Category: Books

View of Cozy Harbor, Maine

Maine Time: A Slower Pace

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IN A BOOK

I’m a voracious reader, but I have to admit that this summer I’m finding it harder to read serious works. Perhaps it’s the effect of living with the coronavirus or maybe it’s part laziness. In any case, I’m spending more time devouring beach reads and mysteries with the occasional heavier title tossed in. Some of the books I brought to Maine are ones I’ve owned for awhile, but many of them sit in a yet-to-be-read stack while I dive into the latest e-book from the library or some just purchased light fare. That said, here are two intriguing novels and one long memoir that lends itself to skimming. What is your reading like this year?

Historical Fiction

Mistress of the Ritz by Melanie Benjamin

Books about people and events during World War II are still big sellers. I’m beginning to tire of them, but Mistress of the Ritz was an exception. It’s gripping and thrilling and a fast-paced read. It’s based on or perhaps inspired by, as author Benjamin states in an afterword, Blanche Auzello and her husband, Claude, the manager of the Ritz. It begins in 1940 when the Nazis first occupy Paris–and the hotel. What is amazing and makes for delicate situations, is that the hotel remains open to rich and celebrated guests while simultaneously being Nazi headquarters. Blanche is an American while Claude is French and exceedingly proud of his position. He devotes himself to the Ritz and to a succession of mistresses that leave his wife subject to neglect.

photo of Blanche Auzello
Blanche Auzello (memoiresdeguerre.com)

Early on, the reader experiences Blanche as a bit of a flibbertigibbet, caught up with fashion, hobnobbing with famous guests, and flirting with handsome Nazi officers. One wonders where her story will lead. As ordinary people begin to disappear, life becomes harder for these two gracious hosts, and the roles they furtively play expose them to danger and exposure. It’s a novel of secrets and intrigue, love and trust, mistrust and misunderstanding. Chapters alternate between Claude and Blanche. Recommended!

Benjamin is also the author of The Aviator’s Wife, a very well received novel about the marriage of Anne and Charles Lindbergh. (~JWFarringon)

Contemporary Thriller

The Last Flight by Julie Clark

I have my friend Marnie to thank for putting me on to this novel. The Last Flight is about two women anxious to exit their present lives. Claire Cook is married to a wealthy man, scion of a wealthy family, who is also abusive. She is desperate to escape his censure and physical abuse and plots to assume a new identity on a business trip to Detroit.

Claire gets re-assigned to fly to Puerto Rico instead and in the airport meets Eva who is leaving a checkered past behind. Eva has fewer options for the future, so she offers to exchange boarding passes and IDs with Claire. What happens when Claire and Eva assume each other’s identities and struggle to function in new environments makes for a gripping story. There may be a few too many coincidences, but it’s a great gallop of a book! (~JWFarrington)

Memoir–Serious But Not Too

Barbarian Days:  A Surfing Life by William Finnegan (2015)

William Finnegan is a staff writer for the New Yorker and author of a number of books.  I am the last person my friends would expect to read a book about surfing, but his memoir won the Pulitzer Price and got such great reviews, it’s been on my radar.  A hefty 400 plus pages, it’s chock full of detail about surfing spots around the world. 

William Finnegan, surfer, approaching waves
(kcrw.com)

Finnegan is almost mesmerizing as he describes waves, water, and the thrill of surfing.  And he’s candid about his occasional fear of drowning.  For me, the appeal was more his account of his childhood years in California and Hawaii, his parents’ laissez-faire approach to any oversight of his doings, and the regular bullying he quietly endured into his teens.  

Finnegan took a long time to settle down. He roamed the globe to experience great surfing venues (Samoa, Australia, Madeira), dropped in and out of college, reported from war zones, and worked on a novel.  Finnegan claims that surfing was not his primary passion in the way that it is for others, but he was regularly enticed to yet another locale. It’s clear that surfing remains important to him and is an escape from the mundane even into his 60’s. (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo of Cozy Harbor ©JWFarrington

Hendrick Head Trail

Maine Moments: Outside & Inside

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HIKING TRAILS

This is a different Maine for us.  No restaurant meals.  Limited social activities and more time at home.  But if we want a change of scene, then there are local trails to explore.  The Boothbay Region Land Trust maintains preserves in Boothbay, Southport, Edgecomb, and the surrounding area.  A variety of trails are open to the public, some good for hiking, others suitable for easy walking. 

