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Unusual Friendship: A Net for Small Fishes

09 Monday May 2022

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Review: A Net for Small Fishes, by Lucy Jago
Flatiron, 2021. 331 pp. $27

London, 1609. Anne Turner, mother of six with a much older husband and heavy debts, looks to increase her income from “fashioning” for wealthy ladies, her sideline in medicinal concoctions being less lucrative. Indeed, it is as a fashion consultant that Katherine, countess of Suffolk, has summoned her to dress her daughter Frances, countess of Essex. Anne’s task: to get Frances out of bed, ready to please her husband, Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex.

But the earl is not easily pleased, even by the most beautiful, vivacious young wife in England. Only an empty-headed bully, coward, and brute with multiple axes to grind could treat Frances Howard so badly she’d refuse to leave her bedchamber. But Essex is all that, and more: He’s impotent and can’t consummate the marriage, which only adds to his shame, prompting him to abuse his nineteen-year-old bride even further.

Moreover, there are politics involved, as always among English aristocrats. Frances Howard is one of those Howards, the family with which Tudor monarchs had to reckon, as do the Stuarts now, in the court of James I. And Essex’s family is the Howard faction’s sworn enemy.

So Mistress Turner, seamstress and herbalist, is sailing in deep, choppy waters, but she’s ambitious. She has claim to social respectability, through this or that marriage or cousin, and she’s always liked finer things, of which she’s had a taste. Consequently, though she resents being ordered about by Frances’s mother, as if she were a servant, the young countess draws her in, and not just as a means for advancement.

Anne Turner, artist unknown, 1615 (courtesy http://www.kateemersonhistoricals.com/TudorWomen5.htm via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

A most unusual friendship develops, as Frankie, as she’s known to intimates, relies heavily on Anne’s guidance. Impulsive, passionate, and unguarded in tongue, the neophyte noblewoman requires a steadying hand, whereas Anne sees in her protégée a kindly soul craving warmth and protection. To be sure, the commoner also revels in court intrigue and the display of wealth and pomp to which she has access through Frankie.

But Frankie’s no easy charge to look after, and she has dangerous tastes, in particular a deep, powerful attraction to Robert Carr, the king’s favorite. All eyes, and not just those of Frankie’s boorish husband, are watching — and Anne is dragooned into acting as go-between.

The narrative therefore intersects with that of The Poison Bed, Elizabeth Fremantle’s take on the Howard-Carr intrigue. But where Fremantle fixed on the cut-and-thrust of court politics and the tempestuous romance, Jago, though she pays attention to those facets of the story, concentrates on the friendship between the two women. She casts her narrative as a feminist tale, a woman wronged by her beast of a husband; has she really no recourse?

Jago’s authorial hand is remarkably sure, especially in a first novel. From the beginning, the reader will admire the prose, descriptive and emotionally evocative at once, as with this early passage, in which Anne contrives to dress Frances appropriately, yet with an eye to the young woman’s own advantage and image to portray:

My hands darted like a bird pecking seed, working needles and pins, laces and points, circling Frances like a whole flock of maids though I was but one woman. My deftness pleased me, as if the pins and laces grew from my own body as silk comes from the spider. I enjoyed the feel of the sharp metal broaching cloth made on looms in foreign lands, by hands as quick and sure as my own. It pleased me to sculpt fine materials into the shapes in my mind’s eye. To the bodice I tied sleeves, pulling them into sharp peaks above her shoulders. From the shambles of this whipped child rose a castle, every swag and buttress a testament to her worth.

With such keen observation, the novel renders the manner in which the court honors or breaks reputations, and what happens as a result. There are a few decent people about, but they must be watchful, for no one falls faster or harder than the lucky person elevated in esteem, then dropped; and courtiers take delight in revenge, whenever they can. Though court life is a standard in historical fiction portraying this era, I nevertheless note Jago’s persistent eye to the human cost, as with the innocent offspring of the figures cast down.

I’m not sure I find as much meaning in the feminist aspect of Frances Howard’s predicament as Jago intends, maybe because, as the daughter of one earl and wife of another, our countess is hardly representative. (I find more of that thematic substance in Anne’s story.) I see the issues involved with Frances — it’s hard not to — just not the claim of deep significance. I’m also not persuaded of Anne Turner’s venal side, because we’re told it rather than shown.

