Category: Books

Maine Time: Of Spies and Ghosts

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In my view, summer is a time for excess.  Lots of lobster.  Indulging in more carbs and sweets, bingeing on television series, and reading beach books as well as serious literature.  This past week, the Chief Penguin and I devoted morning and evening hours to The Americans and Crownies while I also included an atmospheric historical novel (The Tea Planter’s Wife) midst my reading of Lincoln in the Bardo.

VIEWING

Legal Fix—Crownies (Acorn)

If like me, you became addicted to the Janet King series and you are a big fan of Marta Dusseldorp, then I can recommend the predecessor series, Crownies.

The Aussies like their slang (witness a recent article in the WSJ about the heated debated over “parma” versus “parmy” for chicken parmiagiana), and “crownies” are young lawyers working for the Department of Public Prosecutions in Sydney.  Janet King is a character here and there are other familiar faces, Richard, Erin, Lina, and Andy, plus Tony and Tracey, to name just a few.  Janet is more senior in rank and the others are getting their feet wet in preparing briefs and going up before the judges.

Filmed beginning in 2011, it’s looser and has a lot more sex than Janet King, but the cases it presents are serious and complex, making for intelligent and absorbing viewing.  Interestingly enough, some reviewers loved this series and found Janet King somewhat boring and tame.  Others felt just the reverse. I think, on balance, I prefer the greater seriousness of JK.  Crownies, with characters like Tatum who is always dressed more for partying at a nightclub than for work and acts it too, can be tediously sophomoric at times.

Sunken Garden in Wiscasset

Spies in DC—The Americans  (Spoiler alert)

While overall, I think there are more excellent British and Australian series than American ones, this series, The Americans, is simply brilliant! We just binge watched season 6, the final series and it’s so well done.

We get the unraveling of Elizabeth and Philip’s lives as spies, Stan’s curiosity and puzzlement changing to downright suspicion, Paige’s tutoring by her mother and Claudia coupled with her idealistic view of what they are working to accomplish—all set against a changing world.  The end of the Cold War is at hand, Gorbachev is coming to the U.S. for the summit and in 1987, the spy game is changing.

Philip is out of the business, mostly, trying to succeed as a businessman at their travel agency, his and Elizabeth’s relationship is strained and broken, Paige is allied with her mother, and Philip is the parent who pays attention to Henry away at school.  How it all ends, how Stan caves, how the Jenningses get away, and who stays behind as the family is fractured is compelling drama.

RECENT READING

#16  The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies

A historical novel set on a tea plantation in Ceylon, Jefferies’ novel is lush and atmospheric and filled with mystery, love and lust.  It’s perfect for whiling away a rainy afternoon.  At just nineteen, Gwen goes out from London to Ceylon to join her new husband, thirty-seven year old Laurance Hooper, a widower she married after a whirlwind romance.  Attracted to the beauty and scents of this new world, Gwen has questions about her husband’s late first wife Caroline, is confused and uncomfortable with the shabby treatment of the native workers, and unhappy over the continuing presence of Laurance’s sister Verity in their home.

When she gives birth to twins, she faces a difficult decision and the resulting secret plus secrets from the past will haunt them all:  Gwen, Verity, Laurance, and her servant and almost friend Naveena.  (~JWFarrington)

#17 Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders

In my limited reading experience with several Man Booker Prize winners, I have found them to be some of the most offbeat and unusual novels and the most challenging to read. Saunders won the Man Booker Prize for this, his first novel, and it’s hard to find appropriately punchy adjectives to describe it, but I’ll start with weird, inventive, bizarre, strange, and haunting.  To gain the most from this work, it’s helpful to have a working definition of bardo. One can infer from the novel that it’s a state of being that is sort of between life as we know it and complete death. Or to quote from a recent article by Pema Rinpoche:

In bereavement, we come to appreciate at the deepest, most felt level exactly what it means to die while we are still alive. The Tibetan term bardo, or “intermediate state,” is not just a reference to the afterlife. It also refers more generally to these moments when gaps appear, interrupting the continuity that we otherwise project onto our lives. In American culture, we sometimes refer to this as having the rug pulled out from under us, or feeling ungrounded. These interruptions in our normal sense of certainty are what is being referred to by the term bardo. But to be precise, bardo refers to that state in which we have lost our old reality and it is no longer available to us.

Abraham Lincoln’s son Willie died at the age of eleven in 1862 and Lincoln visited the cemetery late at night.  In Saunders’ novel, the graveyard is populated by ghosts who interact with one another and who observe Willie’s burial and the visit by the president. These ghosts appear not to have gone fully over into death or at least they don’t fully realize that they are in fact dead.

