Category: Books

Reading Round-up: Books & More Books

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READING ROUND-UP JAN.-MARCH 2018

 In the first quarter, I read all novels except for one memoir  As it happens, the novels were all written by women with the exception of Wells’ 1909 novel.  And that book is about a modern woman.  To read my review of any of these titles, just key in the title in the search box on this page and you will retrieve the blog that contains the review.  Happy browsing!

NOVELS

Albanese, Laurie Lico.  Stolen Beauty

Anderson, Alison.  The Summer Guest

 Kadish, Rachel.  The Weight of Ink

 Meissner, Susan.  The Shape of Mercy

 Perry, Sarah.  The Essex Serpent

 Rieger, Susan.  The Heirs

 Smith, Dinitia.  The Honeymoon

 Wells, H. G.  Ann Veronica

MEMOIR

Cahalan, Susannah.  My Month of Madness

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AUTHOR NOTE

I was saddened to learn last week of the death of author Anita Shreve.  Not that long ago, I read and blogged about her most recent novel, The Stars Are Fire.  My journey through her work began with The Pilot’s Wife, the Oprah pick that brought her fame and recognition, and continued from there.  She was always a good storyteller, Maine was often the setting, and she was adept at using an historical event as a jumping off point.

 

HISTORICAL MYSTERY

Sarah Maine (www.bricklanestudiosyork.co.uk)

Beyond the Wild River by Sarah Maine.   

Although born in the U.K., author Maine spent part of her growing up years in Canada.  It’s clear that her own experiences in the wild informed the writing of this novel.  Set in 1888 and 1893, mostly in remote Ontario, it’s as much an adventure story as it is a mystery.  In that day, the Nipigon River attracted men from far and away to fish its waters for trout.  It was a rustic camping and canoeing experience even with guides, requiring stamina and skill.  Charles Ballantyre, a very wealthy man, takes his daughter Evelyn to Chicago to the world’s fair and then they go on a fishing expedition on this river.  Five years earlier, two men were murdered on Ballantyre’s Scottish estate.  The man thought by many to be responsible fled, but no one has been brought to justice.  Evelyn has questions about her father’s role in the deaths as well as wondering about the fate of her friend James Douglas.  In the woods, tensions between guides and traveling companions simmer and eventually erupt.  The pace is slow and while you suspect that “the good guys” will triumph in the end, getting there is a detailed interplay of personalities and poses.

Note:  Header photo at Selby Gardens featuring Warhol in the Garden by JW Farrington.

 

Tidy Tidbits: Lobster, Roe & James

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DINING OUT

Lazy Lobster

We’ve enjoyed food from the Lazy Lobster on Longboat Key several times, so it was a pleasure to dine again in their light-filled airy dining room.  There is outside seating too, but it was already taken on this bright Sunday afternoon.  Service was attentive, but leisurely given the crowd.  We, like others, took advantage of their early dining menu, which offered several salad and entrée choices at very good prices.  We were not disappointed.  The shrimp scampi over linguini was very tasty!  The shrimp were cooked just to doneness atop a generous bed of pasta seasoned with garlic, herbs, oil and diced tomato and onion. Their Caesar salad was also a pleasing rendition with enough garlic to make it sing, but not overblown.  My dining companions sampled and were delighted with the fish and chips, and we all tasted the key lime pie which was nicely tangy.

 OUTSTANDING THEATER

Roe, a drama by Lisa Loomer, and part of Asolo Repertory Theatre’s current season, is one of the most powerful plays I’ve ever seen!  By the end, I was exhausted.  Superbly acted and staged, it shows the history leading up to the 1970’s Supreme Court’s decision on abortion in Roe vs. Wade.  Lawyer Sarah Weddington, who argued the case at the tender age of 26, and single pregnant addicted 21-year old Norma McCorvey, aka Jane Roe, are the central characters.  Act I ends with the historic ruling by the high court.  Act II shows how life plays out for the hapless Norma and her partner Connie and for Weddington up to the present day.   Operation Rescue is on the scene and their message is given air time as Norma changes her views and joins them.  Especially poignant is modern-day student Roxanne, pregnant, who outlines all the delays and obstacles she’s encountering in her quest for a legal abortion.

The real Sarah Weddington (Chambers Associate)

While I certainly knew some of the history behind the ruling, I hadn’t realized or remembered that it all started with a case in Texas.  This is hard-hitting, thought provoking drama and definitely worth seeing.  It runs through April 15.