But all the same, A Net for Small Fishes is a splendid novel, evocative and moving, and I highly recommend it. Few authors can bring off literary thrillers, but Jago does. She’s an author to watch.

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

A Not-Quite-Faustian Bargain: The Outcasts of Time

07 Monday Mar 2022

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Review: The Outcasts of Time, by Ian Mortimer
Pegasus, 2018. 386 pp. $26

Devon, 1348. Two brothers, John and William, walk through a plague-ridden country, past rotting corpses and scenes of destruction that presage the Apocalypse. When the sickness overtakes them too, they realize that their lives are forfeit, and they fear that their souls may not be ready for death. However, as they sense their strength wane, a disembodied voice tells them they have six days to live and offers them a choice.

They may struggle home with their remaining strength to see what has happened to their town and loved ones. Or they may spend the six days in time travel, as each day will advance another ninety-nine years, during which brief moment they may redeem themselves. After arguing whether they have listened to the Devil and are being led astray, John and William accept the offer. It’s a twist on Faust, without a contract or sale of a soul.

Harry Clarke’s illustration for the Bayard Taylor translation of Goethe’s Faust, 1870-71 (courtesy Project Gutenberg Open Library System, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

I seldom, as in never, review historical fantasy and rarely read any. But The Outcasts of Time caught my fancy, and maybe it’ll catch yours. As a literary conceit, time travel has grown a long, white beard by now, but I like it that Mortimer has cast his century-spanning mechanism as a matter of conscience rather than a gizmo. Also, no abracadabra changes the scenery or chases away evil people, of whom there are plenty, for our travelers often land hard as the centuries pass.

The year 1447 seems miserable; 1546 brings the brothers to Henry VIII’s time; 1645 places them smack in the Civil War. Consequently, they must choose a face to present without knowing what’s prudent, because so much has changed. What was counted sinful in 1348 may now be virtuous, and what passed for virtue may now be treason. They have a lot of explaining to do.

That’s partly the point, for The Outcasts of Time has much to say about good, evil, and how material wealth or the progress of learning affect them or are used or misused. The novel also explores the human desire for permanence, proof of our passage on this planet that someone else will find after our deaths. John, a stonemason who worked on the Exeter Cathedral and created sculptures he’s proud of, is conscious of this desire in himself and of how futile it is. As he observes more than halfway through his time journey:

It is a salutary thought that something as insubstantial as a name can endure so long.… Tradition, like a centuries-old creeper of ivy, slowly winds its way into the crevices of our conversations and fastens itself onto such words, holding them firmly in place. You’d have thought that it was the private property, kept away from prying eyes and jealous fingers, which would endure. But all the houses from my time have been replaced. As for possessions, fires consume them, thieves steal them, and time erodes them. Common things, like names and roads, last for centuries.

John’s quest to perform a good deed to redeem himself before death takes various turns. That poses several questions, not least whether goodness can be conscious, or whether such acts can serve a redemptive purpose.

Among other pleasures, The Outcasts of Time offers historical detail in a light but authoritative hand. You see through John’s eyes what has changed, what would strike him most strongly, and why, which makes you think. For obvious reasons, Mortimer has updated the brothers’ language, or nobody in later centuries would have understood them. Yet he’s hewed to simplicity of tongue, for the most part, and seldom does the language jump out and stop the reader.

I do wonder, though, how John, who is excellent at ciphering but illiterate, and his brother, who can read, a little — how that happens, I don’t know — dispute the way they do. Free of superstition, seemingly also of common prejudices, they sound sophisticated. They lack any notion that the world is, and has always been, what they know, and appear ready to step outside it enough to judge the future centuries shown them. They sound like relativists ahead of their time, perhaps too tolerant of what they find.

William, the sensualist of the two, comes across less clearly or deeply than John, and though he’s supposed to represent a person who chooses pleasures over an examined life, I still want to see his dreams and desires beyond the next cup of ale or the next woman. Further, though the brothers remark bitterly on the priests’ flight from their plague-ridden land of 1348, they don’t seem perturbed at the likelihood that they’ll die unshriven, their sins unconfessed. I would have expected terror at the prospect.

