Monthly Archives: April 2022

Small Town, Big Corruption: The Gods of Green County

25 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: The Gods of Green County, by Mary Elizabeth Pope
Blair, 2021. 240 pp. $26

One hot day in 1926, the sheriff shoots Buddy Harper to death in Paradise, Arkansas, and claims self-defense. Since the sheriff practically runs Green County, and since a raft of witnesses testifies that Buddy threatened him with a crowbar, acquittal seems certain. Nevertheless, the attorney the sheriff has hired to defend him, Leroy Harrison, nearly withdraws from the case. His client, though smoother than silk, seems utterly unscrupulous, and it’s suspicious how the witnesses’ statements tally so closely in wording.

However, Leroy keeps the case in the end. His wife has just had another miscarriage, the great pain of their lives together, and he can’t handle the turmoil that would surely result if he disappointed the sheriff. But there are compensations, for subsequently, Leroy’s elected judge. And that’s part of his problem, for his conscience tells him that’s wrong, especially when he sees how the sheriff wields power, in ways both petty and devastating.

Nobody suffers more than Coralee Wilkins (née Harper), who sees visions of her late brother on the street, her porch, and the grocery. To her husband, Earl’s, dismay, she becomes more religious as a means of coping. The preacher she chooses is a corrupt, money-grubbing type who encourages his congregants to handle poisonous snakes.

The symbolism here might be heavy-handed: the snake in Paradise. But Pope has re-created a dirt-poor cotton town, with its intricate links forged through lifelong relationships and resentments. The result is a terrific story, a moral tale about power, loyalties, mental disturbance, and corruption. Although I dislike her intended conclusion, she brings her decidedly imperfect folk to life, and it’s a loving portrait she portrays of a time and place gone by.

Told through three different voices — Leroy’s, Coralee’s, and Earl’s — the narrative opens with Coralee’s psychotic delusion:

Truth is, I always could see things. Not every little thing all the time, but the full flower inside the bud of a rose, the fire inside a new green leaf that wouldn’t show until fall, the old man inside the boy selling newspapers on the street. Sometimes I even knew the future. One summer when a hard frost killed the crops and everybody was hungry, I had a vision of Johnny Wilcox bringing us a wheelbarrow full of turnips, and sure enough, he showed up the next day. Another time, I saw Laverne Bishop take up a snake even though she’d never trusted the Lord enough to test her faith before, and the very next Sunday she did. Those times, Mama called me her little prophet. Most of the time she said it was Satan working through me.

Earl, who works for a pittance at a cotton gin, doesn’t know what to do, as Coralee’s illness progresses and her behavior endangers herself and others. He’s a good soul, the salt of the earth, and illiterate, as she is. It’s a poignant portrayal, and you feel for both of them. “No — and furthermore” propels the story, as every move the three narrators make backfires. This small town, where everyone’s known each other forever, has its staunch loyalties that help people get through but also its hatreds and suspicions.

The earliest known working cotton gin, Burton, Texas, built in 1914 (courtesy Jim Evans, 2011, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, the one hatred Paradise lacks is racial. No Black characters live or work here, apparently, nor do any of the three narrators even refer to Blacks. The omission, though it simplifies the storytelling and allows the focus to remain on the principals’ concerns, makes me wonder why Pope chose that approach. I hope it’s not to protect her characters, so they don’t seem “dislikable” — a cardinal sin in book publishing, these days.

Several crucial scenes take place in a bar, and that too tests belief — not in the latter part of the novel, which occurs twenty years and more after the shooting, but in 1926, when Prohibition ruled the land. Along the same lines, somehow World War II escapes notice or mention, which gives the impression that Paradise must be hermetically sealed.

Finally, the narrative takes a couple too many twists in its latter stages, not always believably. And I think Pope wants the reader to see Leroy, who can’t leave the shooting or the sheriff’s abuses of power alone, as the villain here. He’s a whistleblower who neglects his family, yes, and not all his reasons for pursuing his cause are altruistic. But should he really leave well enough alone? And as the only character who stands up to evil, he has my admiration — especially if the alternative is just to keep his head down and tend his own garden.

