SassyLassy Springs Forward along with her Alphabet

Time to embrace spring wholeheartedly after what in this part of the world was the coldest winter on record, although not the snowiest (too cold). Spring is arriving somewhat reluctantly, but I was able to pull a weed on the weekend and what better indicator is there? So spring forward along with the clocks, the extra hour of outdoor reading we gain, my alphabet and me.

I started this year with the loose goal of reading authors in translation alphabetically from A to Z. To my surprise, I am still doing this, having made it from A to E, which should put me on track to finish by year's end. Of course I am reading other things as well.

Here is my alphabet to date:

Juan Tomás Avila Laurel, Equatorial Guinea
Mikhail Bulgakov, Ukraine, was Russia at the time
Chan Koonchung, China
Marguerite Duras, Indochina, France
José Maria Eça de Queirós, Portugal

These books were all on the TBR pile and all were new authors to me except Bulgakov. It's been very encouraging.

This book confronted me from the display in the library.



15. Into the Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead by Michael Winter
first published 2014
finished reading March 6, 2015

July 1st is Canada Day, a day of national celebration. In Newfoundland and Labrador though, Canada's tenth province, it is known as Memorial Day, a day of commemoration for the battle of Beaumont-Hamel, fought on July 1st, 1916.

Newfoundland was not part of Canada in 1916. It was its own Dominion, part of the British Empire. It didn't have a real military, but when World War I broke out, the men of the island went off to fight. Five hundred volunteer soldiers, the Blue Puttees, were the first men of the Newfoundland Regiment to go to war.

Their first action was at Gallipoli. Then, augmented by more volunteers, they were sent to the Western Front and the disaster every Newfoundlander knows, "the line all Newfoundlanders have heard since grade school" Of the 778 men who went into battle that morning,
Only 68 answered the roll call the next day.
For these men who were supposed to be the third wave across the battlefield, expected only to "walk across this field and occupy the space left by a dead German army", it was over in less than half an hour. The Newfoundlanders had "faced the blizzard of machine-gun fire with their chins tucked into an advanced shoulder, just as they did back home in a snowstorm".

The Newfoundland Regiment, later in the war awarded the designation Royal Newfoundland Regiment, would be replenished with yet more volunteers, and go on to more losses, most notably at Ypres and Passchendaele, ending their war at Ledegem.

It is Beaumont-Hamel that haunts though. Winter set out to explore the myth-like hold it has on the island. He retraced the route of the men of the regiment on the Western Front, from their Newfoundland homes to UK training camps, to France and Belgium. Awkwardly, he compares each stage of his journey with theirs. There is simply no way to pretend an overnight trans-Atlantic flight is the same thing as being in a troop convoy across the ocean. There are almost absurd efforts to form a connection with each fact.

He is better at examining the questions of how memory works, how long the names of the battles will have resonance and meaning, how long commemorations will be observed. After reflecting on these matters though, he becomes obsessed with Tommy Ricketts, the Newfoundlander who became the youngest recipient of the Victoria Cross.

Winter is at his best in his walks around the quiet battlefields and cemeteries. Beaumont-Hamel is the only one left as it was, not returned to cultivation or other uses. The women of Newfoundland bought the land from the French farmers to keep their Newfoundland dead on Newfoundland soil. They planted trees from the island and wildflowers. Walking this battlefield, Winter realized "I had been in tears since arriving here... and tears felt like a normal state of being."

Next year will be the one hundredth anniversary of this battle. Newfoundland sent only six thousand men to World War I, but when that number is put against a total population at the time of only two hundred and forty-two thousand, the losses are quite staggering. There is no denying they affected the post war history of the island. In the years immediately following the war, it was seen as a nation forming event for the Dominion. Then came the Depression and the second World War. The Depression hit the dominion so hard that it gave up its self governing status and was run by the Commission of Government from London. It was further wracked apart by the acrimonious debates over joining Canada in 1949. Winter feels that event changed the popular narrative of Beaumont-Hamel to "... a symbol of how we lost a generation of young men who could have risen to power and made Newfoundland strong and viable." He disagrees with that version and instead says 'the destruction of the regiment was the beginning of the loss of our status as a self-governing nation", one which mourns its "stripped independence".

Whichever version of Newfoundland history and the confederation with Canada one supports, there is no escaping the impact of World War I. From Memorial University of Newfoundland down to the smallest Memorial Rink or shortest Memorial Drive, there is a recognition throughout the province that World War I was the event which determined everything since. Beaumont-Hamel was the beginning of that history.

The cover on Winter's book above is a tribute to the caribou, the emblem of the regiment. Caribou roam freely in Newfoundland. There is a monument to the regiment's caribou on the battlefield. Some people feel it stands guard, others feel it is assessing its surrounding, ever alert to danger.



The battlefield at Beaumont-Hamel as it is today, image from http://www.greatwar.co.uk/somme/memorial-newfoundland-park.htm



__________
Edited to add new battlefield image as previous one turned into a question mark.

Wow! the coldest winter on record. That must be very cold where you live. And then you go and read a book by an author named Winter.

I enjoyed learning a little bit about Newfoundland and their tragic history in W. W. 1.

>3 SassyLassy: That sounds like an really interesting book, definitely going on the list.

Thanks for that very informative review. Like Barry, I enjoyed learning about some things I didn't know about.

And I love the leaping lamb at the top!

>3 SassyLassy: Wonderful review and thanks for all the additional information - for example I am always surprised when I am reminded that Canada was still consolidating that late in time - in my lifetime countries were splintering and never uniting (Germany being the only exception of course) and I sometimes forget that countries building did not stop when it stopped in Europe.

>3 SassyLassy: Great review. I read Michael Crummey's works, and have read a few others from Newfoundland (though their names escape me at the moment).

>1 SassyLassy: I am so with you with regards to the weather! Although the snow pack has melted some, there's still 18-24 inches of compacted white stuff out there (not including the piles, of course). But I will take heart in that you have found a weed to pull!!! Love the little lamb photo!

>3 SassyLassy: a fascinating review, I didn't know about Newfoundland's changing status. In all the reflection on the 'war to end all wars' it hits home again and again, overwhelming itself in review.

Excellent review, Sassy. The Newfoundlanders had "faced the blizzard of machine-gun fire with their chins tucked into an advanced shoulder, just as they did back home in a snowstorm". Such a moving image. I know nothing of Newfoundland's history, but that will stay with me.

Love your springy lamb picture.

Interesting book and information on Newfoundland. I learned nothing about Newfoundland when I was in school, and I'm not sure it's any better today. For people growing up on the far west coast of Canada, Newfoundland might as well be the moon. I'd love to go there one day (off to pull some Newfie books out of the TBR stacks . . . )

>5 baswood: That's funny - I hadn't picked up on the Winter connection. It must have been another subliminal message that winter was the pervasive state of things and don't explore further.
The weed was of the perennial variety, and right by the front door where things get shovelled, so it emerged fairly quickly when the sun came out. Nothing else has showed itself as yet.

>5 baswood: >6 mabith: >7 rebeccanyc: and >10 tonikat: I would have been really surprised had Newfoundland been on the radar in your various parts of the world, as it certainly isn't in the rest of Canada, except possibly for some musicians and comedians from there.
Tony, you're so right about that; the more I read from other parts of the world, the more it comes home.

>8 AnnieMod: Canada has its own battles with splintering, despite its relatively recent nationhood. There are the recurring debates in Québec, crotchety people in the West who so far just spout off, and in Newfoundland there is strong nationalist sentiment. That said, I would be very surprised if any part actually left; in general Canadians are a pretty complacent bunch.

>9 avaland: Michael Crummey is a big favourite of mine too.
I have to confess that when I saw the pictures of your beautiful new library, the first thing that struck me was not the books and shelves, but rather the snow on the skylight, and I thought, "I know how that works!" That snow will disappear, and the last thing we all want is a quick thaw... there lie problems of an entirely different nature.

>11 Linda92007: That was the sentence I heard on the radio one day read by someone discussing the book, and I knew I had to read it. It also echoes some of the description in Cassie Brown's Death on the Ice, about a sealing catastrophe from 1914 that was still very fresh in people's minds. They had brought the frozen bodies into St John's by ship, still in the postures they had died in. The whole town had gone down to receive the ship.

>12 Nickelini: I too learned nothing about Newfoundland at school other than it was the tenth province and had fish and lumber. How exciting does that sound? It was only when I went to live there that I discovered just how passionate Newfoundlanders of all stripes are about their history and political status. Politics was and still is the national past time, some might call it a blood sport, for both participants and onlookers and I don't think I have ever lived anywhere where people know it better. I loved it.
Come to think of it, I didn't learn much more about BC either. What's up with the school curricula?

>7 rebeccanyc: >9 avaland: >12 Nickelini: Spring is here and lambs are indeed a symbol of it. I had an aunt on an island off the west coast of Scotland who would feed orphaned lambs in her kitchen each spring, and as a small child I thought that was wonderful.

Nothing to add, just wanted to say i enjoyed your review.

I enjoyed reading your wonderful review more than I would the book, I think. Your description of Newfoundland history is intimate and informative. I hope you add your review to the book page, as there are no reviews posted as yet.

Before I read the review I was struck by a chap called Winter writing a book called Into The Blizzard.

Argh. I feel torn! It's a good looking book about a remarkable event and I am very very tempted, but then there are the numerous annoying downsides to the writing which you mention. What to do? What to do?

1914 was clearly a particularly bad year for the Newfoundlanders with the sealing catastrophe as well.

Two books of Newfoundland tragedy to consider.

It is definitely spring here, and I was woken up at 5am by a particularly noisy blackbird declaring his territory from the roof of the house next door. He was just the lead, as all the other birds of various varieties were declaring theirs as well, and the wood pigeons, robins, and crows are still at it. Someone on the street has bought a couple of hens, and the clucking as they lay their eggs is an interesting addition to the morning song.

Now off to look at the snow at avaland's window.

This next book was a present.



16. The Afterlife of Stars by Joseph Kertes
first published 2014
finished reading March 8, 2015

On the day Robert Beck turned 9.8, his grandmother came to take him out of school. Other children were leaving under similar circumstances. It was October, 1956, and Soviet tanks had just rolled into Budapest.

Robert remembered his age so precisely, because on that day that he would never forget, his class had been learning decimals. He remembered every detail of the day, among them terrible things that no child should see, like the "hanging men" in the square, one from each lamp post. Grandmother hurried him away, trying to distract him with poppy seed strudel from his favourite café. However, there too, nothing was normal and part way through his treat, the patrons were all sent home and the café closed.

Arriving home, Robert and his grandmother found the house in an uproar. Arrangements were being made to leave the country, to flee, something neither Robert nor his thirteen year old brother Attila saw as anything more than an exciting adventure. They were going west, and the children thought of cowboy boots and spurs. This is the charm of Kertes's writing. He is able to take life shattering events and live them through the eyes of a child, without writing at a juvenile level.

Disaster struck as soon as the family crossed the border into Austria, but in the midst of family tragedy, there were exciting new things and new people to be discovered and thought about. There was the older brother imparting his sometimes imagined, sometimes real wisdom to Robert. Atilla found a graveyard of old statues and explained it to Robert:

These statues are the writers and leaders and warriors that the Germans didn't want standing gawking at the people in the squares and parks and outside the museums after they invaded, and now the statues the Russians don't want are thrown in with them too, and it goes on like that -- it always happens, whenever invaders come -- they knock down the statues, and the Hungarians grabbed these ones all up and piled them here instead of having them blown up. It's in case the Russians leave, and then they can knock down their statues -- Lenin and his band of Bolsheviks -- and put these back up, even though the border moved and it's not even going to be up to the Hungarians.

Distractions like this kept the children balanced, free from the overwhelming grief and growing tensions among the adults. While the children were looking forward, the adults could only look back. They made their way to Paris, to a relative, but the past was all too present in Paris as well. Eventually, they were able to board a ship for Canada and a new world.

Kertes himself made this journey when he was only five. Like Robert, he wound up in Canada, and like Robert became a writer. The idea of a new life in a young country suits a child narrator. Perhaps because we are seeing the world through the eyes of a child, albeit one looking back from adult years, the best portrayed adult characters are the Grandmother and Great Aunt Hermina, the kind of relatives who take time with children, whom children see as more caring that the supervisory adults in the role of parents. Where the story runs into difficulty, it is with a subplot involving an uncle and Raoul Wallenberg, whom the authorities were still trying to find.

I'm not sure quite where I stand with this book. I think perhaps it is a book suitable for young teenagers, although it has been promoted on regular fiction shelves. It reads well and I enjoyed reading it, but I would have liked something more, what I don't know. It felt like listening to Peter and the Wolf as an adult; enjoyable but not quite complete. Robert as a character has stuck with me though, particularly for his contemplations on life. Perhaps that alone makes it a successful read.

17. The Bride of Lammermoor by Walter Scott
first published 1819, this edition based on the Magnum Opus of 1830
finished reading March 27, 2015

The young Janet Dalrymple became secretly engaged to Lord Rutherford. Her father, Lord Stair, and her mother, Dame Margaret Ross, disapproved of the young man on political and financial grounds. The young couple had sealed their engagement by breaking a piece of gold in two, each keeping half. Janet vowed that terrible things would befall her should she ever break her troth. Shortly after this, Janet's parents found a promising match for her, which Janet refused. Forcing her to confess her secret engagement, her parents nonetheless insisted upon this new alliance. Lord Rutherford objected strongly, but the engagement was broken, and Janet's half of the gold piece was returned to him.

When Janet married her new suitor, David Dunbar, she was seen to be completely passive, "... sad, silent and resigned, as it seemed, to her destiny." After the wedding feast and dancing, the couple retired to the bridal chamber. Suddenly, "the most vivid and piercing cries were heard." The company felt they should investigate.

On opening the door, they found the bridegroom lying across the threshold, dreadfully wounded, and streaming with blood. The bride was then sought for: She was found in the corner of the large chimney, having no covering save her shift, and that dabbled in gore. There she sat, grinning at them, mopping and mowing... in a word, absolutely insane. The only words she spoke were 'Tak up your bonny bridegroom'. She survived this horrible scene little more than a fortnight...

Scott outlined this actual event from 1669, a story told him by his mother, in his introduction to The Bride of Lammermoor, telling his readers it is the basis for his novel. This raises a certain anticipation in the reader, for Scott is one of the nineteenth century's great story tellers. That story, however, seemed a mere premise for the novel Scott actually wrote.

