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Homeric Vignettes: A Thousand Ships

14 Monday Feb 2022

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Review: A Thousand Ships, by Natalie Haynes
Harper, 2021. 340 pp. $28

Rereading Homer with fresh eyes is like rereading Genesis or Exodus; keep your mind open, and you’ll see something you never considered before. How satisfying that is, even exciting.

But so many publishers these days issue retellings of Greek myths, the trend du jour that everyone’s rushing to capitalize on, that I approached A Thousand Ships with wariness. I’ve tried a few trend-followers du jour, only to put them aside, because the twenty-first-century tone or perspective seems inauthentic, or the writing falls short. If a historical novel attempts to superimpose a modern viewpoint, it’s not a historical novel; and if the narrative employs tropes to express feelings in generic prose, I don’t care what kind of novel it is. I’m not interested.

Even had the famous poet been sighted, he wouldn’t have seen his female characters as heroic (courtesy British Missing via Wikimedia Commons)

I prefer retellings that delve deeply enough into the characters’ inner lives so that I can imagine, however briefly, that the foreordained tragedy will not take place. For instance, in Songs of the Kings, Barry Unsworth somehow lets you hope that Agamemnon won’t sacrifice his daughter. In The War at Troy (unfortunately out of print), for a few pages, Lindsey Clarke encourages you to believe that Paris will give the golden apple to Athena and accept the wisdom he desperately needs, rather than bestow the gift on Aphrodite and carry off Helen as his prize. I like how these novelists let their characters, not a political or moral agenda, call the tune.

A Thousand Ships, though a valiant attempt to avoid these pitfalls, doesn’t always succeed, perhaps because the premise overshadows the execution. Granted, it’s an intriguing concept, retelling the Trojan War and its aftermath through women’s voices only, and a story whose time has come. Further, Haynes forthrightly argues that the women are heroic too, not just the men. No argument from me; I’m enrolled.

The first voice we hear belongs to Calliope, muse of epic poetry, presumably being invoked by Homer to sing the same old, same old story about men, as though she has nothing better to do. What a hoot. Following, among others, in no particular order, come Hecabe, Briseis, Chryseis, Cassandra, Penelope, Thetis, Clytemnestra, and several I hadn’t heard of. Many scenes grip me, despite their familiarity. I particularly like the ones involving Briseis and Chryseis, and the part where Clytemnestra welcomes home Agamemnon, the latter a brilliant take on a woman plotting revenge.

I admire Haynes’s knowledge of and grasp of the original texts, and it’s clear that she loves them for themselves, not merely as a stepping-stone for a theme. And when she rethinks the characters in psychological depth, with vivid physical detail, the narrative sings, as with this scene involving Cassandra:

She spoke of one terrible thing after another, one disaster to befall them and then one more and one more.… But soon the slaves would not wait on her, not even under threat of being flogged. Cassandra would tell them of their own impending deaths, and those of their parents or children. And even though it was nonsense — no one believed a word the deranged girl said — it disquieted them. One day, Cassandra was screaming and crying… The details scarcely mattered — and Hecabe had reached across and slapped her hard, across the face. Cassandra had grabbed her hand and held it, shrieking. And Hecabe had slapped her with her left hand until there were bright red finger marks on both of her daughter’s cheeks, with deeper indentations on the right side, from Hecabe’s thick gold rings.

I also love the back story to the Apple of Discord myth, entirely new to me, which involves not only the goddesses’ rivalry, but Zeus’ desire to thin the world’s population with a long war. Why? Because Gaia’s weary of the ever-increasing human despoliation of the planet — an environmental warning that reaches across the centuries, yet fits entirely within its ancient context. All of this feels fresh and compelling.

But A Thousand Ships lacks a coherent narrative, being a collection of vignettes. Whether that makes a novel is open to debate, but, either way, the voices must be distinct. Sometimes, I hear the author rather than individual characters; or the voices fluctuate, as with Penelope’s, at times a woman struggling to remain patient and loving in Odysseus’s absence, and at times, a chorus, a literary device.

In emphasizing female characters in an authentic light, A Thousand Ships has its points. But I hope Haynes’s next effort focuses on a single episode or tale in depth, and that she concentrates more on the presentation than the literary premise. Her afterword suggests that she worries readers won’t accept women as heroes; I say that’s their problem. Let her storytelling carry the day.

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

The Adamant Sheriff: Nighthawk’s Wing

17 Monday Jan 2022

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Review: Nighthawk’s Wing, by Charles Fergus
Arcade, 2021. 273 pp. $26

Gideon Stoltz, sheriff of (the fictional) Colerain County, Pennsylvania, in 1836, faces long odds in solving his latest case. He suffers headaches and memory loss because he fell off his horse and hit his head. His deputy does his best to cover for him, but Gideon’s boss, an arrogant attorney, openly hopes the voters will turn the young sheriff out of office come autumn. At only twenty-three, Gideon fears for his future, but the present looks pretty dreadful too. His wife, True, locked in grief over their young son’s death from influenza, won’t speak to him or even stir from bed.

