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Learning to See: Swimming Between Worlds

08 Monday Aug 2022

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Review: Swimming Between Worlds, by Elaine Neil Orr
Berkley, 2018. 382 pp. $16

Tacker Hart, former high school football star and would-be architect, has gone to Nigeria on a plum assignment for a private company, only to be summarily dismissed, practically kidnapped, and sent home to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The year is 1959, and momentous change is in the wind, though Tacker doesn’t sense it.

He senses little of anything, feeling adrift and angry and missing Nigeria, a place whose ways and atmosphere swallowed him whole. He’s barely put together that the Black society he admired in Africa would be forced to the back of the bus in his hometown. Moody and distraught, Tacker moves out of his parents’ house, persuades his father to let him manage one of two grocery stores Dad owns, and doesn’t know where he’s going, or why.

Two encounters give him purpose. First, he runs into Kate Morton, whom he remembers vaguely from high school, and picks up signals of common ground:

Still it seemed he was on vacation from the real point of living, a point he could only vaguely have described, though it had something to do with putting oneself at the edge of the world and staying there long enough to imagine something absolutely new. Outside, wind herded a curve of clouds at the far edge of sky and the air smelled of tobacco. The sidewalk was dark from the night’s rain and fall leaves lay sleeping on the pavement. Here and there morning light fell in dazzling sprees. Tacker felt the key in his pocket, cool and solid against his knuckles. He’d be happy to see Kate Monroe drop by again. She’d seemed as dazed by her present life as he felt about his.

Second, Tacker defends a Black customer, Gaines Townson, from a beating by several toughs in front of his store — Gaines has crossed an invisible line by shopping there. Subsequently, Tacker hires Gaines to work in the store, not realizing that his new employee has become active in the Civil Rights movement, participating in sit-ins at lunch counters. Nor does Tacker know that Kate, to whom he’s attracted more and more, distrusts the movement and Blacks in general.

Three protesters sit in at a Woolworth’s lunch counter, Durham, North Carolina, February 1960 (courtesy North Carolina state archives, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Swimming Between Worlds stands out in several significant ways. Orr does a terrific job capturing how adulthood confuses the two prospective romantic partners. They’re both difficult, oversensitive, wary, aching from loneliness, and expert at driving people away. Kate, at least, has a more conventional excuse: Her mother, her sole surviving parent, has died, and Kate lives in her house, with its memories and societal burdens (her parents possessed status and therefore a code to live up to). As part of that legacy, the place contains letters her mother wanted her to burn. Big hint: Kate disobeys and is knocked for a loop.

Kate also has a suitor who’s doing his medical residency, and whom she’s not sure she wants to marry, yet doesn’t see what other choice in life she has. Marrying the doctor would give her social position and security but pigeonhole her as her husband’s reflection. I like how Orr portrays this dilemma while introducing Kate’s growing interest in photography, the pursuit that gives her something of her own, without overplaying it.

As you might surmise, the author shows you her characters’ flaws straight out. You lose patience with Tacker and Kate regularly, and nothing between them goes neatly. For instance, there’s a great scene when the medical resident shows up unexpectedly at a birthday party to which his rival has also been invited. Nor does the author protect her characters in other ways, for they suffer deep losses.

From a moral point of view, essential in a story like this, the sit-ins narrative doesn’t try too hard, just the right touch. Tacker’s no better than he should be, no liberal in hiding. It’s not immediately apparent to him how Blacks endure bigotry as second-class citizens, and how, if they seek ordinary pleasures he takes for granted — sitting down to eat at a lunch counter, for instance — they take their lives in their hands. Kate, too frightened even to contemplate what segregation means, argues with Tacker about it, though she comes around, eventually.

I’m less taken with Gaines’s portrayal. He seems one-dimensional, passionate about the cause and little else, as though he were merely a plot device. Indeed, he brings Tacker messages from the front lines and articles from Black newspapers, all of which prompt action. It’s also curious how easily Tacker, who has a quick temper that often gets him in trouble, tolerates Gaines’s jibes and lets him act as his conscience, his goad.

Then again, Tacker’s characterization in general sometimes feels stilted, particularly toward the beginning. The text often “explains” him, which strikes me as odd, given the care Orr takes with emotional resonance, as with her artful descriptions. Regarding the storytelling, though I like the Nigerian narrative in itself (and am reminded of my years in Africa), both the unnecessary prologue set there and one later section feel shoehorned in.

Still, Swimming Between Worlds is a thought-provoking novel, a human story full of feeling with an unexpected twist or two. It’s well worth your time.

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

Blackmail and Murder: Hot Time

25 Monday Jul 2022

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Review: Hot Time, by W. H. Flint
Arcade, 2022. 267 pp. $27

August 1896 witnesses a record “hot wave” in New York City, as the newspapers call it, searing temperatures that kill thousands of people as well as horses that drop in harness, blocking the streets. Political temperatures run almost as high, as a presidential election campaign prepares for its autumn stretch. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate opposing William McKinley, will speak at Madison Square Garden, expected to draw an overflow crowd, and the police have uncovered purported plans by anarchists to stage a violent demonstration there, maybe even to kill Bryan.

Police Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who makes little secret of his ambitions to ride McKinley’s coattails to a coveted government post, perhaps with the Navy Department, is also trying to weed out the corruption among New York’s constabulary. Aiding him in this Herculean task is Otto (Rafe) Raphael, the first Jew to wear the uniform of New York’s Finest, and Minnie Gertrude Kelly, the department’s first woman stenographer.

