s riveting prose, because there are two more of these books and I need to see what tree the wreck that is Harry’s life ends up wrapped around. ...more
A year like this one anything you do is a mistake. Just being a rancher is a mistake. Only real difference I see between ranching and poker is, witA year like this one anything you do is a mistake. Just being a rancher is a mistake. Only real difference I see between ranching and poker is, with poker you got some chance.
This is an age-old story of man against nature, man against man, and man against government; and Elmer Kelton tells it so well that you can feel that he has lived much of it in his own lifetime. There is a drought in West Texas, where Charlie Flagg owns a ranch and leases another large section of land to run cattle and sheep. Drought is not a new experience for Charlie, he has lived through the big drought of 1933, but this drought is to prove different, this one continues beyond the limits of memory and leaves few men standing in its wake.
It was a comforting sight, this country. It was an ageless land where the past was still a living thing and old voices still whispered, where the freshness of the pioneer time had not yet all faded, where a few of the old dreams were not yet dark and tarnish.
Charlie loves this land and he lives in the memories of the old days, when the line between right and wrong was less gray and more black and white. He is a bit of an anachronism, but that is because he still has the honor and dignity of the best of his generation. He pulls his own weight, and he doesn’t want a handout.
His son, Tom, has a young man’s view of life. He wants to make the rodeo circuit. He doesn’t understand his father’s brand of pride and principle, and he certainly fails to have his wisdom.
Tom Flagg said behind him, “I’d testify to anything for a free trip to Washington.” Charlie grumbled, “There’s damn little in this life that ever comes free. One way or another, you pay for what you get.”
Charlie’s hired man is Lupe Flores, who has lived in the house next door to Charlie’s, raised his large family, and managed the ranch, working alongside Charlie for years. Through Lupe, and his son, Manuel, we get a chance to look at Mexican-Anglo relationships and the fight a man like Charlie has between what is expected, which is to look down at the Mexican population, and what he truly feels, which is respect and a knowledge of how much he depends on this good man who works beside him.
To make things worse, the government programs that were promised as help for the farmers and ranchers in the region are proving to be a sand trap in themselves, and those who might have survived otherwise are being pulled down by them.
There was a time when we looked up to Uncle Sam; he was something to be proud of and respect. Now he’s turned into some kind of muddle-brained sugar daddy givin’ out goodies right and left in the hopes everybody is going to love him…It’s divided us into little selfish groups, snarlin’ and snappin’ at each other like hungry dogs, grabbin’ for what we can get and to hell with everybody else.
This book might be labeled as a “western”, but like so many great books, it is more than the label it is slapped with…it is a book about humanity, about struggle and about perseverance; it is a book about survival–it just happens to be set in the West.
My thanks to the Southern Literary Trail for making this our August selection and to Howard, whose remarkable review let me know that regardless of what I had planned, this book was not one I wanted to miss reading.
This started out a bit slow for me, establishing the characters and the setting took a little time, but it is a Virago Classic, so I knew it was goingThis started out a bit slow for me, establishing the characters and the setting took a little time, but it is a Virago Classic, so I knew it was going to take off eventually–and it certainly did.
The principle story revolves around the children of Albert Sanger, a musical genius who lives a very Bohemian lifestyle, along with his six children from two marriages and his mistress and their daughter. His home is open to visitors who come and go at will, among them another, younger, musician, Lewis Dodd.
Dodd is beloved by all the children, but is particularly adored by the fourteen year old, Teresa (Tessa). With her he has a special bond that is based upon both an unspoken connection that both feel and an abiding love on Tessa’s part. Tessa is the constant nymph of the title. She nurses her love and believes she and Lewis will be together when she is old enough…but, there is a sudden twist of fate and her beautiful and charming cousin, Florence, arrives on the scene.
The situation and Tessa’s life become quite complicated from here and, as the love triangle develops, we witness the struggles of each of these characters to sort out their lives, their feelings, and their willingness to adapt and sacrifice for the other’s needs. Perhaps I should have found these characters unlikable for unsavory, but I did not. I found them hopeful, misguided and pitiable.
If I had any complaint against Margaret Kennedy’s construction, it would be that there are a number of characters in which a great deal of time is invested who then are dismissed far too casually and completely for my taste. I felt I had nurtured relationships and then been told, “oops that isn’t where this story is going after all.” It is a minor complaint, in truth, but it did keep me from giving this the full 5-stars.
This is my second Margaret Kennedy novel. I found them both interesting and compelling, so I will gladly tackle a third someday soon. Her works are not perfect, but they are worthy.