But that’s just for starters. A woman said to be a witch has been found dead in Sinking Valley, a farm district more than a day’s ride from Adamant, the town where Gideon lives, and he’s not sure he can manage an extended trip, given his physical ailments. He’s hoping that the rumors of suicide prove true, and that he can investigate briefly and return home.

However, he not only knew the dead woman, Rebecca Kreidler, he has the strongest impression that he visited her on or about the day she died. Could he have killed her? Could he have taken her to bed, even, for, like many men who knew Rebecca, he lusted after her? The notion fills him with shame.

What’s more, when Gideon begins questioning the good folk of Sinking Valley, he uncovers complexities that challenge a verdict of suicide. Rebecca’s beauty aroused desire and envy, and her knowledge of medicinal plants invited both gratitude for her cures and suspicion of witchcraft. Then again, her past preceded her, for a woman who kills her husband — no matter how violent or abusive — has marked herself as an outcast, and her three years in the penitentiary is not considered adequate expiation.

This ingenious framework, and the facets Fergus gives it, make Nighthawk’s Wing compelling reading. Gideon Stoltz is a man first and a detective second, and though the two naturally intertwine, the narrative offers much more than a whodunit — luckily, for reasons I’ll get to. Not only do Gideon’s cognitive difficulties and the various reactions to them provide a touching, unusual background in a mystery, the social atmosphere places the narrative firmly in the central Pennsylvania soil.

This document bound one Henry Mayer as indentured servant to Abraham Hestant of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1738. Many German immigrants to Pennsylvania, erroneously called “Dutch,” bound themselves in this way (courtesy Immigrant Servants Database, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Like many people in Sinking Valley, Gideon’s of German extraction, or, as commonly called, “Dutch,” apparently a corruption of the German word Deitsch, how they describe themselves. Much hated and maligned for being different, they occupy a social position that marks the story. With skillful economy, Fergus deploys the animosity to effect, tracing its roots and consequences, and since Rebecca was Deitsch, Gideon must take that into account.

Another pleasure of Nighthawk’s Wing involves the vivid, very much lived-in picture of early nineteenth-century rural American life. Fergus shows us crafts, like grinding and resetting a millstone, or a blacksmith shoeing a horse, and recounts herbal lore and depicts burial customs. Such authenticity extends to various mounted creatures, for riding a beast requires particular skills or physical heft, and either you have them, or you don’t:

The animal’s long upper lip stated that it grudged being ridden. No saddle. The boy sat on a girthed sheepskin with the fleece side down. He held a loop of rope tied to the bit rings on both sides of the mule’s broad, disgruntled mouth. The boy was small, and his leg stuck out sideways from the mule’s sweat-slick barrel — uncomfortable enough, Gideon thought, even for one so young.

The narrative from Rebecca’s point of view works less well, I think. I believe her portrayal as a psychotic — one of her delusions gives the book its title — but by going back in time to let the now-dead speak feels like a copout, telling us what Gideon couldn’t possibly know. That may not bother other readers; and I may also be alone in my dislike of the supernatural elements that play a strong role, especially toward the end.

But I wonder whether other readers will agree with me that Fergus has tipped his hand concerning the killer’s identity, which I latched onto because of how mystery novels are typically put together. I don’t want to say more, for fear of giving too much away, but despite this drawback, I do believe that Nighthawk’s Wing deserves its audience. I congratulate Fergus for the loving care with which he re-creates the time and place and crafts his characters. If you’re like me, that will justify reading the novel.

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

Damaged Men: Kith and Kin

29 Monday Nov 2021

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Review: Kith and Kin, by Jane A. Adams
Severn, 2018. 218 pp. $29

In December 1928, two bodies wash up in the Kentish marshes, under circumstances anything but clear. But one thing Detective Chief Inspector Henry Johnstone and Detective Sergeant Mickey Hitchens know. They recognize one of the dead as a lieutenant of Josiah Bailey, a London crime boss who inspires such terror that people think twice before uttering his name.

Cliffe Pools, in the North Kent marshes, now cut off from the sea, forms a fleet, a saline waterway (courtesy Clem Rutter, 2007, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Johnstone and Hitchens also know that when Bailey gives an order, failure to comply may bring a death sentence, not only to the disobedient, but to their families. As such, the policemen must consider whether Bailey turned on his own loyalists, and why, or whether a rival gang has retaliated for an offense known only to the participants — in which case a turf war may erupt. What a terror that would be.

But to forestall that bloodbath, Hitchens and Johnstone must uncover the tangled roots of the murders, and since the key witnesses have connections to Bailey, no one will talk. Moreover, what the detectives gradually learn (but what the reader knows from the get-go) is that the case stems from a decade-old conflict that involves members of a Gypsy clan. They too are loath to speak up, because dealing with outsiders, especially officialdom, has always ended badly for them. As you might imagine, obstacles abound, the “no — and furthermore” that drives the story at a good clip.

However, this premise, though well executed, is surely not the first exploration of gang warfare in a mystery, nor is it what makes this novel worth reading. Rather, Adams focuses on her characters, starting with her two detectives, who care deeply about one another without ever saying so. They met during the Great War, so they have a bond that goes back, a tacit language. But it’s not just the shared background that makes them friends. Mickey Hitchens understands how the war still plagues Henry Johnstone, for reasons only alluded to (but which may have been explained in the first two installments of the series).

