Tag Archives: 1914

Love and Murder: Death of a Showman

19 Monday Jul 2021

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Review: Death of a Showman, by Mariah Fredericks
Minotaur, 2021. 276 pp. $27

Jane Prescott, lady’s maid to wealthy socialite Mrs. Louise Tyler, has just returned from an exhausting trip to Europe in June 1914, during which they attended a wedding. Much to Jane’s dismay, the pros and cons of marriage are on her mind, considering that Leo Hirschfeld, a musician who might or might not have been courting her the previous summer, has married, after insisting he wouldn’t. Then too, the Tylers seem, well, maybe not unhappy with each other, but out of sorts. Bored, maybe.

No boredom allowed when Leo invites Mrs. Tyler to a rehearsal of a ragtime musical for which he’s written the score, and whose cast so happens to include his new bride. Mrs. Tyler has no idea she’s being cultivated as a potential investor in the show. But Jane, who wasn’t born yesterday, realizes that the flirtatious Leo, who can’t abide the idea that someone might resent him, especially if she has every reason to, hopes to get back into her good graces.

Naturally, she has no intention of joining Mrs. Tyler at the theater; just as obviously, she must, because her employer needs a chaperone, and Louise relies on her. Further, you know that one visit won’t be enough, so Mrs. Tyler begins regularly attending rehearsals, while Jane works backstage. She also has to sit through watching Leo’s better half, a voluptuous airhead whose only talent seems to be walking downstairs in a suggestive way. Mrs. Tyler really has no idea how much Jane puts up with for her sake.

Readers familiar with the Jane Prescott mystery series know that someone will soon wind up dead, and Jane will solve the crime. You don’t need a crystal ball (or the jacket flap) to guess that the victim will be Sidney Warburton, the show’s producer. A ruthless, exploitive tyrant who takes pride in seducing other men’s wives, Warburton gets shot in a bathroom stall at Rector’s restaurant during a cast party.

This backdrop may sound familiar for a mystery, but Fredericks makes it her own. Warburton’s not a pure monster; he’s helped many people, given them a chance in a cutthroat theatrical world. Not only does his generosity, however self-interested, flesh him out, it complicates the question of motive. Though just about every member of cast and crew has suffered his vitriol and humiliating behavior, he’s also their bread and butter; even, in cases, their rescuer.

For decades, David Belasco was the high priest of the American theater, complete with clerical collar, his trademark. (1909, unattributed; courtesy J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs, University of Washington, Seattle, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Moreover, Fredericks knows her historical and theatrical ground, whether we’re talking about what the theater district looked like in 1914, or what went on there. To this theater historian and lifelong devotee, she’s conjured up what makes actors tick, the glamour and what lies behind it, and an unsophisticated public’s fear (and admiration) of the theater as institution and lifestyle. Several characters’ names or reputations evoke stars from the era. For those readers familiar with that theatrical age, see if you recognize a hint of David Belasco, a hack producer/director and playwright but technological innovator, in this description of Warburton’s theater:

Only seven years old, the Sidney Theater was equipped with the most modern advances — hydraulics, a lighting board, and set workshops on the lower floors with an elevator to carry the results up to the stage — as well as the most lavish of interior design. Its creator had said he wanted the audience to feel as if they were in someone’s home, and so they might, if that someone were a Vanderbilt. Glossy oak paneling shone as red-brown as a setter’s coat, alongside Tiffany stained glass and murals of the more titillating Greek myths.

I like Fredericks’s re-creation of Rector’s (a real place) and the cast-party murder scene, in which the killer must be present, yet plausibly escapes notice. It’s a clever blend of two mystery traditions, the locked room and the clue in plain sight. For further depth, always welcome, the author explores whether love is what it looks like, and whether you can separate it from physical passion. Along the way, the dialogue crackles with wit — I don’t recall laughing as much reading the other Jane Prescott mysteries — as you might expect from theater folk.

Accordingly, Fredericks has loosened Jane’s corset a notch, and though that makes sense for the story, I stumbled over that, remembering her from previous episodes as a more cautious, demure woman of her time. Another significant character reveals a different sort of shift, which feels contrived — a rare slip for the author. The unnecessary, perhaps deliberately misleading, prologue is at least short enough not to annoy too much. And though the narrative includes the approach of the European war, which makes sense, the mixture doesn’t always flow smoothly, nor are the details always historically accurate.

But Death of a Showman remains a delicious, poignant treat, and I highly recommend it.