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

Manipulated and Discarded: The Peculiarities

18 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: The Peculiarities, by David Liss
Tachyon, 2021. 325 pp. $18

London, 1899. Thomas Thresher, twenty-three, nominal scion of the noted banking family of that name, should consider himself fortunate, with a bright future to look forward to. But Thomas feels no hope for anything, present or future. His cruel, tyrannical brother, Walter, the bank’s governor, insists that Thomas serve as a clerk, performing pointless tasks, from which he learns nothing, nor is he meant to, a Dickensian touch. Further, Walter demands that he marry a young woman he’s never seen — a Jewess, no less, an idea that repels him.

But Thomas finds it hard to feel sorry for himself, or to feel much of anything, because Walter has manipulated him all his life and discarded him as worthless — except to do his bidding, as with the strange marriage, for no reason Thomas can fathom. He’s allowed no will or character of his own, and you can see the effects.

What’s more, London itself has changed. Violent fogs that slither like giant, amorphous reptiles bludgeon people to death. Thomas has seen this, but there are other horrors he’s only read about:

The more lurid newspapers published stories of vampires and werewolves, of women giving birth to rabbits, and houses rendered uninhabitable by ghosts. He has read of people possessed by spirits and living men whose own spirits have become trapped in horses, in furnishings, in articles of clothing. There are horrible transformations and mutilations. Things that should not be, if these stories are to be believed, have become not quite commonplace but hardly rare.
Thomas read it all with a fair amount of skepticism until the first leaf sprouted below his right nipple.

These abnormalities and others go by the name of Peculiarities, and in stereotypical British fashion, nobody talks about them. Nobody in polite society, anyway, for the worst afflictions beset the lower classes predominantly, a concept Thomas is loath to accept when his purported fiancée, Esther Feldstein, tells him so.

But you know that Thomas must take her seriously, sooner or later, not least because the bank seems implicated in some way — the impenetrable institution, a Dickensian theme. At the same time, he can accomplish nothing unless he takes himself seriously too, a difficult task when he has been ground under his family’s heel.

His progression makes terrific reading; I’m reminded again of Dickens, say, Pip in Great Expectations. You don’t often see a thriller with such an intricate, forceful character arc, let alone a story that also has enough “no — and furthermore” energy to power a small city. Plenty happens in The Peculiarities, but this is a character-driven novel that explores every emotional transition, and that’s why you care.

Kabbala, a mystical belief system within Judaism, figures in The Peculiarities. Here, a kabbalistic representation of the Tree of Life (courtesy Thomazzo, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The story invokes magic, as you might have guessed, and the plot revolves around the power it confers. But though characters attempt to cast spells, the magic here, as Liss states in the text and repeats in an afterword, doesn’t operate in defiance of natural laws. Rather, it depends on natural laws “previously hidden or generally unknown.” The distinction will become clearer if you read the novel, which I recommend, but I’ll give you one hint. Thomas was on the way toward becoming a first-rate mathematician at Trinity College, Cambridge, until Walter forced him to quit his studies. The skill comes in handy.

Note too the context of the so-called Peculiarities. That the London fog has become deadly violent, instead of the passive killer known to history, suggests environmental disaster writ large. That it attacks poor neighborhoods more often than others reflects a fact reckoned with today but not during the Victorian Age, and that Thomas at first refuses to accept the evidence rings all too true.

How ironic that he’s turning into a tree, as though the forests are taking vengeance for human depredation. And the births of “rabbit children” represent two themes, natal defects from industrial poisons and the attack on reproductive rights. Surely, Liss intends to criticize capitalism in its unbridled state—consider that the central institution here is Thresher’s Bank.

At once a coming-of-age story, a thriller, and historical fantasy, The Peculiarities has much to offer. The plot twists like an eel, sometimes in melodramatic fashion, with one incredible revelation after another. But the prose is beautiful and lucid, and the characters never strike attitudes, as they might in a full-fledged melodrama. Esther proves more than a match for Thomas, one of several friends with whom he never would have bothered had he not been afflicted and chosen to embark on a journey of discovery.

My regular readers know I avoid historical fantasy, but such is my admiration for Liss’s previous books, most notably A Conspiracy of Paper (capitalism, again), that I grabbed this novel off the shelf. The results confirm my trust, and I suspect they will earn yours.