Touchingly, Mickey tries to make sure that Henry, a bachelor, bothers to eat enough and care for himself. But when his friend does something stupid in the line of duty, Hitchens doesn’t hesitate to say, “Lord, but you can be an awkward bastard when the mood takes you.” I can’t recall when I’ve run across such a pair of sleuths, or even a subordinate detective who never utters the word sir — in Britain, no less. The focus on characterization extends to the minor players, as with Henry’s sister, Cynthia; Mickey’s wife; and several witnesses, especially those who don’t belong to the mob. All receive a dash of inner life.

I also like how Adams creates a world of damaged people, about whom she refuses to moralize, and for whom luck and circumstance play a large role in whether they escape the darkness or succumb. Though Henry and his sister number among the escapees, that wasn’t a given, apparently, so he understands Bailey’s henchmen better than they realize, probably:

Childhood, Henry thought, ended all too swiftly for most children, especially the children of the poor. Henry and his sister, though his family had endured no such acute financial pressures, had also had their own childhood curtailed, in their case by a father who saw no value in creatures who could not contribute to his own wellbeing. Then the father had died and it had just been Henry and Cynthia and, all things considered, they had done well; in their case it was better to be parentless than so badly parented.

Adams’s prose reads like this throughout, clear, direct, and spare. Though I like that, sometimes her descriptions sound like laundry lists of detail, when I want evocations. The whodunit facet of the narrative consists largely of dialogue between the detectives, much of which veers into information dumps. To be fair, the two men must compare notes, yet how the author presents this exchange matters to me, and I prefer an indirect approach.

The back story, though essential and crisply told in itself, feels shoehorned in at times, including the prologue. In its defense, however, said prologue has one of the most compelling first sentences you’ll ever see, so I understand why Adams wanted to lead with it. Finally, though the ending satisfies in its realism, the solution fails to match the buildup, which leaves me wanting more.

Consequently, Kith and Kin is a novel greater than the sum of its parts. The characterizations are what command attention, and if I were to read another installment in the series, I’d do so to learn how the two detectives progress in their lives.

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

A Woman’s Place: Girl in Disguise

12 Monday Jul 2021

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Review: Girl in Disguise, by Greer Macallister
Sourcebooks, 2017. 301 pp. $26

Kate Warne’s up against it. Chicago in 1856 is a rough town for a young widow with no money, no job prospects, and no desire to remarry. Mistreated by parents who never loved her, exploited her, and taught her never to love or trust anyone, Kate has learned to lie and dissemble, as circumstances seem to require. That skill, at least, she picked up from her father, a down-on-his-luck actor who, when not putting on stage makeup to perform, tried his hand at con games.

Alexander Gardner’s photo at Antietam, September 1862, of Allan Pinkerton (seated, right) and a woman believed to be Kate Warne, standing behind him. (courtesy Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Which explains why, when Kate reads a want ad run by Allan Pinkerton looking for an operative to join his agency, she applies. After all, doesn’t she have the natural talent? Pinkerton nearly throws her out of his office; his profession is no place for a woman, he says. But Kate perseveres, of course, and Pinkerton reluctantly gives her a trial run — which doesn’t work out too well.

How that happens, and what she does about it, I’ll leave for you to find out, for Girl in Disguise is well worth your exploration. Be warned, however: Readers expecting a whodunit or thriller or even a unified plot will be disappointed, but, I expect, not for long. Such is the brio with which Macallister tells her story, and the loving attention she pays her protagonist, that it hardly matters.

Girl in Disguise is a coming-into-her-own novel, as Kate settles into her profession and masters it. Sometimes that process feels too easy, but rest assured, “no — and furthermore” resides here. The chapters represent cases, some of which are connected, especially in the narrative’s latter stages. But most stand alone, showing Kate’s progression, the professional and personal obstacles she faces, and, above all, how she handles a line of work that excites and fascinates her, yet leaves little or no room for a private life, let alone intimacy.

That, in turn, leads her toward self-discovery, because she must ask herself what she wants, and whether she’s lied so well to the world, she has fooled herself as well. As such, her character drives the narrative, an essential, given that the plot is episodic and fragmented. It’s an unusual way to approach a suspense novel, but here, it works.

Kate Warne was a real person, but little is known about her. Macallister does an impressive job re-creating her in plausible fashion. I particularly like the family history, which both brings out her character and influences the story line. Better yet, she lets Kate remain emotionally scarred. No miraculous transformations mar this book, for the author is too psychologically astute for that. The most exciting parts involve what few traces the real Kate Warne left in the historical record, and what tantalizing bits they are. She helped spirit Lincoln safely through Baltimore just before his first inauguration, foiling an assassination attempt. Later, during the Civil War, she performed surveillance on Rose Greenhow, a Washington socialite and clever Confederate spy.