I am discovering that the more I read of Virginia Woolf the more I like her and the more easily I understand her. Perhaps she is what we call an acquiI am discovering that the more I read of Virginia Woolf the more I like her and the more easily I understand her. Perhaps she is what we call an acquired taste. She might certainly be a taste worth acquiring.
The Mark on the Wall was her first published short story and is a remarkable stream of consciousness piece that resounds with depth. As our narrator sits in her home observing a mark on her wall, she ponders the possibilities of what the mark might be and strays into thoughts about society, the place of women in it, how we deal with our own self-image, how Shakespeare was inspired to write, what the afterlife will be like…in short, any number of subjects totally unrelated to the mark. It is when the thoughts she is having stray into uncomfortable areas that she brings herself back to the mark on the wall, as if it were an important issue to discover its origin and identity.
The prose is heady and descriptive:
As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror; that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes. And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as the Greeks did and Shakespeare perhaps – but these generalizations are very worthless.
In the course of this very short story, Woolf travels in and out of some very dense and profound thought. She keeps bringing herself back to the mundane mark on her wall, but she cannot keep herself there, for her internal life is too complex and aware to be caged. It wanders of its own accord into deeper places. I think she is already developing that exploration of the roles of women in a man’s world, that need for her own space, that rejection of the feminine mystique of being satisfied with the role of wife and mother. The story seems almost seminal.
I am convinced that I need to re-read Mrs. Dalloway. It was my first Woolf and, being young, I dismissed it rather too perfunctorily. I’m betting Woolf was saying a lot more than I was hearing back then. ...more
“Before the open window of a handsome house, in one of the streets on the outskirts of the provincial towThis book was not off to a good start for me:
“Before the open window of a handsome house, in one of the streets on the outskirts of the provincial town of O, sat two ladies, one of fifty and the other an old lady of seventy.”
What? Who are you calling old? Lol.
Okay, I recovered myself and dove in with good intentions and tackled the second problem, which is just something that comes with reading Russian novels, you have to sort out all those names so that you don’t have to pause and say “who?” all the time.
But finally, I had conquered them and never blinked knowing that Fyodor Ivanych Levretsky was Fedya and Elena Mikhaylovna Kalitin was also Lenochka.
I settled into the story, and was fairly interested when we got our first glimpses of Fedya (we are on endearment terms at this point) falling for his wife. We are told the moment we meet him that he has left her in Paris, so we know there is going to be something juicy here. But alas, that part passes rather quickly and I dare say everything after that is boring.
I am going to admit to being disappointed that the choice this time for the Obscure group was a Russian novel. The last one was a Russian novel as well, so this might be turning into the Obscure Russian novels group. But, no, that is unfair, because the other Russian novel was The Brothers Karamazov, and that one isn’t even obscure.
If you want to read Turgenev, and you have not read him before, go for Fathers and Sons. Far superior. Some novels are obscure for a reason.
I see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth.
This book feels like a goodbye. As Andy CatletI see that we are passing through this world like a river of water flowing through a river of earth.
This book feels like a goodbye. As Andy Catlett looks back over his life, his accomplishments, his joys and trials, and his memories, it feels as if his counterpart, Wendell Berry is doing the same. It is easy to read this into the stories, as Wendell Berry is the elder statesman now. He is eighty-eight, and the production of this book seems a kind of miracle that even he must wonder if he will have the opportunity to ever repeat. In that sense, it is a sad book, but in another, it is a delight, for it is a memory of a job well-done, and what more would a man such as Berry want?
I, like Berry, am on the downside of life. Hopefully a while to go, but knowing I will never hike across a field and leap a fence again. Nope, if I make across the field, I will have to open the gate. Like Berry, I also have more associates of life behind me than with me. I spend too much time, sometimes, thinking of the losses, the absences, the empty spaces. I can walk, mentally, through the house my father built now and see all its flaws, the ones I never saw when I was a child living there. Someone else walks through it now, and I wonder if they love the woods and creek as I did; do they know the best spots to hide with a book and avoid chores–in fact, does anyone have chores anymore?
I think one of the things I love so much about Berry is that he stirs in me memories of my own self, my own raising, and the good people who filled up my world, my mind and my soul. Andy Catlet describes a memory, that isn’t even his own, but has been passed down to him from his grandmother
He sees Grandmother sitting on the step to the back porch of the house as he knew it. She is hulling peas.
What I saw in my mind’s eye was the thin, gaunt face of my own Grandma, who always took the snaps out onto the porch, pinching and snapping them for our dinner. It was one of the rare times during the day you might catch her sitting. There was always so much to be done.