Jacob Riis and Theodore Roosevelt tour the slums, 1894 (from Riis’s book, The Making of an American, 1901, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Complicating matters is William d’Alton Mann, whose dead body has been found near the Brooklyn Bridge. The police report ascribes the motive to robbery, and Commissioner Roosevelt accepts the judgment, even when Rafe, who’s had the chance to investigate on his own — overstepping his authority — points out a key fact. Mann’s gold cufflinks, likely the most valuable items on his person, remained untouched.

What’s more, Mann was an infamous blackmailer, gathering poisonous secrets about the rich and powerful, perhaps even Commissioner Roosevelt himself, and threatening to print them unless sizable sums are paid. Rafe, who admires Roosevelt without being blind to his faults, doesn’t know what to think — and keeps digging.

For me, the chief pleasure of Hot Time is the political and social atmosphere. Flint, a pseudonym for a well-known historian of the Gilded Age, has lovingly re-created that era and many of its figures, well-known or otherwise, the latter including the blackmailer, our inquisitive constable, and ground-breaking stenographer (though the author has taken license with biographical fact).

It’s not just that J.P. Morgan, Mark Hanna (senator, kingmaker, and McKinley’s handler), Bryan, and Jacob Riis, the reporter who exposes the degradation of New York’s slums (and wrote How the Other Half Lives), float through these pages. Flint has underlined how even reformers like Riis disliked and distrusted immigrants, Jews especially, and how the populist Bryan wanted the United States to close its borders.

I’m a little surprised that Flint has ignored Tammany Hall, which ran the police department like a fiefdom and brought about the corruption Roosevelt’s trying to counter. (I’m also curious about how Tammany, a Democratic machine, would have viewed a candidate who wore the right party emblem but opposed immigration, to which the organization owed its roots and power. Maybe too complex for a mystery novel.) But otherwise, the author portrays an engaging portrait of a time when bigotry and fears sound all too familiar to us today.

I also like the depiction of New York itself, of the Lower East Side and what was then “uptown,” the area in the lower Thirties. Flint brings to life the hard existence of newsboys, usually homeless young children, whose welfare was one of Roosevelt’s pet causes. One boy, called Dutch, figures heavily in the story:

At the Bowery, [Rafe] crossed under the elevated tracks, grateful for a moment’s respite from the sun. His usual newsboy was on the corner. Brown hair stuck out from under his woolen cap, and he stood with a habitual hunch, like a stray dog wondering whether the next passerby was good for a handout or a boot in the ribs.

But Hot Time, though intriguing as a historical novel, falters as a mystery. The narrative implies the killer’s identity fairly early on; only the motive remains unclear, and though it turns out to be politically satisfying, I find it somewhat hard to credit. The real tension comes from remarkable chase scenes involving Dutch’s acrobatics, and though they’re hair-raising, I wanted more of a puzzle. It’s as though the narrative can’t decide whether it’s a mystery or thriller.

As a detective, Rafe is dogged, intelligent, and good-hearted. There’s a whisper of attraction between him and Minnie, the stenographer, which can go nowhere, for religious reasons. For the most part, I believe Rafe’s Jewishness — thank you, Mr. Flint — and his family’s living conditions seem real too.

However, certain conversations feel like information dumps, and I wish Rafe’s interior narration depended less on rhetorical questions, sometimes a half-dozen or more in a row. Whenever an author resorts to that device, I sense a perceived need to remind the reader what’s been learned (or not) and uncertainty as to how best to convey this, except in shorthand.

Consequently, if you read Hot Time, concentrate on the atmosphere and the derring-do, and you’ll see the narrative in its best light.

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

Soft-Rock Sixties: Songs in Ursa Major

18 Monday Jul 2022

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Review: Songs in Ursa Major, by Emma Brodie
Knopf, 2021. 324 pp. $27

It’s summer 1969, and the Island Folk Fest awaits the arrival and performance of Jesse Reid, the hottest up-and-coming star of the folk-rock music scene. The fictional Bayleen Island, perhaps a look-alike for Martha’s Vineyard, has always been a tourist destination, and the festival is jammed, having drawn musical artists from all over.

But the locals have serious talent to boast too. Jane Quinn, nineteen, blonde, and preternaturally gifted as a singer and acoustic guitarist, leads her band, the Breakers, to open for Jesse Reid. Except that Jesse crashes his motorcycle, leaving the Breakers to hold center stage — and suddenly, the out-of-town music honchos want to know who this girl is. Assuming she’s marketable.

But as Jane quickly learns, the path to stardom is paved with broken bottles and barbed wire. Yes, once Jesse’s injuries have healed, Pegasus, his label, hires the Breakers to go on tour with his band, opening for them once more. But when it’s rumored that she and Jesse are an item, she can’t tell whether the Breakers, and her, have value for themselves or as the satellite revolving around planet Jesse.

Woodstock, August 1969 (courtesy Derek Redmond and Paul Campbell, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

At its best, Songs in Ursa Major offers an intimate view of the cut-and-thrust politics within the music industry, especially those chapters told through the eyes of a Pegasus executive and a sound engineer. I also like the passages in which Jane searches for musical inspiration; the lyrics she composes not only reflect her life and experiences, they remind me of the songs I listened to as a teenager. I see more than a hint of Linda Ronstadt and Joni Mitchell, credibly rendered, and I catch an occasional phrase that seems borrowed from my favorite Mitchell album, Blue. The book title, after one of Jane’s songs, is catchy and spot-on. Brodie knows her music.

