Category: Books

Summer Reading #3: Mainly Mysteries

JWF Leave a comment

Here are three titles I read recently:  mysteries by Elizabeth George and Victoria Thompson and a biographical novel by Colum McCann.  Two are great fun; the third requires perseverance.

Believing the Lie by Elizabeth George

This is an immensely satisfying mystery, although it’s less of a mystery and more of a study of human relationships.  Somehow, I missed this Inspector Lynley novel when it was published in 2012 so when I spied it at the library book sale here, I snatched it up.

Thomas Lynley is tasked by Bernard Fairclough to investigate the death of his nephew, Ian Cresswell, in the Lake District, even though it has been ruled an accidental drowning by the authorities.  Lynley enlists the assistance of his friends and colleagues, Simon St. James and his wife Deborah, a freelance photographer.  Fairclough’s son Nicholas is a former drug addict working in his father’s business and trying to redeem his reputation. Nicholas’s twin sisters have their own issues; Mignon is single and skillfully and without compunction manipulates those around her, while Manette still shares living quarters with the husband she’s not sure she should have divorced.  Ian, the deceased, was divorced from his wife and his children, Tim, 14, and ten-year old Grace, have been tossed about some.

Secrets and lies and excess baggage abound, but what made this book so absorbing and successful for me (all 600+ pages—Ms. George’s novels are never short!) were the realistic conversations and disagreements between Simon and Deborah St. James over their desire for a child, Lynley’s reflections on his relationship with superintendent Isabelle, the delicate dance between Manette and her ex-husband Fred, and the depiction of Tim’s angst and sullenness.

Ms. George “gets” people and having read nearly all of her previous Lynley novels, I find her main characters are like old friends and encountering them again is a pleasure.

Murder in Chelsea by Victoria Thompson

Thompson’s Gaslight Mystery series is set in New York City in the early 19th century and features midwife and widow Sarah Brandt who works in the poorer neighborhoods and regularly assists detective sergeant Frank Molloy in solving murders.  There are some stock characters like superstitious and nosy, but well meaning, Mrs. Ellsworth who lives next door, and Sarah’s wealthy parents, the Deckers, who don’t totally approve of her way of life and her relationship with Molloy, but who occasionally get called upon to open doors to the social elite.

Murder in Chelsea focuses on Sarah’s adopted daughter and the appearance of her real mother and is multi-layered and full of twists and turns.  It also advances the relationship between Sarah and Frank in a surprising way.  Not as complex or as psychological as Elizabeth George or Julia Spencer-Fleming’s work, but enjoyable.

Dancer by Colum McCann

This is an earlier novel by McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin and Transatlantic, and is his imagining of Rudolf Nureyev’s life and career.  As is the case with McCann’s other novels, the writing is exquisite and he excels at capturing the tactile—the physical details of surroundings as well as the embraces and expressions of bodies in motion or at rest.  Told mostly through the perspective of Nureyev’s teachers, colleagues, and lovers, it has a floating, almost amorphous quality to it (reflective of dance itself?).  I admit to simultaneously enjoying the language while finding it very slow going at points. It was not always clear whose point of view I was being given and this was frustrating.

Nureyev had a rough childhood in Russia, defected to the West as a young dancer, and lived his life with arrogance, hubris, and an often dismissive attitude toward friends.  He soared to stardom with Margot Fonteyn, hobnobbed with the likes of Andy Warhol, sought out the gay bar scene and had a personal life most would deem hollow.

 

 

Summer Reading #2: More Novels

JWF Leave a comment

This set of novels ranges from a meditation on marriage to a hotly debated topic of the day, to a child’s experience of tumult, to a fun historical novel set midst the Paris art scene of the 1920’s.  Perhaps one will tickle your reading palate!

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church

This is a wonderful novel!  Church charts the life and long marriage of Meridian, a wannabe scientist who marries Alden, a much older professor whose intellect excites and engages her own.  A physicist, he is recruited to work on the atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert, and she shelves her own ambitions for graduate school and a career as an ornithologist.

The setting in the closed and cloistered town of Los Alamos mirrors the constraints and restrictions faced by women in the 50’s and 60’s, pre women’s lib.  Meridian decides to study a community of crows, but her frustration builds over Alden’s unwavering focus on his own career and his apparent disinterest in her, leading her to accept fulfillment and validation elsewhere.  A novel about science, the burdens and joys of love and sex, and the power of female friendship.  Church’s writing is meticulous and exact and oh, so satisfying. I’d happily re-read this book right now!