However, the narrative and the philosophy within it demand a stretch from the characters, and if plausibility suffers to a mild degree, remember that we’re talking about a story with Faustian overtones, a legend to begin with. The Outcast of Time’s an engrossing novel, worth stretching for.

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.

Deception’s Toll: An Unlikely Spy

22 Monday Nov 2021

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Review: An Unlikely Spy, by Rebecca Starford
Ecco, 2021. 338 pp. $28

Evelyn Varley has made something of herself, she thinks. It’s late 1939, and the girl from the wrong side of the tracks in Lewes, East Sussex, has come a long way since she won a scholarship to a prestigious boarding school, then Oxford, where she took Firsts in German and literature. Along the way, she befriended Sally Wesley, a girl from a wealthy family that practically adopted Evelyn, showering her with the warmth, hospitality, excursions, gifts, and spirited conversation she never received at home. And when war breaks out, Sally’s father recommends Evelyn to a friend in government, and presto! she gets a job with the War Office.

At first, that means typing and filing, nothing glamorous, and her office is situated in an old prison, to boot. But eventually, MI5 recruits her to infiltrate an organization of British Nazis. Appalled by their views, especially their violent anti-Semitism, Evelyn nevertheless steels herself to the task, unaware that she will have to choose between her conscience, loyalty to country, and her lifelong friends.

The Olympia Exhibition Centre, London, where a British Union of Fascists meeting in 1934 turned violent, costing the movement support. At its height, the BUF boasted more than 50,000 members. (Courtesy Kenneth Allen, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Character-driven thrillers are unusual in themselves, and this one’s terrific. Don’t be put off by the opening, a somewhat confusing section that takes place after the war. I think the author wants you to know that something shocking has happened, to hold your interest, after which the novel goes into Evelyn’s back story. It’s a prologue by another name, and I understand why Starford takes this approach, but it feels clumsy in parts, not at all like the rest of the book. The narrative sorts itself out soon enough, though, and you see how Evelyn unwittingly trains for her future career.

At her boarding school, as the poor girl, she’s the “charity case,” the butt of vicious hazing. Sally rescues her somewhat, being an outsider too, a connection I find a little hard to believe. But if it’s a false note, it’s the only one. Evelyn succeeds socially on her own where Sally doesn’t, by copying their tormentors and earning their acceptance. The price she pays is steep, however — forgetting who she is, learning her new friends’ contempt for her origins, and hiding behind a dissembling heart. Years later:

Sometimes, as Evelyn lay in her bed upstairs, she was wracked by loneliness. She loved her parents, but now she could see them for their true selves, free from the burnish of childish idolatry or just plain youthful ignorance. She knew her father belittled her because he couldn’t face the idea of her one day looking down on him, and she recognized how meager her mother’s existence had become, counting out her shillings at the bakery and going without new clothes or books or an outing to a restaurant, refusing any activity that she deemed indulgent. Evelyn was embarrassed by this puritan denial of even the smallest forms of pleasure. She didn’t want her life to be a mere transaction; she wanted to feel the workings of experience deep in her bones. She knew her parents sensed this change in her, but since she could never tell them about what really happened at school, she had to live with the knowledge that they believed she had actually become this person and was not merely wearing a disguise.

Consequently, she’s got the makeup of a perfect operative, capable of assuming a necessary guise, belonging nowhere, therefore adaptable. But once again, she pays an extortionate price for the thrill of being useful, the knowledge that she’s standing up for her beliefs, which leads her to deceive people, including herself.

What a brilliant portrayal, the better for Evelyn’s hesitations and insecurities. So often, spies in fiction have ice water for blood and seldom make mistakes, only bad bets because they’ve been misled or have no choice. Evelyn’s a different sort altogether, struggling not to engage emotionally, wondering every second if she’s overplayed her hand, and unsure what she’s accomplished, if anything. Unlike many in her trade, she shies away from damaging anyone, unaware that she’s done it despite herself. Sally’s fiancé, a handsome, thoughtless brute, thinks of pain as an “accolade,” Evelyn believes, “something to be earned, and something to be inflicted.” She despises him but has yet to learn how the manipulations she’s assigned to perform work the same way. The reader senses what she doesn’t.

