Monthly Archives: August 2016

As the Losses Mount: Everyone Brave Is Forgiven

29 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, by Chris Cleave
Simon & Schuster, 2016. 424 pp. $27

This novel is hardly the first about a love triangle in wartime, but if it’s not the best of the genre in recent memory, it’s pretty damn close.

Mary North, a young woman at odds with her stuffy London family, hastens home from a Swiss finishing school in September 1939, just after Britain declares war. She wants to “do something,” so she badgers the War Office, assuming that her services must be required, maybe as a secret agent. After all, her father’s an MP, perhaps destined for a cabinet post, so why not? Nobody really knows what the war will be like, but eighteen-year-old Mary is very sure that for her, it will involve duty, freedom, and a ripping lark. In other words, Mary has the makings of an absolutely insufferable, overprivileged twit–and yet she’s quite the opposite.

 

Bomb damage in Valletta, Malta, May 1942 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Bomb damage in Valletta, Malta, May 1942 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Two traits save her, in my eyes. First, she’s delightfully subversive, willing to challenge commonly held beliefs in herself and others, and does so with wit and style. Second, she tries to live by her discoveries, working around the rules whenever necessary–a free spirit who becomes increasingly aware how much her ability to be one derives from her wealth and social position.

Mary finds a job as a teacher, where her readiness to see things from the children’s point of view makes her an asset. For instance, the day they’re to be evacuated from London (a war measure), her charges exchange their name tags the moment she turns her back. Being who she is, she pretends that their new names are the correct ones, which amuses them no end. “It turned out that the only difference between children and adults was that children were prepared to put twice the energy into the project of not being sad.” But Mary’s superiors think she’s unfit to teach–too much levity and sympathy, flouting the rules–so they fire her.

Are we downhearted? Only for a moment. Mary lobbies Tom Shaw, an administrator who grants her the use of an abandoned school, where she plans to teach those children shunted back from the countryside, spurned because of their skin color, emotional disabilities, or neediness. Mary throws herself into rescuing these kids and, shortly afterward, into Tom’s arms as well.

Meanwhile, however, Tom’s good friend Alistair, an officer who barely survived the Battle of France and was evacuated from Dunkirk, has come home to London on leave. (Notice the recurring theme of evacuation and rescue, and who deserves it, or doesn’t.) By happenstance, the day Alistair ships out again, Mary brings him his duffel bag at the train station. Cleave, in the simple, elegant prose that makes this novel shine, describes the feeling between them:

She laughed then, brightly and without complication, and he laughed too, and for a moment the war with its lachrymose smoke was blown away on a bright, clean wind. Alistair marveled that she could do such a thing with the tiniest inflection of her mouth and the lightest look in her eye: even exhausted, in yesterday’s dress with her hair disheveled, she could make the distance between them disappear.

Consequently, it’s no secret that while enduring the terrible, grinding, years-long siege of Malta, Alistair thinks of Mary and his friend Tom in different, not always selfless, ways. What eventually happens is anything but predictable, even if it seems so at first, because Cleave is master of my favorite literary device, the “no; and furthermore.” Just when you think things are settled, they’re not–they get even worse–and no one’s off the hook. Some readers may object to the unflinching nature of the narrative, which deals out plenty of pain and leaves quite a few prejudices intact. But I urge you to read Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, precisely because these characters earn every drop of joy they get. Along the way, Cleave treats you to terrific dialogue, much of it darkly funny, and pitch-perfect descriptions of new love, intense desperation, and loss. The characterizations feel true in every respect, save one (I don’t believe that Mary’s only eighteen at the novel’s beginning, and she doesn’t act like the virgin she’s supposed to be).

I’ve heard some people call this book same-old, same-old, or too sentimental. Don’t believe them. Everyone Brave Is Forgiven is a wrenching novel, one of the finest I’ve read this year.

Disclaimer: I received my reading copy of this book from the public library.