Greenhow not only makes a worthy opponent, she comes across with particular vividness:

Artfully, she flirted, and I watched how she flirted. Her hands were deployed like soldiers to any front where they were needed: stroking a man’s sleeve to create intimacy, resting on the piano to reinforce her wealth, trailing along the side of her neck to draw attention to her body. She was not a young woman, but she was a beautiful one, no mistake. Her beauty alone was not all she had to offer. She gave off some kind of energy that drew men to her. Her gift, I saw, was attention. There was nothing more intoxicating to these men.

I wish Pinkerton’s characterization reached this level, but I don’t see his inner life or motivations as clearly as Kate’s or Greenhow’s. I wanted more from this major character. Lincoln’s cameo appearance provides just enough detail, I suppose, though I could have used a little more with him too, and George B. McClellan gets even shorter shrift, which I understand, yet which sets off my historian’s itch. During the war, McClellan would later command the Army of the Potomac and employ Pinkerton to run informants, who invariably offered inflated estimates of Confederate strength. McClellan swallowed them whole and used them as an excuse not to fight, driving Lincoln crazy. Maybe some other novelist will tackle that triangle.

The relative shallowness of the male characters is the most serious weakness of Girl in Disguise. With one exception, a suave, dapper colleague at Pinkerton’s agency who has a secret to protect, the men don’t measure up to Kate, Greenhow, or two women whom Kate trains as operatives.

Still, I thoroughly enjoyed Girl in Disguise, which richly imagines a complex tale based on a sketchy historical record.

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

Betrayer and Betrayed: The Revolution of Marina M.

26 Monday Apr 2021

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Review: The Revolution of Marina M., by Janet Fitch
Little, Brown, 2017. 800 pp. $30

Marina Dmitrievna Makarova, as old as the century in 1916, can’t wait to break free of her constrained, privileged existence in Petrograd — or thinks that’s what she wants. Change is in the air, and desperation grips Russia, an empire bleeding its life away in a world war practically nobody supports, except her parents. Refusing to accept their rules or blandishments, she has a love affair or two, one with a fellow poet; marches on behalf of oppressed workers; and glories when the revolution topples the tsar. You can guess that this family will soon fracture even more.

But though Marina has been true to herself, she pays a terrible price. What the revolutionaries promise bears no relation to what happens in reality, and this passionate young woman, whose motto seems to be, “Act first, think afterward,” finds out the hard way. To name just two problems, it’s difficult to tell which threat is worse, famine or the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police.

As a bourgeoise, Marina’s already an enemy of the state and can’t be too careful, constantly having to prove herself despite who she is, a direct opposite to the advantages she enjoyed in her youth. Taking care doesn’t entirely square with her impulsive nature, but she’s also a quick study and finds she has more inner resources and survival skills than she knew.

The novel opens in California, 1932, so there’s no question she survives the revolution. As my regular readers know, I detest prologues, but there’s a practical reason for this one. The current volume is only the first of a series; the author has apparently decided not to leave the reader hanging at the end, and I think she’s right. Further, the journey’s more about how and why than where, and Marina covers a lot of ground, emotionally and physically.

Stinton Jones’s photograph of a demonstration on Nevsky Prospekt, Petrograd, March 1917 (courtesy https://archive.org/details/ russiainrevolut00jone via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Throughout, however, Fitch realizes the Russian atmosphere, be it Petrograd or rural peasantdom, with bold, lush strokes and complete authority. With unflagging attention to detail, she renders the idealism and mercilessness that suffuses the air, and gives you back alleys, great houses, and, in this instance, a Cheka prison:

The smell of wet walls and mold, and a dirty animal odor, increased as we descended. A slaughterhouse stench. He [the guard] walked me down the dim hall. Muffled voices came from behind thick doors. A rising shriek snaked from the base of my spine and coiled around my heart, squeezing my throat in its knot. We passed yellow walls the color of old teeth. Black sticky floors sucked at our shoes. Bare bulbs buzzed overhead. The rest of the country was plunged in darkness, but the Cheka would have its electricity.

Like the Russian novels Marina M. evokes, this one has much more to it than a sweeping lens and epic events — it’s the characters who count the most. Marina takes center stage, but her lovers come through with brilliant clarity, as do her mother, younger brother, and a radical revolutionary friend. You understand what motivates these people, all of whom have inner lives for the reader to navigate. So much happens that it seems our heroine has lived a full lifetime by her nineteenth birthday, but that weight never feels like a burden, even at over eight hundred pages. That’s because Fitch keeps you in touch with the feelings of the moment.

Much of the novel revolves around Marina’s sexual awakening, mirroring her political cognizance, as she learns more about attraction and sex as power. Though she enjoys men as lovers, she seldom loses her perspective on who gets to make decisions, and who has to follow them; who gives the orders; and who does the work. This is particularly trenchant, because the revolution that was supposed to honor all work and eliminate the roles of master and servant clearly hasn’t touched relations between men and women. Once, when she witnesses a peasant wife completely efface herself before her husband, Marina observes privately that Marx may have believed that power belongs to those who control the means of production, but this mother, who has produced four children, is her husband’s chattel.