Starford has a gift for active physical description that evokes feelings — there are some truly lovely passages —and she’s at her best among the British Nazis. Their rallies, riots, harangues, and even their quiet dinner parties curdle the blood. Their belief beyond all persuasion that Jews have destroyed their lives and run the world has never gone out of style, so that the historical feels like now. I can’t help think that the author has intended a tacit comparison to alt-right conspiracy theorists, no matter what human target they favor.

This chilling, moving novel, at once character-driven and a page-turner, deserves attention.

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

An Island of Women: Matrix

08 Monday Nov 2021

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Review: Matrix, by Lauren Groff
Riverhead, 2021. 257 pp. $28

In 1158, Queen Eleanor of England removes seventeen-year-old Marie from her court at Westminster and dispatches her as prioress to a struggling abbey. Having managed a family estate in Maine, a French province bordering Normandy and Brittany, Marie is judged to be just the person to turn the abbey into a moneymaker. Besides, the queen says, with Marie’s deep voice, huge hands, and taste for disputation, she has no feminine charm or art whatsoever, so who’d marry her?

History knows little of Marie de France, as she called herself, aside from her narrative poems set in Brittany with chivalric and fairy-tale themes, and her fables about animals. But Groff, in what must rank among the most original and vivid novels I have ever read, has reimagined Marie’s life as a feminist heroine who turns her painful banishment into unheard-of success. Deploying considerable political and social gifts, Marie attempts not only to put the abbey on sound financial footing, creating a beehive of productive activity, she aims for nothing less than making the place an island unto itself, not just free of men but of male influence altogether.

Marie de France, from an illuminated manuscript attributed to Richard of Verdun (courtesy Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Paris, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the United States)

Talk about a fairytale! These are the Middle Ages, when women have no say in anything, and even to suggest otherwise invites accusations of witchcraft or heresy. But Groff knows exactly what she’s doing, and she establishes this threat alongside Marie’s campaigns for freedom; as the abbey grows wealthy, enemies gather. I particularly admire how the narrative subtly employs a historical parallel between the real queen and the fictive yet plausible prioress. Eleanor, as duchess of Aquitaine, bride to two kings, mother of two others, and a political force into her dotage makes an excellent foil for Marie, whose aspirations are both greater and lesser.

Marie, who loves Eleanor and aches from her dismissal, hopes to impress her mentor and regain her favor, hence both the poems and the efforts to increase income for the crown. Marie therefore has one eye on the temporal world, the other on matters of the soul, yet carries an intense desire for approval, a depiction allowing for compelling personal and public stakes. The setup also permits Marie to receive Eleanor’s half-admiring warnings about the dangers she’s running in a world controlled by men.

Further, Groff expertly fleshes out Marie’s biography, casting her as an illegitimate child of royal rape, which has repercussions throughout the story. (The text implies that the rapist was Stephen, the Plantagenet king eventually succeeded by Henry II, Eleanor’s future second husband.) As an infant, Marie accompanied her mother on Crusade, which gives her needed cachet at the abbey — you can imagine the nuns wonder how a seventeen-year-old can presume lead them. They don’t wonder long.

But the real genius of Matrix involves the re-creation of medieval thought and belief regarding the use and abuse of power, the difference between human goodness and a leader’s greatness, how civilizations rise and fall, and a woman’s place in making history. Marie has visions, ornate religious dramas whose recounting conveniently allow her to promote schemes otherwise considered heretical. But she also explores the emotional and moral spaces where no one else even thinks to go. For instance, when she comforts a bellowing cow whose calf has been taken from her, her physical bond with the beast makes her wonder if that’s the closest she’s come to seeing God.

