Monthly Archives: July 2018

Some Enchanted Evening: The Invitation

30 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Invitation, by Lucy Foley
Little, Brown, 2016. 426 pp. $26

Hal Jacobs, a struggling English ex-pat journalist in Rome, crashes a soirée given by a contessa, the first time he has been social in months. It’s 1953, close enough to the world war so that the city and its inhabitants still bear wounds, Hal included. By the evening’s end, however, he’s charmed the contessa — who knows perfectly well he wasn’t invited — and a mysterious, beautiful woman who, in their moment of mutual vulnerability, hints at the scars she does her best to hide. Their brief tryst leaves such a deep impression on Hal that he believes he’s experienced the only warmth and happiness of his life — or has he simply loaded the circumstances with more emotional freight than they can bear?

Remains of the Roman Forum, 2012 (courtesy Bert Kaufmann, Roermond, Netherlands, via Wikimedia Commons)

Months later, however, he sees the woman again. The contessa has managed to fund the film she was trying to produce — that had been the soirée’s purpose, to assemble angels who might invest in it — and because Hal knows the cinema, she engages him to write a magazine story about it, an assignment he gets through her contacts. The stars, director, and others associated with the film will revisit the coastal location where it was shot, and Hal is to pen glitzy, frothy nonsense about this gathering as publicity for the release. Since much of the money to make the film comes from Frank Truss, he’s there with his young wife, Stella — the woman Hal met in Rome.

The invitation to a Mediterranean setting, themes of sexual passion and emotional honesty, and lost souls searching for what they’ve never had reminds me of The Magus, one of John Fowles’s early novels. Another similarity is a parallel narrative, but this one goes back several centuries rather than decades, which Hal reads about in an old diary. But Foley does better than Fowles, I think, in two crucial respects: Her female characters are fully drawn, not merely sex objects, and there’s less literary artifice.

What there is, I could do without — the prologue adds nothing, and I skipped the parallel narrative of the diary. The real action, between Hal and Stella, needs no mirroring or adornment. Foley not only takes love at first sight and makes it credible, she skillfully uncovers layers of past and secret hurts for both principal characters. I’m not sure why Stella’s sections are first-person, whereas Hal’s are in third; does that difference accomplish anything? But two unspoken questions lurk constantly within the narrative, and it’s amazing how much tension they create: What will happen between Hal and Stella, and what will result?

That tension emanates from the characters themselves, much less so the antagonist. Frank Truss lives up to his name as Stella’s sole support, but she pays a heavy price. It’s not so much that Frank likes to get his own way; it’s that when he’s around, there is no other way. He’s menacing enough to serve his narrative necessity, but as a character, he’s too one-sided, the only flawed portrayal in the book. Foley tries to rescue him somewhat at the end, and though I like the shifts in perspective that she creates, they don’t go far enough. You know Frank’s a bad guy from day one, and the pretense he has of altruistic commitment is so obviously pasted on, it’s no surprise when it’s proven a sham.

By contrast, though, Foley does a terrific job with the lesser characters in attendance. I particularly like the film director, Gaspari, a lonely man, humble in his artistic gifts, and the contessa, whose warm-hearted, tolerant approach to life is very appealing. Foley also sets her scenes with care, as with Hal’s crashing the contessa’s soirée:

Torches have been lit in brackets about the entrance, and Hal can see several gleaming motor cars circling like carp, disclosing guests in their evening finery.… He is not prepared for this. His suit is well-made but old and worn with use, faded at the elbows of the jacket and frayed at the pockets of the trousers. He has lost weight, too, since he last wore it, thanks to his poor diet of coffee and the occasional sandwich.… When he first wore it he had been much broader about the chest and shoulders. Now he feels almost like a boy borrowing his father’s clothes.

With prose like this, Foley delivers her keen psychological insights, connecting closely with the reader on every page. The Invitation is well worth reading.