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

Tormented Souls: The White Feather Killer

30 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: The White Feather Killer, by R. N. Morris
Severn, 2019. 284 pp. $29

Like many young men in London in summer 1914, Felix Simpkins feels the tug to serve king and country by enlisting in the crusade against the Germans. It would be the only individual act Felix can think of, the sole rebellious gesture against his emasculating mother (and typically self-defeating), but he can’t quite bring himself to, which flattens his self-esteem even further and risks public shame. For in these mad days when the populace has become intoxicated by jingoism and xenophobia, women of patriotic temperament press white feathers, a sign of cowardice, into the hands of physically fit men not in uniform.

Edgar J. Kealey’s 1915 recruiting poster contrasts the feminine softness within the window and the hard masculinity outside–and manipulates men and women both (courtesy British Library)

Meanwhile, Detective Chief Inspector Silas Quinn of Scotland Yard feels unsettled too, for other reasons. He’s just returned from psychological sick leave, which has further damaged his reputation among police officers of all ranks, many of whom resent him for his brilliance as a detective, his independent methods, and his insistence on truth rather than convenience. Apparently, the resentment goes right to the top, for Quinn has been relieved from command of a special crimes unit and been relegated to a pen-pushing job in which no one need pay attention to him, except to note his lapses.

Military security now requires keen focus on enemies within. Guilt no longer matters. If a crime takes place, arrest someone of German lineage, connections, or alleged sympathies. Justice will be served, and the public, placated. Naturally, this directive rubs Quinn the wrong way. And when he hears that a minister’s daughter has been killed shortly after a patriotic meeting at her father’s church — at which women collected white feathers to hand out — he itches to solve the case. But he’s forbidden to; and the men who’ve supplanted him are watching, waiting for him to step out of line.

Morris excels at characterization, historical atmosphere, the requisite “no — and furthermore,” and the craft of whodunit, with which he keeps you guessing until the end. So many scenes in his novel start out one way and shoot off unexpectedly in another, the essence of tension, because something touches a nerve in his legion of fragile people. Some readers may find these tortured souls off-putting, and I admit, the near-universal willingness to abuse others creates a bleak mood. But the rewards here are many, not least an unvarnished portrayal of police work in 1914, and a similar depiction of a great metropolis straining at its bounds. The famous English credo of decency and fair play seldom applies; that’s an ideal, existing mostly in Quinn’s mind and nowhere else. But with one notable exception, Morris lets his flawed people strive for connection, which shows their fullness and lets you feel for them.

Exhibit A here is Quinn, who’s difficult in his way, though not cruel. He’d like to unburden himself if he could, and his impulses are decent and generous, but he can’t always express them. A psychologically minded detective among colleagues for whom perception and deduction are blunt instruments, he comes across to them as cocksure, even arrogant, yet inside, he’s anything but. Whether it’s his halting overtures to a pretty police secretary or his reluctance to return to the house of a former landlady who realizes he needs care, Quinn makes an unusual male detective, vulnerable and cerebral at once.

The White Feather Killer also conveys London in war fever, whether it’s spy mania or naked anxiety about the adventure that has just begun:

The world had suddenly become a dangerous and uncertain place. A drastic shift in perspective had brought Death into the foreground; the dim figure on the horizon, drifting in and out of sight, had become an insistent, looming presence, so close its stinking, clammy breath could be felt on the back of the neck. Sons and brothers, husbands and fathers, in answering the call to the colours, had brought this dark stranger into the family.

Morris allows himself deeper, more rounded descriptions and motivations than many mystery writers, yet you never feel disconnected or impatient with the narrative. Quite the contrary; I wish more mystery writers trusted themselves (and their readers) to write like this. My only complaint centers on Coddington, Quinn’s nemesis within the police; he’s the notable exception to the generosity granted the other characters. The psychological portrait remains blurry, so I don’t know much about Coddington, except that he’s unreasonably jealous and pigheaded.

The White Feather Killer delivers a terrific story with fully realized characters and an authentic historical background, depicted with precise care. Bravo.

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

Blame the Woman: No Small Shame

17 Monday Aug 2020

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Review: No Small Shame, by Christine Bell
Impact, 2020. 396 pp. AU $33

When fifteen-year-old Mary O’Donnell emigrates from Scotland to Australia in 1914, besides the promise of a more prosperous life, she’s hoping to taste a thin wedge of freedom, like a good pie — and to be reunited with her childhood crush, Liam Merrilees. But there’s precious little money waiting in this sparse landscape for Mary or her family, Further, Liam has lost the fire in his eyes, though not his self-involvement. When he’s not being outright brutal toward Mary, he shows absolutely no interest in her, but she’s the only one who can’t see it. She’s used to being kicked. Mary’s mother has bruised her all her life, and not just emotionally; daughter accepts this as her lot.