From the first line, the prose will spirit you away. Take any passage you like — any — but for argument’s sake, consider this one, when Marie intends to send her poems to Eleanor:

She will send her manuscript as a blazing arrow toward her love, and when it strikes, it will set that cruel heart on fire. Eleanor will relent. Marie will be allowed back to the court, to the place where none ever starve, and there is always music and dogs and birds and life, when at dusk the gardens are full of lovers and flowers and intrigue, where Marie can practice her languages and hear in the halls the fiery tails of new ideas shooting through conversations. Not just the tripartite god of parent and child and ghost who is talked about here, not all this endless work and prayer and hunger.

How Marie surrenders this fantasy to adopt the daily task of tending the women around her so that they realize their true natures and abilities makes stirring fiction. (She struggles hard but subtly against what men have said about women; note that in this narrative, the word god is never capitalized.) The title, a clever play on words, suggests what Groff is after. At the abbey, the healer, for instance, is the infirmatrix, and the scribe, the scriptorix. So it follows that the mother is the matrix, which also means “originator.” You may take that figuratively or literally.

Matrix is a finalist for the National Book Award. Next week, we’ll find out whether it’s the winner, but either way, read this novel.

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

Cult Following: The Prophet

02 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: The Prophet, by Martine Bailey
Severn, 2021. 241 pp. $30

It’s May 1753, and Tabitha De Vallory (née Hart) has every reason to rejoice. A former prostitute turned lady of the manor, Tabitha has found married happiness with Nat, onetime rake and scribbler of scurrilous, lurid tales, now declared heir to a Cheshire estate and the baronetcy that goes with it. Come summer, Tabitha will give birth to their first child.

But when the body of a pregnant seventeen-year-old girl, likely a prostitute, is found beneath the Mandrem Oak, an ancient tree on Nat’s land said to have magical powers, Tabitha sets out to find the killer. Her pregnancy hampers her, not least because Dr. Caldwell insists she remain in bed and refrain from any thought or activity upsetting to her weak feminine constitution. Tabitha wishes she could tell him to stuff it, but despite her natural boldness, she must placate Nat, who fears for her; the servants dedicated to treating her like a human wheelbarrow; and—a nice touch—her own fears and folk beliefs.

Further complicating matters, a charismatic preacher, Baptist Gunn, has gathered a band of believers near the Mondrem Oak. He prophesies a savior to be born that summer and a kingdom free of such annoyances as private property, privileges of birth, or the confines of marriage, all to be found in His Majesty’s colony of Pennsylvania. His followers put their faith in Gunn and the New World he describes, largely turning a blind eye to his habit of lifting every skirt he can get his hands on.

William Hogarth’s painting, An Election Entertainment, 1754-55, helped fuel a legend that riots greeted Britain’s change of calendar in 1753, when it was merely an election issue (courtesy Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

The Prophet is the sequel to The Almanack, and readers of that mystery will find welcome parallels here. As characters with disreputable pasts, Tabitha and Nat must tend their reputations, and the course of their true love travels a bumpy road. I like the hurdles Bailey places in their way, particularly important because Nat, as acting lord of the manor and responsible for catching the murderer, has the physical and moral freedom Tabitha lacks, whereas what secrets he chooses to share (or not) affect domestic bliss.

Readers of the previous tale will also recognize the feminist slant. Nobody understands the sexual double standard better than Tabitha, but, in a further twist, she has to train herself to reach Nat emotionally rather than rely on physical attraction alone. Meanwhile, she suffers the neighbors’ snobbery, endures passes from any man who thinks he can get away with it, and hates being on public display as a child-bearing member of the gentry, rather like a monument about which everyone offers an opinion. The sawbones, whom she heartily dislikes yet also fears, just in case his medical opinions are correct, represents only part of her trials:

Doctor Caldwell was a shambling man of five and thirty; unkempt in his person, with a greasy old cauliflower wig, and the protruding eyes of an overbred pug dog. According to Nat he was an excellent physician, but his manner left Tabitha feeling like a brood mare being assessed for market. First, he inspected her urine in a glass, holding it to the light, then sniffing it, and—rather disgustingly—tasting a few drops on the ends of his fingers. . . . Close up, she was forced to turn her nose from great wafts of his onion breath.