The author also captures the artist’s dilemma, how to receive the attention and validation she deserves because of her talent while fending off all attempts to own her, reshape her, and turn her into cash, with no regard for aesthetics or her sensibilities. That seems all too real. Less real, perhaps, is how Jane, with no musical training whatsoever — Jesse teaches her to read notes — can pick up almost any instrument and make sophisticated music with it. At age nineteen. Even Mozart took lessons, though I suppose poetic license covers that contingency.

More seriously, I don’t see the Sixties. Vietnam might be referred to twice, parenthetically, and the assassinations and upheavals of ’68 not at all. Since much music from that era spoke with political intent, I’m startled, but it’s not the headlines I’m missing. I don’t sense that Sixties vibe, the feeling in the air that once-accepted beliefs and ways of living must either be thrown away or reinforced. Not everybody wanted change, but you took a position, one way or another. In this narrative, though, no one even cares.

Much else in Songs in Ursa Major feels generic, beginning with the prose. Consider the first page, when a music groupie offers a visiting correspondent a joint:

His exhale became a brushstroke inside an Impressionist painting; swirls of smoke rose in the salty air, tanned limbs and youthful faces interweaving like daisy chains across the meadow. He handed the joint back to the girl and watched her skip into a ring of hippies. Someone had a conga; thrift-store nymphs began dancing to an asynchronous rhythm.

The language, though vivid, feels empty, without emotional resonance. It’s a formulaic rendition of a scene, shorthand for an era in some people’s minds—especially those who didn’t live through it—and though it’s just one descriptive paragraph, it’s representative. So many sentences begin, “She felt…” that at one point, I flipped back to the title page to make sure this book had come from Knopf, the quintessential literary publisher. If a writer can’t show why her protagonist is hurt or angry or what that looks like, I don’t feel it. Involving a reader requires complexity, not shortcuts or buzzwords.

The same holds for the love interest between Jesse and Jane. For a while, I thought I was reading a formula romance — girl and boy lock eyes, go to bed shortly thereafter — but luckily, significant shifts occur, and much goes wrong. Even so, the sex scenes read like a Hollywood fantasy, and, within the love affair, the author withholds the truth behind a crucial secret so as to derive maximum shock value. That’s a trend, these days, I guess, but it’s not credible, and though the revelation surprises me, I feel cheated.

Read Songs in Ursa Major, if you will, for its seamy, appalling glimpse of music moguls. In other ways, I find the novel a disappointment.

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

Love Triangle: If You Leave Me

11 Monday Jul 2022

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Review: If You Leave Me, by Crystal Hana Kim
Morrow, 2018. 418 pp. $27

When Communist-aided forces in northern Korea invade the south, sixteen-year-old Haemi, her mother, and young brother, Hyunki, who’s tubercular, flee for their lives on foot. A year later, in 1951, the refugee family lives a precarious existence in Busan, a seaport nestled in the tip of the Korean Peninsula. Haemi goes to school and is bright enough to stay with it, if she wants.

But education is makeshift, and in a country invaded and a war that seems destined to remain a fruitless stalemate, even educated women have little scope. Besides, who can imagine a rosy, far-off future when tomorrow, and the next day, hunger will wrack your body and spirit the same way it does today?

The Busan-Seoul road, a supply lifeline–but mostly for the military (courtesy U.S. Army and http://www.kmike.com/Appleman/Chapter13.htm#9 via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

As a form of escape, Haemi sneaks out at night to drink moonshine with Kyunghwan, a handsome, slightly older boy she’s known all her life. These risky outings, which she has to balance with her responsibilities for Hyunki’s care — the boy’s cough is alarming — provide another danger. Physically attracted to Kyunghwan, Haemi believes he shares her feelings and wants him to declare himself.

But he won’t, and when her mother pushes her to accept a marriage proposal from Jisoo, Kyunghwan’s cousin, because he has more money and better prospects, the girl agrees. The boys go off to war, and Haemi waits for her life to begin, though as a nurse’s assistant at a military hospital, she glimpses a path that she wishes she could follow.

An old story, a love triangle, and for at least the first half of If You Leave Me, Kim makes her narrative seem like a fresh take. It’s not just Haemi’s existence that’s precarious — it’s Korea’s — and the presence of the American “liberators” cuts in several directions. I like this part of the novel the best, in which Korean aspirations for freedom and prosperity, represented by the characters’ dreams, run up against poverty, desperation, and brutal circumstance. How these people carve out niches for themselves, or try to, makes compelling reading. Throughout, those who have money can skate through; those who don’t may well be beating their heads against a concrete wall.

Kim’s prose, sparse, carefully observed, and devoted to moment-to-moment gesture and feeling, fits the story like a glove. Consider this passage early on, when Jisoo becomes Haemi’s suitor, and the girl’s living situation moves him:

On my earlier visits, I’d never been allowed beyond the front door.… The sitting room was spare, more miserable than I’d expected. The hanji paper had been ripped off the walls and windows, revealing bare clay and open frames. But I appreciated their effort to make it a home. A bowl of dried flowers decorated a small desk. Straw floor cushions were piled neatly in a corner. The open windows brought in a soft breeze. I smiled. “A real home. You’re lucky.”