Marina M. is also about betrayal, involving parents, children, lovers, ideals, or merely the greed and envy of the comrade listening at the keyhole. Marina, both victim and perpetrator, wants what she wants and won’t be denied. If at times she seems excessively larger than life or has an insight perhaps more convenient than earned, these are minor blemishes on an otherwise exceptional, engrossing novel.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from a neighborhood free library. I’m grateful to whoever donated it.

Metaphor for England: The Shooting Party

28 Monday Sep 2020

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Review: The Shooting Party, by Isabel Colegate
Viking, 1980. 195 pp.

As he does every October, in 1913, Sir Randolph Nettleby, Bart., invites some of the best shots in England to his Oxfordshire estate to shoot pheasant. The activity has a particular meaning here, for we don’t expect tweed-coated gentlemen to trample through the underbrush in their wellingtons, bagging a few birds for supper. Rather, we have the spectacle of “beaters,” local men and boys recruited to flush the pheasant so that the frightened birds take brief flight — the only type they are capable of — toward the tweed-coated gentlemen, waiting with their loaders and dogs. Not that the participants would agree, but this is more mechanized killing than sport. The shooters take hundreds of birds, and the loaders are there to make sure the gentlemen never even have to turn their heads to receive a ready weapon, restocked with cartridges.

Snowden Slights, a Yorkshire huntsman, sometime between 1900 and 1912, by Sydney Harold Smith (or collaborators). A very different picture from the organized shoots on estates at the time. (courtesy Yorkshire Museum, York, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The novel’s opening paragraph notes that an infamous incident will take place, “an error of judgment which resulted in a death.” And since the timing is the autumn before the Great War, Colegate intends The Shooting Party as a metaphor for England on the eve of that tragic struggle.

What a metaphor it is, slaughter for its own sake, by the so-called best people in the country, no less. That the death referred to is a mistake, and that the author reveals it up front, properly removes any sense of whodunit, though the narrative does build suspense as to who will be the victim, how, and why. Instead, Colegate focuses on the characters, who represent various social classes and attitudes.

In lesser hands, this premise and approach could have devolved into a talky, theme-driven tract, populated by two-dimensional ideas rather than characters. But Colegate writes well-drawn people whose private concerns merge beautifully in a single, cohesive picture, and whose opinions often seem contradictory, which makes them more human.

For example, Sir Randolph, courteous to all despite his oft-injured sensibilities, worries that the stewards of the land, as he views himself, are a vanishing breed. Outwardly almost diffident, he nevertheless carries himself as the aristocrat born to rule, and his confusion as to how the world has changed lends him depth. Stolid Bob Lilburn, who believes in form above all, astonishes his gorgeous wife, Olivia, by doubting that there could exist in England any people worth knowing whom he doesn’t already know. Lionel Stephens, a lawyer who seems perfect to everyone, believes he’s passionately in love with Olivia and would be willing to die for her if the fraught international situation brought war. A footman repeats this sentiment to the young parlor maid he fancies, who has the sense to think it’s twaddle.

Throughout, Colegate’s description of the shoot evokes the future conflict, often involving the manner in which the birds, fed and catered to before their destruction, are driven toward the guns. Again, a lesser author might have overplayed the symbolism, but Colegate’s hand remains deft. That’s because she’s careful to keep her descriptions active as well as physically and visually precise. Consider, for instance, how she portrays a poacher waiting to enter the woods once the gentry have finished their initial shoot of the weekend:

Tom waited until they were nearly all out of sight, and until the gold of the late afternoon had been succeeded by the soft pinkish-grey of the early dusk before he moved. The mist was now rising much more noticeably from the ground, still low but thickening, beginning to spread a layer of damp haze which in the morning would linger on the lower ground like spilt milk, while the sky above it became the pale clear blue of another late October day.

Though published forty years ago, The Shooting Party still keeps its edge. It’s one of those elegant novels I admire, in which the central action is itself an arresting metaphor. I must warn you that other than from a library (or sources in the UK), the book may be hard to find. But it is well worth your time and effort, a classic tale.

Disclaimer: I pulled this book off my shelf because it deserves a revisit, as does the feeling these days of holding printed pages in my hands.

Hiding, Sometimes in Plain Sight: A Thread of Grace

14 Monday Sep 2020

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Review: A Thread of Grace, by Mary Doria Russell
Random House, 2005. 442 pp. $17

It’s September 1943, and Italy has just surrendered to the Allies. Though that brings the war’s end one step closer, it puts in jeopardy thousands of Jews from all over Europe who’ve somehow eluded the executioners and migrated to southern France, where Italian troops have protected them. Since the surrender has destroyed that protection, most of the fugitives attempt to flee, and, for tens of thousands, northwest Italy becomes the next stage of their clandestine existence.

Sant’Andrea, a town in Liguria, scrambles to hide those who seek shelter there, a task that couldn’t be more dangerous. Not only have the Germans invaded Italy, they’ve sent crack troops to hold the line, the Waffen SS, who’ve terrorized much of Europe. Anyone who aids or harbors “rebels,” “terrorists,” or Jews will be executed, and the neighboring area will suffer reprisals.