I have walked the woods with Burley Coulter, reclaimed the land with Elton Penn, felt the loneliness of Old Jack and listened to the stories shared in Jayber’s barbershop. While doing so, I have walked the woods with my uncles, Dorsey and Bud; reclaimed the land with my Great-Uncle Naman; felt the loneliness of my Uncle Shem, who married so late in life but is remembered mostly as the perpetual bachelor at my Granny’s house; and listened quietly in a corner to the laughter of my Daddy and his brother, W.L., who ran, of all things, the community barbershop, and traded stories galore.
Lest I make it sound like there are only men of strong character to be found within these pages, let me tip my hat to all the women who stand behind them and make them strong. To Grandma Lizzie, who dares to mount up, still dressed in her nightgown, and reclaim her man from a kidnapping by soldiers of either the Confederacy or the Union (that detail having been forgotten); to Mary Penn, who states bravely, when asked how Elton weathered the storms of life, “he had me”; and to Lyda Branch, who links her arm in Danny’s and forms a couple that thinks and acts as one person.
Thank you, Mr. Berry, for all your stories, for sharing the membership, for transporting me home. It has been a very personal journey for me.
If you have not read any of Mr. Berry’s works, don’t start with this one. This is a swan song. Get to know these wonderful people first. I suggest a lovely place to start is Jayber Crow. I first entered Port William in his company, and I have never wanted to leave it for very long....more
When Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger bWhen Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger brother, Billy, and they will head for Texas and a new life. But, he hasn’t figured on Billy, who has a plan of his own to find their long lost mother, whom he believes is in California. His plan involves following The Lincoln Highway from their home in Nebraska to San Francisco, but there is almost an immediate wrench in the works with the arrival of two of Emmett’s fellow inmates who have escaped Salina. What ensues is a mad road trip and a lot of character revelation.
This book is a metaphor for life. Like life, you may plan the trip, think you know exactly where you are going and how to get there, in fact, plot it out neatly on a map, but it is not only unlikely, but impossible, that your plans will be followed, for life has a mind of its own. Just when you seem to be on track, life will throw you a detour, a roadblock, a missed turn or a side trip. What you will find, if you are perceptive, is that the journey is far more important than the destination, that what makes it worthwhile, or not, is usually the company you keep along the way, and one true friend to share your room in the Howard Johnsons is worth a suite of rooms in the Hilton alone. What you will also find is that you have your own destiny, with disappointment and heartache, and while you share the road with others, the choice for your future is yours alone.
Towles has created a cast of characters that are distinctive, believable, lovable and pitiable, but never dull. I find him to be the best of the modern writers, proving time and again that he can write about completely different subjects in equally enthralling ways. I count A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility among my favorite books. I wondered if he could do it again. I am not on the fence; I loved this book. ...more
Good Morning, Midnight is the story of a young woman’s plunge into depression and loneliness in the years following World War I. Sasha Jensen, an Engl Good Morning, Midnight is the story of a young woman’s plunge into depression and loneliness in the years following World War I. Sasha Jensen, an English woman, who had spent the years immediately following the war with her husband, Enno, a Frenchman, in Paris, finds herself back there retracing her steps through their old haunts and reliving her past. Paris does not seem to be a city of lights in Rhys novel, but one of seediness and gutter trolling.
I’m not sure what I should say about this novel. I had read that it was vaguely autobiographical, and I sincerely hope that is not the case, for this is a book of so much despair and darkness that it was a struggle to continue to read. It is not melancholy that drives Sasha, it is utter despair, and how a person with this little connection to life keeps living is beyond explanation. The ending was just too, too bizarre and awful for my tastes. The haunting promise of the Dickinson poem the title is derived from came flashing to my mind.
Rating the book is equally difficult, because there is not one thing about it I could say I liked, but I can recognize the emotional investment Rhys has made in her character. I thought of A Farewell to Arms, because the desolation of the ending of that novel seems to permeate this one, but while Hemingway is fairly straightforward in the telling of his tale, Rhys writes in the most meandering way, with random thoughts that require a re-read sometimes just to make sure you have caught the sense of them. And, there is the temptation to believe that she mostly wanted to shock her audience by forcing them to view the depravity of the post-war Parisian society.
Perhaps this was just too much of an intellectual and emotional investment for me at this moment in time, or maybe this is Rhys taken too far into herself for my pleasure. I enjoyed Wide Sargasso Sea and think of it fondly, but that was written by an older, perhaps more mellow Rhys. This book was written in 1939, and having come through one World War, Rhys could surely see the world standing at the threshold of the second. I doubt I will think of this book again, and if I do there will not be any fondness. When I closed the cover, I believe the sensation I was feeling was nausea. ...more
Everyone is alone in this house, she thought forlornly.
Having long wanted to read Dorothy Whipple, I put They Were Sisters on my Old and New ChallengeEveryone is alone in this house, she thought forlornly.