Unfortunately, If You Leave Me loses momentum a few years after the war, when Haemi and Jisoo have children, while Kyunghwan has searched about for a successful career. Part of my impatience comes from how I see the characters, whose appeal wears thin after a while. Haemi, frustrated by her role as wife and mother, wants more and dreams of Kyunghwan, even though she knows it’s not a man she needs but a larger life. Her bitterness and mercurial moods upset everyone, and you want her to act. But this is midcentury Korea, so she’s trapped.

Jisoo, marked by his wartime experiences, can’t listen to her (or anyone else) and expects obedience. That’s an important cultural and political comment, and perhaps why Kim wrote her novel, but a theme isn’t a story, and I want to see other sides to him, to have this conflict go somewhere. As for Kyunghwan, he can’t befriend anyone for real, pleasant as he can be sometimes, so he too remains at a distance. Will he or won’t he visit his old friends? And if he does, what will happen? The answers are fairly predictable, yet still constrained by societal rules.

Finally, as the characters settle into their prescribed roles, the narrative presents a lot of back-and-forth, especially marital quarrels, that feels repetitive, both in action and theme. The almost constant argumentation seldom gets beyond You’re selfish; no, you’re selfish. That’s too bad, because the historical background, unfamiliar to me and probably to most Americans, furnishes an excellent atmosphere for what Kim wishes to say, and if she pushed the envelope a little, maybe the characters would have taken a leap.

If You Leave Me is her first novel. I hope the author’s future efforts develop her readily apparent gifts.

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

“Lag”: Shepherd

04 Monday Jul 2022

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Review: Shepherd, by Catherine Jinks
Text Publishing, 2019. 226 pp. $30 AU

New South Wales, 1840. Tom Clay, transported to Australia at age twelve for poaching in Suffolk, has always loved animals and been good with them. It’s people he has trouble with, especially the murderous types British courts have inflicted on their infant colony in the name of justice. But as long as Tom can stick to tending sheep at the outpost station, he’s got a loyal dog, Gyp, and life’s not so bad.

John Oxley’s chart of part of the New South Wales interior, 1822, from Moreton Bay to Port Philip (courtesy State Library of New South Wales Z/Cc 82/1-3, via Wikimedia Commons)

Trouble is, Dan Carver, a fellow employee of the same rancher, has killed a couple of their coworkers and seems to be just getting started on the others. Consequently, young Tom, who, by rights, should be learning his letters in an English school, has to move fast to save his skin and that of Rowdy Cavanaugh, a glib jokester whose crime in England was passing counterfeit coin. His garrulousness, which he either can’t control or doesn’t care to, makes stealthy movement difficult if not impossible, and may cost Tom and him their lives.

I should add that the phrase by rights doesn’t exist for criminals like Tom, or for anyone else sent to Australia for punishment — “lagged,” it’s called. Therefore, even if Tom somehow manages to evade Carver and alert the rancher, he’s likely as not to hang for Carver’s murders. Nobody believes a “lag,” and when it’s one lag’s word against another, the stronger, older man will likely prevail.

As you may have guessed, this excellent thriller — I defy you to start it and put it down — has more to offer than unending sequences of “no — and furthermore,” gripping though they are. Shepherd tells the grisly, heart-breaking story of how lags come to Australia, or how Tom does, and the various stratagems he must employ to stay alive, let alone avoid flogging or any other casual brutality his masters may devise.

In beautifully crafted, brief flashbacks that seamlessly flow with the main narrative, you learn about the boy’s harrowing sea journey from England, the filthy so-called majesty of the law, and his dreadful childhood in a family of poachers: “I don’t think I’ve slept easy since I was in my mother’s womb.” Shepherd spares nothing, yet I never find the violence gratuitous or sense it’s included for shock value.

I wish the novel didn’t start with a prologue, and Jinks doesn’t need to tell the reader what’s coming, because her first chapter pulls you in right away. However, I like the writing in the prologue, which shows you much about young Tom in few words:

When I first came here, I thought it a cruel affliction to walk through a wood and not know what bird was singing, or which plants were safe to eat. Now I understand it’s more than an affliction; it’s certain death.
I see nothing around me that I can properly name. Ferns. Vines. Bushes. Trees that shed their bark instead of their leaves. Flowers with spikes instead of petals.
I’m going to die wordless, in a lonely hollow in a strange land. I’m going to die among beasts that I don’t understand and plants that have killed me.

The passage suggests both the author’s gift for spare, direct prose and characterization: “I’m going to die among beasts I don’t understand and plants that kill me.” For Tom’s a born tracker, the one advantage he possesses in his attempt to escape Carver or get the drop on him — plans and circumstances change rapidly. How the boy copes with the natural world would make a novel in itself, for his knowledge and ingenuity constantly surprise; yet, as the prologue says, he’s conscious of what he doesn’t know.

His skill and humility set him apart from the other colonists. He’s also alone in his admiration for the Black indigenous people and their understanding of the land, flora, and fauna. He fears them too, because of what they might do, though Carver’s and their boss’s treatment of them troubles Tom. There’s muted social commentary in that as well, and though the indigenous folk linger on the fringes of the narrative, you sense them watching the whites act like maniacs.

This slim volume has a lot going for it — a lightning-paced story, a landscape physically rendered in emotionally resonant detail, and a teenager fighting not only for his life, but to live decently, in a place where no one understands the concept. Few Australian novels reach our shores, unfortunately, unless a major house picks them up. I wish more Americans knew about this small press in Melbourne, Text, which has given us Shepherd and also A Room Made of Leaves, by Kate Grenville.