A Dynasty Between the Sheets: The Romanovs

22 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: The Romanovs, 1613-1918, by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Knopf, 2016. 744 pp. $35

In college, I studied two semesters of Russian and Balkan history with a professor who spiced his lectures with tidbits about outsize personalities, such as the aptly named Vlad the Impaler. Indeed, so well known was Professor Marcopoulos for his dry wit and remarkable breadth of knowledge that people not enrolled in the class would ask me, “Has he gotten to Rasputin yet?” because they wanted to sit in when he did.

Fedor Rokotov's portrait of Empress Catherine the Great, 1763, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Fedor Rokotov’s portrait of Empress Catherine the Great, 1763, now in the Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Consequently, I can’t read a book like The Romanovs without hearing my late teacher’s voice, seeing his long, looping script as he wrote the names of key figures on the blackboard, and starting in recognition when those names, which I haven’t heard uttered in more than forty years, pop up in Montefiore’s text. There’s plenty in The Romanovs that Dr. Marcopoulos would have enjoyed, including the focus on autocrats as determinants of history, and the depth of garish splendor and corruption that marked the dynasty.

I particularly like the section on Catherine the Great, which successfully merges the story of her private life with her politics, including precious insight into the way she viewed power. “‘One must do things in such a way that people think they themselves want it to be done this way,’” she said. When challenged, Montefiore argues, she could be ruthless but was never cruel, and preferred subtle diplomacy to banging her desk with a fist. As a woman, she might not have survived otherwise; Frederick the Great, for one, a noted misogynist, thought she was incapable.

Once, when her secretary remarked on her boundless power, she laughed and replied that it wasn’t so easy. “‘I take advice, I consult and when I am convinced of general approval, I issue my orders and have the pleasure of observing what you call blind obedience. And that is the foundation of unlimited power.’” Regarding legends of her sexual appetites, Montefiore recounts her many love affairs, yet insists that all she really wanted was a warm home life, “sharing card games in her cosy apartments and discussing her literary and artistic interests with her beloved.”

Unfortunately, Catherine’s is the only full, satisfying portrait in the book. Peter the Great comes in second, and I like aspects of Montefiore’s characterizations of Alexander II and his spineless, narrow-minded grandson, Nicholas II. Overall, however, I question the historical and narrative choices Montefiore makes, his writing style, and the numbing amount of often extraneous detail.

The author explains (repeatedly) that he’s the first to research troves of private letters that have only recently been made available to historians. I understand his pride and applaud his diligence. But just because he’s found astonishingly frank letters about sexual practices, pet names, and innumerable affairs with ladies-in-waiting and ballerinas doesn’t mean these must all be included. Such tales do convey the unbelievable corruption that plagued Russia (and still does), and some are entertaining. But I can’t help think that Montefiore simply couldn’t let any of them go, an emphasis that seriously mars his work.

The Romanovs often reads, and looks like, a suitcase that’s stuffed so full that it’s ready to spring open at the slightest touch. The text repeats itself in wordy prose that can be confusing or vague or, in some cases, unintentionally funny because of poor grammar. (Montefiore also uses the word girl when the context clearly suggests woman, an annoying, provocative lapse that, incidentally, belies his portrayal of Catherine the Great as a victim of sexism.) Voluminous footnotes occupy the bottom of almost every page; if they don’t contribute to the main narrative, why are they there, and why so many? Sexual escapades take up so much room that significant historical events and movements sometimes seem almost an afterthought. And at historical turning points, the author never looks back, refusing to ask “what if,” having summarily decided–as he says once–that “counterfactual speculation is pointless.”

Really? What if it leads to deeper analysis of what actually happened? For instance, I never knew that as a prince, Alexander II visited England and charmed Queen Victoria, newly on the throne and still unmarried. Alexander’s father, Nicholas I, said, “Forget her,” and the son duly complied. But such a marriage would have changed Europe and altered the dynastic succession in Russia. Surely that’s worth a paragraph, and something illuminating might have come from it.