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

Washington, 1942: Louise’s War

11 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: Louise’s War, by Sarah B. Shaber
Severn, 2011. 194 pp. $28

American involvement in World War II is six months old, and everybody and her sister flocks to the nation’s capital to find a job. Louise Pearlie, whose husband has died years before and can’t bear to remain in rural North Carolina, has brought her excellent secretarial skills and work experience to the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence organization. Gossip has it that the Allies will invade North Africa within months, hence the OSS search for maps of the coastline and experts who understand the beaches.

A 1943 poster for the Office of War Information by George Rapp (OWI poster 55, courtesy Library of Congress; public domain)

One such authority is Gerald Bloch, a French Jew married to a school friend of Louise’s. From what little news she’s received, Louise gathers that Gerald and Rachel are stuck in Marseilles, while reports say that the Vichy government has made sure that no Jews will receive exit visas. Deportation looms, and Louise, who owes Rachel a huge debt, wishes she could help.

Theoretically, the OSS could claim that Gerald Bloch would provide necessary information concerning the upcoming invasion. But the file on him goes missing during the confusion ensuing from the fatal heart attack suffered by the director of Louise’s section. At first, she thinks nothing of this, but soon, at tremendous risk, she sets out to discover how and why a sensitive dossier could simply vanish, and whether recovering it would save the Blochs.

It’s an excellent premise, if a mite dependent on coincidence, but Shaber’s narrative has a lot going for it. For starters, I like how she’s drawn Louise. Growing up poor and churchy, Louise doesn’t quite know what to make of the big city, where old values get shunted aside in the business of making war. The tremendous crush of people in a hurry and under pressure, with ambition and money to spend, offers temptations she’s not used to, but which attract her. Her parents want her to remarry, but she enjoys her independence, even if she wonders what it would feel like to have the financial security and creature comforts she’d never afford on her own.

That said, Louise also knows that many, if not most, men expect women to keep quiet and use their brains only to help solve male problems, for which, of course, they’ll receive no credit. But her common sense doesn’t prevent her from wanting what might not be good for her. I like that complexity.

The other winning facet of Louise’s War is the atmosphere. Whether it’s fabric shortages, the bus company’s refusal to hire Black drivers, people trying to get around the sugar ration, or the habit of traveling GIs tossing letters out train windows, knowing that someone will stamp and mail them, Shaber knows her ground and deploys details with skill. Here, Louise rolls her eyes at the portrayal of women in a popular magazine:

In its cheerful stories women skipped off to work in full make-up with neatly coiffed hair pulled back in colorful do-rags, carrying lunch pails full of healthy home-made food. Their overalls didn’t get dirty no matter how filthy the job. If they weren’t married with an obliging mother at home caring for their children, they were engaged to a shop foreman or a military officer. None of them were war widows or lived in boarding houses or had to park their children in crowded day nurseries.

Given that keen eye and grasp of psychology, I’m surprised to stumble across a cardinal error. Louise’s first-person narration works just fine, but, for some reason, Shaber shoehorns brief, usually first-person, sections belonging to minor characters, ostensibly to reveal information Louise couldn’t know. Since these look as clumsy as they sound, you have to ask, Does the reader need to know? I doubt it.

Pretty much everything would have kept until Louise manages to discover it, and her ignorance could have heightened the tension, complicating her attempts to parse conflicting evidence. As it is, the story telegraphs answers to a couple major questions when, with little effort, the author might have shaded the account of events to create doubt and keep the reader guessing along with Louise.

Less glaring to the general reader, though unfortunately common in fiction, the Jewish characters don’t feel genuine, which turns them into a narrative convenience. I also object to how certain authors consistently say “Nazis” to identify those who invaded other countries and committed mass murder and expropriation, as though “ordinary” Germans distanced themselves from those crimes.

I can’t help think that the author, or her publisher, wants to separate people we like from those we can hate with abandon. Too bad. Similarly, the novel presents a likable, admirable protagonist, born and raised in North Carolina, who befriends the Black women servants in her boardinghouse without a second thought. That seems a little easy.

Nevertheless, in other ways Louise’s War brilliantly presents a city during conflict, a heroine whose voice draws you in, and a mystery that will keep you turning the pages.