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

The Price of Revenge: The Blood Covenant

27 Monday Jun 2022

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Review: The Blood Covenant, by Chris Nickson
Severn, 2021. 212 pp. $29

Leeds, 1823. Simon Westow, a thief-taker, meaning someone who retrieves stolen goods for a fee, hears from a doctor friend about two deaths that disturb him deeply. A pair of young boys has been murdered, apparently by a factory overseer. Leeds, starting to gain a reputation for its textile mills, witnesses a great deal of industrial child abuse. That’s because children, hired to scoot below the machinery to perform certain tasks, rebel against the long hours of exhausting labor, and the foremen don’t spare the rod.

J. M. W. Turner’s 1816 watercolor, Leeds (courtesy Yale Center for British Art, via Wikimedia Commons)

Since Simon himself just managed to escape that life and has two young boys of his own, the news of the deaths causes him sleepless nights. On one such, he goes for a walk and happens on a young man, throat cut and hand severed, being pulled from the river.

Despite Simon’s curiosity and principles, none of this need have anything to do with him. Leeds mill owners are beyond the law, for this is early nineteenth-century England, and money buys many things, including constables and magistrates. And Simon, though he’s investigated murders before, prefers to stick to thief-taking, a less dangerous, better-paying proposition — not to mention he’s recovering, slowly, from an illness for which a doctor friend has no name.

But when circumstances connect the boys’ deaths and that of the man pulled from the river — none too convincingly, I might add — Simon begins to probe all these crimes, hoping to find a measure of justice in a society where the word has little meaning. Before he’s done, many bodies will fall, mostly in hand-to-hand combat, of which The Blood Covenant provides many scenes. Leeds is one rough town, and if you wish to live out your portion of natural days, you’d best keep a well-sharpened knife in your pocket and know how to use it.

Nickson, the author of the excellent mystery series featuring the Leeds policeman Tom Harper, set toward the end of the century, has once again shown the gritty side of a cruel city. How people managed to live in that place back then makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. That the disenfranchised receive no protection from the law goes without saying. Further, Nickson reminds readers about the evils of the factory system, which remain with us, if in different forms, if in sweatshops overseas.

Nevertheless, though the first three installments in this series may deserve the name mystery — I haven’t read them — this fourth volume doesn’t. Few puzzles emerge demanding solution, or, to put it another way, every question has an answer easily obtainable by putting a coin in the proper palm. Rather, the narrative offers a progression of violent confrontations, as the evildoers will stop at nothing to have their way. That requires our hero to remain vigilant, constantly looking over his shoulder, and he must dig deeply into his resolve and skill. Consequently, given that framework and the public stakes of justice for those who never receive any, The Blood Covenant feels more like a thriller.

Mystery or thriller, the chief pleasure here, aside from the historical atmosphere, is the plot, which moves rapidly. The characters, though, seem flat to me, either all good or all bad, with one crucial exception — Jane, Simon’s friend and associate, whose street smarts, surveillance skills, and knife handling put his in the shade. A nice reversal, there, and Jane’s inner conflicts offer complexity too. Raped by her father at a young age, then pushed onto the street, she has a particular view of life that stands out in even this novel of death and heartbreak.

As for the storytelling, I prefer the Harper novels, though again, I admit that The Blood Covenant may be an outlier within its series. The narrative tells far more often than it shows, sometimes to state or repeat the obvious. The descriptions have little or no emotional resonance, precise though they may be in detail, as with this one, about a mill owner’s home:

It was a room to impress guests, decorated in the finest taste that money could purchase: a wallpaper of pale, comforting blue and white stripes, an oil painting of a naval battle hanging over the mantel, long-clock ticking soft and serene in the corner. The chairs were upholstered in deep blue velvet. A plush Turkey rug covered the polished floorboards. It was all understated, a dignified announcement that Arden had arrived, that he was respectably rich these days. It was exactly what people expected from a house in Park Square.

Nickson plainly has a cause, and a worthy one, about wealth perverting the law. The pages do turn easily, as you wonder how Simon will finesse or force his way past the barriers that keep getting placed in his path. But if you read The Blood Covenant, you may find the theme and story the most rewarding aspects of the novel.

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

Convent Under Siege: The Maiden of All Our Desires

20 Monday Jun 2022

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Review: The Maiden of All Our Desires, by Peter Manseau
Arcade, 2022. 327 pp. $27

Somewhere in midfourteenth-century England, the plague ravages the populace, as it does elsewhere in Europe. A remote convent, deliberately secluded to discourage visitors, secular or ecclesiastic, is under siege—from the threat of infection, yes, but two other forces as well. One is a snowstorm the like of which nobody can recall seeing, and which feels and looks apocalyptic. The third threat, perhaps the most serious, arrives from above in a different sense: The bishop, having heard rumors of heresy at the convent, is coming to investigate.

Nobody dares talk about the danger, and the abbess, Mother John (many of the nuns have taken masculine names, according to which religious figures inspire them), seems to deny any peril at all. But around her lurks the fear that wherever a bishop looks for heresy, he’ll find it. Moreover, he may not have far to look, for the convent, especially Mother John and those she influences most strongly, puts much faith in the sayings of the previous abbess, Ursula. For instance: “Birds see all but say nothing we can understand, which make them a perfect symbol of the divine.”