The novel is structured like a Greek chorus with a series of voices in a continuous stream each spouting his or her lines and each speaker identified by name.  Interspersed with the fictional ghosts are snippets quoted from real historical works.  These excerpts add color, context and factual detail.  The ghosts run the gamut in their speech being coarse and ribald, argumentative, reflective, or even philosophical.  Together the lead threesome of Hans Vollman, Roger Bevins iii, and the Reverend Everly Thomas, collaborate to try to bring Lincoln together with his son one last time to provide him solace and to ease Willie’s transition to the next world.

This description makes the novel sound all very matter of fact, when it’s anything but that. Rather it’s a somewhat mesmerizing experience that caught this reader up in its momentum, so that while I found it initially off putting and weird, I also found it awesome and compelling.  It truly is a novel unlike any other I’ve ever read.  (~JWFarrington)

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

Maine Time: Rockland & Reading

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UP TO ROCKLAND

After several years of good intentions, we finally made the relatively short drive north to Rockland to visit the Farnsworth Art Museum.  Rockland is a charming small town (worth a return visit on a cooler day) and the Farnsworth a gem.  Why did we wait so long to explore it?

Focused mainly on American art, current exhibits included a selection from their permanent collection, a special exhibit of stunning gold animal heads by Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei (who attended Penn in 1981), as well as paintings by assorted Wyeths housed in a historic church building.  Paintings there are by father N. C. Wyeth, sons Andrew and Jamie, and their sister plus a brother-in-law.

Sunset II 2008 by Alex Katz
The Painted Room, 1982 by Lois Dodd
Rudy, 1980 by Alex Katz

The gallery spaces are all very attractive and flow nicely and the museum includes an equally inviting library open to the public.  The small museum store, which also opens directly onto Main Street, contains an attractive inventory of items beyond the usual note cards and scarves.

 

 

We broke up our museum tour with lunch across the street at the cozy Brass Compass Café and tucked into the best lobster rolls and French fries we’ve had yet this season.  It was really hot, above 90, and not a day to eat outside!

 

PAIRED HISTORICAL NOVELS

These two recent novels are set mostly in 1883-1885, one in Manhattan and the other in Philadelphia. In each, an unwed mother must deal with the consequences of giving birth without benefit of a spouse at a time when this stigma was life changing and possibly life threatening.

#14  The Address by Fiona Davis

This is the second of Ms. Davis’s three books, a writer whose distinctive shtick is using an historic building as a jumping off point for novels that combine mystery with a heroine in the past and one in the present day.  Her first novel, The Dollhouse, was about some of the young women who lived in the Barbizon Hotel. This one focuses on The Dakota, a huge apartment complex on the edge of civilization when it was completed in 1884, and which is still a residence today.  It’s a juicy read, perfect for a day at the beach.

In 1985, fresh out of rehab, interior designer Bailey Camden is trying to put her life back in order and has turned to her cousin Melinda Camden for support.  Bailey’s grandfather was Theodore Camden, an architect who worked on the Dakota.  Bailey is curious about her origins and seeks to learn more about the details surrounding Theodore’s death and the housekeeper, Sara Smythe, who murdered him. In interleaved chapters, we get Sara’s arrival from London to work at The Dakota, her attraction to the married Theodore, and her subsequent downfall, along with Bailey’s rough road to recovery and a renewed career.

The historical details on the building are fascinating, the characters mostly believable, and the mystery one you will probably solve before it’s revealed.  The book is fun–a bonbon for a summer’s day! (~JWFarrington)

 

#15  Lilli de Jong by Janet Benton

This first novel by journalist and teacher Benton is intense and both vivid and compelling.  In 1883, observant Quaker and schoolteacher Lilli de Jong surrenders her virginity to Johan, her fiancé, the night before he leaves Philadelphia for a new career in Pittsburgh.  When her father marries his cousin soon after the death of her mother and is barred from Quaker Meeting and when Lilli finds herself pregnant with no way to contact Johan, her life unwinds.  In disgrace, she leaves home and finds herself a place at a residence for unwed women, the first stop in her journey to survival.  Allowed to stay there only until a few weeks after the birth, she must decide how to live her life with or without her baby going forward. Structured as a journal in ten books, the novel is Lilli’s account of her struggles and her descent into poverty and squalor.  It is also one of the most poignant and penetrating accounts of motherhood and the love that binds mother and child.