The Memoriale della Shoah in the Milan train station of Jews deported during the Holocaust (2014 photo courtesy fcarbonara via Wikimedia Commons)

To recount the story further would be pointless and misleading, for it’s simply one “no — and furthermore” after another, a big, sprawling narrative from many perspectives, exploring as many themes. Like Italy, A Thread of Grace is warm, dramatic, good company, passionate, and a bumpy, sometimes uneven, ride, not that I care. Among other issues, Russell sifts through shades of good versus those of evil, demonstrating how telling them apart is always difficult. Her narrative discourses on killing, and whether it’s ever justifiable; what true religious faith demands; how to live, not merely exist, when you must hide; and what courage is.

But above all, Russell’s characters propel this novel. My favorite is Renzo Leoni, former pilot who fought in Ethiopia and lives in liquor because of it. He’s Jewish, yet he hides in plain sight, adopting different personae, testament to his bravery, quick thinking, and ingenuity. Sometimes he’s a German-speaking businessman who chats up the sister of the local Gestapo chief to obtain information. Other times, he’s a tradesman or a priest, whichever guise seems safest at the moment to let him visit resistance contacts. He’s also a cantankerous, exceptionally witty son who has legendary fights with his mother, dialogue that is often howlingly funny. Perhaps Renzo’s greatest gift is his ability to befriend anyone, even a Waffen SS doctor who seeks an exit from the war so he can die in relative peace from TB.

Other notables include Suora Marta, a nun so imperious that a priest of her acquaintance jokes to himself that she outranks the pope. There’s Iacopo, the rabbi for Sant’Andrea, who’s so busy helping everyone else, he neglects his own family. There’s another priest, missing part of his leg from the First World War, who makes sure Jews are welcome and cared for, though he slyly hopes to bring one or two of the ebrei into the Church.

A Thread of Grace is the fourth of Russell’s novels I’ve reviewed, and this one bears her trademark grasp of historical detail. All descriptions show activity, even of a supposedly static landscape, which livens the narrative and makes admirable storytelling:

Wrung out by five minutes’ effort fueled by a diet of poor-quality starch, spring chard, and not much else, Suora Corniglia leans against a terrace wall to muster strength and catch her breath. Beside her, tiny brown lizards dart into crevices between stones. Fig trees bake in the basil-scented warmth above meticulously attended vineyards that crisscross the hillside. The Mediterranean is a stripe of silver between gray-green foothills, and when the wind shifts, the astringency of pine from nearby mountains is replaced by the barest hint of salt and seaweed.

If you’re like me, you may wonder, here and there, whether no Italian Christian ever turned in a Jew. But in her afterword, the author insists her depiction is true to life, having found no instances of any such betrayals in her six years of research. (That may be true of northwest Italy, but elsewhere presents a mixed picture.) Regardless, I appreciate her portrayal of Jewish characters, who seem genuine, down to the refusal to eat a biscuit during Passover, and their outlook on the world, schooled by hard experience. Once or twice, they may break character in small ways, but A Thread of Grace sets the bar very high for Holocaust fiction, both in that regard, and others.

One way in which it does concerns how the author hews closely to reality. The novel encompasses almost two years of war, and if the Italian populace does its best to protect those in hiding, the Germans do their best to find the fugitives, kill them, and take revenge. Murder and torture mark this story, not just kindness and generosity.

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

Women Without Men: A Single Thread

09 Monday Dec 2019

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Review: A Single Thread, by Tracy Chevalier
Viking, 2019. 318 pp. $27

Memories of the dead beset the house in Southhampton, England, where Violet Speedwell lives with her widowed mother. It’s 1932, sixteen years since Violet’s older brother was killed in the Great War, but to Mrs. Speedwell, it’s as though he died yesterday. She grieves him and her late husband to such lengths that she has no room in her heart for Violet, nor even for her other son, Tom, though he’s given her two grandchildren. In fact, Mrs. Speedwell is so unfailingly nasty, impossible to please, and entirely self-centered — talking nonstop of how she’s been put upon — that Violet comes to the end of a very long rope. She moves to Winchester, where she rents a room in a boardinghouse and obtains a transfer to a branch of the insurance company where she works as a typist.

Be it known that Violet is thirty-eight, lost her fiancé in the war, and has moved all of twelve miles. She’s one of many Englishwomen who remain “spinsters,” as they are called, with tacit or explicit disdain, the uncounted casualties of war. But her mother has never uttered a word of sympathy or condolence. And to no surprise, when Violet leaves, Mrs. Speedwell throws a fit worthy of King Lear and is not in the least mollified by her daughter’s weekly visits. Said pilgrimages, incidentally, cost train fare that Mum would never think to underwrite, a sacrifice because Violet’s job in Winchester covers the rent and little else. Even people who don’t know her well remark on how thin she looks; she never gets enough to eat. Freedom has its price.

Then too, the other “girls” she works with, younger, less conscientious, or empathic than herself, snub her, except when they want something. They live up to their employer’s prejudices by focusing on when and whom to marry, which means they would leave his freezing, inhospitable office and bequeath a mountain of untyped insurance contracts. Heavens! Just shows you can’t trust a girl.