You see the problem here: Since when is a woman’s philosophy meaningful, particularly if it replaces standard (read: created by men) dogma? Mother John would object to the accusation of replacement, arguing that her beliefs coexist with those of the church. However, her outlook, though scrupulously devout, seems based on common sense — rather refreshing, if you ask me, and perhaps most modern readers would agree.

But nobody’s asking us, or anyone else, for the spirit of inquiry is precisely the problem. A good fourteenth-century Christian is supposed to obey, not think, let alone question. And the manuscripts of Ursula’s that Mother John refuses to get rid of could send her and many others to the stake.

Consequently, The Maiden of All Our Desires deals with where faith comes from, what it means, and how the earthly world gets in the way. The Department of Earthly Delights has its ambassador in Father Francis, the priest who hears the women’s confessions and performs other necessary sacraments, but who might have preferred to follow wood carving as a career, and who has known forbidden pleasures. That means he has secrets to keep and sins for which to atone.

A working water mill in Lyme Regis, UK. An ingenious mill wheel figures in the novel (courtesy Zephyris, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The novel purports to unfold over the course of one day, divided into the various prayer services–matins, lauds, prime, and so forth. Umberto Eco followed a similar framework in The Name of the Rose, though at greater length and with greater coherence. In Manseau’s novel, it’s not always immediately clear when events happen, the day of the snowstorm or in the past, but bet on the latter, and you’ll be right most often.

Back story rules, which can be difficult to sort out, but stay with it. There’s much here to enjoy. A different literary conceit, from the publisher (not the author), invokes Matrix and Hamnet, among other comparisons, which proves, once again, that the publicist’s favorite game provides the surest way to minimize in glibness each book’s essence or meaning. What else would you expect from a soundbite?

That said, having loved both those other books, I see a resemblance, though not because Matrix involves an abbess. It’s the tactile prose.

She reached out timidly to touch the crucifix, to be certain of what she saw. With two cracked, scratching fingers, her hands shaking like a bride’s, she moved down the leg from knee to ankle. The wood was cold and smooth, carved perfectly. She traced her fingers along the rounded line that joined the legs, and felt the angles that made its curve: numberless angles, like a tiny and perfect mountain range; peaks formed meticulously by a skilled hand and the finest of edges, undetectable by sight, but so apparent to the touch. She felt too the grain of the wood and the remnants of rings, the signature of the tree this once had been.

A typical passage, this. Throughout the novel, Manseau’s descriptions reveal inner life, setting, and conflict. It’s reason enough to read the book, but consider also the story, which, despite the occasionally confusing time frames, keeps you riveted and offers a satisfying ending. As for characters, Mother John and Ursula come through, but I would have liked more differentiation among the nuns, other than their petty rivalries.

Further, it’s curious how Father Francis commands an outsize presence in this community of women, though perhaps that results from the necessities of plot and the importance to it of earthly desire. Nevertheless, Manseau, curator of religion at the Smithsonian Institution, knows his ground thoroughly and has written a thought-provoking, engaging, and entertaining novel.

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

Starting Place: The School of Mirrors

13 Monday Jun 2022

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Review: The School of Mirrors, by Eva Stachniak
Morrow, 2022. 399 pp. $17

The year, 1755. Thirteen-year-old Véronique Roux lives in a squalid Paris apartment with her mother, who scratches out a living mending old clothes, and three younger brothers. One day, Maman tells Véronique she’s to go into service for a wealthy nobleman, and just like that, the girl’s shipped off to a splendid home a brief carriage ride from Versailles, where Louis XV holds court. Naturally, her mother receives certain financial considerations.

Told that her patron is a Polish nobleman attached to the court, Véronique is groomed for her upcoming service to him. She’s given plenty to eat; her skin and hair cleansed of lice and treated for various ailments common to poor children; she’s taught penmanship, posture, and comportment; to improve her singing and recitation; and, most important, instruction, religious and secular, stressing modesty, restraint, and obedience. In other words, qualities foreign to the French monarchy.

The emotions had to be controlled at all times. Anything vulgar had to be strictly avoided. Eating fast and too much, running, jumping, stomping our feet, shouting, cursing, showing either sadness or joy. ‘News of a death or a proposal of marriage… must be met with equal composure. Always smile, whether you are happy or not. Make your eyes sparkle, no matter what you are thinking of.’

Meanwhile, the narrative also recounts life within the palace at Versailles. In particular, we learn how the king, jaded and bored with his caged existence, longs for pleasures to lift his heart (and another part of his anatomy, which seems to rule his moods). He can’t stand dealing with matters of state, which include a war that’s going badly, so he spends as little time on these as possible. How droll.

Rather, everyone close to him, most especially his former mistress and closest advisor, Madame de Pompadour, do their best to divert him with gossip, prop up his flagging ego, and provide tender flesh to interest that other, significant part of him. Practically from the get-go, the reader understands what Véronique doesn’t: what her “service” will entail, and who her patron really is. She’s a bit dense for a Parisian girl, especially a beauty who’s endured advances from strange men and whose mother has all the tenderness of a brick, therefore the embodiment of hard lessons.

Charles André Van Loo’s portrait of Mme de Pompadour, née Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, ca. 1755 (courtesy Petit Trianon, Palace of Versailles, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Suffice to say that the “Polish nobleman” takes a shine to Véronique, and her subsequent pregnancy gets her expelled from paradise. Her child, Marie-Louise, is taken from her, while Véronique’s packed off to marry some grain merchant.