I can’t recommend plowing through all of The Romanovs. But, as I said, several sections are worth your time, as are the stunning photographs. I also like the last three pages very much, about the ways that subsequent Russian regimes, including Putin’s, have adopted Romanov style and policies. I could have read more about that happily.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Death of a Genius: Fall of Man in Wilmslow

15 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: Fall of Man in Wilmslow, by David Lagercrantz
Translated from the Swedish by George Goulding
Knopf, 2016. 354 pp. $27

Like Alan Turing himself, the extraordinary mathematician and cryptanalyst whose life forms the premise of this novel, Lagercrantz’s narrative is often brilliant but fails to realize its promise. In Turing’s case, his apparent suicide by poisoning in June 1954 ended a life of spectacular accomplishment while he was still young. In the novel, the mystery quickly swims away like a red herring, and the focus shifts, a setback for the reader, who may be forgiven for expecting that the narrative will identify who might have wanted to murder Turing and build a case for or against.

 

Alan Turing's passport photo at age 16, 1928 or 1929 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Alan Turing’s passport photo from his teenage years, 1928 or 1929 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Instead, you get a sort of coming-of-age story about the detective who investigates, a character almost as annoying and socially inept as Turing, but who has talent of his own, submerged under a mountain of self-hatred. Leonard Corell is twenty-eight but hardly formed, conscious that he was meant for better things than to be a policeman in a backwater like Wilmslow, a town near Manchester, yet also believes he deserves nothing else. Leonard has no friends, has never had a romance, was bullied at school (which he never finished, for lack of will), and is often irritable with colleagues who try to be friendly. Just the kind of person you’d want to spend a few hours reading about, right?

Indeed, if that were all, Fall of Man in Wilmslow would be a dreary book, too much to finish. Yet Leonard learns to grow into his skin–haltingly, to be sure, a process rife with sharp elbows given and taken. He has a long way to go, and Lagercrantz’s portrait is terrifying in its depth and detail. Leonard’s father, now dead, was a narcissist who drew constant attention to himself through exaggerated stories and antics, such as announcing, on entering a room, “What a delightful gathering! May a simple man such as I join your company?” Required to revolve around this sun like an outer planet in perpetual shadow, Leonard grew up feeling that he would never be good enough. Yet, at the same time, he fantasized coming up “with an idea, a great thought which would revolutionise the world.”

What the reader knows, though Leonard doesn’t, is that Turing was just such a thinker. Not only did he develop the theory and mechanical means to crack German codes during World War II, he framed the mathematical theories that have given us computers. But Leonard, though groping in the dark, can tell that Turing was special, and you sense that in attempting to grasp how such an accomplished person could poison himself, and what Turing was trying to say about life, the young detective will change.

Turing was homosexual and prosecuted for it, victim of both homophobia and hysteria over national security. The Cambridge ring of Soviet agents (which Helen Dunmore wrote about in Exposed, from a different, later perspective) included several homosexuals, about whom it was presumed that they were led to their treason by immorality, an unnatural affinity for communism, or desire to destroy the world. Since only highly placed intelligence officers know what Turing did during World War II, most people who hear his name, including the Wilmslow constabulary, assume that he must be a danger to society because he’s gay. And the intelligence community, many of whose less enlightened denizens wonder whether Turing ever passed information to the Soviets, becomes very curious about this young policeman who asks a lot of questions.

They don’t realize what Leonard’s after, or where he wants to go. But the reader sees that he starts out sharing the common prejudices and comes to recognize the hypocrisy in himself and others. He gets there, in part, through long discussions of mathematical principles and of Turing’s life and character. These can be long, interesting though they often are, and feel like explanations, another weakness of the narrative, which tells too much instead of showing it. Nevertheless, Fall of Man in Wilmslow has tension to spare, because Lagercrantz occupies Leonard’s head so convincingly, and the young man is fit to burst with discovery and feelings he can’t manage.