Having long wanted to read Dorothy Whipple, I put They Were Sisters on my Old and New Challenge at the Catching Up On Classics group. It is the only challenge that cannot be altered; it is set in stone; if the book is there, it gets read. I could not have made a better decision.
They were sisters, but what fully individual women they became. Lucy, the oldest, is a bastion of love and concern. When her mother dies at eighteen, all her plans and dreams go on hold and she cares for her father, the home, and her two younger sisters. Her caring remains a part of her character for her lifetime, even when her sisters should be well able to care for themselves and their respective families. She has a sweet and strong husband, a man of moral quality (and thank goodness for that), but she is not allowed to live her calm and peaceful life because she worries constantly for her sisters.
The other girls, Charlotte and Vera, have very different lives. Charlotte is the victim of a bad marriage, with a man who makes me want at times to crawl into the pages of the book with a baseball bat, madly swinging. The frightening thing about Geoffrey is that you know he could easily have existed, might easily exist even today. What struck me the most was how completely caught a woman still felt in the 1930’s when she had made a bad marriage, and how little recourse anyone had to save the woman or the children, even close family members. Men ruled and no matter how extreme their behavior, society primarily tsked and turned their heads away.
Nothing bloomed in her; the dry, teasing, tiresome wind of Geoffrey blew over her spirit and parched everything up.
The youngest sister, Vera, is a drop-dead beauty, and as such never has to work for anything and never appreciates anything she has, including the sister who worries so for her welfare, husband who provides for her, or the children she has been given. Her fear of aging and the loss of her beauty called to my mind women I actually know. I think it might be easier on those of us who never stunned anyone in the first place.
When people said she was the loveliest woman in Trenton, she smiled indifferently. It was too easy. What competition was there? If it had been in London or in Europe, it would have been different.
As the book progresses, the lives of these women become more and more tangled, and our sympathies shift to the next generation, the children who must survive all these bad decisions. My deepest angst was for the oldest of Charlotte and Geoffrey’s children, Margaret. The unique relationship she has with her father made me cringe. Like her mother, I felt she had no possible avenue of escape.
Man made such a mess of everything, thought Lucy. God must almost despair waiting for man to be as strong to do good as he was to do evil.
Like a favorite author of mine, Elizabeth Taylor, Whipple tells a deceptively simple tale, these are just ordinary lives being lived in rather usual ways; but there is so much more beneath the surface than that, so much is hidden. Still waters run deep, and this is an ocean....more
Philippa Talbot is a 42-year old widow, who has lost her only son, when she enters the Benedictine Abbey at Brede. She is a successful business woman Philippa Talbot is a 42-year old widow, who has lost her only son, when she enters the Benedictine Abbey at Brede. She is a successful business woman and much older than the other postulates, and she enters the order amidst the serious doubts of several of the older nuns already installed. Dame Agnes particularly objects to her and seeks to find in her the faults she foretells before her installation. It is her story that is the crux of this novel, but there are multiple other stories weaved into its fabric, and together they give a full picture of the young and the old who live behind the closed doors of the Abbey; what they are seeking and sometimes what they are running from.
With a motto of “Peace," the Abbey is sometimes anything but peaceful. Here are a large group of women, from different backgrounds and at different stages in their journey of faith, and each of them brings with her all the worldly shortcomings she possessed before entering the cloister. We see struggles with pride, jealousy, hubris, loss, despair and favoritism; but also strength of character, sacrifice, true vocation, devotion and love.
I believe the overpowering theme is that of obedience. How difficult it is for us, as egotistical human creatures, to bow completely to the voice of God guiding our lives–even for those who have chosen and sworn to do so without fail. Godden wishes us to see that while this is a simple life, it is not an easy one, either physically or emotionally. There are good women behind the grill, but there are not perfect and saintly ones. Peace is not what they have, it is what they seek.
Much of this book is about life within the walls of a nunnery. It is about the structure, the customs, the rituals. However, it is also about the very human struggle for goodness and completeness and understanding. It is about a need for God, but also about a need for one another. It might have been boring, but it was not. It might have had nothing to do with lay people, like myself, but it did.
I am not a Catholic, so the world of the cloister was both foreign and fascinating for me. I have no experience to tell me if the nuns are realistically portrayed, but I would bet a large sum that they are. My conviction comes from the fact that Godden has given a full spectrum of personalities, strengths and short-comings to them. They felt quite real. Dame Philippa’s struggle to fit and to submit felt inordinately true.
The more I read Rumer Godden, the more amazed I am that she is not better known and appreciated. I did not love this in the same way that I loved A Fugue in Time, but it is an excellent piece of literature and a book I am happy to have read. She and I have just begun our friendship, but I suspect it is going to be a lasting one.
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