IMG_0025 (1)

Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh

I have read all of Haigh’s previous novels, and she’s an author whose work I admire and respect.  I was predisposed to like this latest work, but found myself disappointed.  The setting is Bakerton, the old coal mining town in Pennsylvania which features in her earlier work, but this time the focus is on fracking—those salesmen who cajole and persuade working class folks to sign leases for drilling on their land and the townspeople whose land and lives are affected.  Rather than being straightforward plot or character-driven fiction, the book is episodic and goes back in time, for example to 1979 and Three Mile Island, where you re-encounter some of the characters.  I read three quarters of the book, 76% according to my Kindle, and then set it aside.  Not sure I’ll go back.

Mitar

In the Country of Men by Hisham Mitar

Published in 2006, Libyan writer Mitar’s semi-autobiographical novel is receiving new recognition with the arrival of his memoir, The Return: Fathers, Sons and the Land in Between.  Thanks to my friend Margaret for introducing me to this author and this novel.

Set in Tripoli in 1979, it’s told from the perspective of a 9 year old boy who is aware of strange goings on, but isn’t old enough to comprehend the underground movement to try and topple Qaddafi.  He knows that his father goes off on business (supposedly out of town), that his mother is “ill” from some under-the-counter drug she takes periodically, and that the father of one of his friends is seized and eventually tortured.

Events and people are vague and shadowy, like a blurry photo lacking clarity.  You, the reader, initially get hints of what’s transpiring, then a sense of what the relationships are and how boys and men protect, but also hurt and betray one another.  A puzzle piece here and there slots in, but never the complete picture.  I found this novel challenging to read and also haunting.  In retrospect, I wish I had read it in a more compressed timeframe.

Moonlight Over Paris by Jennifer Robson

This novel was my introduction to Canadian Jennifer Robson whose three novels all take place during or after WWI and feature well born, aristocratic young women who are finding their place in the world.  Helena, 28 years old in England in 1924, has been very ill and is extremely dependent on her parents after a broken engagement.  She is invited to Paris by her unconventional aunt and taking up the offer, enrolls at an art school.  The novel is her coming of age story—discovering whether she’s an artist or not, making friends who are nothing like her English contemporaries, and meeting a man who both attracts and worries her.  This is the perfect bonbon for a summer’s afternoon.  Light and pleasing.

 

Porch photo by JWFarrington (some rights reserved); Hisham Mitar from theguardian.com

 

Maine coast

Coastal Maine: Reading & Eating

JWF Leave a comment

In summer, we’re given permission, as if it’s really needed, to read whatever we want, and to eschew serious tomes.  Or to decide that that heavy book you’ve been meaning to tackle is just perfect for long stretches of SSR or “sustained silent reading.”  When I was in 4th grade, we did a lot of reading comprehension exercises.  Read a passage from the Power Builder, then answer questions about it, then, when you’d finished some requisite number of Power Builders, you were rewarded with a period of sustained silent reading.  I loved that latter!  And still do.

Here are two books that are simply pleasurable reads.  Enjoy!

Who am I?

The Woman in the Photo by Mary Hogan

I’d classify this novel as an airplane read. It’s engaging, but is somewhat overwritten and feels a bit as if Ms. Hogan just dashed it off. It follows a now standard practice for historical novels of linking characters and events of the past with a parallel modern-day story. In this case, the event is the Johnstown, Pa flood (not really a flood but a wall of water from a burst dam) and the main character is Elizabeth Haberlin, a rich young lady who’s preparing for her society debut. In the present, adoptee Lee Parker, eighteen, is finally old enough to receive a bit more information about her genetic heritage which propels her on a search for her birth mother.

The best sections deal with the aftermath of the Johnstown tragedy in 1889 and Lee’s initial meeting with her birth family. A more elegantly written novel about this historic event is In Sunlight, In a Beautiful Garden by Kathleen Cambor.

Whodunnit?