The Bride of Lammermoor tells the tale of Edgar, the Master of Ravenswood, last of an ancient and noble family. Edgar does indeed become secretly engaged to Lucy Ashton, daughter of the man who had taken over the estate of Ravenswood through legal cunning. Once Scott has Edgar and Lucy engaged though, Lucy barely appears again until the end of the novel. Instead, the meat of the novel lies in Ravenswood's character and actions. Principally these revolve around Ashton's manoeuvres to secure the estate of Ravenswood, and Edgar's attempts to win it back. Scott altered the time frame, so that his events take place shortly after the Act of Union, when Scots were adapting to some new legal measures and to shifting political alliances.

Simply put, Ravenswood's psychological makeup is the old romantic Stewart side of the tale. Ashton represents the new. It's not black and white though. Scott portrays Edgar as a more complex character, torn between old and new, wanting to evolve beyond the old battle lines, but eventually throwing in his lot with his powerful relative, the Marquis of Atholl, who was himself finding his way in this new world.

There is a large cast of supporting characters. Edgar's last retainer, Caleb Balderstone, is used to inject humour, often to an annoying extent, but in the end, he is a figure of pathos, a relic of another age. Lucy's mother, Lady Ashton, rivals any Wilkie Collins heroine in evil behaviour. There are the three hags, echoing Macbeth's witches.

This is an excellent political novel and character study. However, as I read it, for the first time when reading Scott I thought I understood why he is no longer widely read. The politics, legal manoeuvres, and intrigue were perhaps too specific to a place and time for many readers. For such readers, the dramatic tension of the original story wasn't there to make up for the amount of time spent on their study.

Scott himself had worries about his novel. In a letter to his friend and publisher James Ballantyne, he said

The story is a dismal one, and I doubt sometimes whether it will bear working out to much length after all. Query, if I shall make it so effective in two volumes as my mother does in her quarter of an hour's crack by the fireside? But, nil desperandum.

I have the feeling that I didn't read this novel in a manner that would do it justice. It is only three hundred and thirty-one pages long, but has ninety-five pages of notes. For about seventy-five per cent of the book, I read each note as I went along. I felt incredibly bogged down. Then I switched to only reading them at the end of each chapter, and things picked up remarkably. After all, Scott is above all a teller of tales, and as such should never be interrupted. Next time I read this book, I will read it right through.

Enjoyed your review of The Bride of Lammermoor

Yes, perhaps it was the notes that got in the way, as The Bride of Lammermoor was dramatized on Radio 4 a while ago, and although I heard only part of it it did seem a good old-fashioned bit of romance and skullduggery. Of course the Beeb doubtless stripped out a lot of material in order to do the dramatization.

How many more Scotts do you have to go?

I bought The Heart of Midlothian after you reviewed it last year, so i am resolute about not buying anything more by Scott, no matter how much you tempt me, until I read it!

>19 baswood: Thanks, bas

>20 Oandthegang: How many more Scotts do you have to go?

Well, it could be a lifetime enterprise, although at least he's not quite as prolific a writer as RLS. I've been collecting the novels here and there for some time, which was difficult before the internet and is still tricky as they aren't always in printed in an edition I would like. I had started with Penguin, who seemed to discontinue them for a while, then no one seemed to have them, now OUP seems to have picked them up. After reading The Heart of Mid-Lothian last year, I had resolved to start at the beginning of the list this year with the unread novels and read right through. That went by the boards when I read somewhere that The Bride of Lammermoor was based on Hamlet. That seems a somewhat odd notion, given that it is based on a real story, but since my Shakespeare group is reading Hamlet this year, I thought I would give it a go. After finishing them both in the same week, I will say that there are definite echoes of the play in Scott's novel, but then, you could say that about some of the other plays too. I now resolve again to start at the beginning, as soon as I find a copy of the first novel.

One of the things I like about the Penguin and OUP editions are the footnotes and introductions. Scott often altered history for his own purposes, and at a good hundred pages of notes and introduction so far per novel, I have been picking up a lot of background.

To answer your question though, for adult reading, probably about twenty, depending on how you count them. Some I read in children's versions but have not yet read again in full length.

>21 rebeccanyc: The Heart of Mid-Lothian would be a much more compelling first pick!

>22 SassyLassy: The Heart of Mid-Lothian would be a much more compelling first pick!

OK, I heard that and wishlisted it. Although it wouldn't be a first read exactly. I read Waverley a couple of years ago, when I visited the Highlands.

Excellent review of The Bride of Lammermoor. I remember adding The Heart of Midlothian to my wishlist when you reviewed it. I agree with your difficulty of finding the right edition. It requires some care.

I'm going to stick with experiencing Scott through your reviews for now.

You had me wanting to read the Kertes, all until that last paragraph. What an experience he must have lived through.

>23 FlorenceArt: Waverley is listed as the first, so it was a good place to start!

>24 VivienneR: Too true.

>25 dchaikin: Sometimes I think my reviews are almost as long as the novels.
I suspect I may have done Kertes a disservice. His book is marketed in the regular fiction shelves, not children's shelves. He has written children's books though. Perhaps after the seriousness of a couple of the books that preceded it, it suffered in comparison.
I agree about the experience he went through. It was seeing the world through that child's eyes that was the best part of the book.

Another present, with some unexpected lessons.



18. Remaking a Garden: The Laskett Transformed by Roy Strong, photography by Clive Boursnell
first published 2014
finished reading March 31, 2015

Remaking a Garden could be more aptly called "Remaking a Life". When Roy Strong and his wife, Julia Trevelyan Oman bought The Laskett with its four acres in 1973, they started to plant a series of linked gardens, full of ornament and set pieces.

An expert on Tudor and Renaissance life, Strong at the time was director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, but says designing his gardens allowed him "to live out my fantasy career as a designer in the theatre." Oman actually was a designer for theatre. The two had no end of ideas. Like many couples, they had differences of opinion as to which ideas to implement, but over time the gardens became "...a joint creation with a degree of 'his' and 'hers." Julia's major concern was to plant for privacy both indoors and out, while Roy favoured more visibility.

Then, in 2003, Julia died. Strong says "Now everything came under my control", modifying the impact of such a statement with "How was I to exercise that control with integrity and also with respect to her memory as the joint maker?"

Strong's answer was to sell Julia's design library, commission paintings with the proceeds, remodel the exterior of the house, and then set to work on the gardens. One could argue that this frenetic activity was a response to grief, but as Strong tells it, it sounds more like a liberation.

This book is the record of the garden's renovation and resurrection. Over the course of the previous thirty years, the initial plantings of trees and hedges had reached maturity, vistas had been obscured, paths had been overgrown, and some plants had disappeared altogether. Strong started a massive clearing and rearranging process. What emerged was a truly personal garden, which is after all, what any gardener wants to achieve. It is not a garden for everyone, myself included, but as an implementation of his ideas, it is an amazing feat. To document it, he enlisted Clive Boursnell, a garden photographer. It is Bournsell's photographs which truly bring home the process of renewal; viewing what already exists with a dispassionate enough eye to see what needs done, changing what needs to be changed, introducing some new ideas and eliminating some old, not just for the sake of change, but to gain a new perspective.

Strong says, "Gardening is like a picture that is never finished, one that is forever calling for alteration and retouching." Boursnell's photographs show all that can be won along the way: light, space, connection, vistas.

The two together made me leap to the idea that this process applies not only to gardens, but also to houses and possibly even life itself. No books on domestic design have ever managed this, but armed with their inspiration, I say "Bring in more of that metaphorical light and open up those vistas."

Another lesson, one that any gardener knows all too well, was somewhat more sobering: that of the complete and utter transience of our imprint.

______
edited for spelling

I'm catching up on missed threads. I liked your review of Into the Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead, which I am ashamed to admit that I knew nothing about that. There are no reviews on the book's page. Would you add yours?

There are drawbacks to not entering your TBR in LT. It seems I wanted to read this book so much, I bought it twice in three months.



19. The Moro Affair by Leonardo Sciascia, translated from the Italian by Sacha Rabinovitch
first published as L'Affaire Moro in 1978
finished reading April 5, 2015

Sometimes there is nothing like reading contemporary accounts of events that have since passed into history. We see how people felt at the time, whether they considered a particular event in a different light than we do now. We learn more about peripheral players and actions than we can from reading history, and we wind up knowing more than the abbreviated historical record offers. Leonard Sciascia's account of what came to be known as 'The Moro Affair' gives us a real sense of the events surrounding it, and keeps us completely engaged, even though we know the outcome.

Aldo Moro was a former Prime Minister of Italy. At the time of these events, he was President of the Christian Democrat Party. On March 16, 1978, he was on his way to the swearing in of yet another Italian government, one which was being formed by an alliance between the right wing Christian Democrats and the Communist Party, an alliance he had worked hard to arrange, one which would create a sort of meeting at the centre. Such an alliance upset many, including the Red Brigades. On his way to the ceremony, Moro was ambushed, his driver and four guards were murdered, and Moro himself was kidnapped.

Over the next seven weeks, the Red Brigades issued a series of nine official communiqués. They labelled Moro a prisoner, incarcerated in the 'People's Prison', tried him and sentenced him to death. Sciascia deconstructs each of these communiqués, along with the so called false communiqué, searching for motive and meaning. Along with these documents, he also analyzed the more than fifty letters Moro had been allowed to write to his family, friends and politicians, which were published in the newspapers.

What emerged is a scathing portrayal of Italian police, bureaucracy and politicians. There is also the beginning of a somewhat grudging respect for Moro from Sciascia, who in his roles as essayist, political commentator and parliamentary deputy, had never shown much regard for him.

Early on we see the Red Brigades trying to negotiate a prisoner exchange, an idea the government under Andreotti rejected. There are Moro's discussions about the philosophical principles of exchanges, saying

In guerilla warfare such are the alternatives which arise and have to be objectively and unemotionally assessed, while considering the political issue at stake.

Sciascia presents a Moro who would have initially believed he was the object of a police search, someone the authorities wanted to find and rescue. He shows how Moro gradually came to the realization that perhaps the new Christian Democrat government was not particularly interested in finding him, as paradoxically, the dealings with his kidnappers had conferred a certain needed legitimacy on it. However, at the same time, as Sciascia suggests, it also increased the appeal of the Red Brigades to certain factions. He tells of non governmental involvement as well: the early recognition by the Cosa Nostra that the government was not interested in an intervention to save Moro, a fellow Sicilian. Even the Vatican seemed deliberately ineffectual.

Finally there is the stoic resignation on the part of Moro, knowing he has been forsaken and in now doomed. On April 27th, he wrote a long letter, a mixture of appeal, diatribe and farewell.

What makes you suppose that the State would go to rack and ruin if, once in a while, an innocent man survives and, in exchange another goes into exile instead of going to prison?
...
It is within the Party that such problems are not bravely confronted. And for me it is a matter of life and death, my death practically ensured by the Christian Democrats who, entrenched behind their questionable principles, do nothing to save a man, whoever he is, but in actual fact one of their more prominent members and long-standing militants, from the scaffold.
...
I shall die, if such is my Party's decree, in the fullness of my Christian faith and in the profound affection for an exemplary family which I love and over which I shall watch from the heavens above.

Aldo Moro's body was found in the trunk of a car on May 9, 1978. He had been shot. The family held a private funeral. Three days later there was a public funeral, presided over by Pope Paul VI, with all the members of the government in attendance. The family did not attend.

There was a Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into the via Fani crime, the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, the policy and objectives pursued by the terrorists. Sciascia presented the minority report, suggesting there had been ".. an imperceptible waning of any eagerness to find Moro" and demanding to know

How is it that the forces the State provides for the protection, security and safeguard of its individual citizens, collectivities and institutions failed to rescue Moro during the fifty-five days of his captivity?

___________________

This NYRB edition also contains Sciascia's 1975 essay The Mystery of Majorana, first published as La Scomparsa di Majorana. Here Sciascia once more works with letters and primary documents to tell the story of Professor Ettore Majorana, who disappeared in 1938.

Majorana was a brilliant atomic physicist who had worked with Fermi in Rome and Heisenberg in Germany. Returning from Germany, he retreated to his own home, working on his own from 1933 to 1937. Then he was appointed to the Chair of Theoretical Physics at Naples in 1938, a position he had applied for on a whim. In March he wrote what appeared to be a suicide note to a friend. The friend received a telegram telling him to ignore the letter first, then the letter. Then he received another letter saying "The sea rejected me and I'll be back tomorrow..."

The police said he had been on the ferry from Palermo to Naples, but no on who could confirm his identity ever saw him again. Suicide or disappearance is the question Sciascia explores, along with the related question of whether or not Majorana possessed the knowledge to create and atom bomb. It was rumoured that Mussolini had expressed an interest in the case, wanting him found. It was also rumoured that all Majorana's scribblings at home had nothing whatsoever to do with physics, but were merely rantings.

In this essay Sciascia is writing almost forty years after the events. There is none of the drama present in his account of Moro, even though he says Majorana's case had always intrigued him. It is now almost forty years since Moro was kidnapped and his case still fascinates.

I am a big fan of Sciascia and have this book on the TBR. You've motivated me to mentally bring it higher up on the pile.

Great review of The Moro Affair, Sassy. The Moro kidnapping happened during my senior year in high school, and my classmates and I read about it and discussed it in one of my classes. I'll definitely buy and read it soon.

Somewhat belatedly, I enjoyed your excellent and informative review of The Bride of Lammermoor, a book I have been wanting to read for decades! One of these days . . .

Thank you for your review of The Moro Affair - I saw the film 'Good Morning, Night' d. Marco Bellocchio last year which is also about this but takes a sort of dreamy poetic view of it and it won me over very much, when I was not really after seeing a political film. Its contrast between the daily life of the captors and his own captivity and suffering and dawning realisations was striking. I looked for Moro's letters and couldn't find them in English, so this is good to know of, though I am not sure I need to know any more of it now.

>18 SassyLassy: - Informative review of The Bride of Lammermoor. I want to read that eventually, although mainly because it's the source for the opera Lucia di Lammermoor. It's interesting that Lucy disappears for a big chunk of the book, because the opera is generally considered a soprano showcase and most of the political stuff is cut. I read Ivanhoe a long time back, and I had the same problem with too many notes.

I read The Moro Affair also, but I think I liked the piece on Majorana more than the Moro essay. I had some issues with the analysis of both events though - didn't think his hypothesis of Majorana's ending was well-supported and I wasn't sure how much of the interpretation of the communiques was accurate.

>27 SassyLassy: I loved your reviews of both, The Moro Affair and Remaking a Garden. You are absolutely right in pointing out the ephemeral nature of our presence: I loved how you put this: Another lesson, one that any gardener knows all too well, was somewhat more sobering: that of the complete and utter transience of our imprint. (now that spring is passing by and the tropical summer is here, I watch my flowers wither in the heat).