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

Escaping a Predator: The Widow Nash

23 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Widow Nash, by Jamie Harrison
Counterpoint, 2017. 373 pp. $26

It’s 1904, and Leda Cordelia Dulcinea Remfrey has just buried her grandmother in the East and wants nothing more than to retrieve her bearings. But a summons comes from Seattle, one she can’t ignore: Her father, Walton, is losing his mind to tertiary syphilis, likely dying. More importantly to the two men who send for her, Walton has misplaced or hidden or spent a fortune reaped from the sale of African mines, and part of that money is due them. Dulcy, as she’s known, is essential to the task of deciphering Walton’s notebooks and figuring out what he did with the money, for she’s traveled the world with him and knows his secrets. Or so they believe.

Their conviction brings much misery to Dulcy, and here lies the biggest flaw of this often splendid, engaging novel. Victor Maslingen, her former fiancé, imprisons Dulcy in Seattle, and his henchman, Henning Falk, immediately welches on the promises he made to keep Victor in check. Surprisingly, Dulcy never even protests, only sets out to care for her father, living up to her second name, Cordelia.

Moreover, if she’s ever regretted breaking her engagement, all you need to know is that Henning has furnished Victor’s office with objects that don’t break if they’re thrown. Unfortunately, people aren’t as sturdy; and Dulcy’s first name, Leda, suggests what Victor has done before and keeps threatening to do again. In fact, Victor is such a completely unappealing, unbalanced character, he could fill a page in the DSM by himself. And the strange part is, nobody who knows him (other than Henning) can understand why Dulcy threw him over. To a degree, her reticence to share the story is quite understandable. As Harrison shows, a woman may be the soul of virtue, but society will still condemn her for lodging such an accusation.

Nevertheless, the central conflict of this novel results from two clichéd characterizations, a masochist and a sociopath, and during the long Seattle narrative, little changes. We get Dulcy’s sufferings and discursions into Walton’s past life and travels with his daughter, some of which is interesting, much of it simply appalling, as when Walton carelessly and unconscionably passes his syphilis to his wife, killing the children she bears subsequently and later, herself. Meanwhile, the main narrative treads water while Dulcy works up the courage to escape, and you may be forgiven for wondering when she’s going to get it.

Yet The Widow Nash is about running away, and round about page 120, Dulcy manages to rescue herself and the novel. Unfortunately, Harrison wants you to believe that Victor will pursue Dulcy if he ever traces her — that’s why he has to be a sociopath, I suppose —and that Henning, who’s far more practical and therefore more dangerous, will help. Or maybe he won’t, because he has a soul and a conscience when the narrative absolutely requires. That’s the trouble with over-the-top characters; they can’t bend, so everyone else has to, even in illogical directions.

Henry Wellge’s 1904 photo of Butte, Montana, population 60,000 (courtesy Library of Congress)

When Dulcy settles in a Montana town, assuming the name Mrs. Nash and declaring her widowhood, the novel settles in too. How she keeps her secret from the nosy matrons makes a wry, entertaining narrative, and though predators flourish here — most especially the chief of police — there’s good-heartedness that Dulcy drinks in and wonders whether she’s dreaming. Most fiction about the American prairie that I’ve read stresses how plain and boring life can be, but where Dulcy lives, there’s never a dull moment.

One reason Harrison can get away with a few mistakes and still come out with a good novel is that her prose evokes not just a setting, but a way of life:

Walton packed an India rubber bath, which liked to collapse suddenly, and his medicines often shattered, the fumes poisoning fellow travelers. Travel meant being wet and cold or dry and hot;… Pushy, mustachioed men in uniform, demanding imaginary paperwork at sudden borders; dusty telegraph offices and banks with wayward hours and false coinage; mysterious meat, leathery fruit.… insects skittering over mattresses or rappelling down at high speed from dark ceilings, the flutter of bats and whisper of mice.… He’d opened the wide world for her but sluiced away her joy.