The Poacher’s Son by Paul Doiron

Doiron is the former editor of Downeast magazine so it’s no surprise that this, his first mystery, is set in northern Maine. What one might find unusual is that the main character is a state game warden, and in this wild woodsy setting, represents the law and is, in essence, a cop. Mike Bowditch is a rookie warden, still learning the ropes, and is shocked when his father is a fugitive murder suspect and the object of an intensive manhunt. Jack Bowditch is a longtime brawler and heavy drinker with a long string of girlfriends, and he and his son have been mostly estranged since his parents divorced when Mike was nine. Seemingly bent on self-destructive actions that will destroy his young career, Mike is caught up in the search for the killer, all the while proclaiming his father’s innocence. Engrossing and suspenseful, this will appeal to mystery lovers, especially those also fond of Maine. This book was published in 2010 and there are now six additional Mike Bowditch mysteries.

2016-07-18 20.07.20

Casual Dining

To match the easygoing quality of the two books, I’d suggest Oliver’s on Cozy Harbor.  With both inside and outside seating, Oliver’s offers lobster rolls, chowder, and fresh haddock plus a number of salads, sandwiches and daily specials.  And an indulgent cheddar and blue cheese spread with pita chips that’s positively addictive!  Open for lunch and dinner, it’s also a good place to take the kids.

Photos by JWFarrington (some rights reserved)

 

Summer Reading #1

JWF Leave a comment

When we first get settled into our Maine digs, our pattern is to hunker down for the first few days.  We go almost nowhere and we spend hours on end just reading!  I have time to read at home, but somehow, this is a change of pace without a fixed routine and so it’s vacation.  Here are three novels that easily kept me immersed in the world of fiction.

The Mapmaker’s Children by Sarah McCoy

Sarah Brown, John Brown’s daughter, was an accomplished artist, abolitionist, and a very independent woman, particularly for the 19th century. Using her as one focus of this novel, Sarah McCoy recreates the events leading up to John Brown’s raid at Harper Ferry and his ultimate hanging from the perspective of his daughters and wife and his close friends the Hill family. His death is just the beginning as McCoy follows Sarah throughout the next twenty plus years using straightforward narration plus letters and newspaper articles.

Linked to Sarah’s story is that of a contemporary couple Eden and Jack Anderson who have purchased an historic home in New Charlestown, West Virginia, not far from Harpers Ferry. The Anderson marriage is on the skids, Eden is desolate over several failed attempts to have a child, and initially she is bent on selling this house and getting out fast. Without going into elaborate detail, suffice it to say that some strange artifacts turn up in the house that set Eden and 11-year old neighbor Cleo on a quest to document the house’s history.

I found this a totally absorbing novel. The writing is wonderfully picturesque and McCoy skillfully and poignantly involves you into these two women’s lives. Even the secondary characters, Cleo, Freddy Hill, his sister Alice, and Ms. Silverdash, the bookstore owner, come alive on the page.  I also gained some new insights into how the Underground Railway operated.

The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson

Charming and heartfelt, this novel about life in a small English town in 1914 made me misty. Going against tradition, Agatha Kent, board member and part of a prominent family, advocates for hiring a woman, Beatrice Nash, to replace the school’s Latin teacher. But she is younger and prettier than everyone expects and her independence and somewhat advanced views are a threat to a society that is content with the status quo.

With Beatrice’s arrival in town, I wondered where this novel was going as there are a lot of characters who initially seem secondary: Agatha and John Kent’s nephews Hugh (studying to be a doctor) and Daniel (a poet); Celeste, one of the Belgian refugees the town takes in after the Germans invade their country; Snout (Dickie) Sidley, one of Beatrice’s students; and Mayor Fothergill and his busybody, self-important wife. But Simonson captures the ordinariness of daily life which ceases to be so once young men enlist and go off to fight in France and weaves together the fabric of the town’s divided social classes in a time of changing roles and more relaxed mores.   Recommended!

Blueprints by Barbara Delinsky

Delinsky is a bestselling novelist of women’s fiction, stories of romance and family relationships. This, her latest, is a hefty tome that I devoured in a matter of hours. It’s a great beach read, a treat that requires little effort, and yet is very satisfying. You know from the get-go that everything will come right in the end, and the fun is in the getting there. It’s fiction after all and, in this kind of fiction, life gets smoothed out more readily than in real life with no rough edges remaining.

The focus here is on a mother-daughter team who are the leads on a TV show called Gut It! that features homes their family company has rehabbed. When the producers want to replace host Caroline (Mom) with daughter Jamie, hurt feelings and anger ensue and each must reflect on and assess her role and decide who she wants to be. Add in some other complications and two attractive men and life gets mixed up and spiced up!