• About Me
  • Contact Me
  • Policies
  • Welcome

Novelhistorian

~ What's new and old in historical fiction

Novelhistorian

Tag Archives: Ann Weisgarber

This Blog Is One Year Old Today

27 Tuesday Oct 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Andrew W. Taylor, Ann Weisgarber, Colm Toíbín, Geraldine Brooks, Helen Dunmore, historical fiction, Jean-Christophe Rufin, Jerome Charyn, John Spurling, Laila Lalami, Lily King, Mary Morris, Robert Harris

A year ago today, I published my first review as Novelhistorian. My thanks go to all my readers, regular or casual, with a special nod to those who’ve graced their visits with commentary. Without all of you, this blog wouldn’t exist. Thank you again.

When I was growing up in the New York area, a local TV channel broadcast Million Dollar Movie, a program that showed a single film continuously for hours at a stretch. The theme song, as I only found out years later, was from Gone With the Wind; I still think of it as belonging to the TV program. The movies were generally the swash-and-buckle type, like Scaramouche or The Crimson Pirate (Burt Lancaster in a title role he probably preferred to forget). It’s thanks to Million Dollar Movie that I can quote stretches of Duck Soup, without which my education would have been incomplete, or vividly recall James Cagney playing George M. Cohan and Errol Flynn as Robin Hood.

Each showing of a movie closed with the voiceover, “If you missed any part of ________ or would like to see it again, stay tuned after these messages.”

So that’s what I’m offering you today. After reading about a hundred books the past year, the following dozen are the ones that have stayed with me most clearly and probably will for awhile. And if you missed my reviews (or care to read them again), here they are, in recap, with links, following the order in which I published them.

The Lie, by Helen Dunmore, recounts the painful, tragic struggle of an English veteran of the First World War who returns to his village and tries to make a life. The Anatomy of Ghosts, by Andrew W. Taylor, involves an eighteenth-century amateur sleuth who must combat superstition, class prejudice, and political influence to solve a murder–and grows as a person in the process.

The Dream Maker, by Jean-Christophe Rufin, is a gripping tale about Jacques Coeur, the fifteenth-century French merchant who not only helped Charles VII transform his country but conceived of power as stemming from knowledge, a revolutionary idea. I Am Abraham is Jerome Charyn’s stirring portrayal of Lincoln as a man conscious of his physical ugliness and tortured by loneliness and desire as he tries to find his way.

An Officer and a Spy, Robert Harris’s novel about the Dreyfus Affair, is more than an intensely compelling story about the most infamous political scandal in nineteenth-century French history (and there were many). It’s also the gold standard for thrillers. The Ten Thousand Things, John Spurling’s novel about Yuan Dynasty China, explores art, sex, love, justice, and politics–you know, the important stuff. For the record, it won this year’s Walter Scott Prize. Colm Toíbín’s subtle, probing Nora Webster, set in 1960s Ireland, takes a commonplace subject, widowhood, and makes it into literary art of the first order.

Jazz Palace, Mary Morris’s lovely rendition of Chicago jazz during the Twenties, captures the era and two of its walking wounded in a hard-edged, deeply felt romance. In The Promise, Ann Weisgarber spins a keenly observed, taut love story of 1900 Galveston, about two people who can see past surfaces and the jealousies that surround them.

The Moor’s Account, by Laila Lalami, follows the disastrous sixteenth-century Narváez expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, as viewed by its most adept (but socially and culturally invisible) member. Lily King’s Euphoria follows a love triangle among anthropologists in New Guinea in 1931, based on Margaret Mead’s life, in a retelling of exceptional breadth, psychological insight, and power.

Finally, The Secret Chord, Geraldine Brooks’s recent novel, recounts the rise of King David, as told by his prophet and trusted adviser, Natan. Like The Dream Maker, I Am Abraham, and An Officer and a Spy, Brooks manages to infuse edge-of-the-seat tension into a narrative whose events are no surprise.

Here’s to another year of good reading.

Texas Three-Step: The Promise

25 Monday May 2015

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

1900, adultery, Ann Weisgarber, characterization, Galveston, historical fiction, inner lives, literary fiction, love triangle, marriage, romance, twentieth century

Review: The Promise, by Ann Weisgarber
Skyhorse, 2014. $25

The Promise is one of the best novels I’ve read in years, a brave, exacting, often painful work, the type that takes a premise elegant in its simplicity and explores its depths.

Catherine Wainwright was brought up to appreciate and expect the finer things, including the music by which she makes her meager living. However, in this year of 1900, an independent woman’s place is precarious, to say the least, and Catherine has made a costly blunder. An affair with her cousin’s husband has made her hometown of Dayton, Ohio, too hot for her to live in. Polite society cuts her dead, parents cancel their children’s piano lessons with her, and her nascent concert career vanishes. Owing back rent she can’t pay and cut off from the man she loves, she realizes marriage is the only answer.

Map of Galveston, Texas, 1885, Augustus Koch (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the US).