In the author’s notes at the end, Benton describes how this book was conceived when she was pregnant with her own child and how it is also a tribute to Philadelphia, a city she loves.  She details the historical underpinnings of the buildings, streets, and institutions that appear in her 19thcentury city.  I found the book a moving account of one spirited and determined woman. (~JWFarrington)

All photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Maine Time: Two Takes on Identity in Life

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This week Maine is sunny and Maine is always quiet.  Activity besides reading consists mainly of walks around the neighborhood, trips to the general store, and dinners with friends, punctuated by the occasional movie or boat trip.  Included in this blog are a few photos of the local scene plus reviews of a new documentary and a compelling novel.

FASCINATING DOCUMENTARY

The Gospel According to Andre

Andre Leon Talley, a black man, grew up in North Carolina in the 1950’s and 60’s when segregation was still the norm and options for blacks were limited.  Raised by his grandmother, his childhood was strongly grounded in the life of the church and the values it represented.  From an early age, Talley was drawn to fashion and after earning his degree at Brown University, he began working in Paris, writing and commenting on the fashion scene there.  Later he came to New York and worked at Vogue with both the legendary Diana Vreeland and the meticulous Anna Wintour.

Over time, Talley became an icon for others aspiring to a career in the fashion industry.  A large man physically, his mode of dress and his style have always been colorful, bold, and uniquely his.

Kate Novack is the producer and director of this excellent documentary covering Talley’s career.  She has creatively combined a wealth of archival footage of life in Durham, NC in the 50’s and 60’s and the fashion scene in Paris and New York in the 70’s with interviews with Talley’s contemporaries, colleagues, and friends from his childhood.  While racism is an underlying current, it is not dwelled upon.  The interviews with Talley himself take place interspersed throughout the film leading up to the 2016 election.  The scene on election night is remarkable for its restraint.

On a personal note, Kate Novack is someone I know a bit since she is the daughter of very good friends. The Chief Penguin and I had the pleasure of viewing the film at a special showing at the local nonprofit theater in Boothbay Harbor complete with a Q&A afterward with Kate.  It was informative to hear more about the making of this film.

Kate and spouse Andrew Rossi are also the creative team responsible for two other recent documentaries: First Monday in May, and Page One about the New York Times.  They are all worth seeing!  For more about Kate and the Talley film, here’s an interview by Garage.

 

SUMMER READING

Timely Novel about the Immigrant Experience

#13  The Leavers by Lisa Ko

This 2017 novel is another one that made multiple best books of the year lists and was also a National Book Award finalist.  It’s a vivid portrayal of a Chinese mother and her son who at various points navigate the different physical and cultural worlds of Fuzhou, China and the Bronx. Pregnant by a neighbor she has no interest in marrying, Polly leaves China for New York City where Deming is born. She works first on a factory floor and later in a nail salon.  When she realizes she can’t work and take care of him, she soon sends him back to China to live with his grandfather.  When he’s older, she brings him back to the U.S.

Deming makes the adjustment to the city, grooves to all its sounds and colors, and is comfortable living with his mother, her boyfriend Leon, Leon’s sister Vivian, and her son Michael who becomes his good friend.  Until the day his mother doesn’t come home.  Feeling abandoned and rejected when he hears nothing from her, he must then cope with white foster parents, being adopted, and living in suburban upstate NY.  Ten years later at 21, having spent the past ten years as Daniel Wilkinson, he seeks to locate his birth mother.  The novel alternates between Deming’s life in the United States and his times in China and sections in Polly’s voice about the torture of being deported and the new successful life she builds in her native land.

My only quibble is that it could have been more tightly edited at points to sustain the forward momentum.  Nonetheless, it is a richly imagined novel of identity:  how does one figure out who he or she is, how does he find a way to believe in himself, what must one do to belong, and what is acceptable behavior and what is selfish.  Both Deming and Polly wrestle with the issues of who they are and what living a fulfilling life means. Each is a multi-layered character with Polly being especially complex.  (~JWFarrington)

Note:  All photos ©JWFarrington.

Maine Time: Politics & Fiction

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POLITICS—BRITISH STYLE

If you’re fed up with the American political scene, here are two video offerings for an English change of pace.

Margaret  (Amazon Prime)

This 2-hour production traces the wheeling and dealing and backroom haggling that transpired in November 1990 and resulted in Margaret Thatcher’s ouster as British prime minister. Think lots of older white men all angling for their continued place in the sun (i.e. the Cabinet) or for more, the prime ministership itself.  Lindsay Duncan is strident, determined and even occasionally screechy as the indomitable Margaret while Roger Ashton-Griiffiths is appropriately deferential and caring as her long-suffering spouse Denis.  Very entertaining, although some might find Duncan’s portrayal of Thatcher caricaturish.  Released in 2009.