From this premise, you can predict where the narrative will go most of the time. You know that Mary won’t give up on Liam, that mother will never stop ripping into her, and that vile prophecies will bear fruit, evoking more than one trope. Yet the novel works, more or less, because Mary struggles to slip between the Catholic hellfire her mother has taught her to fear and the life she’s dreamed of leading. Her awakening from masochism won’t happen overnight, nor will the world spin any differently for it, but Mary’s interior journey is far less ordained than her exterior one.

The background fits too. First World War Australia, though distant from both Gallipoli and the Western Front, where its volunteers have gone, has its own battlegrounds, starting with that word volunteer. The country has no conscription, but the number of white feathers handed out to able-bodied men not in uniform, based on the grotesque assumption that real men never shirk a fight, takes a heavy emotional toll, on Liam as on others. The lengthy casualty lists don’t seem to make a dent, either; if some men have been slaughtered, it’s up to the rest to avenge them, even if nobody really knows concretely what the war’s about. Throw in wartime price inflation, the wages that haven’t kept pace, and strife between Catholic and Protestant, you’ve got quite a vortex of problems. Incidentally, Mary’s mother relishes the religious conflict, in her perverse way. She’s a piece of work.

I like this aspect of No Small Shame, the everyday burdens that twist life in ways that no one could have imagined when the trumpets sounded. Not least are the burdens that women bear, silently and without question, for it’s their job to make sure their men are happy and feel supported, no matter what sacrifice that entails. And you guessed it: Mary takes the brunt, though she’s not alone.

Bell’s prose is simple yet effective, as with Mary’s first glimpse of her new home:

Where were the fabulous fields and plump livestock waiting for lads and farmers promised by the immigration agent in Motherwell offering assisted passages to sunny Australia? All Mary could see extending beyond the train windows was blade after blade of grass bleached colourless as sand in a desert. The poor animals in the endless paddocks were without a leaf of shade or drip of water. She couldn’t guess how any of them survived.

Less convincing, I find, are the characterizations. Maw, her mother, is well drawn. As for Mary, it’s not easy to portray a slow transformation to selfhood, and Bell succeeds, mostly, barring shaky instances that don’t quite make sense to me. Liam, though predictable, has edges. He’s never learned to move past self-pity or reckon with who he is, and though he wants to do better, he can’t. Unfortunately, the reader knows what Mary doesn’t, that he’ll never change. I wish Bell hadn’t tried to redeem him, which I don’t believe, and which I think actually demeans his stature, renders him less tragic.

The children in these pages are idealized, not like any I’ve ever met. Ditto Tom, a Protestant friend of Mary’s who holds a candle for her, which she’s remarkably slow to recognize. He’s a nice guy and treats her kindly, but he’s cardboard, and since he’s crucial to the story, his opacity hurts the narrative. As a man with a medical condition that prevents him from enlisting, he embodies the shame men feel, just as Mary represents women that way. That’s not enough.

Nevertheless, despite these objections, I should point out how unusual No Small Shame is among First World War novels with a female protagonist, a narrow field to begin with. Mary’s neither nurse nor bandage roller nor factory worker nor her country’s soul, keeping the home fires burning. I like that. For that reason, you may find this novel worth reading.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the author through my work for Historical Novels Review, in which this post appeared in shorter, different form.

Dreams of Freedom: The Parisian

27 Monday Jan 2020

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Review: The Parisian, by Isabella Hammad
Grove, 2019. 551 pp. $27

In 1914, young Midhat Kamal leaves Constantinople, where he’s graduated from a French lycée, for Montpellier, France, to study medicine. The relocation has two objects: to keep Midhat from being conscripted into the Ottoman army, therefore safe from the world war; and to become someone of whom his father can be proud. Father will demand his reckoning, that’s certain, for he’s a wealthy cloth merchant from Nablus, Ottoman Palestine, and a firm believer in traditional, hierarchical values.

Midhat, however, doesn’t quite see his father’s tyranny, despite having suffered from it his entire life. Such thoughts are unthinkable. But once in France, everything is thinkable, even sayable, often doable, and Midhat’s inner romantic flowers like a tree blooming in the desert. He falls in love with Jeanette, the daughter of the professor who offers him room and board, and maybe she returns his feelings. Subsequently, he goes to Paris, where he continues his studies, talks politics with Palestinian nationalists, and becomes a dandy and a seducer.

However, his inevitable return to Nablus shocks him to the core, and as he dutifully tries to reconstruct his life according to the traditions he’s been taught, he mourns his lost freedom, even as he makes the best of his circumstances. That’s what a man must do, he decides, fulfill his role as a proper son and heir to the family business.