Several years ago, we hiked the wooded one-mile trail at Porter Preserve on Barter’s Island.  It has some gradual elevation and several great vistas of the Sheepscot River and one overlook with a welcoming bench.

Large toadstool

This week we went to the nearby Hendrick Head Trail.  This is a short trail, just a half mile one way that then loops back to the main road.  It’s wooded and quiet and the path was dotted with tiny pinecones and one giant toadstool.

The trail entrance is located just down from a little beach and from the beach, there’s a view of the Hendricks Head Light. This lighthouse was established in 1829, with the present structures dating from 1875.  It’s a squarish lighthouse with a keeper’s house that has a bright red roof.

Hendricks Head Light (lighthousefriends.com)

HODGE PODGE OF READING

I mailed a box of books to Maine and between them and e-books from the library, I have a motley assortment.  Here are just two of them.

Tough Love by Susan Rice

Susan Rice (nytimes.com)

Susan Rice is one of the contenders to be Joe Biden’s vice-presidential candidate which makes her memoir timely.  A Black woman who grew up in a contentious household (her parents ultimately divorced), she served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama and then as his national security advisor.  She was slated to become his secretary of state but was pilloried in the press and on social media for comments she made after the Benghazi incident.  Smart, extremely knowledgeable about a range of international issues, Rice is straightforward and occasionally blunt.

The book is long and covers some of the same crises that Samantha Power dealt with in her book, The Education of an Idealist.  I confess to doing a fair bit of skimming and, at points, being more interested in the personal details of how she juggled having young children with her very demanding schedule.  Nonetheless, I recommend it. I think you will come away impressed with her accomplishments and her talents. (~JWFarrington)

Kiss and Kin by Angela Lambert (1997)

I bought this novel in paperback some years ago (the paper is yellowed) and never had read it, so added it to my Maine stash.  It’s a story of love and loyalty in two upper class British families.  Harriet is a recent widow in London to celebrate her grandson Hugo’s birthday. He’s the child of her son, Roderick, and daughter-in-law, Jennifer. They are going through a rough patch with talk of divorce.  

The other grandparents, Oliver and Clarissa, are slated to attend, but Oliver arrives alone and is immediately transfixed by Harriet.  As Oliver and Harriet embark on a passionate affair, they agonize over what they perceive as their duty to their adult children.  Harriet particularly is concerned about the impact of their relationship, once proclaimed, on their mutual grandchildren.  I enjoyed this novel, but found it dated, an opinion shared in other online reviews.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Toadstool and header photo on Hendrick Head Trail ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Customers--Boothbay Farmers' Market

Maine Time: A Different World

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A DIFFERENT MAINE

Maine is very different than Florida.  It has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases and one of the lowest numbers of deaths.  Masks are required almost everywhere, and the level of compliance is very high.  Going to the supermarket here is a real adventure.  One entrance only with sanitizer and a mask enforcer, big arrows and signs indicating one way down the aisles, and a reminder at the checkout station to stay back on the indicated spot.  It’s strict but reassuring.

Even the outdoor Boothbay Farmers’ Market is compliant.   Everyone was masked!  Stands are fewer and spaced farther apart on the town green than in past years. A sign in the middle of the lawn states face coverings are required.  

People queue up widely spaced to be served, and the produce stand has a rope in front of its offerings. When it’s your turn there, you tell the man what you would like. He gathers up your zucchini, cherry tomatoes, basil, and lettuce, and then at the end figures out your total.  You insert your credit card and bag your veggies while the transaction takes place.  The process takes longer than usual, but certainly reduces contact with anyone else and with the veggies!

WEATHER

The weather too has been a welcome change from home.  Not the heavy rain showers of our arrival day, but the cool to cold nights thus far and two days with highs in the middle 60’s.  Last evening and this morning, we were blanketed by coastal fog.  Eerie, moody, calming, you name it, it’s a different scene.  I am happy to be wearing long pants, long sleeves, socks (yes!) and even a light fleece indoors.  

NOVEL READING

Maine is quiet, quieter than usual this year, and social engagements will be fewer, so more time for reading and reflection.

ON TRIAL

The Body in Question by Jill Ciment

(penguinrandomhouse.com)

This spare novel was on several notable and best-of-the-year booklists, but I don’t believe it received much attention when it was published in 2019. Googling Ciment, I learned that at 17, she married a professor thirty years her senior and remained with him until his death in 2016.