Looking for a social outlet, Violet volunteers to embroider cushions for Winchester Cathedral. An unusual idea, perhaps, but she loves the cathedral, which puts her in mind of other desires:

Over the centuries others had carved heads into the choir stalls, or sculpted elaborate figures of saints from marble, or designed sturdy, memorable columns and arches, or fitted together colored glass for the windows: all glorious additions to a building whose existence was meant to make you raise your eyes to Heaven to thank God. Violet wanted to do what they had done. She was unlikely to have children now, so if she was to make a mark on the world, she would have to do so in another way. A kneeler was a stupid, tiny gesture, but there it was.

I have to confess that embroidery has never interested me, but Chevalier brings the craft to life, because she invests care in who the broderers are, the egos involved, and the power struggles that inevitably result. These women can be fierce in their loyalties and ostracism, especially if they sense behavior they believe improper. Nevertheless, within this vicious sewing circle, to which Violet recruits others, she finds purpose, friendships, a measure of confidence, and, through proximity, an attraction for a cathedral bellringer, a married man twenty years her senior. Heavens, indeed.

The high altar of Winchester Cathedral, Hampshire, as it appeared in 2014 (by permission of DAVID ILIFF, License: CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Chevalier has portrayed both the generosity and small-mindedness of English provincial life to a T. Another “quiet” novel, in other words, in which the author displays her well-known gift for characterization and deftly explores themes of gender roles and sexuality without earnestness. I particularly salute how she depicts women crushing other women, beating them down through social snobbery or selfishness, hurting the very people with whom they could make common cause. Without calling undue attention to the irony, Chevalier shows how Violet’s male boss exploits her, that brother Tom’s condescension and sexism undermine her, or that a man seems bent on stalking her–and still, other women find ways to cut her down, voicing the same attitudes that men do. Through that, Chevalier wants you to recognize how women often attack their sisters or others who represent their own interests, out of fear or envy.

Sometimes, quiet books speak loudly. This is one.

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

Teach Your Children: Grievous

21 Monday Oct 2019

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Review: Grievous, by H. S. Cross
FSG, 2019. 524 pp. $30

John Grieves, a.k.a. Grievous, has never felt so tested, pained, or enraged, despite a life that has given him much heartache. The cause of his current frustration and anguish is a fourteen-year-old student, Gray Riding, whom everyone says will win a scholarship to Oxford one day — unless he’s expelled from Saint Stephen’s, the public (private) school in Yorkshire where John is his housemaster.

Eton College boys wearing hats corresponding to the various rowing teams competing on the Thames, June 1932, photographer unknown (courtesy Bundesarchiv via Wikimedia Commons; Bundesarchiv, Bild 102-13350 / CC-BY-SA 3.0)

Naturally, he’s the most sensitive housemaster at the school; the others would have caned Riding black and blue until he shaped up or shipped out. But in the year 1931, John understands that though the momentous issues of the day never penetrate Saint Stephen’s gated walls, his struggle with Gray, and how he manages his own strengths and weaknesses in that effort, matter just as much in their own small way. That knowledge, however, generally offers little consolation.

Gray follows an adolescent code of honor typical of Saint Stephen’s, and of the public-school culture: never show feeling, never flinch, never make yourself vulnerable, never betray a friend. Inspired by Rudyard Kipling’s rebellious schoolboy character, Stalky, the friend he chooses is one determined to break every rule, even those the school hasn’t thought of yet. Mind you, that’s even before John’s thirteen-year-old goddaughter, Cordelia, shows up and smites the boy in a heart that others suppose has been encased in lead.

The genius of this novel resides in the urgency with which Cross imbues John’s attempt to redeem young Riding, and why the boy resists. Didn’t such novels go out with saying goodbye to Mr. Chips? Well, no, as Cross amply proves here. This British public school resembles an infernal machine that stamps its inmates with snobbery, sadism, treachery, and cold-hearted contempt, while hunting down the homoerotic impulses it otherwise does so much to encourage. Any sensitive soul like Gray would howl in rage and pain, but only to himself. His outlet is a Tolkienesque story he writes during class lectures, featuring characters named Valarious and the Elf Rider. Already chained by Kipling’s Stalky, he wonders, during a very risky escapade with his reckless friend, whether stories can help him at all:

The ground was damp, his seat soaked, his teeth coated in licorice. If they could make it back intact in every sense, Gray silently vowed to devote himself to ordinary life and stop confusing it with stories. In stories, you didn’t risk your life and your arse waiting in a field to perform your heroics.… In stories, a coherent hand guided the plot; there was no tumble of make-believe just when you needed to think clearly. Friends in stories never lied to one another.

This passage, which occurs around page 60, marks the point at which, for me, the narrative overcomes obstacles that may deter even a dedicated reader. Cross explains absolutely nothing of Saint Stephen’s myriad intricacies, letting you infer them as you go along, including the schoolboy slang, which reminds me of Anthony Burgess novels in which he invents languages. How maddening. Nevertheless, you have the sense that if you can only hang on, you’ll be rewarded; and so you will. That said, the author need not have refused to clarify more of her transitions, so that I don’t have to ask myself which character’s voice I’m tuning into right now. I could also have done without the long dashes that introduce dialogue instead of quotation marks, an affectation I dislike.