Midhat’s inner struggle mirrors that of the Palestinian fight for independence. Hammad shows how his trust in French values gets crushed by colonial realities. But she also portrays the nationalists falling prey to rigid codes of honor that lead to self-destruction, when “flexibility,” as one broader-minded politician remarks, would be saner. So it is that telling one man’s fictional story depicts history.

Nevertheless, this brilliant, impressive novel — a debut, no less — almost sinks in the first hundred and fifty pages. The Montpellier narrative develops slowly, and Midhat’s character seems maddeningly concrete and restrained. To be fair, that’s culturally appropriate, and Hammad does a terrific job portraying her protagonist’s confusion as to language, customs, and behavior, suffering with an obsessive, overdeveloped sense of what people must think of him. Every failure, whether or not it really is a failure, feels like dishonor to Midhat. Still, though you understand why — especially in retrospect, which means those first hundred and fifty pages can feel like wandering — you want the young man to let looser within himself, even if no one else sees it.

But if you read The Parisian, which I highly recommend, don’t sink with the narrative. Tread water, and you’ll be rewarded. Once our hero connects with politics, then returns to Nablus, his character opens. Don’t be put off by the untranslated Arabic, usually honorifics or exclamations, which you don’t need to understand, nor the occasional French phrase. The plot, though simple, wields a very sharp blade, and I defy you to put the novel aside.

Palestinian women march against the British Mandate, Jerusalem, 1930; photographer unknown. The sign urges “no negotiations, no dialogue” until the Mandate ends (courtesy British Mandate Jerusalemites Photo Library, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Ninety-nine percent of jacket blurbs are fluff and nonsense, but here’s an exception — Zadie Smith astutely remarks that Hammad has written in the tradition of Flaubert and Stendhal. Though I’m not yet ready to place Hammad on that exalted shelf, I see the comparison, visible in the filigree approach to the characters’ interactions as well as the prose, as in this scene with Jeanette in Montpellier:

A strong red blush started at her chest and covered her face. It was Midhat’s turn to look at the garden. He wanted to give her privacy, but he was also waiting for the grin to subside from his own cheeks. Outside, the clouds turned the grass grey, and the tree at the far end was animated with wind. When he looked back, Jeanette was still red, staring at her lap. Neither of them said anything. Something in Midhat’s chest began leaping wildly about as a fly zoomed into the silence and browsed the coffee things. Together they watched the fly inspecting the corner of a sugar cube, and then sitting on the silver rim, rubbing its hands together. He made a decision to look at her again. He found, to his amazement, that he was unable.

Also like the two nineteenth-century masters, Hammad has written a biography of one character standing for a time and place — think of Emma Bovary, Julien Sorel in Red and Black, or Fabrizio del Dongo in The Charterhouse of Parma. (If you don’t know these novels, grab a glass of wine, a comfortable chair, and dig in.) This is the most successful kind of biographical novel, I think, true to history yet unconstrained by having to set down the complete historical record, which doesn’t always squeeze into a fictional frame. Another similarity is that all three protagonists, like Midhat, have been educated in romantic ideals, which leave them unprepared for the cruelties of real life.

But perhaps the most compelling aspect of The Parisian, as with these predecessors, is Hammad’s authority as a storyteller: This is how it happened.

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

Two Shot: The Girls in the Picture

20 Monday Jan 2020

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Review: The Girls in the Picture, by Melanie Benjamin
Delacorte, 2018. 415 pp. $28

When would-be artist Frances Marion flees San Francisco for Los Angeles in 1914, the last thing she anticipates is falling in with the crowd of hopefuls knocking on the doors of those who produce “flickers,” as movies are popularly called. But Frances catches the bug too, and in a great stroke of luck, gains an introduction to Mary Pickford, the most beloved actress in America, who also has artistic control over her films. Luckier still, Mary and Frances take to one another on sight, and a famous partnership begins. With Marion as her screenwriter, Pickford will go on to even more dazzling heights, playing young girls in her famous blond curls and rosebud lips.

Director Marshall Neilan (far left), star Mary Pickford, screenwriter Frances Marion, September 1917, photographer unknown (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

Frances’s first look at Hollywood may be idealized, but it sets the stage for what follows:

Far from being a barren cow town, the place seemed drenched in color, crimson and gold and purple and white flowers spilling out of every window box, embracing every streetlamp. I couldn’t stop gazing at the tall pepper trees, with their languid, lacy green leaves dripping with clusters of red berries, providing much-needed shade from a sun that rarely found a cloud behind which to hide — something this native San Franciscan thought she would never find tiresome. Orange groves dominated the mountainous landscape that sloped to the beckoning sea, the air so perfumed that I immediately craved the sweet, tangy fruit that I’d never really cared for before.