And though the world of this novel is a very violent one, the people Dulcy meets in Montana have a zest for life, or many do, and that’s just what she needs, having been beaten down so long. I think that Harrison could have gotten to that point much sooner and more directly, and if that meant jettisoning discussions of Walton’s pseudoscientific theories about volcanoes and earthquakes and the interconnection of all human events, so much the better. I think the themes of The Widow Nash are well established without that. But if you can get past these excesses and the clunky narrative machinery before Dulcy’s escape, the novel offers rewards.

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

Master Sleuths: The Bag of Tricks Affair

16 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Bags of Tricks Affair, by Bill Pronzini
Forge, 2018. 254 pp. $26

Grass Valley, Nevada, isn’t the loosest mining town John Quincannon has ever seen, but it has its share of conmen, quick-tempered fortune-hunters, and card sharps, as befits any Western burg of the 1870s. But John and his partner, Sabina Carpenter, of the Professional Detective Services agency of San Francisco, are on hand to thwart the latest con game about to happen, and they plan on a successful conclusion, bringing their firm more business. The key seems to be a high-stakes game of five-card stud:

The Saint Louis Rose cut a slimmer and far gaudier figure. Too gaudy by half, in Quincannon’s judgment. She wore a fancy sateen dress of bright green, fashioned below across the bosom and high at the knee so that a great deal — a great deal, indeed — of creamy skin was exposed. A red wig done in ringlets, a little too much rouge and powder, false eyelashes the size of a daddy longlegs, and mouth painted the same rose color as the wig completed her image. She laughed often and too loud and was shamelessly flirtatious with the kibitzers.

However, before John and Sabina can expose the grifters, a murder takes place, to which Sabina is the only witness in an otherwise crowded room. A third party who has an interest in the upcoming murder trial has all but told her she’d do well to forget about testifying. But no one scares Sabina Carpenter. Very little eludes her, either, which is why she’s a formidable witness. John wishes she took the threat more seriously, and not just because he’s sweet on her. Former Pinkerton and first-rate detective she may be, and more than able to take care of herself in a tight spot, but John knows a ruthless bad guy when he sees one, and that’s who she’s up against.

Eadweard Muybridge’s panorama of San Francisco, taken from the Mark Hopkins mansion, Nob Hill, 1878 (courtesy Collection of the Society of California Pioneers, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Meanwhile, though, duty calls, and once the detectives return to San Francisco, each pursues a separate case. The plot zips along faster than the Southern Pacific Railroad, but much more reliably, subject to no delays. Pronzini didn’t get to be a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America for nothing, and he connects his stories with ingenuity and economy, wasting no words, yet setting the scene so that you see it vividly. He also gives you all the clues and puts you in the role of Dr. Watson, as you try to figure out how things happen (the who is less mysterious, sometimes because the narrative tells you, and once because there’s really no other choice). Yet the how is invariably marvelous and unexpected, and the manner in which our hero and heroine put their puzzles together recalls Holmes at his lightning best — especially Sabina, who’s the better detective. More intriguing yet, these mysteries are of the locked-room variety, so it’s pretty special to find two of those in the same narrative.

Their relationship is my favorite part, though. They work together, but don’t let that fool you; they compete as well, and John pretends to understand Sabina’s conclusions before he actually does. He’s quick to catch on, but she teases him about it afterward. He’s more impetuous than she, quicker to anger, but his sense of honor forbids him to ask for more money in fees when he might get it. She has no scruples about that, which makes her less of a pushover in business dealings, precisely what the male clients don’t expect — and, perhaps, the reader.

As for any hint of romance between the pair, John keeps looking for it, and his occasionally flirtatious banter annoys her, as well it should. Over their years in partnership, she’s grown fonder of him, but she keeps her distance. Not only is she unsure of her feelings for him, she’s holding on to the memory of her husband, dead five years. So during the course of The Bags of Tricks Affair, sexual tension percolates under the surface, increased by the secrets that each withholds from the other, for professional and personal reasons. Consequently, as they set about solving the criminal mysteries before them, they attempt to decipher one another. The mixture makes for an entertaining, fast-paced narrative, and I wish I’d discovered Quincannon and Carpenter before now.