I know nothing about math or cybernetics, and I don’t think you need to be passionate about either to appreciate Fall of Man in Wilmslow. However, if you’re looking for a mystery, this is one of character, not who done it, and that may be a letdown.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Art Belongs to the People: The Noise of Time

08 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: The Noise of Time, by Julian Barnes
Knopf, 2016. 201 pp. $26

How can an essentially plotless novel about a man’s career path be so riveting? And how can the narration, which sprays the protagonist’s thoughts like atomic particles that ricochet and rebound, feel like seamless, inevitable chemistry?

When the protagonist is the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, and the author is Julian Barnes, that’s how.

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1950 (Courtesy Roger & Renate Rössing, Deutsche Fotothek, retouched, via Wikimedia Commons).

Dmitri Shostakovich, 1950 (courtesy Roger & Renate Rössing, Deutsche Fotothek, retouched, via Wikimedia Commons).

The story, to the extent that there is one, begins in 1936, when the Helmsman, Josef Stalin, attends an opera, a singular event in itself, only to leave in the middle. The next day, an editorial in Pravda attacks the composer, D. Shostakovich, for making “muddle, not music.” Be it known that the Helmsman’s love for and understanding of that art go no further than tapping his foot to songs from his native Georgia, and that the opera in question, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (I kid you not) has been performed for months to good notices. None of that matters, of course.

What matters is that untold numbers of people have already died for less. As Lenin said, art belongs to the people, which, under his successor, means that anything that may be construed as antirevolutionary, anti-Soviet, or possessed of occult or insidious influences must be stamped out. Naturally, captive pens will do the necessary construing, as if Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk were reactionary trash, everybody had known it from the get-go, and the groundswell of criticism were spontaneous. Shostakovich must confess his sins and be reeducated.

But even that may not be enough. Rumors fly that Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky, decorated war hero and architect of Soviet grand military strategy, has been arrested. And when he’s executed for plotting against the Great Leader, Shostakovich’s days are numbered. Why? Because the late marshal, who loved to play the violin, was the composer’s friend.

Since we know that Shostakovich outlived Stalin (and Krushchev, whom he privately disdains as Nikita Corncob), the question isn’t whether the composer will be murdered or exiled to the gulag. It’s how he handles that possibility and the problems that survival poses afterward.

Yes, survival has its problems. Since the state has protected him, every several years, an emissary comes from on high, like a tax collector who must be paid, except not in money. For instance, open letters are published under Shostakovich’s name excoriating Stravinsky, whom he admires above all other twentieth-century composers; Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, whom he also respects (and whom, he suspects, has actually downplayed the true horrors of the gulag); and the dissident physicist Andrei Sakharov. As Shostakovich muses late in life:

Being a hero was much easier than being a coward. To be a hero, you only had to be brave for a moment–when you took out the gun, threw the bomb, pressed the detonator, did away with the tyrant, and with yourself as well. But to be a coward was to embark on a career that lasted a lifetime. You couldn’t ever relax. You had to anticipate the next occasion when you would have to make excuses for yourself, dither, cringe, reacquaint yourself with the taste of rubber boots and the state of your own fallen, abject character.

Barnes makes brilliant use of circumstances surrounding his protagonist’s birth. His parents wanted to name him Boleslav, but a priest told them they couldn’t–and they bowed to his authority. Name the boy Dmitri, like his father, the priest said; and the future genius became Dmitri Dmitreyevich, a repetitive moniker that has no music to it. Even his name is a surrender to authority.

However, The Noise of Time would be a dull, excruciating rant if its subject were simply a coward. Things aren’t that simple; how could they be? While Shostakovich waits to be dragged away to prison and death–he spends his nights by the elevator outside his apartment door, suitcase packed–he knows that not just his friend Tukhachevsky but members of his wife’s family have been arrested. If he goes too, what will happen to her and their children, or her other relatives? Other people he knows, whose only crime is to have been his friends? When critics living in the West beseech him to “make a statement,” he answers (silently, of course) that they have no idea how much that would cost or how little it would accomplish. At the same time, he understands what they’re saying.

Dmitri Shostakovich comes across as a complicated man, a celebrated figure at the pinnacle of his profession, yet living in an abyss of conscience. Julian Barnes has made fine literature from his predicament.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.

