Crime, Music & Great Books

VIEWING: CRIME IN THE UK

Shetland (BritBox)

Sandy & Tosh with Jimmy (radiottimes.com)

Jimmy Perez is back! I missed the Scottish crime series Shetland, when it went into hiatus after five seasons.  I was delighted to discover that Season 6 is now available on BritBox, not sure about on other online services.   New episodes are released on Tuesdays.   The Chief Penguin and I eagerly watched the first episode, and were not disappointed.  Detective Jimmy Perez is at his mother’s funeral when his colleague Tosh notifies him of the death of a prominent member of the community.  As in other seasons, the investigation begins, but is not completed in one episode.  As I think of the many crime series I’ve watched over the past few years, this one ranks among the best! 

The Long Call (BritBox)

Brethren members with Detective Matthew Venn (thescottishsun.co.uk)

While browsing new offerings on Amazon Prime, I came upon this other offering through BritBox.  It’s another crime series set in England, and it’s based on work by Ann Cleeves.  Ms. Cleeves is the very successful author of the Shetland series mysteries and ones featuring detective Vera (also a series, but not one I’ve watched).  Here detective Matthew Venn, a gay man, is estranged from his family.  He grew up in a closed, tightly ordered religious society and left about twenty years ago full of bitterness, anger, and sorrow.  When a young girl in that community goes missing, he and his police colleagues are tasked with locating her.  Like Shetland, this is a compelling drama of relationships as much as it is about crime.  There are 4 episodes in this season.

VIEWING: MUSICAL HISTORY

Oratorio (PBS, etc.)

Scorsese sitting in Old St. Patrick’s (pbs.org)

In the lovingly told documentary, Martin Scorsese brings to life the history of an 1826 opera concert in Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.  Scorsese provides background on the historical figures, Mozart’s librettist, for one, who were central to the concert, and details the concert’s role in forming the city’s cultural life.  The re-creation of this event in 2018 for a modern audience is the motivation for the film.  

Scorsese grew up near the cathedral and has fond recollections of the neighborhood and the role of this church in his life.  As concert plans and preparations are underway, there are interviews and clips with the maestro and soloists of Teatro Lirico Cagliari of Italy who will perform.  Overall, it’s a fascinating piece of history. And, if you are so inclined, you can separately watch the 2018 performance also on PBS.

AWARD BOOKS:  A GREAT READING ASSIGNMENT

I receive Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles’ e-mail newsletter, Book Club, each week.  His take on new literature is always informative, often quirky, and piques my interest in what I might read next. In this week’s issue, he detailed an assignment his high school teacher spouse gives her students.  I think it’s a great assignment and so, I’m sharing it and at the end the books the students will be evaluating.  You can read another issue of his newsletter here.

My wife, Dawn, has started one of her favorite projects with her 11th graders. She brings in copies of the five finalists for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and breaks the class into five groups. Each group reads the first chapter of one of the finalists. Then the students devise criteria for a winning book and explain to the class how well their finalist meets those standards. 

Next Wednesday, just hours before the National Book Awards ceremony, her students will vote on which title they think should win. It’s a fun way to introduce these kids to the country’s best new nonfiction books.

You can follow along, too. The NBA ceremony will stream on Nov. 17 at 7 p.m. ET. (free, but donations appreciated). I’ll be there (virtually) to introduce Nancy Pearl, winner of this year’s Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community.

NONFICTION FINALISTS

Hanif AbdurraqibA Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance

Lucas BessireRunning Out: In Search of Water on the High Plains

Grace M. ChoTastes Like War: A Memoir

Nicole EustaceCovered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America

Tiya MilesAll That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Watching: Three Superb Series

With the arrival of cooler weather, perhaps you are spending more time indoors, When you get tired of reading or knitting, I have three top-notch television series to recommend.

Call the Midwife (PBS)

Nurse Crane & Sister Julienne (bbc.co.uk)

It’s hard to believe that this is the 10th season of Call the Midwife.  Early seasons drew extensively from the memoirs of midwife Jennifer Worth.  Successive seasons have built on the premise of an order of nun midwives working alongside secular midwives to serve a poor East London community.  While some viewers may feel that the series is too sentimental, more recent episodes highlight medical and social issues such as Thalidomide babies and domestic abuse.  

The current season, which the Chief Penguin and I binge watched, is both sober and thought provoking.  It is 1966 in Poplar, the Beatles are popular, and England is in the World Cup.  Abortion, Down syndrome, race, and wretched housing condition all figure here.  And yet, your favorite midwives, from the often wise Sister Monica Joan, compassionate yet firm Sister Julienne, and outspoken but oh, so caring Trixie, aka Nurse Franklin, persevere.  As the voiceover before every episode states, it’s definitely for mature audiences.  

Grantchester (PBS)

Leonard Finch (distractify.com)

Grantchester too is a keeper, and the seasons keep coming.  Most of us have adjusted to Sydney’s replacement by Will as the curate since detective Geordie, assistant curate Leonard, and housekeeper Mrs. C. remain in place!  This season, season 6, is a much darker one than the previous ones.  