>27 SassyLassy: Another lesson, one that any gardener knows all too well, was somewhat more sobering: that of the complete and utter transience of our imprint. How true, but I would not have it any other way.

I got caught up on your thread tonight, and enjoyed all your reviews beginning with The Afterlife of Stars. Your review is so good and there is only one other posted. Might you consider adding yours? I have been meaning to read more Scott for years now, ever since I purchased a lovely four-volume edition of Tales of a Grandfather. I will look for OUP editions. I did not know of the Moro Affair and was fascinated by your review. Hmm. I am desperately trying not to add to my TBR, and you are making it very hard (as usual)!

Remembering your excellent review of Getting To Know The General I enquired for it at my local bookstore. It is now a 'print on demand' book, despite Vintage having a substantial collection of Greene volumes on the shelves. I suppose print on demand is better than being out of print, but it will tend to push a work into obscurity. I'm rather curious as to how print on demand works in terms of factory efficiency, etc. I always imagine print on demand books as looking rather shoddy like a bad photocopy, but presumably this is not the case. Will have to order one and see what it's like.

Hard to believe it's been almost a month since I was last here. My next review has been nagging at me, but not enough to write itself, so it may be a few days yet. There has been much else to do, and several trips away, so my reading and LT life has suffered greatly. Now I'm happy to say I can spend some uninterrupted time catching up with LT and some reading.

>30 rebeccanyc: This was my first book by Sciascia. It took me a bit to get into his particular style of political rhetoric, as well as to think in that fashion again, but then it seemed like complete immersion. I know you have read some of his fiction and I would like to give that a try.

>31 kidzdoc: I suspect your classroom discussions would have provided the perfect antithesis to Sciascia. It would be fun to go back to them and hear what they entailed.

>33 tonikat: I will have to look for that film. I think the whole story would translate to that medium very well. The only comparison I had was to a film on The October Crisis in Canada, when Pierre Elliott Trudeau invoked The War Measures Act following the separate kidnappings of a politician and a trade commissioner by the Front de Libération du Québec: https://www.nfb.ca/film/action_the_october_crisis_of_1970. It also prompted one of Trudeau's most quoted phrases "Just watch me" in a seven minute debate with a reporter on Parliament Hill, a scenario that now seems improbable. So many theses...

>34 DieFledermaus: Like you, I found the hypothesis about Majorana's fate somewhat weak. The interpretation of the communiqués I found fascinating, but as you say, it is difficult to know how accurate it was.

>32 Poquette: and >34 DieFledermaus: I am resolved to slowly work my way through Scott's novels, a somewhat major undertaking given their length and number. That does guarantee me a good long life though. I should look for a copy of the opera at the library. DieF, do you have any preferred sopranos in the role?
Back to Ivanhoe; I think that was the novel I liked least so far, perhaps because I felt the setting and characters were a bit of a stretch for Scott, but it does make I great film.

>37 labfs39: It was an edited down for children version of Tales of a Grandfather that first got me reading Scott. It was only one volume. The picture on my profile page was on the spine of that book and the story behind it always stuck in my mind.
I say build up that TBR. You never know when it will come in handy.

>35 reva8: and >36 baswood: I am lucky that most flowers apart from hardy spring bulbs have not dared make an appearance so far, so there is still that anticipation all gardeners love. Summer even approaching tropical seems like a remote dream right now. Bas, you are absolutely right.

>38 Oandthegang: My edition is a used book find. As for 'print on demand', I have had one experience with this. My copy of High Albania is such a creature and I was apprehensive about ordering it. However, it is quite respectable and that particular publisher (Echo Library) has a pleasing standard format for many of their titles.

Time to finally move forward with my alphabet with this cry for help



Spoken: Foxtrot
Meaning: I am disabled, communicate with me

We are here:

Poster edited out to correct odd interventions (see 53 below)
The set of the real movie Macho Callahan

>40 SassyLassy: Wow, I'm glad that with all that violence, we also get a peek of side boob. Well done.

20. Diana: The Goddess who Hunts Alone by Carlos Fuentes, translated from the Spanish by Alfred Mac Adam
first published as Diana, o, La cazadora solitaria in 1994
finished reading Aprili 7, 2015

Writing about this book had been presenting me with a number of problems, so I kept putting it off. Then it occurred to me; this was the great Carlos Fuentes writing, so I had been searching for something that wasn't there. After all, even great writers produce lesser books once in a while. Having accepted that this was a slight novel for Fuentes, in both tone and length, I felt much better. I was now more prepared to look at it on its own.

Part of the problem was that this is an autobiographical novel narrated by the author himself. I imagine it is difficult to write such a thing, no matter how much pleasure is derived from having the starring role. Looking back to 1970, the time of the novel, the narrator tells us at the beginning,

At the time I believed, despite everything, that literature, my gospel, excused everything. Others surrendered in the name of literature to drugs, alcohol, politics, even to polemics as a literary sport. I -- and I wasn't alone -- succumbed to love, but I retained my right to keep my distance, to manipulate, to be cruel.

He viewed himself as a Don Juan, giving himself to the dual roles of lover and writer. Loving or writing, nothing is more exciting or more beautiful than recognizing the struggle between the power we exercise over another person and the power the other -- man or woman -- exercises over us.

However, as an attempt at a "total victory over transitory loves", he sought a reconciliation with his wife, from whom he had been separated for over a year. At a party to celebrate this reconciliation, he met Diana Soren. He did not go home.

Diana was an American actress, married to a left leaning French intellectual. They lived in Paris. She was in Mexico to make a film, a western. Diana is based on Jean Seberg, the real life American actress with whom Fuentes had an affair. Like Seberg, she was under FBI surveillance, forced to leave the US for a Europe more understanding and tolerant of her political views. Like Seberg, she died in miserable circumstances.

Diana was a needy creature on many levels, and Fuentes never quite succeeds in conveying her appeal. He is far better at describing the world of film making itself. Here was a group of actors and crew basically banished to the edge of the desert for the making of a second rate film. Each goes through the routine of establishing a partner and a territory for the duration, a choice which may or may not work out. As Diana's hairdresser later said to the narrator, "How good it is you came. You saved Diana from the stuntman."

Narrator/Fuentes moved in with Soren. He wrote in the morning while she worked. He visited in the afternoon.They drank in the evenings. Each night he was confronted with the photograph of her last lover, a man who could only have been Clint Eastwood, watching over them from the bedside table. Naturally the affair didn't last.

The narrator tells his tale from the vantage point of 1993. This allows him to reflect not only on the US of the 1960s, but on later US debacles like Iran Contra and Nicaragua. Fuentes seemed much happier in this role of social critic. Government and Hollywood each have their own thoughts on history, Fuentes has his. It is in the distinctions between myth and reality, and the overlapping of the two, that he excels.

>41 Nickelini: Some things never die. Apparently they are a big celebrity "look" now. This was a 1970 movie poster, which actually has the name of the film spelled incorrectly. I was looking for something that might reflect the Jean Seberg interest of the time. Most of the posters were more macho, but less violent. Here's an example.

>42 SassyLassy: Nice review, as always, of Diana: The Goddess Who Hunts Alone.

>43 SassyLassy: That second one is so much better, and nice to actually spell the title right!

The first one looks like it is the movie poster for The Magnificent Seven.

Edited to correct auto-correct. :(

<42 and Fuentes never quite succeeds in conveying her appeal. Probably one of the hardest things to do in an autobiographical novel especially if that person appears less than wonderful in the eyes of third party characters.

How Blue Can You Get? The Thrill is Gone.

As I woke up this morning, CBC was playing BB King, and I knew right away he had died overnight.

Here is a darker version of The Thrill is Gone with Tracy Chapman. Don't watch the video, just close your eyes and listen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVxCtt3s_1M

Edited to add that the version they perform on Deuces Wild is longer and better, featuring more of Lucille, but I can't find the full version online

>39 SassyLassy: Yes, I enjoyed the fiction I read by Sciascia: The Day of the Owl, To Each His Own, Equal Danger, and The Wine-Dark Sea (all published by NYRB. That's what makes me interested in reading The Moro Affair.

>42 SassyLassy: Nice review of the Fuentes. I can appreciate why writing about his work is difficult.

The Fuentes review is quite interesting, but I think I would prefer one of the better Fuentes. I was surprised to find I own Inez, apparently that was a blind library sale purchase, possibly I just liked to cover. Anyway, I don't know what the better Fuentes's are.

I'm catching up for a month, that's the state of my club read. But I loved your reviews of The Moro Affair, a topic which also fascinates me, and of Remaking the Garden. Both books I will likely enjoy only through your reviews.

>50 dchaikin: Terra Nostra is maybe his most famous work, and amazing, but a tome and a difficult read (I'm sure I only understood a fraction of it). I've also read Vlad, which was seriously disappointing but mercifully short.

Thanks R. I'll skip Vlad, and keep Terra Nostra in mind.

>45 Nickelini: Okay, something weird has happened and the bad poster has been replaced completely by some deus ex machina with a poster for western movies. It directs us to a French language website for westerns. I have removed the image completely now and we'll see what happens.

>46 NanaCC: I love correcting auto correct, especially after something like the replacement above. It's the human intervention that does it.

>50 dchaikin: I've been doing the same catchup as you. It's good to know that Moro still fascinates. As I was reading the book, I found myself wondering if he would become one of those footnotes to history, which would be unfortunate.
As a footnote to Remaking the Garden, Strong apparently has offered his garden to the National Trust, which turned him down, saying it failed to "reach the high rung of historic and national importance." He has now directed that all personal aspects of his garden be destroyed after his death. I would argue that all aspects of a private garden are personal, so it will be interesting to see what happens.

>49 rebeccanyc: Thanks. I read Terra Nostra too, and I was just grateful I wasn't reviewing it! I hadn't heard of Vlad, but despite your caveat, suspect I may have to read it, as for some unknown reason I seem to be acquiring a small collection of Vlad related material.

>52 dchaikin: Terra Nostra may be the place to start.

>47 baswood: I suspect you're completely correct there. I hadn't thought of that before, but I can see how that would happen.

>46 NanaCC: I had the same thought about The Magnificent Seven, but as I looked through endless western movie posters, there was a definite sameness in the two to three categories those posters encompassed, all variations of the girl, gun and horse themes. There also seemed to be a lot of offshore copyright infringement.

>53 SassyLassy: the only reason I know The Magnificent Seven is that it is a movie that my hubby will watch every time it is on. You are right though, the western movie posters from that time period all have a sameness, copyright infringement aside.

>53 SassyLassy: I reread my Vlad review and discovered that I liked a lot of it, although in the end I had mixed feelings. So interesting how my memory of it was much worse.

Alan Furst has been mentioned quite a bit on LT lately. I've been a fan for some time, reading one a year when distraction is needed, but somehow I missed this one when it first came out.



21. Dark Voyageby Alan Furst
first published 2004
finished reading April 12, 2015

During World War II, merchant and other working ships of neutral and Allied nations frequently came under the direction of the UK's Merchant Marine. Some did so willingly, some did so under pressure. The risks were high, the survival rate low, for

in the first nineteen months of European war, from September, 1939, to March of 1941, the island nation of Britain and her allies lost, to U-boat, air, and sea attack, to mines and maritime disaster, one thousand, five hundred and ninety-six merchant vessels.

Dark Voyage is a fictional account of a Dutch freighter, the Noordendam, pulled in to take part in one of the Royal Navy's clandestine missions. Her captain, DeHaan, was Dutch. The crew came from a variety of nations, not all on the same side.

The first order of business was to give the ship another identity, home port and flag. Somewhere off the coast of Africa, a quick paint job transformed the Noordendam into the Santa Rosa, home port Valencia, flying the flag of neutral Spain. The Santa Rosa was listed and described in Lloyd's Register, so to the unsuspecting it was a legitimate vessel. London was counting on the wartime suspension of the daily lists of merchant ship movements to keep the whereabouts of the real Santa Rosa secret. However, unbeknownst to British Intelligence, the real ship had just sunk in a Mexican port, witnessed by German observers and reported back to their superiors as just one more piece of potentially useful information.

From these beginnings, Furst takes the captain and crew of the erstwhile Noordendam around the Mediterranean to establish credibility. Then it's off on their secret mission north. The route will take them around Scotland, down through the North Sea past German bases in occupied Norway, through the Skagerrak and Kattegat with their submerged minefields, into the Baltic to Smygehuk. Here they should unload their cargo. Then it would be back to Malmo, their stated destination. Along the way, luck ran out. Not surprising, for throughout the book, Furst hints at possible fates. Early in the novel, DeHaan passed a Norwegian freighter in port, filled with aviation fuel. "Of all the ways he didn't want to die" Elsewhere, British Intelligence had given him call signals, not to be used to signal for help, because help was not available, but rather to warn others in the vicinity of imminent danger. There was constant risk from spies on shore and crews on board, with who knew what allegiances. Above all, there was the nagging realization that those in charge had no expectation that DeHaan and his crew would survive; that even if the ship actually made it all the way to its mission, the chances of return through those same waters were next to nil.

Furst skilfully paints the claustrophobic life of a freighter, knowing when to inject some action. There is heroism and treachery. Possibly worse for the protagonists, there is doubt, as there should be on all secret missions. World War II novels are Furst's element. This is one of his best, a real get away from it all escape.

Excellent review of Dark Voyage. It seems Furst gets nothing but praise, no wonder there are so many holds on his books at the library. I've been waiting a long time for mine to surface.

>56 SassyLassy:. Dark Voyage sounds like one I would like. Adding to my wishlist.

>39 SassyLassy: - The recording of Lucia that I have is the Callas/di Stefano/von Karajan one at La Scala. I think it's pretty dramatic, but I'm not as much of a voice person as some people. I saw one live performance with Eglise Gutierrez in the title role - she was quite moving in a very good production, that was the one that made me decide I did love the opera.

>42 SassyLassy: - Informative review of Diana: The goddess who hunts alone, although I think I'll start with another Fuentes first. I have Christopher Unborn in the boxes somewhere.

>56 SassyLassy: - Great review of Dark Voyage - sounds like a pretty tense book. I've seen a lot of Furst around lately also - what would you recommend as his best/a good first one?

>57 VivienneR: That's funny. You'd think they would start bringing them in from elsewhere.

>58 NanaCC: I think you would.