That I haven’t yet recounted the main premise of the novel tells you the major weakness of The School of Mirrors: The story really picks up steam seventeen years and 175 pages after it begins. Marie-Louise’s life in Paris, apprenticeship to a midwife, and ringside seat at the revolution and its excesses form the core of the book, and I like this part. So do we really need to know, in meticulous detail, how despicable the Bourbon monarchy was under the previous, fifteenth Louis?

Stachniak seems to want to reveal the precise depth of sexual abuse, misogyny, and moral corruption, and what a gruesome, ugly tale it is. I don’t think that justifies its presence, and I suspect that if you began reading at page 175, you’d understand almost everything you need to know to appreciate the novel. Well-chosen back story could have filled in the rest.

The first half of the book does offer a few noteworthy characters. I like the portrayals of the king, his chief procurer, and Madame de Pompadour. The descriptions give a vivid picture of court life — the author knows her ground — though I’d have liked them better had they struck an emotional chord. Some feel merely decorative, static.

But there’s no comparing with the second half of the book, where conflict spins more rapidly, and the revolutionaries turn out to be just as corrupt as the monarchy they toppled, if in their own way. Marie-Louise has more to her than her mother, and the narrative feels more intimate, therefore more compelling.

I wonder whether Stachniak has two novels here; she’s got two stories, certainly. Her desire to connect the two and derive surprise lacks the impact she may have hoped for, but that strategy’s apparently a trend, these days: try to shock the reader, at any cost to narrative flow or plausibility. At least the author doesn’t withhold information the way some do — she’s too generous for that — but I’ve never understood the fascination with connecting multiple disparate narratives. Seldom does it work out as intended in artistic terms, so it must sell books.

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

The Great American (Historical) Novel: The Scarlet Letter

06 Monday Jun 2022

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Review: The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Penguin, 2003. 228 pp. $8

Maybe you know the story, even if you’ve never read the novel. Hester Prynne, a woman of seventeenth-century Boston, must be punished for having borne a child out of wedlock. In this most Puritan community, she’s lucky to escape with her life; instead, she spends several months in prison, after which she must forever wear a scarlet letter A, announcing that she’s an adulteress.

The simplest of premises, you’d think, yet there’s nothing simple about this quintessential American moral tale, written in 1850. Hawthorne, descended from a judge at the Salem witch trials, an ancestry that shamed him and influenced his work and life, cuts surgically into the withered, envious soul of Puritanism and holds the stinking mess up to the light. (For those interested in a fictional account of the author’s life and struggle with his unwanted legacy, see Erika Robuck’s House of Hawthorne.)

It’s not just that the reader is meant to understand and sympathize with Hester, who’s actually a bit of a stubborn drip, at times. It’s that Hawthorne wants you to see the society that condemns her, a group of caviling hypocrites who may or may not lust for her but certainly do for the wealth and power they possess. Nobody escapes, Hawthorne says; there’s evil in all of us, and desires aplenty.

Mary Hallock Foote’s illustration of Hester and Pearl, from an 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

H.L. Mencken, writing more than a half-century after Hawthorne, quipped that Puritanism was “the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.” The Scarlet Letter bears witness, as even children’s play involves games of persecuting Quakers or attending church. Some leading elders assume that Hester’s daughter, Pearl, unable to answer a single question from the catechism at age three, may therefore be Satan’s handmaid. She is ungovernable, it’s true, and has a mean streak that pains her long-suffering mother. But she’s also a happy child, and nobody knows what to make of this.

Crucial too is how Hester wears her A, skillfully embroidered, perhaps pushing the bounds of everyday Puritan taste (though not of formal wear, curiously enough, especially among the rich and powerful). Consequently, the adulteress hides nothing, though she largely keeps to herself, because her every public appearance challenges her judges as to their righteousness and pretended sobriety of custom.

But, in Hawthorne’s world, sin must be spoken of, or else it eats away at everyone. The Scarlet Letter pays heed to the spiritual and emotional as though they were the same. To feel whole, the sinner must confess, so as to breathe freely; conversely, so as not to overstep the bounds of humility, the hearer must listen and withhold judgment. Desires are human, not particular to individuals. To Hawthorne’s seventeenth-century Boston, this idea was revolutionary — and in some ways, it still is, not in what American society says, but what it does.

Hawthorne’s style can take getting used to, even for readers accustomed to nineteenth-century literature. Not only does he tell, tell, tell, explaining damn near everything, he imbues the smallest moments with hard-working metaphorical swoop:

The mother’s impassioned state had been the medium through which were transmitted to the unborn infant the rays of its moral life; and, however white and clear originally, they had taken the deep stains of crimson and gold, the fiery lustre, the black shadow, and the untempered light, of the intervening substance. Above all, the warfare of Hester’s spirit, at that epoch, was perpetuated in Pearl. She could recognize her wild, desperate, defiant mood, the flightiness of her temper, and even some of the very cloud-shapes of gloom and despondency that had brooded in her heart. They were now illuminated by the morning radiance of a young child’s disposition, but, later in the day of earthly existence, might be prolific of the storm and whirlwind.