Finally, The Prophet enacts the fascination with folklore that drove The Almanack, and I find that the most appealing part of the current tale. Through Baptist Gunn and his cult followers, and the mysteries and folklore of childbearing and fortune telling, Bailey offers a fine glimpse of everyday Cheshire life. I like how she captures the outlook of people who pretend to be modern but aren’t, nor do they know what modern means, except that it scares them. Nowhere is that more evident than in time keeping, in which a society largely without clocks or authoritative calendars can’t be sure what day it is—especially because the country has just changed systems. That uncertainty affects the story.

However, I find the storytelling and writing less compelling than those of the previous installment. Here, the villains are 100 percent villainous, Gunn’s 100 percent corrupt, and the mystery, 95 percent predictable, the remaining 5 percent accounting for minor detail. As for narrative style, I prefer stories in which authors show rather than tell, particularly when it comes to their characters’ emotions. The Prophet, for all its welcome marital complications between Nat and Tabitha, often resolves them through explanation, or so it seems. I notice many physical descriptions that feel static rather than active, a surefire measure of tell versus show.

I wish I could recommend The Prophet more highly. I hope that future installments reclaim the pleasures of its predecessor.

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

Blood Will Have Blood: The Abstainer

22 Monday Mar 2021

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Review: The Abstainer, by Ian McGuire
Random House, 2020. 307 pp. $27

When the law hangs three members of the Fenian Brotherhood for killing a policeman in Manchester, England, in 1867, Constable James O’Connor knows the punishment will solve nothing. The Irish revolutionaries will retaliate, and since he’s the copper who has paid informants among them and understands his countrymen better than his English superiors, officialdom should listen. But they don’t. O’Connor’s place of birth condemns him in their eyes; they consider the Irish bloodthirsty, drunken savages, thieves, and heathens. Besides, O’Connor left the Dublin police under circumstances he won’t talk about, but which have something to do with drink.

Now, however, he abstains, and though his sympathetic, more human approach to law enforcement alternately puzzles and enrages his bosses, he speaks the sober truth no one wants to hear. But he does get them to pay attention when he learns that the New York Fenians have sent an assassin to Manchester to plot revenge for the hangings. Unfortunately, it will take more than O’Connor’s say-so to persuade his superiors to follow through in the ways he suggests, partly because they can’t believe that the drastic legal penalties they have just meted out will fail to curb the violence.

O’Connor has an inkling of what he’s up against, but not even he can anticipate the determination of his newest enemy. Stephen Doyle, though born in Ireland, fought for the Union in the Civil War, and he believes that he’s been sent to Manchester to fight another war whose rules are much the same. A colder, more ruthless and capable opponent would be hard to find, and he startles even his Fenian brethren in Manchester by his attitude. You know that he will give no quarter and expect none.

You also know that sooner or later, O’Connor and Doyle will meet, because the constable does his best to think along with the assassin. However, O’Connor has two distinct disadvantages. He can’t command, merely suggest, whereas Doyle dictates what he wants, and the Fenian foot soldiers obey. Secondly, and more important, O’Connor has a heart, and it’s still reeling from the untimely death of his beloved wife in Dublin. Further, a nephew he barely knows shows up from America and demands to play a role in the surveillance operation — a brilliant stroke of McGuire’s that raises the stakes immediately.

Consequently, this thriller has much more to it than the usual cat and mouse. You do want to know whether O’Connor and the police will thwart Doyle or fail to stop him, though it would be fairer to say that the narrative gives you no choice, compelling you to turn the pages. McGuire’s a terrific storyteller, and “no — and furthermore” lives in the very soot-infested air of Manchester. For me, the tension even feels too much, at times.

“Freedom to Ireland,” an 1866 Currier & Ives lithograph. The Fenian Brotherhood began in the United States and was eventually superseded by similar organizations (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain in the U.S.)

On top of that, The Abstainer explores an aspect of good versus evil that belongs to every conflict in which some believe that violence is the best or only solution, while others don’t. Naturally, that division fits Irish history under British rule, so though this story takes place in 1867, the same issues would apply in 1967 or beyond. Accordingly, McGuire’s really asking who has the upper hand: the side with fewer scruples or the one claiming the moral high ground? And is the upper hand the better hand to have, or not?