>59 DieFledermaus: Thanks for the Lucia recommendation.
I haven't read Christopher Unborn. I sympathize with the problem of books in boxes. I can't wait to see all mine again.
Dark Voyage would not be a bad one to start with if you are not averse to the sea, as it isn't involved with any historic incidents, so it doesn't matter when in his catalogue you read it. Otherwise, I might read through his books in chronological order of WWII, as opposed to the order in which he wrote them, which I believe would put the starting book at Midnight in Europe as the Spanish Civil War winds up.

From late April to late May, I was away on five different occasions for at least two nights each time. This led to a somewhat disjointed existence, and perhaps led me to reading this book, which someone had given me as a distraction.



22. The Drop by Dennis Lehane
first published 2014
finished reading some time in April 2015

A somewhat humdrum novel in which the inhabitants of Lehaneland, otherwise known as old time Irish South Boston, find the Chechen Mafia encroaching on their territory. As with most of Lehane's books, it has been made into a film of the same name. The only thing of note is that it is James Gandolfini's last film, released posthumously.

Not having had much to say in (61) above, I thought I would augment (56) with a bit of background history, albeit not from the Netherlands. If you've read some of my previous threads, you will know that the Battle of the Atlantic is an interest of mine.

On April 9th, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway. King Haakon VII and part of his government were evacuated to England, where they formed a government in exile.

At the time of the invasion, Norway had a population of only three million, yet it had the world's third largest ocean going merchant fleet, consisting of about 1100 ships. Of these 1100, 1024 were at sea when the Germans arrived. Haakon ordered them all to proceed to allied ports. The German backed government in Oslo, under Vidkun Quisling, ordered them to return to Norway. Not one obeyed Quisling's order. Norway's merchant fleet became part of the allied effort, with Norwegian ships and personnel operating from around the globe. By 1942, over 40% of the desperately needed oil arriving in Britain was carried by Norwegian tankers.

One half of the Norwegian fleet would be destroyed during the war, falling victim to U-boats, mines, Luftwaffe bombings, weather and just plain misadventure. Today there are memorials in harbours around the world, recognizing the Norwegian contribution. Here are just a few:

in Lunenburg NS, where Camp Norway was established as a Norwegian military training facility, with Norwegian factory ships and whalers.



in Halifax NS



in Bergen Norway, Leif Larsen, who brought agents back and forth from Norway to the Shetlands, and refugees from Norway



in Scalloway, Shetland

Very interesting about the reaction of the Norwegian fleet to Quisling's command. Norway can definitely hold its head up high about its response to the Nazis.

>62 SassyLassy: very interesting, thanks for sharing that! Have you read any nonfiction accounts of the Norwegian fleet that you would recommend?

Enjoyed your review of Dark Voyage. Alan Furst is new to me

cool stuff on the Norwegian merchant marines, and fun review of Furst's Dark Voyage.

Great memorials. How do you find this stuff? The Scalloway memorial is particularly striking for its unusual design. Looking at the differences is design it might be interesting to see if there is a relationship between places and commemorative styles, what the styles say about the places. The Halifax one looks new.

Thanks for sharing that very interesting information and great photos about Norway's role in World War II, Sassy.

>63 rebeccanyc: and >68 kidzdoc: Thanks, for some reason Norway has always fascinated me, although as yet I have never been there.

>64 japaul22: I haven't read any, but if there is one out there, I would be interested. It seems to me I have seen academic titles over the years, but don't seem to have any lists of them. They may be buried somewhere. There are used books stores which specialize in marine history and ocean going life, and these may be the place to look. I always come away with several titles when I find such a place. Unfortunately I am now far from a coast, which is where most of those bookstores are to be found.

>65 baswood: and >66 dchaikin: Good summer reading.

>67 Oandthegang: I did like this design and had somewhat the same thoughts as you about the relationship between place and style. For instance, in Battery Park in NY, there is a large memorial to the American Merchant Marine, which is dynamic in a sense.



Here the crew members are calling for help and trying to rescue someone from the water. You can see the tide line, and as the tide rises and the waves wash over the figure in the water, you get the sense of desperation and abandonment the crews felt.
The guide to New York City parks, says this was based on a photograph taken on a German U boat of the aftermath of the sinking of a merchant marine vessel they had just attacked.

I believe the memorial in Halifax is down by the Supreme Court Building by Historic Properties.

Buddy Guy at Massey Hall, April 24, 2015



Photo by Steven Danyleyko/ Aesthetic Magazine, Toronto

My immediate thought when I got to the concert hall, was how did all these middle aged men get their sons to go to the concert with them? My question was answered as soon as the programme started.

At 79, Buddy Guy doesn't do full concerts any more. The first half of the night featured Quinn Sullivan, a guitar sensation who turned sixteen that week. Sixteen. He has performed with Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton, BB King and just about any other blues people of note. Those kids were there to see Quinn. He was just an amazing player, although at sixteen while he has mastered the guitar, his experience of the blues isn't enough to make him a totally convincing blues singer.

Here he is at Massey Hall two years ago, in another performance with Buddy Guy. He has this great Eric Clapton laconic stance and then his guitar just wails.



Then Buddy Guy himself came out for the second half and what a half it was. He is an amazing showman and gave it his all. When he descended the stairs from the stage and played his way through the hall and upstairs to the balconies and back down, people were jumping all over the place. There was the obligatory duelling guitars with Quinn, all in all a great concert, including a tribute to BB King, in hospital at the time.

23. The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Arnim
first published 1899
finished reading May 7, 2105

What does is mean to be solitary? Is it reading your mind out in a mountain cabin or seaside cottage? Perhaps it's the quiet contemplation offered by a hike in the woods or working in a garden. Even the accompaniment of full out blues while driving the back roads, or of Mr Bach on a winter afternoon still counts as solitary. These are all ways I can think of to be alone and happy.

Elizabeth von Arnim's idea of solitary was completely different. Her stated aim was to ... be alone for a whole summer, and get to the very dregs of life... to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow. She went on

Nobody shall be invited to stay with me, and if anyone calls they will be told that I am out, away, or sick. I shall spend the months in the garden, and on the plain, and in the forests. I shall watch the things that happen in my garden and see where I have made mistakes. On wet days, I will go into the thickest parts of the forests, where the pine needles are everlastingly dry, and when the sun shines, I'll lie on the heath and see how the broom flares against the clouds. I shall be perpetually happy, because there will be no one to worry me. Out there on the plain there is silence, and where there is silence I have discovered there is peace.

This sounds solitary enough, but Elizabeth lived on a huge estate. There was her husband, the Man of Wrath, three small daughters, nannies and governesses, servants, gardeners, farm labourers, visiting relatives, and even in that summer of 1898, the army requiring billetting. Hardly solitary, but one can certainly understand the need and the desire to be alone and unobserved for however brief a time.

This book is a followup to Elizabeth and Her German Garden. There Elizabeth worked desperately to establish the garden to which she now wants to flee. Elizabeth was no dilettante however. Starting life in Australia as Mary Annette Beauchamp, having a conventional upbringing in England, she became Elizabeth on her marriage to Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin. Becoming mistress of his huge estates in Pomerania was a full time job. She was also a voracious reader and demanded time and space for herself. The Solitary Summer is part of that plea. Her desire was to have the time to appreciate her garden, to read, and to write. As she said to her husband, "I must be alone, so that I shall not miss one of these wonders, and have leisure really to live."

Each day she did get a set time alone, to wander, to read, to contemplate. This book is a journal of those ramblings over the four months from May to September. Naturally there is her garden. By now, she had confidence enough to hire knowledgeable gardeners, rather than the halfhearted ones she had hired in the past when she worried about her lack of knowledge being discovered.

There is her reading.

In the afternoon I potter in the garden with Goethe. He did not, I am sure, care much really about flowers and gardens, yet he said many lovely things about them that remain in one's memory just as persistently as though they had been inspired expressions of actual feelings; and the intellect must indeed have been gigantic that could so beautifully pretend.

There is the always delightful time spent with her children, because what children are not delightful when there is always someone to lead them away when things threaten to get out of hand? This is part of a certain air of unreality about the book. Compounding this is the conceit that she is German, for at this stage in her writing career, she was published anonymously and played down her English background to further her anonymity. Always though, despite the constraints of her privileged life, there is a strong humorous woman here, not afraid to poke fun at herself or her life.

Nor does the reader begrudge her this idyll. Ten years later, following shortly upon the loss of the estate to debt, she would be widowed. She had an affair with H G Wells, married Bertrand Russell's elder brother, the second Earl Russell, and ran off to the US when things didn't work out. In all, she wrote 23 books. In every place she lived from her German time on, she always had a garden house for writing, and regular hours to devote to solitude.

Excellent review! I have enjoyed a number of Elizabeth von Arnim's books but omitted to read much about her. I will have to set that right. I always wondered about the person known as "The Man of Wrath". Sounds ominous.

Very interesting about von Arnim! I've had her book The Enchanted April on my list for a while, and might have to look up The Solitary Summer after that.

I loved The Enchanted April (somewhat to my surprise), and this book sounds intriguing too. Excellent review. I must say that the more I learn about H. G. Wells, the more it seems that every interesting woman at the time had an affair with him.

Elizabeth Von Arnim; A fascinating woman and I can empathise with her wish for solitude. Enjoyed the review.

>70 SassyLassy: Buddy Guy in concert. Wow!!!!

>71 SassyLassy:

Nobody shall be invited to stay with me, and if anyone calls they will be told that I am out, away, or sick.

This is one thing that fascinates me in books from the 19th and early 20th century. One character will mention being alone, but in fact you know or can guess that by "alone" she means "with no-one from her own class". Actually she is surrounded by people who cook, clean, open the door, keep the garden for her, but these don't count as people.

>71 SassyLassy: >77 FlorenceArt: On the other hand, Sara Maitland, in A Book of Silence, really was alone.

>72 VivienneR: The relationship with "The Man of Wrath" actually sounds quite tempestuous. It sounds as if he indulged her remarkably up to the point where she had to fulfill her duties as the Countess. Here he had definite expectations, she would balk and things would get rocky. She did take extended vacations in England during their time together, when things were difficult. Given the way marriages worked at the time in those classes, I think I might sympathize with him somewhat. Her descriptions of him often indicate not just that she had a sense of humour, but that he did too.

>73 mabith: I haven't read The Enchanted April, but I have never heard anyone say anything critical of it. It sounds like fun.

>76 avidmom: I was thinking of your review of his book and wondering if you had ever seen him live. It was Wow!!!!

>75 baswood: I think I'm going to order a biography of Elizabeth. Solitude is perhaps the most difficult state to attain, but it is bliss and I can see why she constantly sought it as refuge for the soul.

>77 FlorenceArt: Too true. Von Arnim did talk about these non people, in the sense of trying to find places where she could not be seen from the house, or as she walked the paths, for she feared giving them anything as fodder for gossip, which I found quite funny when you think about her relationship with her husband. She speaks of the head gardener and how delighted she was that he was deaf, as it cut down on the time she would have to spend talking to him, of how she scowled at any of the outdoor help as she wandered the estates, till finally they got the message and got out of the way as she went on hers.

In an aside, one of the things I like about these writers is their rigourous distinctions in the use of "shall", "will" and "may". Outside legal documents, these aren't really adhered to anymore, but they do add something.

>78 rebeccanyc: You remind me that this is a book I really want to read. Having wandered around Skye, I could see how you could be completely alone there.

I've always admired Ian McEwan's writing skill despite his distancing himself from his characters. Lately this remoteness seemed to be bordering on an almost clinical detachment. That only left his skill as a focus and I was beginning to wonder if that was enough to hold me. Luckily, someone gave me a copy of his latest book. In it, he's become less remote, and created one of his best characters in the process.



23. The Children Act by Ian McEwan
first published 2014
finished reading May 12, 2015

The title The Children Act has two meanings. One refers to the major piece of legislation governing the decisions of Fiona Maye, a High Court judge whose specialty is family law. The other refers to the actions of the children whose lives she is called to rule upon. However, not just the children, but also the childish, for her husband of thirty-five years has just asked her permission to conduct an affair. When do you go from being your husband's lover to being his mother?

There is no good time to come up with such a request, but this was a particularly bad time in Fiona's work life. Her current case load involved writing decisions that would be used as precedents for years to come. Perhaps that work life was part of the problem. Her husband Jack clearly saw it that way. Now, on a Sunday evening, she was faced with making a judgement directing the future of her own family.

Fiona's life was a good one. Her work was stimulating. Her life outside work was a pleasant cocoon of witty friends, concerts, dinner parties, interesting holidays and elegant surroundings, all held together by the polish of good manners. She knew she was lucky, but also knew she had earned it. Her private life was the antidote to the world of personal tragedy and destruction she saw before her at work each day. Now that world promised to become Fiona's.

On the night Jack made his plea for a rediscovery of youth, Fiona was the presiding judge on call. Their verbal sparring was interrupted by a call from a hospital seeking an order to transfuse a child against his wishes and those of his parents. The child Adam was less than three months from his eighteenth birthday, the age of majority. However, the Family Law Reform Act allowed minors of sixteen and seventeen to consent to treatment, which Adam could do despite his parents' wishes.

Adam's legal case is the counterpoint to Fiona's mental case against her husband. On the brink of life, Adam is prepared to deny it, while Fiona, "...an abandoned fifty-nine-year-old woman, in the infancy of old age, just learning to crawl", will fight for her life as she knew it.

McEwan skilfully portrays Fiona's work and home life, as she fights to prevent each from interfering with the other. However, the threatened dissolution of both her worlds had her looking at life from a new perspective:

It was her impression, though the facts did not bear it out, that in the late summer of 2012, marital or partner breakdown and distress in Great Britain swelled like a freak spring tide, sweeping away entire households, scattering possessions and hopeful dreams, drowning those without a powerful instinct for survival. Loving promises were denied or rewritten, once easy companions became artful combatants, crouching behind counsel, oblivious to the costs. Once neglected domestic items were bitterly fought for, once easy trust was replaced by carefully worded "arrangements".... And the children? Counters in a game, bargaining chips for use by mothers, objects of financial or emotional neglect by fathers; ...

This is a bleak novel. There are missed chances, unfulfilled dreams, disillusionment and despair, all delivered with McEwan's characteristic restraint. Yet there is hope too. Not the magic wand kind, but rather the kind that believes if only we remain constant to our principles and ideals, we will be able to move forward, not in a blaze of glory, but enough to live with ourselves, and so with others.

___________________________

Other books I've read by McEwan:
Amsterdam
Atonement
On Chesil Beach
Saturday
Sweet Tooth

I liked this image too. The picture caption says its from the people of Norway to the English.
http://en.tracesofwar.com/article/9042/Norwegian-Memorial-Hyde-Park.htm

Excellent review of The Children Act

>80 SassyLassy: Thank you for the review. I tried to read Atonement and I must say I was rather underwhelmed by the writing, so I'm curious what you like about it. I thought Atonement was maybe not his best book, but looking at other reviews it seems many people have a different opinion, so maybe it's just that this author is not for me. I kind of feel I should give him another chance though.