Hands-on History: How to Be a Tudor

01 Monday Aug 2016

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Review: How to Be a Tudor, by Ruth Goodman
Liveright/Norton, 2015. 320 pp. $30

To paraphrase an old maxim, writing social history is like trying to nail jelly to a wall. But, as Goodman proves in her remarkable book, it helps if you’re using a hammer authentic to the period–better yet, if you’ve forged that tool yourself.

And that’s essentially what she’s done for the years from 1485, when Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, assumed the throne as Henry VII, until 1603, when Elizabeth I died. Doublets, kirtles, ruffs, and gowns? Goodman has sewn them, by the hundreds. Want to know why Tudor folk dumped rushes on castle floors and slept on them? She can tell you, and what’s more, she’s done it. Think it would be a challenge to prepare a feast in a sixteenth-century wood-fired oven? To understand exactly how challenging, she’s built them–and, by the way, if you do likewise, remember to soak the wooden door in water so that (a) it doesn’t burn, and (b) imparts steam to the heat.

A young Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, by an unknown French artist, painted between 1470 and 1480 (Courtesy Musee Calvert, Avignon, via Wikimedia Commons).

A young Henry Tudor, earl of Richmond, by an unknown French artist, a portrait believed to have been painted between 1470 and 1480 (courtesy Musée Calvert, Avignon, via Wikimedia Commons).

 

I’ve never read a book like this, informed both by devoted scholarship and meticulous, hands-on experience. Even more amazing, Goodman has set her focus precisely where the written sources are thinnest, on how the common folk lived. Since few commoners could read, and even fewer could write (the skills, when taught at all, were learned separately), these people created no chronicles of themselves, and upper-class or noble commentators wouldn’t have deigned to. However, by using court records, parish registries, wills, paintings, and books of advice and commentary (a literary genre just then becoming popular), Goodman has pieced together a startling amount of information about daily life among commoners. It’s not surprising that she’s a recognized expert, a consultant for costume dramas, as with the televised version of Wolf Hall.

Among other things, I learned how details of posture and dress that we would call subtle or even meaningless spoke loudly to fifteenth-century Englishmen and -women about social class and breeding. Woe betide any who failed to observe these strictures, and who thus became suspect of trying to get above his or her station, for humiliation and punishment would soon follow. Naturally, the higher up you were, the more latitude you had. Certain young gentlemen, a classification with a specific social meaning, liked to swagger with their hips thrust forward, which caused purses, daggers, swords, or bucklers to swing about and make a clattering noise. Such was a swashbuckler, who announced his presence well before he came into view. The word is one of thousands the Tudors bequeathed to modern English; and of course, nobody coined more than Shakespeare, who left us some seventeen hundred.

Goodman has subtitled her work A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life, and the way she goes about this makes sense, though it also has its drawbacks. She begins with cock crow, when people got out of bed, and describes their rituals of prayer, dress, and hygiene, and ends with nighttime, return to bed, and what went on there. In between, she recounts what people ate; how they cooked it; what they had to learn so they could function, stay out of trouble, and maybe rise in the world; what kinds of work they did; and how they amused themselves when they had the chance. You easily understand the rhythm of everyday life, and how busy people were, especially those who had no servants to tend them–indeed, Goodman accounts for every waking minute.

The downside to this approach is the lack of narrative or individual characters. Occasionally, a person emerges from the crowd, provides an example, and quickly recedes. I lay this charge gently, because more than one critic has said the same about my work, and the dearth of first-person source material dictates how this type of social history must be written. In this book, however, I found myself pouncing on these brief stories, only to feel disappointed that they melted away so soon. I suspect that I yearned ever more for them because the wealth of detail Goodman offers can be overwhelming. I confess that I skipped over parts of How to Be a Tudor; the section on dress, for instance, goes on too long for my taste. However, I devoured the rest, such as the fine points of a bow or curtsy or the manner of baking bread.

In short, there’s something for everyone in How to Be a Tudor.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the public library.