That style deserves consideration in its context, however. Hawthorne was countering the point of view that all wisdom and truth comes from God; he argues that humans can find truth anywhere if they look hard enough, particularly within themselves. The Scarlet Letter, published nine years before The Origin of Species, feels like kin to Darwin, though it has nothing to do with biology: Both works deal with the power of observation and its overriding importance. Hawthorne wants you to see his abstractions, as though the spiritual world inhabits the physical. Often, he succeeds.

Strange, but I had avoided reading The Scarlet Letter, and I’m not the type to shun the classics. As a high school sophomore, I transferred out of an English class, no mean trick, led by a teacher with whom I knew I’d quarrel, and who’d just begun discussing this novel. The teacher whose class I transferred into turned out to be a mentor, so I got the better deal–and swapped Hawthorne for Dostoyevsky, Huxley, Orwell, and Zamiatin besides. But I still didn’t let Hawthorne off the hook—there’s a Puritan in me too—and more than fifty years passed before I found out what Hester’s story has to offer.

Don’t make the mistake I made. At least take a look at The Scarlet Letter.

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

Trauma and Post-Trauma: Death at Greenway

30 Monday May 2022

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Review: Death at Greenway, by Lori Rader-Day
Morrow, 2021. 414 pp. $28

Bridget Kelly, a nineteen-year-old nurse-in-training, has been dismissed from a London hospital, probably an unusual occurrence to begin with. Worse, this is April 1941, wartime, and with nurses in such short supply, you just know Bridget must have messed up horribly. In her parting words, the nurse matron has harangued Bridget for coldness, arrogance, inability to concentrate, and more besides. Whew.

But Matron has given her one last chance: to accompany a group of young children to Devon, where they’re to be evacuated for the war’s duration, presumably safe from the bombs hitting London daily. The country house that will be their billet belongs to Agatha Christie, a fact of no consequence to Bridget, who doesn’t read stories — they hit her in the gut, literally.

Agatha Christie, Dame of the British Empire, in 1958; photo of a plaque (courtesy Torre Abbey.jpg: Violetriga, via Wikimedia Commons)

Rather, she’s wondering how to manage ten children, a chore that scares her, and for which she thinks she has no aptitude. Meanwhile, she’s reeling from the deaths of her mother and younger siblings from a German bomb, so the sight of any child can be dangerous for her.

When she first sets eyes on her charges-to-be at the train station, her heart sinks, because she has imagined older children, easier to care for:

The children were tots, baby fat in their knees below shorts and skirts, socks pulled up or sliding, shoes scuffed or untied. They had tags affixed to their coats and child-sized gas masks in paper cases and straps around their necks. They wore caps or hats or bonnets and flung them to the ground in a tantrum. Those who were carried by their mums kicked to be let down. Two were infants, dear God.

But Bridget has one hope, a fellow nurse to share the load — until that nurse, who claims also to be named Bridget Kelly, doesn’t seem to know the first thing about children, the human body, or caring for anyone else’s needs. For that matter, as Bridget discovers, few people or things she runs across are as they seem. No sooner have they arrived in Devon than she has her doubts about the house staff, the people leading the evacuation, and the local characters, whose intense suspicion of outsiders may have a darker side.

Her skepticism is often warranted, but as Matron’s criticisms ring repeatedly in her ears, you begin to wonder just what was going on there. For instance, is Bridget really arrogant? Hardly; she’s too self-effacing by half. She only seems withdrawn, because when circumstances call for intense emotion, her post-traumatic stress kicks in, manifesting itself as the aforementioned hits to the gut. And that, of course, she can’t reveal.

But that’s only for starters. As she tries to settle in, an intruder or two stalks the property, precious food supplies go missing, and, eventually, a dead body washes up on shore. Connected events, or coincidental?

Mysteries and thrillers generally go by the moniker of plot-driven, but not Death at Greenway. This one’s character all the way, and it’s masterful. You get the nurses, the staff, the neighbors, the atmosphere, the house, the PTSD, and they all move the story. Aside from Bridget and her nursing colleague, I single out the local doctor, who’s too handsome by half and sensitive to feelings but somehow off, and an artist living on the property who’s got a battleship-sized sense of entitlement.

Rader-Day peels back layer upon layer of mystery, misunderstanding, and “no — and furthermore.” If the narrative proceeds more gradually than in other mysteries — the dead body, for instance, doesn’t show up until page 115 – the tension nevertheless keeps you riveted.

How? The author shows you Bridget beneath the skin and the fear, isolation, and resentment everyone breathes with each inhalation, which marks them and makes for potent drama. I admire that kind of storytelling, which doesn’t need a man with a gun to raise the stakes. This narrative may seem “quiet” for a mystery, to use a publishing buzzword that no two people define the same way. Gentle reader, don’t be deterred.

I’ve also never read as gripping or accurate a description of post-traumatic stress, unless it was in Daniel Mason’s fine novel, The Winter Soldier — and he’s a psychiatrist. Moreover, Rader-Day captures the underside of Britain’s so-called finest hour, portraying less-than-heroic behaviors, reminiscent of Lissa Evans’s novels, though without the irony or humor. Here in Devon, they’re playing for keeps.

For those who like Agatha Christie — I don’t particularly — the setting will appeal as well. And just in case you’re thinking from what I’ve said that the mystery must take second place to the characterization and somehow muddle its way through, let me assure you that the plot goes through as many twists and turns as the seaside Devon roadways.

Death at Greenway is a fine mystery and a brilliant re-creation of the British home front, worth your time in both respects.

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