In terms of writing, what threw me off was how all the characters spoke with the same voice. This was especially disturbing in the case of the little girl. Basically I felt that this 5 or 6 year old girl living in the 1930s (?) had the outlook on life of a middle-aged male writer from the early 21st century. I have trouble reconciling that with the raving reviews about "vivid characters, precise descriptions of sense images and emotional states" (from a LT review). I must be missing something.

You may have pushed me to finally pick up a book by McEwan. Nice review. I also am interested in The Solitary Summer. I have The Enchanted April on audio, and LT says it is unread. I'm not sure that's true, but I may just be confusing it with the movie, which I loved. It may be worth a re-listen.

>80 SassyLassy: >83 FlorenceArt: I too was underwhelmed by Atonement, and also by On Chesil Beach, which I didn't read as a book but rather as extracts in The New Yorker. It's made me not read any mor McEwan, largely on the too many books, too little time principle.

Great review of The Children Act, Sassy!

>81 Oandthegang: Thanks for that image. Hyde Park would keep it all in the forefront.

>81 Oandthegang: and >86 kidzdoc: Thanks!

>83 FlorenceArt: Thanks for your thoughts and discussion. It's been awhile since I read Atonement, but thinking back to it, I liked the way the solitariness of the child in the midst of all those people was portrayed by McEwan. Perhaps it was this sense of being alone that gave her a more advanced perspective for her age.
Thinking about what you said about all the characters speaking with the same voice, I went searching for my copy in vain, as almost all my English read fiction is packed up (very frustrating, as there are more and more things I would like to check). I do believe though, that Briony was closer to twelve or thirteen than five, and so would try to mimic the voice of the older members of the family. Of course, that would not account for any male overtones unless they were all taking their cue from the head of the house. I was just going to say I would agree about the early 20th century, but then noticed you said 21st century. When I read the book back when it first came out, I was struck by the feeling that he was channelling A Passage to India and possibly a bit of Henry James.
I have trouble reconciling that with the raving reviews about "vivid characters, precise descriptions of sense images and emotional states" (from a LT review). I must be missing something. "Vivid" and "precise" aren't words I would use either. Vivid to me would be a much more colourful and active character than the quiet child who worked in more circular ways. Precise is a good description of McEwan's language, but what he was conveying about Briony's thoughts seemed far more dream like and unreal, so precise wouldn't really fit there.

You have made me resolve that Atonement will be one of my first rereads when I am finally reunited with my books!

>84 NanaCC: I think if you read a McEwan book, it is best to have the time to read it from start to finish. I don't like to put them down as I always feel something has been interrupted when I go back.

I realized recently I haven't read The Enchanted April. For some reason I was confusing it with a short story by Somerset Maugham which I had read. I will look for it. You don't have to read Elizabeth and her German Garden before The Solitary Summer, but the latter does follow on from the former.

>85 rebeccanyc: On Chesil Beach was a book I did not take to at all. I agree with you there. That was about the time I started having doubts, now thankfully cleared away. I suppose everyone is allowed a dud once in awhile. Things started to pick up again with Saturday, but once again, there was nothing to make me care about the characters. The Children Act has more of a conscience and I suspect if you ever read McEwan, that would be the one for you.

>87 SassyLassy: I managed to dig up the thread where I posted about this way back when. You're right, Briony was 13 years old. Here's the excerpt I posted at the time to illustrate:

"As she stood in the nursery waiting for her cousins’ return she sensed she could write a scene like the one by the fountain and she could include a hidden observer like herself. She could imagine herself hurrying down now to her bedroom, to a clean block of lined paper and her marbled, Bakelite fountain pen. She could see the simple sentences, the accumulating telepathic symbols, unfurling at the nib’s end. She could write the scene three times over, from three points of view; her excitement was in the prospect of freedom, of being delivered from the cumbrous struggle between good and bad, heroes and villains. None of these three was bad, nor were they particularly good. She need not judge. There did not have to be a moral. She need only show separate minds, as alive as her own, struggling with the idea that other minds were equally alive. It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you. And only in a story could you enter these different minds and show how they had an equal value. That was the only moral a story need have."

I guess I was exaggerating about the "male" thing, but my point was that for me, this is the author speaking, not a 13 year old from a century ago. At least that's how I felt then.

24. Blood on the Forge by William Attaway
first published 1941
finished reading May 19, 2015

The early part of the twentieth century saw huge upheavals in the US. The south faced economic decline. Black sharecroppers facd a hopeless situation of debt and early death working for white landowners who controlled so many aspects of their lives. The solution for many was to head north for paid hourly work in what became known as the Great Migration. At the same time, immigrants from Eastern Europe were pouring into the northeast, the first place the boats docked. Poor whites from the south were also heading north looking for work in the ever increasing number of factories and mills.

Blood on the Forge takes these groups and throws them together in the steel mill town of Vaughan Pennsylvania. Attaway's main characters are the three Moss brothers from Kentucky. The oldest, Big Mat, had murdered the overseer. That same day, his brothers Melody and Chinatown had made arrangements with a jackleg recruiter from the north to board a train north for work. Big Mat, fleeing for his life, joined them, leaving behind his wife Hattie. The five day journey in a sealed train is the first intimation of what is to come.

The Moss brothers' new lives throw them together with the Slavs and a new kind of racial tension. The immigrants looked down on the blacks not on traditional American grounds of race, but on economic ones. They feared they would lose work to these lower paid men. This was a real concern in 1919, the year in which the novel is set. The push for unionization was strong, and blacks were used as scab labour. Management would bring in trainloads of them from the south as a silent threat, whenever a strike looked likely. Walking down the street their first day in town, the brothers realized "In the eyes of all the Slavs was a hatred and contempt different from anything they had ever experienced in Kentucky."

While none of the three brothers was afraid of the punishing physical work, there were real differences. Work in Kentucky had been outdoors, with the rhythms of the seasons and contact with the natural world. "What men in their right minds would leave off tending green growing things to tend iron monsters?" In the south, the brothers and Hattie had lived together in their shack. Here they lived in a dorm, with no sense of a home life. Danger in the south had been from lynch mobs. Here it was ever present in their work "... furnace gas, electric shock, falls into the pit, slides of piled iron on the narrow gauge railways". Without a home life, the empty hours outside work were filled with card games, dog fights, corn liquor and trips to visit the women of Mex town.

Through it all is the leitmotif of the blues and Melody's guitar, the music that sings of everything that has been lost, even when there are no words to express it, until one day even the music is gone.

No happy ending could be expected here, and none is given. The brothers are destroyed physically and spiritually. There is no nostalgia here for the south. As the child of black parents who left Mississippi for Chicago, Attaway knew better. There is however, a powerful sense of loss for a time before unfettered capitalism governed life. More than that, there is a real concern both for the migrant workers' ability to earn an honest living and a decent life, and for those left behind with even less opportunity to improve their lot.

>89 SassyLassy: Wow. That sounds truly depressing.

>89 SassyLassy: >90 FlorenceArt: What Florence said. But powerful too.

Interesting review of Blood on the forge William Attaway is new to me.

>88 FlorenceArt: I see what you mean in that excerpt. While I can certainly see a thirteen year old and even younger child revelling in the hiding and then the writing up of it all, complete with pen and paper, the flow into She need not judge and what comes after certainly seems like a transition from the child to McEwan. I thought about how this would work in the first person though, and decided it wouldn't. I really need to get back to that book.

>90 FlorenceArt: and >91 rebeccanyc: It was depressing, but as rebecca says, very powerful too. Thinking of baswood's current review of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and other novels of working life, perhaps we don't read enough proletarian fiction because of this, but to me, that is the very reason we should be reading it, for there is no other way we can enter those worlds and realize the need for change.

>92 baswood: Blood on the Forge was Attaway's second and last novel. Based on Darryl Pinckney's introduction, he did odd jobs and then did script writing for radio and TV. He also wrote songs, among them an adaptation of The Banana Boat Song, otherwise known as Day O, for Harry Belafonte.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUY8rGJGU8

Attaway left the US for several years to live in Barbados with his wife Frances, as the situation in the US was such that they felt they could not live there comfortably in a mixed marriage.

Blood on the Forge sounds like a terrific work, and an important one. I recently touches on the black migration in Toni Morrison's and it's interesting to see how much of your review is brought out in her book - the tensions over work and the loss of connections to the natural world. But she was writing around 1990, not 1940.

Terrific review of The Children's Act. I don't think I can get myself to read more McEwan, but this sounds like a book to consider.

Catching up after falling way behind!

>56 SassyLassy: I am one of those who just recently discovered Alan Furst here in Club Read. Looking forward to reading Dark Voyage eventually. Nice review!

>71 SassyLassy: The Solitary Summer sounds good. I am a big fan of the movie version of Enchanted April but have not yet read the book. One of those situations where the movie was so good I have been reluctant to risk spoiling the image.

>94 dchaikin: The Morrison book might be an interesting one for me to read now. Sometimes it seems as if things are getting worse, not better.
If you do read more McEwan, this certainly would be the one to consider. I am always surprised at the strong opinions about him, but that shows the strength of both his writing (whether one thinks it is good or bad) and LT.

>95 Poquette: Welcome back. If you need distraction, either of those books would work, though in different ways. I know that feeling about not wanting to read a book after a great movie, as well as the reverse. Now I don't know which version I should choose!

In the past couple of years, I have read a handful of novels about the apartheid era in South Africa, and the struggle against it. Each one has made me more interested in this history. This next book was the latest.



25. At the Still Point by Mary Benson
first published 1969
finished reading May 23rd, 2015

In 1963-64, South Africa held its infamous sabotage trials, aimed at eradicating the opposition to the regime of Prime Minister Verwoerd and its apartheid system. Mandela, Sisulu and Mbeki were sent to jail for life.

1964 saw the introduction of the "Ninety Day" law (the General Law Amendment Act), whereby anyone could be detained for ninety days in solitary without charge, or trial, or even access to a lawyer: ninety days of unfettered interrogation. Following release at the end of ninety days, the person could be rearrested and the process would start again. Thousands fled the country or went underground. Bram Fischer had defended Mandela at his trial. The outcome was considered a win for the defence as the sentence was not execution. Fischer was then accused of being a communist and of opposing the state. He went into internal hiding, but was arrested after 290 days in hiding. He spent all but the last few weeks of the remainder of his life in prison.

At the Still Point is Mary Benson's fictionalized account of the Ninety Day period and the circle around Jakob Versfeld, a fictional Fischer, who has just gone into hiding.

The story is narrated by Anne Dawson, a recently returned South African journalist who had been living in London. Anne was a political reporter, a liberal. Her time away had dimmed her awareness of some of the horrible conditions in South Africa, but once back home, she felt right back in the thick of it. Through friends she met the lawyer Matthew Marais. She began working for him on a huge project: a survey of political trials, the evidence produced, and a cross referencing of witnesses. It was to be used by sympathetic lawyers internally and also by sympathetic organizations outside the country. Anne kept her job as a reporter as cover for attending trials on the Eastern Cape, an area of particularly brutal violence and outrageous trials.

Through Anne's travels and reports, we get a picture of the paranoia shared by blacks and whites working to overthrow the government. There is the sheer hopelessness of the case, a situation where people who knew it would not get better in their life times were prepared for jail and death for freedom in a future time.

At one stage Anne met the wife of Daniel Makhana, the fiction Govan Mbeki. Rosie

... was about to go down for a visit. A thousand miles by train to Cape Town, then the ferry boat to Robben Island. And half and hour with Dan. And then a thousand miles back again, to wait another three months. And then another half hour.

Anne

... tried to imagine: Dan Makhana, now, at this moment, on Robben Island. For life. For life without Rose. Without his children. For life. A half hour with her every three months. Supposing he lives twenty years more. Equals? - Christ! It equals less than two days.

Sometimes a quiet passage like this can convey atmosphere better than any action.

Matthew and Anne became romantically involved. Although Anne knew Matthew and Jakob Versfeld were close friends, she did not realize Matthew was helping him, a crime for which the authorities would have no hesitation in imprisoning Matthew.

At the Still Point is also a fictionalized autobiography of Benson herself, and the time after her 1964 return to South Africa. Published in 1969, it still gives a feel of the power of the struggle against apartheid. Benson was a banned person by then. She moved back to London. In 1987 she wrote an afterward. Mandela was no closer to release. Apartheid was still in place. Luckily Benson lived long enough to see Mandela released and to meet him again.

I enjoyed your reviews of Blood on the Forge and At the Still Point, Sassy. They both sound intriguing in very different ways.

Interesting to read the review of the Mary Benson book as I have recently been reading Doris Lessing 's autobiography and novels about Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), although they were of a period 10 years earlier, before apartheid went out of control, but was heading down the isolationist route.

At the Still Point sounds very powerful. Most of my knowledge about the apartheid era comes from Alan Paton, Nadine Gordimer, Athol Fugard and Doris Lessing -- I've not heard of Mary Benson before. Must check her out.

Just as an aside -- in my 30 years of teaching at community colleges -- none of my students were aware of the apartheid situation in SA -- it just blew my mind how ignorant of the world they were (and I'm not blaming them -- it's the general cultural miasma).

Excellent review of Blood on the Forge - sounds good but very depressing.

I had never heard of At the Still Point so thanks for putting it on my radar. Another good review.

>98 NanaCC: Intriguing is a good word. The authors certainly were able to show their worlds in ways that make us think and want to know more.

>99 baswood: Your Lessing reviews have made me want to go back to her writing and reread and read for the first time some of the works particularly dealing with her time in Rhodesia and its aftermath.

>100 janeajones: Athol Fugard was a new name to me, so thanks for that introduction. Here is a link to The Guardian's obituary of Mary Benson. Looking at her privileged background, it is even more remarkable that she took the actions she did in opposing apartheid. http://www.theguardian.com/news/2000/jun/22/guardianobituaries.nelsonmandela

That's discouraging about your students. Maybe now they may know something through the film Searching for Sugar Man. I was amazed to hear the librarian speak of how she censored music and put it away.

How is/was apartheid approached as a subject in US schools?

>101 DieFledermaus: Thanks, it was depressing, but still certainly worthwhile.

It appears to have been a month since my last alphabet letter, so time to get going again.



Spoken: Golf

Meaning: I require a pilot.