Names matter in this very literary novel. John Grieves is an apt handle for a man who suffered as a conscientious objector in the Great War and who’s never gotten over a disappointment in love. Dr. Sebastian, the headmaster, acts as though he’s been pierced by many arrows, though John, a lifelong friend, actually takes more of them. Most importantly, I think, Gray’s first name is Thomas, and because the two names and their initials appear several times, I can’t help think of Thomas Gray, the eighteenth-century poet whose masterpiece, “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard,” hung in the back of my mind while I was reading. You can apply the poem’s most famous line, “the paths of glory lead but to the grave” to John’s story, and, even more significantly, Gray’s father. And John’s initial motive to help Gray, one that many teachers must feel, appears in this subsequent couplet: “Full many a flow’r is born to blush unseen,/And waste its sweetness on the desert air.”

I wish Cross had given Grievous a more fully resolved ending. But, as a sequel to Wilberforce (whose title derives not from the famous British abolitionist but an older student who tries to liberate Gray from his self-imposed emotional shackles), I expect another volume in the series to bring the story further.

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

Orgy on the Shore: Cape May

05 Monday Aug 2019

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Review: Cape May, by Chip Cheek
Celadon, 2019. 243 pp. $27

In 1957, Henry and Effie, married straight out of a small-town Georgia high school, honeymoon in Cape May, New Jersey. Borrowing a cousin’s cottage, they arrive at the end of September to find the town deserted — naturally, because it’s a place where the well-to-do summer, and now they’re gone. That’s only the first fact to surprise the innocent, unsophisticated newlyweds, and Effie’s instinct is to go home after a couple days. But Henry, unsure of her, though they’ve known each other for years — he can’t quite believe that the mayor’s daughter chose him — takes her notion to mean that she doesn’t want his company. That insecurity leads to much trouble and the discovery that the Jersey shore is much farther from rural Georgia than the mere distance indicates.

A group of city sophisticates welcomes them next door to a nonstop party, though absorb would be a fitter word. Max, a sometime writer, heir to a shipping fortune, and a lewd drunk, drives the festivities with his lover, Clara, who was in show business at one time. Alma, Max’s sullen, gorgeous half-sister, acts as though she’d rather be anywhere else, but she draws Henry’s eye. At first, he’s more susceptible to this crowd’s invitations than his bride, attracted by the veneer of “civilization,” as he calls it, what these mildly degenerate Yankees represent to him. And in that fever, he loses his common sense and his moral compass, helped by a power outage after a storm (something of a cliché, there).

Cheek’s a terrific observer, especially of social interactions and sexual mores. What could have been a stagey, turgid domestic drama stewing in its own juices feels surprisingly open, fluid, and freewheeling. This requires a subtle touch, the ability to evoke movement even when people are sitting still, and simmering tension below the surface, at all of which Cheek excels. Throughout, there’s a sexual charge, like a humid summer day before a thunderstorm. All of these elements derive from the prose, which does its work simply, never calling attention to itself, yet conveys the mood in vivid, active images:

Through the big windowpanes, now that the inside was brighter than the outside, Henry could see more people gathering in the den, big groups of them, laughing, sipping from martini glasses, smoking cigarettes. He saw the beatnik in the slip take her shoes off and hand them to a man who placed them into a potted plant. He saw a naked toddler run screaming from the archway. He saw an Oriental woman with a complicated bun and a silvery eye shadow. He saw a man with circular sunglasses and a shaved head under a beret.… For the past week he’d felt isolated from the world, and now the world was upon him, or some strange version of it.

For all that, though, Cape May falls short of memorable. I understand Henry, somewhat, but Effie hardly at all, and the sophisticates even less. They seem too brittle to feel anything, rushing from experience to experience to prevent what they most fear, boredom. I would have wanted flashes of depth, glimmers of what they’re trying not to face; though, since the newlyweds provide the only perspectives as naïve observers, that’s difficult to achieve. Cheek seems to be saying that the Georgians’ innocence is also a veneer, that they share their new friends’ desires, and we’re all the same underneath, city mouse or country mouse.

That’s fine, but absent fuller characterizations or any particular connection to time and place — if it weren’t for clothing styles or brief mentions of current events, I would never have known it was the late Fifties — we’re left with what sex means, or what it means to Henry, Effie, and the reader. And as for sex, there’s plenty of it, licit and otherwise. Cheek does well to make the scenes matter-of-fact and realistic — no breathless, inflated bodice-ripper descriptions — though I do wonder how these people manage to get it on after half a dozen gins-and-tonic.

Cheek’s a fine writer whose subject matter and theme remind me of Ian McEwan’s On Chesil Beach, also about newlyweds clueless about marriage. But the people in Cape May seem more a collection of attitudes than complex humans, and their plight therefore less than powerful.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher via Historical Novels Review, where this post appeared in shorter, different form.