It is 1958 and while there is a murder in every episode, Leonard’s homosexuality and the U.K. laws in effect are a running story throughout the season.  It is a season with added depth and poignancy and one that made me appreciate society’s greater acceptance of differing sexual identities.  This is first rate television.  Highly recommended!

Maid (Netflix)

Margaret Qualley as Alex (indiewire.com)

Maid is a new offering on Netflix and one also dealing with a serious subject.  Based on a memoir by former maid, Stephanie Land, it’s a graphic and heart-rending picture of poverty and living hand-to-mouth while working.  Alex, the maid, abruptly leaves an abusive relationship with her toddler daughter Mattie.  Without a plan or any support, she is hard pressed to find a job or a place to live.  Some of the social services offices she encounters seem unhelpful or at best indifferent.  Reluctantly, she is offered a job as a maid cleaning houses.  Some clients are wealthy with gorgeous homes; others are realtors having seriously filthy properties scrubbed for sale.  

You can read about what it’s like to be poor in America, but this series clearly depicts how one small incident (a sick child, for example) has a domino effect on everything else from her job to her apartment.  It’s raw viewing, but Alex’s daydreams and her interactions with her kooky artist mother provide some relief.  Margaret Qualley with piercing dark eyes is amazing as Alex, while her real-life mother, Andie MacDowell, plays her mother here. 

Note: Header sunset photo ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Tidy Tidbits: Gander, Oxford, New York

This week’s blog brings together several compelling works. One is a musical related to 9/11 while the other two are books. One book is a wonderful novel about the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, while the other is a cancer memoir, painful yet ultimately redeeming.

POWERFUL VIEWING: Remembering 9/11

Come from Away (Apple TV+)

Plane on the tarmac at Gander (appleinsider.com)

I doubt there is anyone of a certain age who doesn’t recall where he or she was on September 11, 2001. Come from Away (2013) is a musical about the passengers whose planes were diverted to Gander, Newfoundland, and how they were embraced by the local residents.   Unabashedly energetic, even boisterous, it is also a compelling and heart-tugging perspective on five days of confusion, chaos, and community.  Folks of different religions, nationalities, and cultures were thrown together at a tragic, uncomfortable time.   

Members of the cast play multiple roles, switching back and forth from Gander community leaders to one of the many passengers.  Standouts for me were the female airline pilot played by Jenn Colella based on the real Beverley Bass; Joel Hatch as the mayor of Gander; and Beulah Davis, chief organizer and comforter, played by Astrid Van Wieren.  There is conflict, craziness, and coming together.  I found watching it an uplifting experience.  A live Broadway performance was filmed for this production and is aired with no breaks or intermission.  Highly recommended!

RECENT READING

THE LANGUAGE OF WOMEN

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams 

Author & her book jacket (betterreading.com.au)

I loved this novel and read it in just a day.  If you love words and their meanings and how they are used, you too will be fascinated.  Author Williams wondered how gender affects the use and understanding of words.   Given that the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was largely the work of older white Victorian men, she crafted a novel that reflects first a child’s, then a young woman’s participation in the creation of the dictionary.  Some of the characters such as Dr. James Murray, the chief architect, and several of the male lexicographers are historic figures. So is Edith Thompson, a historian who contributed definitions and quotations for many thousands of entries.

The novel focuses on Esme, a child of six, who hides under the sorting table collecting the occasional stray definition slip of paper. Over the course of publication of all the fascicles from A-B to Z , Esme becomes a woman.    Esme spends hours in the Scriptorium where the work is carried out.  As she gets older, she becomes involved in sorting mail, then checking quotes at the Bodleian and other libraries, and eventually taking on some editing and correction duties.  Lizzie, the household maid of all work, takes care of Esme and a friendship develops.

Esme is curious and full of questions and begins to wonder why some words, particularly those spoken by the lower classes, but not written down in books, are not to be included in the OED.  She gets a graphic education in colorful language from Mabel, a down-at-the-heels vendor in the local market and creates her own slips with quotations for these less than polite terms. An only child whose mother has died, Esme leads a sheltered life until she meets actress Tilda and her brother Bill, encounters the suffragist movement, and delivers pages to the typesetting room at the press where she meets Gareth, a handsome young compositor.

The novel relates the laborious process of releasing the letters of the alphabet in sections from 1888 to completion in 1928 alongside the coming-of-age of Esme from age six to middle age.  For Esme, the treatment of the suffragettes is disturbing, while the exodus of men to war means more work coupled with an all-consuming worry for their safety. How Williams weaves in the suffrage movement and the impact of WWI add to the richness of this story. But, some readers may be surprised at the ending and question if the author wraps things up too neatly.

Esme is not a common name. I wondered if Williams chose it as homage to J. D. Salinger’s notable story, For Esme with Love and Squalor, about a 13-year-old girl and a soldier during the Second World War.  