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

Seekers: The Wanderers

09 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Wanderers, by Tim Pears
Bloomsbury, 2018. 366 pp. $28

In this beguiling, gorgeous, yet frustrating novel, we first meet Leo Sercombe in 1912. The young teenager is on the run through the Devon countryside, bearing the wounds of a severe beating, and near faint with hunger.

The boy stumbled in the night over dark earth. The land was silver. His steps were heavy. At first light in the waters of a stream he cleaned the charred red mud off his boots, and limped on in a kind of crouch that seemed best to allay the pain that racked many parts of his body. He saw where the sun rose and headed in the opposite direction, hunched over like someone with secrets from the light.

Gypsies take him in, but he receives little kindness, and not only because he’s an outsider, what they call a gentile. They sense his weakness, his ache for friendship, and, with few exceptions, treat him cruelly because they can, even after he shows his usefulness. Leo has a way with horses, a valuable skill, and he’s curious, quick to learn, eager to please. Theirs is a hard existence, however, with little room for sentiment, and Leo’s reminded at every turn that he owes them his life and had better not try to run away.

North Devon, near Croyde, 2018

Meanwhile, Charlotte (Lottie) Prideaux has just lost her mother, and she too is rootless, without friends, though in a very different, coddled context. She’s a lord’s daughter, and her father lets her do more or less what she pleases, with one crucial exception. The narrative hints that because Leo and Lottie became too friendly, the boy and most of his family were banished from the estate, which also presumably explains the beating he took. (Since The Wanderers is the second book of a planned trilogy, these events may be more explicit in the first volume, The Horseman.) In protest, for months, Lottie refuses to say anything to her father except, “Yes, Papa,” or, “No, Papa,” and tells him he did wrong to punish the Sercombes.

With great subtlety, Pears shows that Lottie and Leo care deeply about one another, though neither spends much time thinking about it, and both outwardly pretend no connection exists. This understatement makes you want all the more for the two to find one another again. But that’s not how the real world or this novel works, and Lottie and Leo have learning to do.

They’re both empathic, lonely, see beyond surfaces, and love the natural world, about which they have an abiding curiosity. But where Lottie dissects animals to study them and borrows anatomy textbooks from the local veterinarian, Leo helps butcher animals for food and assists a ewe through a breech birth because that’s his job, for which he receives neither thanks nor payment. Pears never underlines the comparison; he doesn’t have to. You only need to watch Leo make his way, suffering physically and emotionally, whereas there’s always someone looking out for the daughter of the manor. Nevertheless, you see Leo gain knowledge that Lottie may never have. I love this juxtaposition, simple and elegant like the prose, which creates a coming-of-age story unlike any other I’ve read.

Yet The Wanderers, though superbly written with brilliant characterizations, lacks a plot to speak of, a climax, or resolution. Having recently torn apart Charles Frazier’s Varina for that failing and others, it’s only fair to ask what Pears does to overcome this deficit, and to what extent he succeeds. He does ask implied, powerful questions, and though nothing happens in the usual way of novels, everything also happens, because it all matters. Partly that’s because Pears offers a view of life on the margins that few writers attempt, but it’s not just the content. Here, the episodic chapters open the characters to the reader, and the small moments establish a constant emotional connection.

Even so, I still feel cheated at the end. I don’t want to wait for the third volume to know what happens, and I’m especially worried that the First World War, to which the novel metaphorically refers as the year 1914 approaches, will deny Leo and Lottie any chance of happiness. Leo in particular is just the type of person to be destroyed in the conflict, and one theme of The Wanderers is how people who embrace violence and dishonesty have a tremendous advantage over everyone else.

So does it matter how many questions Pears leaves hanging? Yes and no. If you’re the type of reader who prefers to have everything wrapped up, then this book may not be for you. If that uncertainty doesn’t faze you, the narrative offers a breathtaking ride.