 

RECENT READING:  CHANNELING HENRY JAMES

Mrs. Osmond by John Banville.  I loved this novel, but I’m not sure everyone would.  Using Henry James’, The Portrait of a Lady, as a jumping off point, Banville presents Isabel Archer Osmond roughly six years after her marriage to Gilbert Osmond.  The marriage is at the breaking point as Isabel has learned of the intimate relationship between Gilbert and Madame Merle and that Serena Merle is his daughter Pansy’s mother.  She also realizes she’s been duped and married for her fortune.  Disillusioned and fed up, Isabel flees Rome, against Gilbert’s wishes, to be at her dying cousin Ralph’s bedside.  When the novel opens, she is in London where she seeks out her old friend Harriet Stackpole, an acerbic journalist.  She also visits Miss Janeway, a suffragette, for her advice on what to do.  Recognizing that she needs to return to Osmond for a showdown of some sort, but first determining what her course of action will be, Isabel nonetheless lingers in London and Paris.  In Paris she runs into Madame Merle at a party and makes her a proposition.  Then she goes on to Florence to see her Aunt Lydia and discovers that Osmond is there too.  The Osmonds’ get-together is a tour de force as a newly self-assured Isabel flexes her figurative muscle and penetrates through Gilbert’s savoir faire.

Like James, Banville writes wonderfully long descriptive sentences about the weather, the interiors the characters inhabit, and the city streets.  John Bayley writing about a different novel by Banville even commented “that the author ‘does not quite coordinate pace with expectation in the reader’s mind; his felicities are apt to hold him up, so that the reader wants to read faster than the author is doing the writing.'”  Nonetheless, the language is marvelously rich, and action is at a minimum.  You could summarize the plot of Mrs. Osmond in about two sentences, yet that would be a shallow statement of Isabel’s growth in self-awareness and her efforts in resolving her dilemma.  Winding and deliberate though Banville’s prose is, there are flashes of wit, and the occasional directness in conversation that is contemporary in a way that the sedate, indirect, ambiguous James wasn’t.   (~JWFarrington)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note:  Header image from the New York Times and is attributed to 26Eugenides.  Mandala colored by the author.

Tidy Tidbits: Of Eggs and Art

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SNAPSHOTS OF EASTER

When I was a child and young adult, Easter was a major holiday.  Not major like Christmas, but certainly notable and celebrated.  Those celebrations included Easter baskets stuffed with green plastic grass and an assortment of jelly beans (the spice ones were the best!) and colorful foil-wrapped chocolate eggs.  If one was really lucky, there was also a separately boxed Cadbury chocolate crème egg.  (These still exist, but are no longer packaged in a box.)  This large egg had a thick outer layer of milk chocolate coating an orb of white candy with a yellow yolk, mimicking a real egg.  Yum!

Celebrating Easter also meant going to church, something my family did every Sunday, but on this day in a new dress or, more likely, a new pastel-colored spring coat.  We lived where winter held its grip, and little girls wore light wool spring coats in yellow or blue or pink.  When older, I participated in an occasional Easter sunrise service.  Being at church at 6:30 am was a challenge for any teenager, this one included!

We didn’t have many relatives nearby so dinner on Easter Sunday was usually just my immediate family, with perhaps once, dinner with my great Uncle Edwin and Aunt Ruth.  They lived an hour away and weren’t accustomed to having children around.  Ruth set a formal table and one time served each of us kids (my two sisters and me) a quarter slab of a pint of ice cream.  It was lemon flavor and an undeniably daunting serving for a child!  At home, Easter dinner was baked ham with potatoes, often scalloped, green salad, and probably green beans.  When our son was small and  Cousin Jane lived close, she invited us and other cousins for Easter dinner preceded by an egg hunt for the children, a lovely tradition that lasted for some years.

 SEASON’S LASTS

In this past week, we went to the last of a number of events.  On Sunday we saw our last opera of the season which was the final performance by the Sarasota Opera for this year.  Egen d’Albert’s Tiefland is a seldom performed work sung in German and first presented in 1903.  It’s about a simple shepherd who is corralled into marrying Marta, a young woman who is the reluctant mistress of the area’s big landowner and boss, but also a less than eager bride.  It was slow at the start, but then picked up and was most enjoyable.

 It was also the last week for our SILL (Sarasota Institute of Lifetime Learning) series and both ended on high notes.  At Music Monday, we were treated to Ashu, an exuberant and spirited young classical saxophonist, along with a Russian pianist who was equally dazzling.  Later in the week at Global Affairs, we heard a grim, but very detailed, report from journalist Amberin Zaman on the sorry state of affairs in Turkey, a country rapidly becoming more authoritarian and more repressive under the continuing leadership of President Erdogan.

RECOMMENDED READING—STOLEN ART

Stolen Beauty by Laurie Lico Albanese.

This is a wonderful novel about Klimt’s famous work, Woman in Gold, and the woman who inspired it.  Last fall, while in Manhattan, we visited the Neue Galerie founded by Ronald Lauder, and it was there that I saw this marvelous painting.  Earlier, the C.P. and I had seen the movie, The Woman in Gold, about Maria Altmann’s lengthy legal battles to regain possession of her aunt’s portrait stolen by the Nazis in the 1940’s.

Lico Albanese re-creates the life of Adele Bloch-Blauer, a rich young bride in early 20th century Vienna, whose love of art and whose bold desire to study philosophy and other subjects forbidden to females, prompts her to encourage and support Gustav Klimt.  Klimt’s art was daring and controversial and Adele became one of his muses and subjects.  

