Tidy Tidbits: End of Summer Reading

It’s almost Labor Day and the unofficial end of summer.  If you are off for holiday over the weekend or just home with some free hours, here are a couple of lighter books plus an engaging biography of a neglected writer who deserves more attention.

What have you been reading this summer?  I’d love to know!

BON BON FOR THE BEACH

Along the Infinite Sea by Beatriz Williams

I have been noticing Williams’ novels on bookstore shelves, but this is the first one I’ve read. It’s a historical novel and a romance, but that doesn’t completely describe it. It also has a frothy element as its two main characters, Annabelle and Pepper, are rich and beautiful women who could have any man they wanted. The stories of these two alternate with most of the novel focusing on Annabelle in 1930’s France and Germany and her involvement with two men, Stefan, a German resister, and Johann, a high-ranking Nazi general. Annabelle and Pepper meet in 1966 in Florida when a pregnant Pepper sells Annabelle her 1936 Mercedes roadster and Annabelle takes her under her wing, sort of. It’s a delightful romp in the high life, mostly, and perfect escapism. (~JW Farrington)

SPIES IN PAKISTAN

Bloodmoney by David Ignatius

I occasionally read Mr. Ignatius’ columns in the Washington Post and decided to read this spy novel on the recommendation of my good friend Margaret.  I didn’t find it as fast-paced as many reviews indicated, but I was fascinated by the tradecraft of spies—surveillance detection routes, for example—and the disguises, duplicity, and double-dealing required by operators on both sides.  I became more engrossed the deeper into his version of Pakistan I got.  (~ JW Farrington)

 

FORGOTTEN FENIMORE   

Hulton Archive, Getty Images

Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist by Anne Boyd Rioux

As a relative of James Fenimore Cooper, Constance Fenimore Woolson gained entrée to select company and, initially, received more attention for her work than she might have otherwise.  Later praised as the finest woman writer of her time, Woolson wrote a wide range of short stories and several novels.  She traveled widely and often lived for several months in different climes, everywhere from Florida and Florence to England and Egypt.  She became acquainted with Henry James, and although both were somewhat solitary souls dedicated to their writing, they enjoyed a close friendship.   At one point they even lived in the same building in Florence one floor apart.

Woolson’s work, however, didn’t fall neatly into one movement or another; she wasn’t strictly a regionalist nor was she a student of social mores.  She came between Sara Orne Jewett and Edith Wharton in time and hence, after much success, but uncategorizable, she was mostly forgotten after her early death.  The fact that her death was most likely by her own doing didn’t help.  I knew about Woolson from my reading of James’ biographies and was pleased to learn more about this vibrant, independent woman.  (~ JW Farrington)

Miss Grief and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson

Readers owe a debt of gratitude to Anne Boyd Rioux for her engaging literary biography of Woolson and for resurrecting a representative sample of her short stories.  Having read the biography with its detailed discussion of Woolson’s work, it is a treat to discover her.  I have now read a few of the stories here and so far liked the most the title story, “Miss Grief,”  about a successful young male writer and a middle-aged poor woman writer who wants to be published.  It has both some humor as well as pathos.

I found the nature imagery too rhapsodic for my taste in her Great Lakes story, “St. Clair Flats,” but I thought the premise of “A Florentine Experiment” with its twists and turns was intriguing and with its emphasis on dialogue definitely reflective of Henry James.  Both the biography and the story collection were published in 2016.  (~ JW Farrington)

 

Thoughts on Summer Reading

SUMMER READING

Like the proverbial “eyes bigger than her stomach,” I always have ambitious plans for how many and which books I will read over the summer.  Several stacks of them in fact.  They are a mix of novels, mysteries, biography, and general nonfiction.  And I have aspirations of re-reading some classics like Austen’s Persuasion and the last three novels in Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga.  Then I stock up on books in paper (can’t read everything on my Kindle, what fun is that?) and every year for the past several, I’ve posted a box of said books to our Maine address.

I also confess to getting carried away and purchasing bunches of bargain-priced novels for the Kindle.  It’s far too easy to be seduced by the daily e-mails from BookBub, Bookperk, Harper Collins and Random House of titles one shouldn’t miss.  Finally, I succumb and treat myself to one or two literary works from my ever growing Kindle Wish List.  All in all, sufficient reading for many months, perhaps years!

What are your summer reading plans?  You can comment below.