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

Tidy Mystery, Messy World: The Man upon the Stair

02 Monday Jul 2018

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Review: The Man upon the Stair, by Gary Inbinder
Pegasus, 2018. 252 pp. $26

On the day before he accedes to the chief inspectorship of the Paris Surêté, Achille Lefebvre witnesses the execution of an anarchist assassin. Colleagues warn Lefebvre that the dead man’s friends will seek revenge the first chance they get, so why not have them “taken care of”? No, Lefebvre says; he believes in the rule of law, and stooping to criminal methods would undermine that and reputation he wishes to maintain.

It’s an unusual viewpoint among the Parisian law enforcement of 1890, but, then again, Lefebvre is no ordinary detective. He’s studied the Japanese warrior code, martial arts, pistol marksmanship, the latest methods in criminology that his superiors scoff at (such as fingerprinting), and reads Jules Verne as if the master’s works predicted tomorrow’s news. Lefebvre knows and keeps good relations with Toulouse-Lautrec, cabaret singers, stars of the demimonde, the king of the rag pickers, and every important figure in the judicial and police world, with a few diplomats on the side.

Paris, circa 1890, from A Photographic Trip Around the World, John W. Illiff & Co., Chicago, 1892 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain, expired copyright)

So it is that when Mme. Mathilde de Livet, wife of a nouveau riche baron, approaches the detective’s wife, Adele, at the watering hole of Aix-les-Bains and seems strangely agitated, Mme. Lefebvre’s social antennas quiver. Well they might, for Mme. de Livet is soon telling the police that her husband has disappeared. Questioning the missing man’s valet reveals that the baron was holding hundreds of thousands of francs in a Gladstone bag, said to be gambling winnings that prompted a duel. Before long, the case will involve possible espionage, a poisoned maid, Russian diplomats, and several swindles. A few of these problems may pose serious international implications, it seems.

Inbinder has written a clever mystery that keeps the pages turning; just when you think there can’t be another twist, he gives you three more. Lefebvre is an appealing character, if hard to believe, but his heart’s in the right place, and he earns his subordinates’ loyalty by praising them and giving them chances to succeed. (Everybody deserves a boss like that.) As a family man, Lefebvre wishes he could do better, for some days he hardly comes home. One of my favorite scenes is when he has to beat a quick retreat, leaving Adele to administer her own form of law enforcement to their young daughter.

Another pleasure of The Man upon the Stair is fin-de-siècle Paris. Inbinder spends few words on it, but they all count:

Achille sat on a slatted wooden bench on the open upper deck of the Rue Caulaincourt tram. The horse-drawn car ran up from the Place de Clichy and over the iron viaduct that crossed the cemetery. He grabbed the brim of his fedora as a gust whipped over the elevated roadway. Wind rustled the reddish-golden-leaved treetops lining each side of the thoroughfare. The breeze carried smoke from dead leaves smoldering in piles gathered around the graves and sarcophagi; the fumes irritated his eyes and nostrils, making them water. He removed a handkerchief from his breast pocket, coughed, and blew his nose.

For all that, I find The Man upon the Stair a contrived, frustrating mystery to read. There’s never any doubt that Lefebvre and his minions will handle whatever obstacles arise, before the tension can stretch its legs or the reader’s nerves. It’s as though the author, through his detective, were saying, “Don’t worry. We’ve got this covered.” For instance, we’re told that the diplomatic complications could provoke a war, but we don’t actually see that in play, so there’s no reason to believe it. No amount of explanation that the French government is courting Russia as an ally raises the stakes. It’s historically accurate but involves no drama, for Lefebvre massages everything behind the scenes and then narrates his success after the fact.

He should at least break a sweat. But, as he says himself, he’s very lucky, and his infinite sources of information never fail. Moreover, that information is most often relayed to him (and the reader) in dialogue that reads like declarations or pronouncements rather than ordinary speech. This stilted feel pervades the novel, in which there are too few surprises. Minor characters have one overriding trait or concern, which the narrative describes or explains, and which the dialogue then reinforces, so you often have the impression that you’ve just read something twice.

So though I enjoyed The Man upon the Stair, largely for its glimpses of a city I love, I could take this novel or let it alone.

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