Naturally, La-La Land can’t remain milk and honey forever, with such large egos, salaries, and audiences in which to bask. And that is by no means the whole picture. As women at the peaks of their respective professions, Pickford and Marion become easy targets for jealousy and slander, with others waiting — hoping — for their fall, men in particular. The two friends often talk about such conniving men and vow they’ll never let a man come between them. Famous last words.

However, it’s not just the man-child Douglas Fairbanks who splits the friendship when he marries Mary, and whose powers of jealous manipulation know no limit. Within a few years, the advent of talkies overturns the silent screen, casting out those performers who can’t cope in the new medium (or are perceived incapable of it). Further, as producers consolidate their power—and the industry—they retain artistic control and subjugate their hired talent, women especially.

This history both enlivens The Girls in the Picture and undoes it. I like the behind-the-scenes action that describes how movies are made, for both the silent and sound eras. I’m also glad to learn how the studio system today got its start, and the how its rampant sexism has very old roots. But these events and themes, significant though they are, fail here to make a novel.

The narrative, though talky enough, rests on simplistic characterizations that bounce between two poles instead of bumping up against edges. In almost any scene, the reader may ask, will Mary be the girl who never had a proper childhood, and who grasps at her popularity to prop her up? Or will the generous, sensitive adult shine through for her friend Frances, with whom she shares an artistic outlook and ardent feminist sensibilities? As facts and viewpoints repeat themselves, the conflict plays out from A to B and back.

The story also seems too simple. Love happens at first sight, and so does hatred. Conflict lasts a few paragraphs, and just when you think, Now, we’re getting somewhere, the rift resolves somehow. Benjamin offers the “no,” but not the “furthermore,” maybe because the story must move on to the next script, the next year. Round about page 260, the threat that Fairbanks poses to the women’s friendship emerges, and for a while, the trouble percolates and deepens. But for some reason, Frances, who’s capable of holding her own with just about anybody, can never manage with Mary. Benjamin, who says that she has made up all the dialogue, seems unable to let her stars go.

Some of these problems may have to do with biographical fiction and its constraints, but there are other, more successful approaches to Hollywood, as with The Chaperone, about Louise Brooks, a lesser silent film star. The Girls in the Picture aspires to a more panoramic view, which is fine; in a different framework, that might work. But despite a large cast, this novel stays a two shot, Pickford and Marion, which poses limits, and their long internal monologues feel predictable and repetitive, especially Pickford’s. As for color, the cameos the jacket promises are similarly flat, except for that of the entirely self-absorbed lech, Louis B. Mayer.

The Girls in the Picture has whetted my interest in reading about early Hollywood history, so I’ll say that. If that’s what you’re looking for, maybe this book is for you; but I can’t recommend it as a novel.

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

Class Conflict: The Summer Before the War

28 Monday Aug 2017

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Review: The Summer Before the War, by Helen Simonson
Random House, 2017. 479 pp. $28

That last, idyllic English summer of 1914, Hugh Grange, a young medical student, has come to rural Sussex to visit his beloved Aunt Agatha and Uncle John. As the protegé of a famous surgeon who has all but invited him to marry his pretty daughter, Hugh may be forgiven for thinking he has the world on a string. However, two obstacles emerge to his plans.

Obviously, one is the coming conflict, of which just about everyone remains blithely ignorant in this lovely town of Rye. The other is Beatrice Nash, a young woman hired to teach Latin at the Rye grammar school, a subject traditionally a male preserve. She owes her job to Aunt Agatha, a closet feminist but no “suffragette,” who has politicked, plotted, and flattered to get the old-boy network to accept her protegée. Beatrice is intellectual, serious, and a freethinker–much like Hugh–whereas the surgeon’s daughter is a flirt, a twit, and a social climber. So there’s even less doubt whom he’ll prefer than what’s about to happen to Europe.

That predictability plagues much of The Summer Before the War. Simonson sets her battle lines right away, so that you can tell the good guys from the bad guys, or, when there’s less question of good versus bad, who’ll survive and who won’t. Her upper-class characters are completely detestable, but they’re stick figures, mere attitudes on two legs, and therefore easy targets. To cast doubt on what seems ordained, Simonson employs the “no–and futhermore,” often with skill, but toward the end especially, the story feels contrived and resolutions too neat. It doesn’t help that the novel has one or two superfluous subplots.

But to give The Summer Before the War the credit it deserves, Simonson has a knack for social conflict, and she portrays the pecking order of Rye with wit and verve. The never-ending battle against small-mindedness, gossips, sexism, and class snobbery consumes much energy in these pages, and the repartée between Hugh and his rakish cousin, Daniel, makes fun reading. (It’s a bit surprising how neither young man seems to have a home other than that of their aunt and uncle, but I’m glad they don’t.)