We are here in Basarabia during WW II:

26. My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest by Paul Goma, translated from the Romanian by Angela Clark
first published in French as Le Calidor in 1987, then published in Romanian in the Federal Republic of Germany
finished reading May 28, 2015

That children understand things differently than adults is a given. Language mastery, experience, prejudice and memories of other events all go into adult judgements. Lacking these modifiers, does a child sometimes see more clearly?

The four year old boy watched the villagers from the raised porch of his home as they scrambled to flee Basarabia in 1940, after its surrender to the Russians. His father scurried around the yard below, while his mother doggedly loaded the cart with their belongings. It was true what the boy saw; Father was not helping. He was deliberately pretending to do other things so that the departure would be delayed.

The Goma family wound up unable to flee. It was too late by the time the cart was ready. Years later the boy asked his father why he delayed. Father was a teacher, a student of history. He could not leave because he had built the house and school with his own hands, bought the books with his own money. He wanted to teach the local peasants their nation's history as long as he could. Even as he explained all this to his son, he did it in the form of a history lecture.

The war years were not good years for the Goma family. They suffered for Father's obstinacy. When Father was arrested in 1941, and sent to a Soviet camp, even the child knew he and his mother were suffering due to Father's action, although that was never said out loud. Their only help came from the peasant mayor of the village, Old Iacob and his wife Aunt Domnica, at some risk to themselves.

It is the adult Goma looking back at his childhood who tells the story as the child saw it. The first time I read the book a month ago, I was struck by this view of war and occupation. Going over it today, it was the history narrated by the father that struck me; the history of repeated invasions and surrenders, of successive rulers and occupiers of this small part of the world.

It wasn't just this national history that repeated. Personal history repeated too. Like his real and fictional father, Paul Goma was imprisoned by the authorities and spent time being re-educated. He was banned and now lives in exile in France. His novel is his history and his remembrance of the time when a small boy sat outside on the calidor and watched and learned his first lessons.

And I can still remember. And I can. And I.
And - nothing. Because we had to leave.
And when you leave, you die, that's what they say.

That sounds like a fascinating book. How did you find it?

>104 SassyLassy:. Another great review, Sassy. My TBR runneth over

>105 rebeccanyc: I used to be on an automatic mailing list for the published RI, or Readers International and this was one of the books I received. It has been on my TBR ever since. They were sent from the UK, but then my information somehow got transferred to their Louisiana location and then lost. I also lost them. I have since found them again on the internet. They don't seem to mail automatically anymore, but here is a link to their website. All the books I received from them that I've read so far have been excellent. They seem like a more political And Other Stories.

http://readersinternational.org/

>106 NanaCC: Always happy to help with those wish lists and TBR piles!

Thanks for the link to RI -- years ago I used to get books from them too. Lost sight of what they were doing -- now bookmarked.

Enjoyed your review of My Childhood at the Gate of Unrest.

>104 SassyLassy: fantastic review, and this sounds like an interesting book.

>107 SassyLassy: Thanks for the Readers International link. I'm grateful that they don't have an automatic mailing list anymore, but I'll look out for their books.

>107 SassyLassy: It was odd how they "disappeared" ... interesting to hear that you had somewhat the same experience.
>111 rebeccanyc: I suspect you're right about being grateful for the end of the automatic mailing list, but since there didn't seem to be a schedule, or any advance announcements, it was always interesting and fun to see what would turn up.

Spoken: Hotel

Meaning: I have a pilot on board

We are here:



Szklabinya Castle, which is in current day Slovakia, in what was once part of Hungary

By odd coincidence, this book also came from Readers International



27. A Hungarian Romance by Agnes Hankiss, translated from the Hungarian by Emma Roper-Evans
first published as Széphistória in 1988
finished reading May 30, 2015

Susanna Forgách and Ferenc Révay were married on April 21, 1598, and went to live in the castle of Szklabinya. Ferenc failed to consummate their marriage, indeed, he didn't even try. On New Year's Eve the following year, Peter Bakics, the Révays' counsin, turned up at the castle to celebrate. From then on, Peter's visits to the castle became increasingly frequent. Ferenc always welcomed him, not yet comprehending that perhaps he was no longer the object of Peter's visits.

Peter told stories well, for he loved to collect and pass on information as currency wherever he went. One day Peter brought news that István Illésházy, a friend of Ferenc's, was being tried for treason.

These people are all in the records of history. What Hankiss has done is twine the unknown personal lives with the public records, not with the aim of writing a historical novel, but rather as a means of exploring how each sphere determines and affects the other. To do this, she intersperses the ongoing story of Peter and Susanna, and their inevitable affair, against the trial and its ramifications for the nobility and the country.

At that time, Hungary was ruled by the mad Emperor Rudolf, a German. Rudolf held court in Prague and Vienna, outside Hungarian parliamentary jurisdiction. As the trial of Illésházy dragged itself out over the years, as the nobles who sat in judgement were threatened and coerced to arrive at Rudolf's preferred verdict, Ferenc and Susanna each developed signs of madness too, in their own individual ways. During all this time, political alliances were forged, fell apart, and formed anew. The waves of Reformation and counter Reformation swept the land, and always, there was the threat of the Turk.

Finally Ferenc Révay sued for divorce. Hankiss tells us

We cannot be at all surprised - if we recognise the nature of those volatile times - that the prospects for and opinions of divorce changed from moment to moment. As it was not really the custom to write openly about political aims, the national colours, anything which the occasion presented were used as substitutes. So that from this time Protestant and Catholic, religious tolerance and the Counter Reformation lined up against each other by proxy through the plaintiffs and defendants in a private case.

However, this is a tale of obsession, rebellion, lust, treachery and madness. The wheel turned.

...the chameleon public changed a cuckold into a sadist, an adulteress into a martyr, and a lecher into a hero. Old fossil notions were pushed off the shelf. From one pole to the other, and what lies between? The whole of life. Die ganze welt, no less.

Hankiss has given us not just a romance, but a cautionary tale, an exploration into the private and public depths of the times, and what times they were.

>114 SassyLassy: A select band of people own this book {according to the book page} and you are the first to review it.

>114 SassyLassy: I definitely have to check out Readers International!

Interesting review of A Hungarian Romance. Oddly enough, I have another RI book sitting on my coffee table (brought home from my office when I retired), A Cadre School Life: Six Chapters by Yang Jiang, that I now feel compelled to read.

A Hungarian Romance sounds very intriguing, though I imagine (like so much translated fiction) there's no audiobook.

>114 SassyLassy:
This sounds really weird!

>114 SassyLassy: I tried reading Danubia earlier this year to get a grasp of the Hapsburg/Holy Roman Empire but was put off by Simon Winder's gosh-isn't-this-weird jokey style and by the number of people with the same name and all those intermarriages. The principal things I remember from it are the genetic failings, such as the Hapsburg jaw, the possibility that if Mary 1 of England had borne a child by Phillip of Spain England would have been ruled by Hapsburgs, and the fact that in the burial place of a monarch whose name I've forgotten is a bronze statue of Rudolf 1 with a codpiece so dramatic that visitors cannot resist touching it, with the result that it is now very much brighter and shinier than the rest of the statue.

Perhaps this novel would be a better way in.

>114 SassyLassy: Great review, and what an interesting book this sounds like.

>97 SassyLassy:, >104 SassyLassy: & >114 SassyLassy: you're going to interesting places. Three great reviews.

Thanks all for your comments. I am in a public library thousands of kilometres from home, so will answer when I get home in about a week. No reading done so far as my book was drowned while camping, but I have made up for it by buying a dozen more.

>123 SassyLassy: No reading done so far as my book was drowned while camping, but I have made up for it by buying a dozen more.

Good thinking! And good reading!

>123 SassyLassy: I've drowned my fair share of books (and magazines). Why aren't there any waterproof books? Why?

A Hungarian Romance sounds really interesting. Will have to add it to the list, although I think it would probably have to be special ordered. It would be great if you could add your excellent review to the work page - I'd thumb it.

Hope you had a good trip!

Finally home safe and sound after a drive of almost 5,000 kilometres. The camping ended dramatically with a sudden downspout that drowned not only my book, but everything else, with no hope of drying out the equipment soon. So, after a night spent in a small car, it was off on more adventures. Five days were spent in a city where the first thing on the weather report each morning was "Smoke". I had never thought of smoke as a weather condition before, but it was pervasive, turning the sun red and the sky brown, all from far away forest fires. Went to a wedding in a conservatory where the humidity was sky high, the humidex well over 30C and thunder and lightening raged outside. Maybe those who deny climate change should take this kind of trip!

Just back from a great weekend in another city, with yet another dozen books. Now to catch up with reading and reviews.

>125 avidmom: Great idea, like hiking maps and sailing charts! Unfortunately, my book seems to be out of print, although still available second hand online, so I will have to go that route.

>126 DieFledermaus: Thanks and done.

Edited so that I am not addressing messages to myself.

>127 SassyLassy: "Maybe those who deny climate change should take this kind of trip! "

Amen to that. I have some friends who seem to be fairly bright people, but are part of the "deny" group, and I know people who still don't recycle. It drives me crazy.

Last year, when I was reading the background material in the Oxford edition of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, this title kept popping up as an influence, so I had to order it.



28. A Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison
first published 1896
finished reading June 3, 2015

London in the late nineteenth century was one of the most crowded, filthy places on earth. People crowded into the East End of the city at a time when increasing industrialization meant there was less work for them. Slums proliferated. In many ways, it was children who suffered the most. Deprived of light, shelter, education and food, they roamed the streets looking for anything that might contribute to their continued existence. Morrison's Jago, based on the area known as the Old Nichol, was the worst part of the notorious East End.

This is not a novel with some of the cleaned up sentimental descriptions penned by Dickens in his crusade to bring the conditions of the poor to the attention of the reading public. Nor does is have the overlay of rural life that provided a safe remove for urban readers of writers like Hardy. Instead, Morrison refused to protect his Victorian readers, sparing them nothing.

The child of the title is Dicky Perrott. When first encountered, he was an indeterminate eight or nine years old, although he more closely resembled a five year old. Dicky spent most of his time on the streets, away from the room where he lived with his mother and father and ailing baby sister. His father was a petty criminal. His mother was completely ineffectual, too worn out to care for her baby, and not really interested in anything. Food was scarce, so Dicky was easy prey for the neighbourhood fence, Aaron Weech. Weech fed young children in exchange for the miserable goods they stole for him, overcharging them for the food, and using those inflated sums to offset any money owed the young thieves for their plunder.

Set against the influences of Weech and Dicky's father, is the social reformer Father Sturt, based on the real life reformer Arthur Jay. Sturt found work for Dicky, a bright enough child in his own way, and one whom Sturt hope to free from the cesspool of the Jago. Dicky was proud of his new situation.

In his daydreams he saw himself as a tradesman, with a shop of his own and the name 'R. Perrott', with a gold flourish, over the door. He would employ a boy himself then; and there would be a parlour, with stuff-bottomed chairs and a shade of flowers, and Em grown up and playing on the piano. Truly Father Sturt was right: the hooks were fools, and the straight game was the better.

Weech, however, deprived of one of his best producers, managed to get Dicky fired in a most underhanded way. This freed up Dicky to work for Weech once more. Even worse, it demonstrated to him that there was no way out of the Jago for the likes of him. Jail or the gallows was his probable future.

Morrison was a leading writer of what was known as slum fiction. However, unlike many Victorian reformers who wrote of these problems, he did not believe that slum clearances would cure the social ills found there. He believed that the vice was inherent in the people, and would move with them to their new homes. He did believe that removing children before they learned the ways of evil would at least offer hope for them. Morrison was no ivory tower theorist though; he spared no one. In his preface to the third edition, Morrison wrote

...chiefly this book of mine disturbed those who had done nothing, and preferred to do nothing, by way of discharging their responsibility toward the Jago and the people in it. The consciousness of duty neglected is discomforting, and personal comfort is the god of their kind. They firmly believe it to be the sole function of art to minister to their personal comfort -- as upholstery does. They find it comfortable to shirk consideration of the Jago children, to shut their eyes to it, to say that all is well and the whole world virtuous and happy. And this mental attitude they nickname optimism, and vaunt it-- exult in it as a quality. So that they cry out at the suggestion that it is no more than a selfish vice; and finding truth where they had looked for the materials of another debauch of self-delusion, they moan aloud: they protest, and they demand as their sacred right that the bitter cup be taken from before them.

A Child of the Jago is the second of three books Morrison wrote about the conditions of the London poor. Although scarcely known today, he was one of the best known writers in England in the decades either side of 1900. Given the subject matter, his books were controversial. Like the novels of Gissing and Zola, A Child of the Jago offers no false hope. Morrison himself said that the story "... was designed by me to picture the life and to show that children brought up in such surroundings had no chance of a decent life." Dicky's story is testament to that.

Morrison provided a map of the area he called the Jago. For those who have an interest in Victorian London, here it is, a thinly disguised Old Nichol. It was being cleared while Morrison was writing, and the clearance is part of the plot.



The notes in the book provide a concordance table:

Edge Lane = Boundary Street
Honey Lane = Mead Street
Meakin Street = Church Street
High Street = Shoreditch High Street

for Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago Street, and Jago Row, substitute Nichol for Jago

Fascinating review of The Child of Jago I see that Morrison's books are free to download at Project Gutenberg.

>127 SassyLassy: Five days were spent in a city where the first thing on the weather report each morning was "Smoke". I had never thought of smoke as a weather condition before, but it was pervasive, turning the sun red and the sky brown, all from far away forest fires.

We had that weather here in Vancouver earlier this month. It was nasty. Had to close all my windows and hide in my basement.

Child of Jago sounds interesting. It's been on my wishlist for a while but I think I'll have to hunt down a copy now (or go to Project Gutenberg).

>129 SassyLassy: Fascinating review, but I should get to The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists first.

A Child of the Jago sounds too depressing for my taste, but I added The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists to my wishlist as I keep reading recommendations here. Plus, who could resist such a title?

Great review of A Child of the Jago, Sassy; I just "purchased" the free Kindle version of it, and I'll likely read it soon. Paul (Polaris) and I were there when we met up last month, as we walked from Brick Lane onto Bethnal Green Road to the Shoreditch High Street Overground station, which would be on the lower left hand corner of The Old Jago map you posted.

Great review of A Child of the Jago, a book I had never heard of before.

Also, thumbed A Hungarian Romance! Now the LT page has one excellent review.

>131 baswood: I kind of liked the idea of Morrison boots being on Project Gutenberg; I wanted to see if they were sturdy working man's boots or those of a more polished Victorian gentleman!
Thanks for the tip on the download.