Interwoven with Adele’s story is that of her niece Maria during and after the Nazi takeover of Austria.  Submitting to the unthinkable to free her husband, Fritz, from prison, Maria and Fritz must then re-make their life in a new country.  Years later, Maria faces the challenge of recovering her family’s stolen art.  Based on history, Lico Albanese’s novel is a fascinating portrait of glittering, cultured Vienna and two equally fascinating women.  (~JWFarrington)

 

Notes:  Header image from Amazon.co.uk; photo of Ashu from Ravinia Festival and Woman in Gold from Huffington Post.

Culture Notes: Movies, etc.

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With the exception of the lecture we heard, these films and books all focus on women—young women, angry women, and one, a queen.

BINGEING ON MOVIES AT HOME

The Chief Penguin and I are trying to catch up on some of this past year’s best films, or at least ones that got a lot of press.  

I, Tonya.  I knew the story behind Tonya Harding’s career, the C.P. did not.  Mostly, I wanted to see this film for Alison Janney’s performance. She won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, and, oh, my, did she ever deserve it for her portrayal of Tonya’s toxic mother!  None of the people in this film is particularly likable—not Tonya’s husband, not her clueless bodyguard, and even Tonya herself is hard to take.  But, at least, you understand from her deprived upbringing what she had to contend with and why she is driven to compete.  Intense and full of vulgar language, it’s almost painful to watch.

Victoria & Abdul.  I would see almost any film starring Judi Dench, and here she is the aging queen—fat, unattractive, querulous—nothing like Jenna Coleman of the current Victoria series.  Long years after Albert has died and after John Brown is gone, Queen Victoria takes a shine to a young Indian servant who has been sent to England to present her with a special coin. Abdul charms her with his knowledge of poetry, leads her to believe he is a writer, and at her insistence becomes her teacher or munshi.  His continued presence at court and his increasing status horrify the government and the royal household while simultaneously providing joy to the monarch.  Loosely based on real events (Abdul Karim spent 15 years in the U.K.  with occasional trips back home), the film is somewhat light fare, but enjoyable and a definite change of pace from I, Tonya.

HUNDRED YEAR OLD NOVEL  

Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells.  This is a curious novel.  Published in 1909, it’s about a modern young woman in London.  Chafing under her father’s strict control over her behavior, twenty-one year old Ann Veronica Stanley very much wants to go to a ball that some of her friends are planning to attend.  Both her father and her aunt forbid her to go and he goes so far as to lock her in her room.  Dismayed, determined, and yet deluded about what it takes to live, she escapes to London intending to find a job and an apartment.  Ann Veronica is both innocent and naive about the ways of the world and soon finds herself borrowing money from an older man, living in a spare room, subsisting on not much, but thriving on the intellectual challenges of working in the college biology lab.  How she navigates her so-called romance with Mr. Manning, her entanglement with Mr. Ramage, and her attraction to Mr. Capes make up her education in life for the next six months.  

The novel is polemical (a tendency seen in other of Wells’ work) and presents an idealized view of womanhood as all wifedom and motherhood.  Floundering in trying to discover who she is or who she wants to be, Ann Veronica also is briefly caught up in the women’s suffrage movement.  The early chapters were too full of political exposition for me, and some of the characters mere mouthpieces for their points of view, but I found it got better and more engaging the farther in I got.  But, even given that, the ending was questionable.  However, Ann Veronica’s enlightened perspective on her father and aunt (they looked smaller and less threatening) was one believable outcome of her growth as a woman.

Ann Veronica was the subject of my local book group’s March meeting and it provoked a lively discussion.  A few individuals thought that young women today are still too prone to being objectified by men, while others, like myself, felt that we have made a lot of progress in terms of the opportunities available to women for careers and an independent life.  But then, you have the #MeToo movement which has brought to light sexual assault and harassment of women by men in positions of power.  The group found AV’s extreme naivete about what Mr. Ramage might expect from her in return for the loan unbelievable and felt the happy ending with marriage to Mr. Capes unconvincing.  It was noted that at the time the novel was published, Wells was in the midst of an affair with a young woman, Amber Reeves, who bore him a daughter, and later became a noted feminist.  Wells was clearly attracted to intelligent women as he also had an affair and another child with author Rebecca West among others.  Here are several of the various covers for this title. Which one do you think best represents the book?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TOWN HALL

The fourth speaker in this series of lectures supporting the Ringling College Library was Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene:  An Intimate History.  It was a talk about trends in science and medicine that are already impacting human health, especially cancer treatments.  He was very engaging and a welcome change from another talk about politics!

Notes:  The image of Tonya is from golfdigest.com; the book covers are all from the web and in order of appearance from Abe Books, Barnes & Noble, and the Project Gutenberg Archive.  Header photo of Tiffany glass from Morse Museum.