Rye Grammar School, which last held classes in 1907, as it appeared in 2010 (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Beatrice’s struggles are more compelling. She has to play the upright spinster so that the school worthies will hire her, because only a young woman of irreproachable character may come in contact with impressionable youth. Meanwhile, of course, said worthies have nothing but contempt for these lower-class children and would never lift a finger to help them, whereas Beatrice actually believes she can bring light into their lives. Further, having catered to a domineering, scholarly father who has recently died, Beatrice should, in theory, have her meager inheritance, but (male) trustees prevent her from touching it. They, and others, assume that a “girl” of twenty-three can’t be independent without losing her virtue, a criticism that extends to her desire to write books. These are the parts of The Summer Before the War that I like best.

But I like the humor too. Consider this description of an oak-paneled anteroom:

. . . between two large windows, an imposing, green malachite bust of Cromwell on a matching plinth so floridly carved with vines and flowers that Cromwell himself would surely have had it destroyed. Hugh was not familiar with any connection of the Earl North family to Cromwell. Perhaps, he thought, there was none and that was why the ugly heirloom had been consigned to oaken purgatory to intimidate unwanted guests.

The Summer Before the War unfolds at a leisurely pace, for the most part. I don’t mind that, and I regret that so few authors these days tell stories that way; they probably figure their readers won’t have the patience. They may be right, but I don’t think length is the problem. It’s depth. We That Are Left and A Gentleman in Moscow, for instance, succeed by showing their characters’ inner lives so thoroughly that I don’t care how many pages go by. Conversely, when Simonson narrates an intricate story with half-full characters whose inner lives she tells in shorthand (“he felt such-and-such”), that’s when I become conscious of page numbers.

I don’t mean to blame Simonson or single her out; I happened to read her at a moment when I’m redefining my standards. Many, if not most, novelists follow some version of what she does, which for me these days means that I can borrow a stack of promising books from the library and find only one or two that intrigue me past the opening pages. The Summer Before the War would have pleased me more had the author plumbed her main subject and characters to the greater depth.

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

South African Tragedy: Who Killed Piet Barol?

17 Monday Apr 2017

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Review: Who Killed Piet Barol?, by Richard Mason
Knopf, 2016. 362 pp. $28

Despite the title, this remarkable novel is no whodunit, unless you take the death implied in the title as a more symbolic accusation, in which case we’re all guilty.

Now that I’ve confused you thoroughly, let me explain. Piet Barol, last seen in The History of a Pleasure Seeker making his way in Amsterdam through roguish charm, has broadened his horizons and his debts. Styling himself a French viscount, he’s living large in Cape Town with his American wife, Stacey, a former opera singer blessed with charm and diplomatic cunning more than equal to his own. But the Barols’ furniture business is failing, partly because Piet can’t bring himself to collect what he’s owed, but mostly because they spend money they don’t have to keep up appearances. Things look desperate, especially as the year is 1914, and Europe plunges into war, which puts Piet in a bind. Had he represented himself truthfully from the get-go as a Dutch national, he’d be in the clear, since the Netherlands remains neutral. But as a French aristocrat, surely he should be fighting for la patrie?

The South African Native National Congress delegation to the British Parliament in 1914 tried unsuccessfully to reverse colonial land policy (courtesy historywiz.com)

So it’s altogether convenient that he disappear for awhile, and when he hears that there’s a forest full of high-quality wood available for the taking, he sees how he can restart his furniture business with practically no overhead. However, to find the wood and remove it, he must hire two Xhosa men, Luvo and Ntsina; and therein hangs a tale.

First of all, this is no ordinary forest, but one dating from the time of Jesus, fecund in its density:

The grove was almost a single being, so bound were its member trees to one another, and yet each was wholly individual. They had grown together from saplings and forged a union without conflict, free from betrayal and viciousness. In their crowns were gardens of fertile soil, several inches deep, dropped over centuries by passing birds. In these gardens earthworms wriggled, grown distinct from those that churned the forest floor. Their branches began thirty feet above the ground, and this refuge from predators made them desirable residences for all sorts of creatures that relished distance from the great cats.

The forest represents a society of interdependence, in other words, a metaphor for that which white colonists have set about destroying among the Bantu peoples whose land they have stolen. More specifically, the noblest trees serve a religious purpose for the Xhosa, who believe their ancestors reside within them, whereas Piet doesn’t even know that the trunks are as old as Christianity.