>132 Nickelini: Same forest fires. There were people from Vancouver there who were dreading going home. Very apocalyptic looking all around.
As always, I read the OUP edition, which I try to do whenever there is one available. It's fairly recent, so should still be available.

>133 rebeccanyc: and >134 FlorenceArt: I'm not sure which I would read first, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists or A Child of the Jago. I suspect I would read them in chronological order, but I didn't do that as I didn't know about Morrison's book when I read TRTP. You're right Florence, the Morrison is depressing, but there is also a young boy in TRTP, for whom there is little hope. TRTP does have great political discussions which I really enjoyed, as Tressell wrote them with a certain degree of humour. My one recommendation would be to read the full Oxford version of TRTP, rather than the shorter versions available elsewhere.

>135 kidzdoc: If only we could go back in time and see the changes. I wondered about putting the map in and now I'm glad I did. That's a station I haven't been in, next time in London I would like to spend some time exploring that area.

>136 DieFledermaus: Thanks DieF!

Arthur Morrison's story is fascinating. Enjoyed your review. Hope the smoke clears.

>137 SassyLassy: Well, I own The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists (thanks to you), so that will be first up for me.

>130 SassyLassy: Being something of a map anorak I've just had a look at the A to Z. I've known of Child Of The Jago for a long time, but haven't read it. I'd never heard of Old Nichol, but there it is, Old Nichol Street, just north of Redchurch Street. So I guess we're looking at the area between Bethnal Green Road, Shoreditch High Street, and Columbia Road, but perhaps more specifically within the area of Redchurch Street, Boundary Street, Virginia Road, and Swanfield Street, in behind St Leonard's Church. You might be interested in the subsequent history of this neighbourhood.

The BBC had an excellent series recently called something like The Secret History Of Our Streets, which looked at various small neighbourhoods up and down the country, concentrating on a particular street within each and following its social history from earliest records. One of the best was about Arnold Circus, which was part of a redevelopment of the Old Jago/Nichol area. I haven't the details to hand, but there was a remarkable slum clearance done (by the London County Council?) where the new properties were built to accommodate the same number of people whose homes had been destroyed in the clearance. Is this perhaps the clearance that figures in the plot? I'd be interested in the book's view.

In the centre of Arnold Circus a garden - Boundary Gardens - was created. The garden is on an artificial hill planted with trees so that the people in the buildings on Arnold Circus would have greenery to look at. There is a flat area with a bandstand at the top where people can sit and children can play. The buildings were carefully designed with nice architectural details and shops at street level to serve the community. It was all beautifully done with the best of intentions, but unfortunately the way the funding worked the rents were too high for the utterly destitute who had originally lived there, and who were therefore forced out. It was a thriving working class area for some time, but when more modern council housing was created elsewhere it became rundown and many of the properties were left empty. In the early 1970s (poss late 60s?) one of the activists in the squatters' movement helped Bangladeshis who were living in truly appalling places to move in to the empty Arnold Circus flats. The council was going to evict them, but had a change of heart and started doing the flats up for them to live in. There was then a political furore about the area becoming a ghetto and all sorts of discussion about people's right to live with friends/family/other people who share their culture vs cultural isolation and creating targets for racist extremists, none of which was new to the East End. That all died down and everyone got on with life, but now, inevitably, the families are moving out and the youngish well heeled are moving in. Great documentary. There was a feature film made about the activist helping the people to break in to the buildings.

At a guess I would say that Jago/Nichol Row is now Club Row, which runs from Bethnal Green Road to Arnold Circus, and the parallel, unnamed, street on the map might be Chance Street, which joins Bethnal Green Road just by the synagogue. Everything north of Old Nichol Street was cleared.

OK, time to get on with (get a?) life.

>140 Oandthegang: Just to bore on a little bit longer, in case anyone is interested, there is reference to what is now known as The Boundary Estate on Wikipedia, and the Friends Of Arnold Circus website gives something of a flavour of the area today, as well as including reference to the London Metropolitan Archives collection. I realise this is nothing to do with literature, just background squirrelling.

Anyway, you are now safe from further squirrelling. Someone is having a large tree either removed or seriously pollarded (why have all my neighbours suddenly developed a dislike of trees?) and the noise is forcing me from my home. I will have forgotten about Arnold Circus by the time I return!

>140 Oandthegang: The Old Nichol area did indeed become the Boundary Estate. This was happening as Morrison wrote, and part of the plot involves tearing down houses and relocation. In his introduction to A Child of the Jago, Peter Miles writes

The original Old Nichol was an area of some thirty streets located off Shoreditch High Street, a mixture of decayed late seventeenth and eighteenth century houses and a swarm of early nineteenth century jerry-built infilling that crowded and jumbled smaller building cheek by jowl into what had once been largely town-house gardens. The consequence was a district of barely mapped alleyways sunless cellars, tunnels and courts, cul-de-sacs, stables, barrows, and sheds. ... Here, in what was a whirlpool of poverty and exploitation, inadequate sanitation and decaying construction, lived some 6,000 people, many of them in families who could afford to rent no more than a single room in a rotting tenement or barrack-like building.

Miles goes on to add that the mortality rate was twice that of the surrounding Bethnal Green and four times that of London as a whole. Morrison's view was quite bleak, believing that moving the people would just take the problems elsewhere. Many of those from the Old Nichol relocated to Bethnal Green, being unable to afford the rents in the new buildings.

Good map reading. I didn't identify that unnamed road you mention, parallel to Edge Lane/Boundary Street. Morrison, in the map in my edition, calls it Luck Row, and it is indeed Chance Street. Jago Court was Orange Court. I share your love of old maps and it's great that people who know London had a look at this one. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London also has some great maps if I remember correctly (my copy is currently in a box).

As a side note, I was unfamiliar with the UK usage of "anorak", which Wikipedia tells me is "a person who has a very strong interest, perhaps obsessive, in niche subjects. This interest may be unacknowledged or not understood by the general public." My mind had gone immediately to the Canadian item of clothing called an anorak, which often has special pockets for maps, so working through map anorak was quite amusing.

I sympathize about the trees. The chain saw sound often makes it appear that the tree is shrieking in pain.

>138 dchaikin: Morrison changed directions in later life. His introduction to A Child of the Jago juxtaposes Japanese art forms with his novel in a discussion of realism. Morrison built up a fine collection of Japanese art throughout his lifetime, so much so that he was able to sell works from it to the British Museum, and his collection was later sold to that same museum by its original purchaser from Morrison.

>139 rebeccanyc: Always happy to be an enabler for such good things as buying books!

Writing a two volume history of the Battle of Lepanto and another on the Battle of Waterloo, doesn't necessarily prepare you for writing fiction.



29. The Eyes of Venice by Alessandro Barbero, translated from the Italian by Gregory Conti
first published as Gli occhi di Venezia in 2012
finished reading June 9, 2015

What a disappointment. This book had much to recommend it: Venice in the 1500s with all its intrigue, the Alessandro Manzoni Prize for Fiction, pirates, one of my favourite publishers, and even a lovely cover. Did I mention the promise of pirates?

What it actually delivered was an overwrought tale of a young couple, Bianca and Michele. They were separated when through his own stupidity, Michele was forced to flee Venice. Not pausing to think, he leapt onto a departing merchant galley and signed on as a "free" oarsman. This provides a pretext for taking the reader around the Mediterranean in order to meet a stereotyped character from just about every known port of call.

Meanwhile, Bianca was back in Venice, trying to defend her honour against all those evil types this most cosmopolitan of cities could throw at her. Could anything be more obvious than the name Bianca? How was she to make a living? The faithful Bianca was convinced that someday her Michele would come back to her, having first somehow dealt with the impediment of his sentence of banishment and the certain death that would await him if he returned.

Back to Michele, who had witnessed a dastardly crime on an unnamed island; a crime involving murder and lots of gold, a crime he could not reveal to anyone.

At times I felt embarrassed to be reading this book, although there was no one around to comment on such an odd choice. At other times, I told myself it was just a light summer read, so it was okay. Why did I keep reading? I think I just wasn't prepared to ditch the whole endeavour, and there was always that promise of pirates to liven things up. There was also hope. Not hope that Bianca and Michele would be reunited, that seemed a foregone conclusion, especially as the coincidences piled up. No, it was just the simple hope that things would improve, that this 483 page mediocrity disguised as a literary work might actually turn into a literary work.

Sometimes hope and perseverance are not rewarded.

Ouch. Sounds like The Eyes of Venice should be permanently avoided.

>144 SassyLassy: there was always that promise of pirates to liven things up

Hoping for pirates, I kept reading Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, but at least it had some redeeming interest even if the title was the best -- and misleading -- thing about it.

Great discussion about Old Nichol! I was wondering if anorak was an autocorrect blooper (but for what?).

>144 SassyLassy: Am I to understand that there were no pirates? What a dastardly thing to do!

>142 SassyLassy: I must delve about and see if I can find the reason for the Luck Row / Chance Street name. Odd that the sentiment should have remained when the street was renamed. I must resist City of Dreadful Delight. As an aside someone I knew who used to be a bicycle despatch rider in London told me that when Hawksmoor was published they took to giving despatch locations using the old street names just to liven things up.

>145 janeajones: Sometimes you just have to take one for the team.

>146 rebeccanyc: Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean is on my TBR. It was an intriguing title. I remember your review and suspect that I will learn something from the book, even if it unfortunately has nothing to do with the title.

>147 FlorenceArt: I've been playing with possible words for anorak since reading your post. That's too funny.
There were pirates, but of the fairly anaemic variety. Dumas and Stevenson have nothing to worry about.

>148 Oandthegang: I don't believe there was an actual name change. I think Luck Row was just Morrison's synonym for Chance Street keeping the sentiment so that contemporary readers could identify it. I meant to say above that I had a look at the Council clearances on line and the homes they built to replace the old ones. No wonder the people who lived there couldn't afford them!

June was a terrible month in reading terms, with only two books completed. July was much better.

During part of my recent trip, I stayed in a place that was new to me. As soon as I walked in, I knew it would be a good six days, for books and prints were everywhere. Not the usual kind of rental accommodation books, but real books that would please most Club Read members. After only about fifteen minutes conversation, Tove Jansson's The Summer Book was being proffered as something I would enjoy. I had to confess I had already read it, but that it was definitely a favourite book and author. Next up was this book, Beauty by Design. While I managed to finish it during my stay, I liked it so much that I ordered my own copy when I got home.



30. Beauty by Design: Inspired Gardening in the Pacific Northwest by Bill Terry and Rosemary Bates
first published 2013
finished reading July 6, 2015

Alexander Pope's line "Consider the genius of the place in all" is the first line of the epigraph for Beauty by Design. The authors tell us genius in Pope's sense would have meant the essential character or spirit of the place. That this was done from the beginning for each of the featured gardens in this book is evident as their creators discuss them. For while most books of this sort would focus on the gardens, Beauty by Design looks more at the people behind them. Inspiration, influences, artistic preferences and acquisition of horticultural knowledge, the authors discussed it all with these gardeners before presenting them and their gardens to the reader. While the accompanying photographs are beautiful, this background approach gives an appreciation of their work that photographs alone could not convey.

The creativity here is amazing. The gardeners are used to expressing themselves not only in their living designs, but in other ways as well. There are poets, painters and potters: workers in wood, stone, cement and metal.

"Garden" seems like such a small word to describe what these people have created. The sheer range of landscapes presented here offers inspiration to just about anyone. Location is the only common factor. All the sites are in Washington state or southern British Columbia. Some gardens are small, some encompass acres. Some gardeners started with almost no financial resources, others have very deep pockets. All share an ongoing belief in what they are doing and creating, in the values of sustainability, preservation, and individual expression.

Not all gardens presented here will be to any given reader's taste, but all will offer thoughtful ideas for every reader who instinctively does "consider the genius of the place".

Some images of these gardens:



Photo from http://idyllhaven.blogspot.ca/2012/09/little-and-lewis.html of garden of George Little/Lewis and David Lewis garden on Bainbridge Island, sculptors and designers


photo by Robin Hopper
Robin Hopper's "36 year work in progress" featuring Japanese maples Coralbark and Trompenberg


more from Robin Hopper, potter, or in his words

Please allow me to introduce myself,
I'm a man of clay and glaze
Pushed mud around for seventy years
or twenty five thousand days.

http://rhrising.blogspot.ca/

31. Hard Light by Michael Crummey
first published 1998
finished reading July 12, 2015

Today, Michael Crummey is one of Canada's best known novelists, and to me, he is the best contemporary writer in the country. However, Crummey didn't start writing as a novelist, he started by writing poetry and short stories or fragments. Hard Light comes from that time.

All Crummey's work is steeped in Newfoundland history and culture. Here he takes stories told to him by older generations in his family, particularly his father, of life lived before Confederation with Canada, a time before highways and social safety nets. There is no sentimentality here, no "good old days" or romanticizing of hard times. There are just the straight stories told in Crummey's amazing language as first hand accounts of life in the elements, al life of unceasing manual work driven by the seasons, a life that cannot fail to be reflected physically on those who live it. This book is an elegy for those people.

When Crummey was a boy, the family had already moved inland, away from the ocean, to a mill and mining town.

The boy watches his father's hands....
They have a history the boy knows nothing of, another life they have left behind. Twine knitted to mend the traps, the bodies of codfish opened with a blade, the red tangle of life pulled from their bodies. Motion and rhythms repeated to the point of thoughtlessness, map of a gone world etched into the unconscious life of his hands by daily necessities, the habits of generations.
...
It will be years still before the boy thinks to ask his father about that other life, the world his hands carry with them like a barely discernable tattoo. His body hasn't been touched yet by the sad, particular beauty of things passing, of things about to be lost for good. Time's dark, indelible scar.

Part of the book was inspired by Crummey's reading of the nineteenth century diary of Captain John Froude:* fisherman, sealer, miner and seaman. 'The Price of Fish (September 1887)' comes from his reflections on Froude's writing.

I have had a fair trial on the fishing line now,
being 3 summers out from home, 2 summers on
the French Shore, 4 down on the Labrador,
and three trips this year to the Banks of Newfoundland,
and this is what I have learned to be the price of fish

Shem Yates and Harry Brown lost with the Abyssinia,
making through slack ice 60 miles N E of the Grey Islands
when the wind turned and she struck hard on a block,
the vessel split like a stick of frozen kindling ---
May, 1886

Tom Viven out of Crow Head, his boat running
loaded down through heavy seas that opened her up forward,
going down just off Kettle Cove and a good trip of fish lost besides ---
August, 1884

My last trip to the French Shore, Luke Brumley and Fred Strong
sent out to take in a trap cut loose in a gale,
the rough weather filling their skiff with water
when they hauled up the span line, the two men
pitched under only a good shout from the Traveller
but neither one could swim a stroke ---
June, 1882

Show me a map and I'll name you a man for
every cove between home and Battle Harbour

I am twenty-four years old,
there is no guarantee I will ever see twenty-five

Little has changed from Froude's day to now.