Like the process of compiling a comprehensive dictionary, this novel unfolds slowly and gradually.  I was committed to it from the first paragraphs.  Highly recommended!  (~JWFarrington)

CANCER AND BEYOND

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Author Jaouad (latimes.com)

Cancer memoirs often take one of two forms.  Either they are an account of battling and surviving the medical aspects of cancer or they are one individual’s experience and reflections which end just before death.  Ms. Jaouad’s memoir is somewhat different in that she was diagnosed with leukemia at age 22, just after completing college.  It was a delayed diagnosis, and she was by then very sick. She underwent massive chemotherapy treatments, endured numerous hospitalizations due to infections, and ultimately required a bone marrow transplant, a long and arduous process involving months of isolation.  

The medical details in the first part of her memoir are graphic, frightening and often unpleasant.  Yet she writes about them with candor, humility, and even occasional humor.  She was blessed with loving parents and an unbelievable new boyfriend who re-arranged his life to be her primary caregiver.  

What is perhaps more appealing is part two in which she attempts to regain a sense of normalcy.  All treatments are over, and she’s deemed able to travel and work again.  Yet her immune system is still, and may always be, fragile.  She tires easily and finds it difficult to focus and apply herself without the goal of the next medical procedure.  How to be normal again is not something the medical team has covered.  

Probably what saves her, or at least provides emotional and intellectual sustenance, is a solo cross-country journey she undertakes.  Dubbed the One Hundred Day Project, it is to visit individuals who wrote or e-mailed her after she published a regular column in the New York Times. Meeting these almost strangers, Jaouad gains perspective on herself and reflects on how she was often self-centered and needy in some of her relationships.  I found this section of the book satisfying as she finally goes beyond her four years of treatment and comes into her own as a more well-rounded person.  I wouldn’t recommend this book to everyone, but some readers may find her journey amazing and her sprightly writing a gift.  (~JWFarrington)

Note: Header photo of morning clouds ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).

Maine Days: Reading & Viewing

RECENT READING

The Only Woman in the Room by Marie Benedict

Author Benedict has created a niche for herself writing novels about women, notable women whose contributions to society have often been overlooked.  Previous novels focus on Albert Einstein’s wife, Andrew Carnegie’s personal maid, and Clementine Churchill.  These novels are well researched and engaging reading; I’ve read the one about Andrew Carnegie.

Hedy Lamarr (the guardian.com)

This latest novel is about Hedy Kiesler, known to most Americans of a certain age as actress Hedy Lamarr.  Austrian by birth and an aspiring stage actress in 1930’s Vienna, Hedy is romanced by entrepreneur and munitions dealer, Fritz Mandl.  She is beautiful, and his attentions are pronounced, his determination evident.  Hedy appreciates the finer things he offers.  As Austria battles to stay out of Nazi German’s arena, marriage to him is a politically wise step for herself and her Jewish parents.  What this marriage entails, how Fritz controls her activities, and what Hedy learns hosting high level business dinners becomes both valuable and dangerous.  This is a multi-faceted Hedy Lamarr who takes risks to help in the war effort.

I enjoyed this novel but found myself wishing that the author had included an epilogue about her life after World War II.

CRIME IN DENMARK

The Sommerdahl Murders (Season 2 on Acorn)

Flemming, Marianne & Dan (rotten tomatoes.com)

Dan Sommerdahl, his partner Flemming, and his wife Marianne return for a second season of crime, Danish style.  Set in the waterfront town of Elsinore, there are eight episodes, and each case is solved over the course of two episodes.  What makes this series appealing is as much the dynamics between the three principals as it is the intricacies of solving the case.  Dan and Marianne have been married for 25 years, but the marriage is on the skids, Flemming has feelings for Marianne, and Marianne feels she’s taken an unfulfilling detour in her choice of career.  Plus, she’s attracted to an old suitor. Each of them is attempting to define a satisfying personal life.

The culture of a particular country is reflected in a crime series.  The behaviors and attitudes in this one seem especially Scandinavian.  Good entertainment!

LOCAL CUISINE

The Thistle Inn

One of our favorite Boothbay Harbor restaurants of long standing, the Thistle offers comfortable dining indoors and out.  Its dark wooden booths and bar inside are especially welcoming on a cold wet night.  During the summer, dining on their porch is airy and made magical by little lights strung in the trees.

We’ve already dined outside twice this year and were pleased with old favorites and new choices on their menu.  Their crab cakes are always delicious as was the baked haddock with cherry tomatoes and sautéed greens and their New England clam chowder.  I especially enjoyed the seared diver scallops over a lemony risotto with spinach and bacon bits.

I liked their concept of shrimp scampi over pappardelle but wished that the pasta had been a little less sticky.  For dessert the other evening, we shared the special pistachio crème brulee, a different twist. A very popular place making reservations essential!

Note: Header photo is a view of Little Christmas Cove ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).