But Mason, who managed to make Piet a sympathetic character as an Amsterdam imposter, does so here as well. Not only does Piet befriend Luvo and Ntsina in a true sense and grow to trust them, he lets himself see things from their perspective and corrects his behavior accordingly. He also entrusts his young son, Arthur, to them so that the boy can learn the ways of the forest, which Piet correctly judges will help him grow into a man. That said, Piet nevertheless sets out to take the Ancestor Trees, and though he fully intends to compensate Ntsina and Luvo for the loss, he’s a plunderer. And his failure to stand up to Stacey, especially where his African associates are concerned, makes him a weakling.

Then again, the degree to which he comes to love and understand life in the wild frees him from many prejudices. It also releases the artist in him, so that the furniture he carves adopts African themes and is absolutely gorgeous. Morever, Mason takes care to show the village politics among the Xhosa, many of whom, in their own way, are just as rapacious as the colonials.

But in the end, you know that all this will go wrong, that the scale of destruction the white men wreak will be far greater than that of the black, and that only one side will profit. That systematic destruction answers the question of the title, and that’s why I said we’re all guilty for condoning or participating in the crime. But how Mason arrives at this conclusion makes a fine tale, and that he renders the Xhosa in ways that ring true is no accident. For a year, he lived among them in a tent, learning their language and culture, and establishing a center for green farming. Who Killed Piet Barol? is a worthy result, a wide-ranging discussion of morals and racial tensions, and a pretty good yarn besides.

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

The End of an Era: The Passing Bells

02 Monday Nov 2015

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Review: The Passing Bells, by Phillip Rock
Morrow, 1978. 516 pp. $16

As my regular readers have probably figured out by now, I seldom pick up a family saga. Normally, when I scan the library shelves for historical fiction, I avoid those novels whose jacket illustration shows a beautiful woman standing in front of a magnificent ancestral home. Not that I have anything against such novels; I simply sense that they weren’t written with me in mind.

However, The Passing Bells is about the First World War, my historical specialty and favorite subject as a novelist. I’ve also read that the late Phillip Rock knew his stuff, and that he chose his title from the first line of Wilfred Owen’s “Anthem for Doomed Youth” suggests as much. So I gave the book a shot.

Heaton Hall, Manchester, England (Courtesy PublicDomainPictures.net).

Heaton Hall, Manchester, England (Courtesy Public DomainPictures.net).

There’s a lot to like about The Passing Bells, the first novel of a trilogy. Rock indeed portrays the England of 1914 and after with a keen grasp of history, issues, and, most visibly in this book, social prejudices. The Grevilles of Abingdon Pryory, an earldom created in Tudor times, wear their superiority like their perfectly tailored formal clothes and need not reflect on their values, outlook, way of life, or how they treat others. In other words, they’re absolutely insufferable and likely to remain so.

Rock’s narrative argues that the Greville mindset typifies what holds England back from political, social, or scientific progress. Come the war, this thinking is particularly disastrous, for its aristocratic purveyors see nothing wrong with sending legions of Britons to the ugliest deaths imaginable so long as the enemy pays a commensurate price. The old trope that the men who fought that war were lions led by donkeys is on display here, to potent effect. You see it not only at Gallipoli and the Somme, but among staff officers safely in England or behind the lines in France. Rock’s war is that of self-inflicted wounds, hopeless attacks, and overwhelmed aid stations; the nursing scenes are particularly gripping and true to life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. As the novel opens in the late spring of 1914, Martin Rilke, Lady Greville’s journalist nephew from Chicago, visits Abingdon Pryory before setting out on a brief Continental tour, reporter’s notebook in hand. He’s warm, open, loud, and very badly dressed, just what you’d expect an American to be, swimming in a sea of blue-bloods. Martin’s also got more on his mind than the subject that transfixes everyone else: who’s going to marry which spoiled, gorgeous, young woman, and whether the stuffy, old earl will allow the match. (It’s telling, though, that Martin’s eye immediately falls on a pretty housemaid, newly hired and worried about losing her job; apparently, she’s got too much character to transform herself into the liveried robot her station requires.)

Over the coming weeks, war draws closer, and life as the Grevilles know it is about to end. Nobody can say exactly what’s in the air, but in London, Martin senses it:

It appeared to Martin that the streets of the city never emptied. . . .Perhaps it was no more than the unusually hot weather that drove people, mainly young men, from their rooms and set them to wandering in restless bands through the West End. The groups were orderly–excessively polite, as a matter of fact–and the police were not concerned. It was almost Bank Holiday time and a certain anticipatory excitement was normal. And yet, somehow, this behavior could not be explained that easily.