Map of Galveston, Texas, 1885, Augustus Koch (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain in the US).

Accordingly, she resumes her correspondence with a Dayton man who has moved to Galveston, Texas, and become a dairy farmer. When they were at school together, Oscar Williams always liked her, and he intrigued her too, in his way. And as it happens, when Catherine writes Oscar again, he’s recently widowed and has a five-year-old boy to think of. After a few more letters pass back and forth, Oscar proposes marriage, and Catherine accepts–without telling him about her disastrous affair.

In Galveston, she finds a different level of heat from Dayton, and not just from the stifling, insect-ridden climate. She shares a bed with a man she doesn’t love, worries that his Dayton relatives will have told him about her, feels deeply hurt by her former lover’s treatment of her, and doesn’t know how to approach her stepson, Andre. Then there’s Nan Ogden, a young woman who keeps house for Oscar and looks after Andre. Nan resents the new Mrs. Williams and fancies Oscar for herself, but she doesn’t let herself think about it, which makes her character all the more fascinating. The two women narrate the novel in their very different voices. What they see (or don’t) in themselves or their adversary turns their already fraught triangle into high drama, even when the action concerns sweeping the floor or making coffee.

The Promise therefore delivers what I’ve come to believe is the key to good literary fiction. Like the musical Catherine communing with Beethoven, Weisgarber plays every note. She lingers over emotional transitions, finding many that lesser writers would miss or skim over, unpacking the compressed moments into their intriguing parts rather than summing them up in shorthand. Yet the narrative moves at a crackling pace, because the author knows storytelling and her characters’ inner lives.

This all begins with Catherine’s flaws. At the start, she’s self-absorbed, entitled, and superior, disbelieving that her comedown should happen to her. She’s terrified of her new surroundings and the scrutiny she’s under:


 

I felt Nan Ogden watching from the house as I fumbled with the latch on the barnyard gate. The soft soil in the yard was churned with hoof prints, and flies buzzed around a pile of dung. Water streamed from the chin of the cow that stood at the trough, her unblinking eyes taking note of my every move . . . . I’d never been so close to a cow, and her size was alarming. So, too, was her udder. It resembled a balloon but one that was lined with swollen blood vessels. I hurried past her.


 

Prompted by necessity and Oscar’s patient insistence, Catherine unbends enough to discover hidden sides to him, Andre, and herself. She also reflects on how she must appear to others. Consequently, she grows within a short time, as does Oscar in her view, which further deepens the novel.

My only quarrel is the manner in which, fairly early, she admits her mistakes to herself and realizes her illicit lover wasn’t the man she thought he was. Her shame feels completely real–I connected with her right away over that–but don’t see what prompted these revelations at that moment.

Otherwise, The Promise is absolutely splendid.

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

Recent Posts

  • Stage Mama: On the Roof Top
  • Lying About a Death: Florence Adler Swims Forever
  • Murder in the Mandate: The Red Balcony
  • Civil War in Ireland: The Winter Guest
  • Dust Bowl Mystery: Funeral Train

Recent Comments

ivefreeoffgrid on What a State They’re In:…
Novelhistorian on Advance review copies came…
Robert Janes on Advance review copies came…
Charles Fergus on The Adamant Sheriff: Nighthawk…
Novelhistorian on Rot and Corruption: Company of…

Archives

  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Categories

  • Comment
  • Reviews and Columns
  • Uncategorized

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blogs I Follow

  • ALOR Italy
  • Roxana Arama
  • Damyanti Biswas
  • madame bibi lophile recommends
  • History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction
  • Suzy Henderson
  • Flashlight Commentary
  • Diary of an Eccentric

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 181 other subscribers
Follow Novelhistorian on WordPress.com

Recent Posts

  • Stage Mama: On the Roof Top
  • Lying About a Death: Florence Adler Swims Forever
  • Murder in the Mandate: The Red Balcony
  • Civil War in Ireland: The Winter Guest
  • Dust Bowl Mystery: Funeral Train

Recent Comments

ivefreeoffgrid on What a State They’re In:…
Novelhistorian on Advance review copies came…
Robert Janes on Advance review copies came…
Charles Fergus on The Adamant Sheriff: Nighthawk…
Novelhistorian on Rot and Corruption: Company of…

Archives

  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014

Contents

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

ALOR Italy

Italy Destinations & Travel Tips to avoid crowds & save money on your next trip to Italy.

Roxana Arama

thriller meets speculative fiction

Damyanti Biswas

For lovers of reading, crime writing, crime fiction

madame bibi lophile recommends

Reading: it's personal

History Imagined: For Readers, Writers, & Lovers of Historical Fiction

Suzy Henderson

What's new and old in historical fiction

Flashlight Commentary

What's new and old in historical fiction

Diary of an Eccentric

writings of an eccentric bookworm

  • Follow Following
    • Novelhistorian
    • Join 181 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Novelhistorian
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...