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

Food for the Soul: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen

04 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen, by Annabel Abbs
Morrow, 2021. 363 pp. $17

Eliza Acton, a respectable brewer’s daughter, has brought a second volume of poems to her publisher, Longman of London, only to be told that ladies shouldn’t write poems. (Read: The first book didn’t sell.) Not only won’t Mr. Longman publish her manuscript, he asks for something almost as déclassé, a cookery book, and tells her not to bother him again until she’s finished it.

He’s supposing that Miss Acton wouldn’t actually cook from her own recipes, for the year is 1835, and as Abbs makes clear, middle-class women aren’t supposed to show appetites of any sort. Miss Acton’s poetry, though hardly risqué in any tangible sense, is about longing rather than daffodils, intense feelings rather than Christian uplift. How wanton!

Longman’s assuming that, as managers of respectable households, ladies maintain a staff of servants, and the cook and scullery maid do the real cooking. He never considers the result, inevitably awful, nor does anyone else — meat roasted to the consistency of leather, like as not curried, with half-cooked potatoes drowning in grease.

Illustration from Eliza Acton’s Private Cookery for Modern Families, 1845 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Except Eliza, who has spent time in France and knows what food should taste like. But her mother will not hear of her besmirching the family escutcheon. Daughter must not descend into the kitchen herself and sully her hands, educated for finer pursuits, with anything so coarse a task as satisfying human appetite.

Worse, the family escutcheon has already suffered — Papa’s business has gone belly-up, and he’s fled to France, leaving wife and children to fend for themselves and pretend to the world that he has died. Since two sisters of Eliza’s have become governesses, a comedown necessary to prevent further financial embarrassment, and a third has married and produced a house full of children, Eliza has no room to divert from the path chosen for her.

So it is that mother and daughter rent a large house in a town near a watering hole and prepare to take in boarders. But that’s such a comedown too that Mother schemes to have her spinster daughter, already in her thirties, married off — and if, perchance, a wealthy widower came to stay at the boardinghouse while taking the waters, why, that would be perfect.

Part of Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen involves the mother-daughter power struggle, and whether daughter will find her voice to resist. And it’s not sure she wants to, because she recognizes that marrying a rich man would solve a lot of problems. But the larger story revolves around her insistence that she do the cooking, so that she may prepare a book for Mr. Longman and satisfy the poetry she finds in food. To assist her, she hires Ann Kirby, a local girl, and when Eliza discovers that Ann too finds poetry in food, a friendship and collaboration develops despite the social gulf between them.

What a charming story, told alternately from Eliza’s and Ann’s points of view. I confess I have a soft spot for Eliza Acton, whose cookbook provided me years ago with historical evidence for my book on the social history of the potato. But aside from Acton’s significance, as the story of a middle-class woman’s choices in Victorian England (few) and moral and emotional dilemmas (many), the novel flies off the page.

And she’s not the only point of focus, for Ann faces a set of problems far more complicated and harrowing than her employer’s, though cut from the same cloth. For instance, Ann’s mother suffers what we would now recognize as early-onset dementia, while her father is a disabled veteran.

Another pleasure of Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen is the prose, which conveys the place and time, yet also inner lives:

The eggs are still warm and stuck with feathers as I count them from the basket. I pour grated sugar from the earthenware jar, then take a freshly whetted knife and pare the rind from two lemons. The world slips away. I feel my eye, my nose, my palate yielding, and I think how satisfying it is to scrape at a lemon, to lose myself in its sharp bright song.
I have started to see poetry in the strangest of things: from the roughest nub of nutmeg to the pale parsnip seamed with oil. And this has made me wonder if I can write a cookery book that includes the truth and beauty of poetry.

On the downside, I find Eliza’s mother wanting depth. I wish the narrative revealed her thwarted desires, so that she came across as more than a corseted autocrat obsessed with reputation. You also sense that Eliza has a secret, and I think Abbs might have revealed it earlier, allowing it to complicate the emotional narrative, instead of concealing it for shock value later. The plot point it eventually provides delivers less than promised, and at the expense of fuller character development, including the potential to deepen Mother’s.

All the same, Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen makes pleasant reading, and I recommend it.

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