What I don’t like about The Passing Bells is the two-dimensional characterizations. Only a handful of a large cast show any depth, and only two or three can be said to have inner lives. Martin’s a very nice guy, but once he corrects his wardrobe, he’s got no flaws to speak of. The earl’s attitudes ring shudderingly true, but there’s little humanity to him, even when he knows nobody’s watching. His daughter, Alexandra, remains a ravishingly beautiful twit until she becomes a nurse, but that takes half the book; ditto the dashing Coldstream Guards captain who acquires substance (and a conscience) only after he sees combat.

As a consequence, it’s hard to care about these people. But The Passing Bells does depict the time very well.

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

A Century Old, Yet Still New: The Fall of the Ottomans

25 Thursday Jun 2015

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Review: The Fall of the Ottomans: The Great War in the Middle East, by Eugene Rogan
Basic, 2015. 485 pp. $32
Not everyone will be interested in how and why the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War, and what resulted, but maybe they should be. Pick any current headline about that region, and you’ll find its roots in Rogan’s narrative, whether it’s Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide, machinations over Iraqi oil, or the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Of the four imperial thrones that the war toppled, Westerners probably know least about the Ottomans. (The other three were Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia.) Turkey, having fought two revolutions and three wars between 1908 and 1914, needed peace desperately. By playing the Russians off against the Germans, Turkish diplomats adeptly sought promises that would allow their country to remain neutral. But hawks who feared that their empire would break apart unless Turkey backed the winning side, successfully pushed to join the Central Powers.

You have to wonder how history might have played out had Turkey stayed neutral. What, for instance, would have happened to Palestine and the oil-producing regions? I wish Rogan had devoted space to this, but he doesn’t go in for speculation. Rather, using an astonishingly impressive array of Turkish, Arab, and European sources, he traces military campaigns and the politics that influenced or resulted from them, quoting the participants. Rogan argues that the diplomatic promises the Allies made to each other, Arab nationalists, or Zionists, derived from panic (usually overblown fears of jihadists) or fuzzy, short-term thinking. If pressed, Allied diplomats would have insisted they had promised less than the potential beneficiaries believed. Little did they know how their words would be parsed for decades to come.

From the military side, Gallipoli gets much of Rogan’s attention, deservedly so. From the Turkish perspective, the Allied invasion signified the Crusades revisited, an attitude prevalent in the Middle East today concerning Western military power. The Turkish victory, which cost the Ottomans even more lives than the Allies, resulted from tenacity and brilliant generalship. The Allied disaster came about from ad hoc strategy executed by inept tacticians; if you believe, as I do, that the British and imperial soldiery were lions led by donkeys, Gallipoli could be Exhibit A. Rogan captures the misery, the heroism, and the fear, as with this memoir of the last moments before “going over the top”:

The moments appeared like hours–the suspense–then the officer, his eyes glued on his watch following that finger (of death) slowly, so slowly, but surely moving to destruction–maybe a second left to live–for this is sacrifice–this is the moment when all hearts are sad and heavy–when you will hear some muttering a prayer. . . .

But the greatest service Rogan renders in The Fall of the Ottomans is, I think, his thorough, vivid, and decisive handling of the Armenian genocide. To show how the tension between Turk and Armenian increased, he explains Turkish fears of Armenian collaboration with the Russian enemy, for which there was some evidence. As for what followed, Rogan names names, places, dates, and, when possible, numbers. His chilling descriptions recall aspects of the Holocaust, as with eager civilians who participated, or long, forced marches, during which thousands of Armenians, dying of thirst or starvation, were clubbed or bayoneted to death. I didn’t know that Greek Christians were deported and dispossessed (though not killed), or that Assyrian Christians met the same fate as the Armenians. These facts, rarely mentioned, are surely significant.

Turkish soldiers march Armenians to prison in Mezireh, April 1915, photographed by an unknown German bystander (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

Turkish soldiers march Armenians to prison in Mezireh, April 1915, photographed by unknown German bystander (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons).

After the war ended, the Turkish government prosecuted eighteen defendants accused of ordering or carrying out the massacres, hanging a few and convicting the others in absentia. (Armenian agents tracked down the missing defendants and assassinated all but one.) Apparently, the Turks were trying to placate the victors, hoping to gain favorable peace terms. When that didn’t work, the country went to war again, led by Mustafa Kemal, the hero of Gallipoli, and fixed the borders more to Turkish liking. Whether that resentment led to Turkish intransigence about admitting the genocide, Rogan doesn’t speculate.

I’d have liked The Fall of the Ottomans much better had the author written more carefully. The narrative, full of repetitions and clumsy phrases, plods sometimes. But if you read this book, I guarantee that you won’t look at Middle Eastern politics in quite the same way again.

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