For this murder trial, the jurors are sequestered.   Juror C-2 is 52, married, and attracted to 41-year old juror, F-17 and, against judicial rules, engages him in a secret affair. In part, she is testing whether or not she is still attractive enough, even though she has a husband she loves.  Her spouse is decades older (86) and in rapidly failing health.  

There are several bodies referenced in this novel:  the body of the child Caleb at the heart of the court case, C-2’s husband’s body described alternately with tenderness and medical detachment, F-17’s body, and lastly, the bodies F-17, anatomy professor, dissects. The trial goes on and ends as does the affair, but it is followed by a media frenzy and a crisis.

C-2 returns to her husband’s decline and to another meeting with the other jurors.  It is only then in the aftermath that the characters have names, not numbers, and life twists and unwinds.  

As I was reading, I wasn’t sure whether I liked this book or what to think of it.  I appreciated the clean-cut writing and the distance the author maintained from the characters.  Upon finishing, it has stayed with me. And I have pondered the various facets of love and desire, trust, innocence and guilt it presents. (~JWFarrington)

MYSTERY AND LOVE

The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs

(bainbridgereview.com)

Susan Wiggs is a reliable author of contemporary women’s fiction and, early in her career, historical novels. One such was set at the time of the Chicago fire.  I looked forward to reading this latest novel but was somewhat disappointed.  The setting in a San Francisco bookshop hooked me from the start, but I found Natalie’s all-consuming grief over her mother’s unexpected death overdone and tiresome.

Natalie returns home and takes over managing her mother’s bookshop.  The store is teetering on the brink of failure in a dilapidated historic building, and she has the added burden of caring for her grandfather Andrew, who has early dementia.  There are two likely “knights in shining armor”:  one, contractor Peach, who takes on the building repairs, and the other, the famous, handsome and wealthy author Trevor Dashwood (what a name with echoes of Jane Austen!) who agrees to do a reading and signing in the store.  

A bit of mystery surrounding the legacy of the building and hints of hidden treasure add to the mix.  Wiggs did her bibliographic homework on the ultimate treasure as it is very believable.  The outcome is predictable, and the two men engaging characters. Especially delightful is Dorothy, a regular store patron with initiative and pizazz, who is also Peach’s young daughter.  Overall, this is pleasurable reading to while away an afternoon.  (JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo and farmers’ market photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Summertime Doings: Reading & Action

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This summer, reading has been a primary activity. This month I branched out with some targeted political action.

BEACH READING

The Ambassador’s Wife by Jennifer Steil

Free spirited artist Miranda meets and marries Finn, an upstanding, conventional British career diplomat, and becomes an ambassador’s wife in a fictional Middle Eastern Muslim country.  Adjusting to the constraints of life in a walled compound, she, nonetheless, continues to teach painting to a group of local women.  When Miranda and two French women are kidnapped while hiking, the stakes are high as the authorities race to locate them.  Published in 2015, The Ambassador’s Wife is a gripping novel which I raced to finish–almost in one sitting.  

Ms. Steil is a journalist who worked in Yemen for a number of years.  She’s also married to a British diplomat and so has personal experiences as an ambassador’s wife.  Currently she lives in Uzbekistan and has just published her second novel, Exile Music, set in Bolivia beginning in 1938.

POLITICAL ACTION

With Covid-19 still limiting social activities and outings for many, you too might have some free time.  If you’re concerned about how this fall’s national elections will turn out, you may want to donate time as well as dollars.  Through a good San Francisco friend of mine, I’ve begun joining her and others in a weekly postcard writing effort.  It’s under the umbrella of Swing Left which has chapters and events in many states.  

I’ve committed to handwriting 20 postcards each week.  Last week, Marcia’s scattered group of volunteers wrote to individuals in Des Moines, Iowa, urging them to vote for Theresa Greenfield, the Democratic senatorial candidate in a tight race.  Before that, the focus was on Durham, North Carolina, and encouraging folks to pledge online to vote in November.  This week, we’re sending cards to Denver, Colorado, with a message about electing John Hickenlooper to the Senate to ensure good judges in the courtroom.  Scripts and addresses are provided, and it takes an hour or two each week.  There is so much is at stake in 2020, I feel it’s well worth the effort!

Birds of a feather…egrets and ibis

Note: All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).