LATEST READING

 The Wizard of Lies:  Bernie Madoff and the Death of Trust by Diana B. Henriques 

While the details of the financial maneuvering and chicanery Madoff indulged in were beyond my understanding, I found this a chilling read.  Made me want to re-check my own financial advisor’s credentials (subsequent conversation with said advisor was most reassuring!) Painstakingly detailed, the book gripped me and I read it quickly, mostly for the timeline and scenario of how his lying and scheming developed and who of his team was complicit.  I would have liked more probing analysis of Madoff’s psyche and his early life.  The book was made into a movie which I’ve not seen.

A House among the Trees by Julia Glass

I have read every one of Julia Glass’s previous five novels and enjoyed them all, some a bit more than others.  And I had the pleasure of seeing and hearing her at a reading in a Bay Area bookstore several years ago.  I found this new novel, A House among the Trees, equally satisfying. Her works are not heavily plot driven, and some readers might find the pacing slow as the characters are revealed through their conversation, their thoughts and their own writing.

Glass has a fondness for the theater and at least one earlier work had elements of the theater and performance in it.  Here we have an award-winning aging children’s book author, Mort Lear, mostly keeping close a secret from his childhood, and a handsome boldface actor, Nicholas Greene, who will play Mort in an upcoming film.  Both of these characters have well developed public faces, facades that protect who they really are.  Linking these two is Tomasina Daulair, a middle-aged woman who has, in essence, given over the entirety of her adult life to serving Mort.  She is coordinator of his daily life, protector of his privacy, negotiator with his publisher and fans and yet neither lover nor wife.  When Mort dies before Nicholas gets to meet him, Tommy becomes the guide to Mort’s life.  In the process, she and Nick learn new things about themselves as they deliberately or inadvertently shape Mort’s legacy along with their own futures.  I like Glass’s writing a lot; to me it’s rich and juicy, full of yummy detail.

Summer Reading #2: More Novels

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!

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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

 

Tidy Tidbits: Mostly Books

VIEWING

Dr. ThorneThis adaptation of Trollope’s novel on Amazon Prime was written and produced by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey fame.  It’s a short series, only 4 episodes, but each one is introduced and closed by Mr. Fellowes.  Formally dressed sitting in a chair in what appears to be a library, his remarks are engaging and informative and delivered with a twinkle.  Mr. Fellowes is a talented man, witness the wild success of Downton, and recently his latest novel, Belgravia, was issued in hardcover, but first  serialized a la Charles Dickens on a downloadable app.  Pushing the envelope, as they say.

I don’t think Dr. Thorne is great television, but it was diverting and fun to watch while being on the treadmill.

READING

The Rainbow Comes and Goes:  A Mother and Son on Life, Love, and Loss by Anderson Cooper and Gloria Vanderbilt.  I had eyed this book in the store and was pleased when my friend Sue sent it on for me to read.  Gloria Vanderbilt is a famous name, but I didn’t know much of anything about her life, particularly her early life.  In this book, the sharing of a year-long e-mail correspondence between her and her son, she unloads about her lovelorn and tumultuous childhood and her rootless adulthood before her successful marriage to Wyatt Cooper.  You learn much more about her than you do about him, although he shares his feelings about the premature deaths of his father and his brother and about his coming out as gay to his mother.  What is remarkable about this book is that mother (at 91) and son (48) were able to have this frank discussion and to make themselves vulnerable in this way.

LOADED UP

As I get ready to be in Maine, I’m pondering which paper books to take as well as loading up my Kindle.  I will have far more books at hand than I will ever get to, but I relish having choices and never want to be without enough reading material.  You’d think there weren’t any bookstores in Maine!  Actually, there are branches of Sherman’s, an independent regional store, in Portland, Boothbay Harbor, and Damariscotta.

Anyway, here are a few of the titles I have waiting on my Kindle, all novels plus two mysteries and none looking to be too heavy.  Perfect for summer!

Heat & Light by Jennifer Haigh.  A new novel about fracking by this talented author set in a small Pennsylvania town.  She also wrote Baker Towers and Mrs. Kimble, both excellent.

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith.  A 17th century Dutch painting is the focus of this novel spanning several decades by native Australian Smith, who now lives in Texas.

Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave.  He’s the author of one of my all-time favorite best books, Little Bee.  This is his new novel set during WWII.

The Summer before the War by Helen Simonson.  She wrote the very popular novel, Mr. Pettigrew’s Last Stand, about intercultural relationships.  This one is set in 1914.

The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny.  An early Inspector Gamache mystery, as always set in Three Pines, Quebec.

A Pattern of Lies by Charles Todd.  This is the 7th in the Bess Crawford mystery series written by a mother-son team.