A Very British Scandal  (Netflix)

In three parts, this mini-series chronicles the calamitous career of MP Jeremy Thorpe beginning in 1961 with his affair with a young lower class man named Norman Scott.  This was when homosexual relations were still illegal in the U.K.  Thorpe set Scott up in a flat and wrote him affectionate letters.  Scott later made the letters public and talked freely to any and all about their relationship.  How Thorpe dealt with this threat to his rising career and the lengths to which he went to try and silence Scott are so extreme and farfetched as to seem unbelievable.  But all true.  This slice of British politics stars the usually impeccable Hugh Grant as Thorpe with Ben Whishaw as the charming, flaky, and appealing Scott.

 

SUMMER READING

#10  Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

I found Ng’s first novel, Everything I Never Told You, masterful and poignant.  This one is even better, excellent, in fact.  Ng gently skewers life in the perfect suburb of Shaker Heights, Ohio, during the Clinton era.  And she “gets’ and skillfully portrays the foibles, frenzies, and frustrations of teenage life.  The Richardson children, Lexie, Trip, Moody, and Izzy are well intentioned (except for Izzy) and appropriately self-centered.  Outsiders Pearl Warren and her mother, Mia, a rootless, talented artist, who rent an apartment from the Richardsons, are different, and each child is attracted to one or both of them.

They become catalysts for upheaval when Mia champions a Chinese woman whose baby is slated for adoption by the wealthy, white McCulloughs, close friends of Elena Richardson and her husband.  Newspaper reporter and busybody Elena runs a well-ordered household and lives a mostly rule-following life.  Lacking in self-awareness, she uses her reporting skills to investigate Mia and reaps much more than she bargained for.

With a punchy opening sentence:  “Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer:  how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down,“ this novel about motherhood, art, and how we live in society will linger in your memory long after you’ve finished it.  For more about Ng and her upbringing, here is a link to a 2017 interview.  (~JWFarrington)

 

#11  Love and Ruin by Paula McLain  

Paula McLain writes historical novels about intriguing women, women who are notable in part because they are the wives or amours of famous men.  In essence, she writes love stories.  I first read The Paris Wife about Ernest Hemingway’s time in Paris and his marriage to Hadley Richardson, wife #1.  It was good, particularly for its depiction of the literary scene and all the famous writers who congregated there in the 1920’s, but not great.  I did not read Circling the Sun about Beryl Markham, but was attracted to this latest novel by the very positive press it’s been getting.  And it didn’t disappoint.

Martha Gellhorn was an accomplished and noted war correspondent who covered all the major 20th century conflicts from the Spanish Civil War to the Second World War to Vietnam and even Panama in her early 80’s.  She was the first journalist and the only woman to be on the beach in Normandy.  She was also Ernest Hemingway’s third wife and reputed to be the only woman who stood up to him.

Effectively told primarily in Gellhorn’s voice with two wars as backdrop, it’s a gripping and graphic account of the turmoil of battle and the tempestuous relationship between two intense individuals.  Gellhorn’s desire to accede to the demands of marriage fights with her strong determination to forge ahead in her own career as a writer and journalist.  As a reader, I also gained a better understanding of the Spanish Civil War through this novel.   (JWFarrington)

 

#12 From the Corner of the Oval by Beck Dorey-Stein

Probably most of us didn’t realize until recently that there are stenographers assigned to the president to transcribe his every public word.  I certainly didn’t until I read about this memoir by Ms. Dorey-Stein. She worked for President Obama for five years and stood in the shadows recording and then transcribing.

She has a fresh voice and an enduring sense of wonder at being where she is:  witnessing history, traveling on Air Force One to U.S. cities and countries around the world, and living in a very special bubble.  For the twenty-somethings who support POTUS, it’s a life fueled by alcohol and constrained by the demands of being available 24/7, but ripe with opportunities for affairs and hook-ups.

Reading Dorey-Stein is a bit like being on a careening roller coaster as she shares her doubts and insecurities and details her relationships with boyfriends and work colleagues all the while demonstrating her ability to write.  She matures and becomes more confident over these years, and I appreciated the up close view she provides of living and working in such a rarefied atmosphere.  A quick read that will either entrance you or drive you nuts with all the boyfriend angst!  I was entranced and always rooting for her to have good sense. (~JWFarrington)

Note:  Header photo ©JWFarrington.  Book jackets from the web.