'Bread' shows the reality of what was needed to run a household and keep a family:

I was twenty years younger than my husband, his first wife dead in childbirth. I agreed to marry him because he was a good fisherman, because he had his own house and he was willing to take in my mother and father when the time came. It was a practical decision and he wasn't expecting more than that. Two people should never say the word love before they've eaten a sack of flour together, he told me...

And finally there is the reality of death and oblivion, in the will of Ellen Rose, signed with her mark:

... Married woman, mother, stranger to my grandchildren...
Every word I have spoken the wind has taken, as it will take me. As it will take my grandchildren's children, their heads full of fragments and my face not among those. The day will come when we are not remembered, I have wasted no part of my life in trying to make it otherwise...

Perhaps I've quoted too extensively here, but there is no other way I can find to represent Crummey's mastery of language and the power of what he has to say.

_____________________________

* On the High Seas by John W Froude

_____________________________

Other books I have read by Michael Crummey:
Flesh and Blood
River Thieves
The Wreckage
Galore

I will have to add Michael Crummey as an author I need to get to based upon your review.

Lovely photos and intriguing review (and quotes).

>153 NanaCC: Based on what I've seen on your threads, I suspect you will like him.

>154 rebeccanyc: I know not everyone has the fascination for horticulture books I have, but I always hope the images will lighten them! One of the featured people was the poet Patrick Lane, who together with his wife Lorna Crozier, has worked with plants for years. Lane was quoted as saying "When in doubt, go into the garden and the garden will heal you", which just about sums up what I get from gardens, my own or other people's.

>154 rebeccanyc: It was really difficult to restrain myself with the quotes from Hard Light, as it all seemed to say so much.

The cover art is from an etching by one of Canada's best known artists, David Blackwood.



For Edgar Glover: The Splitting Table from http://emmabutler.com/artists/blackwood/index5.htm an amazing gallery.

This would be the kind of table used for splitting and cleaning cod in the days before fish processing plants. The mitts are the type routinely used in outdoor work, including this process.

Crummey had a piece on preparing cod in Hard Light, "Making the Fish", which goes through all the stages.

The latest from a long time favourite author:



32. The Harder They Come by T Coraghessan Boyle
first published 2015
finished reading July 23, 2015

T C Boyle's many novels and short stories feature damaged goods: the American environment and the American psyche. The two are so intertwined that it becomes impossible to determine which is cause and which effect. His characters are aware of this damage. Some have only the dimmest recognition that something is wrong, a feeling at the gut level. Others can identify the problems, but have no idea at all how to approach them.

The Harder They Come is Boyle's latest book. Here we have Sten Stensen, a Vietnam vet and retired high school principal, someone who should be a reasonably successful representative of middle class American life. However, Sten, while realizing his life has been relatively decent in all senses of the word, is still a cynical man, wary of life's twists and turns. Only recently retired, his is especially wary of encroaching old age and inevitable death.

When we first encounter Sten, he is travelling on a cruise ship with his wife Carolee and almost two thousand other retirees, a situation that does nothing to improve his state of mind. On a shore excursion in Central America with a small group from the ship, the party is held up by local armed bandits. Reacting quickly, Sten murdered one in a chokehold. By the time the couple returned home to Mendocino, he was a hero. Not to himself though.

While in normal circumstances Sten was able to control his inherent violent tendencies, his son Adam had no such constraints. He had slipped outside the bounds of reality, living in the woods for long periods, cultivating his own crop of opium poppies. Adam was obsessed by John Colter, the legendary nineteenth century scout who reputedly walked three hundred miles alone through Indian territory. Adam wanted to be as free of society and as independent as he fantasized Colter had been.

Lastly, there is Sara Jennings, a farrier and supply teacher, who knew Sten from teaching in his school. Sara may be a familiar character to Americans, but this was the first time I had encountered her type. According to Sara, most people didn't

... understand that it was the Fourteenth Amendment that converted sovereign citizens into federal citizens by making them agree to a contract to accept federal benefits --- and taxes and all the illegal and confounding maze of laws that came with them. Taxes on your taxes. Do this, do that. You don't like it, go to jail. But that amendment was unconstitutional and if you subscribed to it you were just a slave of the system and had no rights at all except what they doled out to you with one hand while helping themselves to your paycheck with the other. How did it ever come to this? How could people be so stupid?

In her mind, this meant that she had no contract with the state of California, which meant seatbelt laws, vehicle registration and dog licensing had nothing to do with her. This was her downfall, as her car and dog were impounded and she was jailed as the result of a routine traffic stop.

Boyle takes these three characters and throws them together in the kind of nightly news story the networks love, the kind of story involving what appear to be random murders and drug deals. He sets it up so that of course it appears to his characters that it is Mexicans committing these acts. After all, Americans are the good guys. Sven, Sara, and Adam must all examine their lives and beliefs within the scope of their individual abilities. Each will confront the consequences of their individual choices.

This was a fascinating book for what it had to say about American approaches to civil society from one of its best observers. The epigraph comes from D H Lawrence's Studies in Classic American Literature

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never melted.

Boyle makes this ring true.

_____________________________________

Other books I have read by Boyle:

Novels
Water Music
Budding Prospects
World's End
East is East
The Road to Wellville
The Tortilla Curtain
Riven Rock
Drop City
Talk Talk
The Women

short stories

Greasy Lake and Other Stories
If the River was Whiskey
Wild Child and Other Stories

I haven't read anything by T. C. Boyle, though there are 2 or 3 on the TBR. The Harder They Come sounds like a good one. I have met a couple of people like Sara Jennings who boasted about ignoring certain laws or regulations in the name of their constitutional rights. Mostly, though, the people who talk like her are just blowing off steam. They follow the laws and pay their taxes.

I have Boyle's Talk Talk on audio. I've never read or listened to any of his books, but should get to that one soon.

The only TC Boyle I've read is "The Sinking House," a story in the excellent anthology Points of View. It definitely made me want to read more by him, but I haven't yet.

I first read T. C. Boyle decades ago because a man I was interested in recommended him. I can't remember what book I read by him, so I guess it didn't make an impression on me. (The guy didn't work out either.) But you make me think I should give Boyle another try. I have World's End and Budding Prospects on the TBR.

>156 SassyLassy:. Great quote from D H Lawrence - A generalisation of course but............

Enjoyed the excerpts from Hard Light

The Hard Light sounds beautiful. Your Newfoundland reading is fascinating. Whenever I see your Newfound reviews I want to read the books.

I like the pattern detail on the mittens in The Splitting Table. Reminiscent of, but different from, some Nova Scotian patterns I've got.

>157 StevenTX: steven, I suspect you would like T C Boyle given what I have read in your threads. While it's reassuring to hear that these people are mostly just blowing off steam, it was a novel line of thought to me.

>158 NanaCC: Talk Talk would probably work well on audio, but I think it would all fall to the reader to convey Boyle's humour in it.

>159 Nickelini: I read that one a long time ago in The Atlantic. It's a good representation of his work. Hopefully you'll get to more.

>160 rebeccanyc: That seems the way I first read him too, only it did work out! Water Music was the book and I still think it is far and away his best.

>161 baswood: A generalisation of course but............ Of course!

bas and >162 Oandthegang: It was difficult to stop myself with the excerpts from Hard Light, but fear of whoever it is that monitors such things restrained me.

>162 Oandthegang: It seems to me that for the last twenty years or so, writers from Newfoundland have been some of the most preeminent in Canada. The best of them are able to write with the true independent spirit of the place without sinking into writing from "the folk" as some other writers from Atlantic Canada have done. They also manage to maintain the unique humour of the place, again, without being corny.

The diamond pattern for the mittens can be found in Flying Geese and Partridge Feet: More Mittens from Up North and Down East. It is called in that book Mrs. Martin's Finger Mitts. The style is also known as Torbay mitts, or shooting mitts among other names. Photographers find it useful as well. Blackwood's mittens have a different cuff though, more snug, obtained by alternating the two colours in the ribbing with the knit and purl alternation.
If you don't have the book, you may be able to find the pattern on ravelry.com

There's nothing like a quick whodunnit to clear the mind when other reading is not progressing quite as you'd like. This author has had a few mentions lately on LT, so I thought I would try her out.
To forestall confusion, Mainland is actually an island, the largest in the Shetlands.



33. Red Bones by Ann Cleeves
first published 2009
finished reading July 24, 2015

The Shetland Islands may be small and remote, but that doesn't mean nothing happens there. Like many such communities whose main families have lived there for generations, there are simmering disputes and jealousies, lots of unwritten rules, and no escaping your family's history.

Nowhere is truly remote anymore though, and there are new people on the small island of Whalsay. A university is conducting an archeological dig. People from away have married in and have different ideas on how daily life should be conducted, disturbing the fragile equilibrium. Then, when not one but two people are murdered, the carefully maintained social structure collapses.

Jimmy Perez from the chief island of Mainland is called in to investigate. This isn't the first Perez book Cleeves has written, and Perez is definitely an evolving character. He is a quiet man with a love of local history, and under no illusions about the islanders. Through his eyes we see not the Shetlands of the travel brochures, but a place where real people live and work, trying like people everywhere to keep apace of the world around them. These insights are the strength of Cleeves's books and I can see why she has become so popular.

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edited to correct cover image which had mysteriously disappeared

Maybe another mystery series for me to investigate, since I seem to read mysteries when, like you, I can't concentrate on other reading.

>164 SassyLassy: Another series for my wishlist.

>144 SassyLassy: - Ouch! Thanks for saving us from The Eyes of Venice - I might have been interested in that one for all the reasons you list.

And some great pictures at >151 SassyLassy:

>165 rebeccanyc: and >166 NanaCC: It looks like it will be a good series, although comparing it to other series set in Scotland, (Denise Mina, Ian Rankin, Craig Russell), it seems positively bucolic. That may be a good thing.

>160 rebeccanyc: and at >164 SassyLassy: I actually meant to say Water Music, but your mention of World's End was making more sense as it was set in your part of the world. Both are excellent.

> 167 I'm still surprised at Europa publishing this book. It must have been the author's reputation. However book 35 below redeemed them.
Those kind of pictures always inspire me. That is a beautiful part of the world and the gardens are outstanding.

>168 SassyLassy: I may not be up for bucolic!

Two renowned authors far from home, each facing death; this was one of those great unexpected book pairings. The books were found a day apart on a city weekend. They begged to be read together.



34. Stevenson Under the Palm Trees by Alberto Manguel
first published 2002
read July 27, 2015

In 1894, Robert Louis Stevenson was at home at Vailima, the Samoan compound he had built for his family. Only forty-four, Tusitala, the teller of tales, knew he was dying. He knew he would never see his beloved Edinburgh again. One day at dusk, while walking on the beach, he came upon a stranger. When the stranger spoke, "Stevenson joyfully recognized in the voice a robust Scots accent which, to his sorrow, was dying out in the better parts of Edinburgh."

Instantly predisposed to like the stranger, who had introduced himself as Mr Baker from the Edinburgh Missionary Society, Stevenson looked for him each time he went about the island on his routine outings. Baker proved elusive, however. Even the local gossips knew nothing of him. Occasionally the two would meet by apparent chance. Each time Baker would chastise Stevenson for his sins, his writings, his way of life. Each time Stevenson's health suffered a setback. As the interplay between Baker and Stevenson develops, it moves from polite to sinister with just the right degree of uncertainty.

Alberto Manguel is a great reader and anthologist. It's natural that he would have favourite authors. Among the top ones on his list is Robert Louis Stevenson. Here, in what Graham Greene might style an "entertainment", he has created an imaginary episode in Stevenson's life using some of the master's own techniques, and in doing so, fashioned his own tribute to Stevenson's influence.

______________



35. Firefly by Janette Jenkins
first published 2013
finished reading July 28, 2015

In 1971, some seventy-five years after Stevenson's death, Noel Coward was dying on another tropical island. Firefly was his Jamaican home. His regular man servant had taken some time off, and Coward was being tended to by the inexperienced Patrice. Patrice believed in the London of Coward's writing; a world of manners, wit and elegance, a world in which he could have a career at the Ritz as a waiter.

Coward is not a likeable man. He shouts at Patrice, curses him and mocks him, but Patrice cheerfully persists in his efforts to have Coward coach him in the niceties of the table. Coward at seventy-one is much older that Stevenson's forty-four. Fed by a constant stream of alcohol, his mind and body seem even older. Inadvertent napping or moments of mental wandering never fail to bring up images of former days for him, of former lovers, a world where he was Sir Noel Coward, not this shell.

Coward isn't quite ready to admit defeat though. He and his onetime lover and now companion, Graham Payn, are about to leave for their annual stay in Switzerland.

His Jamaican clothes are hanging in the wardrobe for the days he has left, and they will stay here, with the camphor balls and cedar blocks. Where else could he wear such light garish shirts or such bleached tatty shorts? He runs his hands across them. Everything looks shapeless. Loose. The shoulders seem to be shrugging at him. He lies on the bed and places his hands across his chest. A medieval monument. When he closes his eyes he can still see the shirts. The saggy-looking cardigans. The trousers with easy-to-wear elastic sewn into their waistbands. Really, he could weep. Again.

This was a convincing sketch of Coward. Jenkins presents a man who needs constant minding, basically to save him from himself. Her book is more sensitive than bleak however. She uses Coward's memory gaps and ramblings to show his earlier life, the life that had made him the success he became. His treatment of the help around him precludes any hint of the maudlin, rather it shows the high price he paid to be the persona he created.

A happy coincidence to find a connection between two recent reads. It sometimes enhances the reading experience quite a bit.

As I struggle to catch up here, i just came across your review of Crummey's Hard Light. Love those quotes.

...

The rest of your thread will need to wait a bit, just didn't want to wait on that comment.

Caught up now. Enjoyed your thoughts on those last two. As for Boyle, I'm still afraid of him. I mean I don't think I would like him, not yet anyway. But enjoyed your review.

Great reading here. Hard to catch up and comment after half a year of absence.

>173 dchaikin: Crummey has an amazing way with language. As for Boyle, I liked your caveat ... not yet anyway... There is a lot of humour in some of his work, which provides a good balance to the social commentary.

>174 edwinbcn: Happy to see you back. The internet problems must make things more difficult, but looking at your thread, it looks as if you are doing even more reading with the free time they provide.

Time to move on.