As befits this heady theme, McGuire deploys lucid, hard-edged prose that conveys deep feeling and the raw atmosphere. Early on in the novel, O’Connor witnesses the hanging — he’d rather not, but he’s supposed to be there — and it makes a terrible impression on him:

O’Connor hears the call of a crow like a dry cork being pulled from a bottle and, from over the river, a clatter of cartwheels and the whinny of a horse. For a long moment, the three men stand side by side beneath the heavy oak crossbeam, separate but conjoined, like rough-hewn caryatids, and then with a startling suddenness they are gone. Instead of their breathing, living bodies, there are only the three taught lines of rope like long vertical scratches on the prison wall. The crowd inhales, then gives a long guttural sigh like a wave slowly pulling back from a beach. O’Connor shudders, swallows, feels a pulse of nausea sweep up from his stomach into his mouth.

With this moment and many others, throughout The Abstainer, you see how thin the line between life and death, good fortune and bad. One false move here, and catastrophe would have resulted; one forgetful lapse there, and it arrives unexpectedly. That’s another theme, what happiness depends on, and how fleeting it can be.

If this story sounds bleak, in many ways, it is. But it’s also quite powerful and rings true; this is a novel to remember, and I highly recommend it.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from bookshop.org, an online retailer that splits its proceeds with independent bookstores.

Heresies: The King at the Edge of the World

28 Monday Dec 2020

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Review: The King at the Edge of the World, by Arthur Phillips
Random House, 2020. 265 pp. $27

In 1591, Mahmoud Ezzedine lives a fulfilling life. As court physician to the Sultan Murad in Constantinople, Mahmoud is highly respected, and his general practice gives him a deserved reputation as a skilled, empathic healer. He has a comfortable house, a beautiful, loving wife, and a son whom he dotes on. Truly, Allah has blessed him.

But a diplomatic mission to London, of all places, is setting forth, and Mahmoud, who’d rather not go anywhere, is dragged along. He has little choice, really, for Murad the Great’s command is law. However, the official who gives the Caliph of Caliphs the idea to send the doctor with the diplomats lusts after Mahmoud’s wife. As a kind, honest person who prefers directness to invasion or suggestion, Mahmoud’s no match for that particular courtier, or any other, for that matter. And you just know, even if you haven’t read the jacket flap — don’t — that the good doctor will make an innocent mistake, for which he’ll pay dearly.

If you’re like me and get upset when you read about decent people suffering for their virtues while the evil triumph, The King at the Edge of the World will make you ache. For that reason, short as the novel is, and recounting as riveting a story as you could want, the threats to our hero kept me from plowing through. Do read the book, though — but not, repeat, the jacket flap, about as potent a spoiler as you’ll ever find.

Sultan Murad III (d. 1595) by an unknown Spanish artist (courtesy Wikimedia Commons, public domain). As his first act upon accession to the throne, Murad had his five younger brothers strangled.

Phillips excels at re-creating historical attitudes, prejudices, and ways of reasoning. Mahmoud’s adventures in England also resemble a thriller’s in their ever-increasing intensity; combined, these elements make a strong, thought-provoking narrative. At its center, Phillips puts the England riven by conflict between Protestant and Catholic and imagines how a Muslim would view that. It will be recalled that Elizabethan politics and diplomacy revolved around who prayed where, and in what way, and how many people died, often in hideous fashion, for doing it wrong or attempting to make everyone else do it their way. Hard to imagine that all this idiocy happened during an age blessed with cultural triumph — and Mahmoud, the observant Muslim, remains unimpressed:

He was there, he reminded himself, to be a figure of strength and confidence in the face of endless strangeness, of threats to health and mental stamina. He must fortify the bodies of the embassy’s men (himself included) and fortify their minds against all that was wrong here: the half-naked women, the food, the fog, the filth, the intoxicating drink, the intellectual softness, the islanders’ several varieties of devoted and violent false faith.

The physician, if he weren’t a member of a diplomatic mission, would be called a heretic and a savage to his face (as some English folk manage to imply even as they think they’re being polite). But who’s the person who embodies religious virtue, and who are the real heretics? Who’s the savage, and who’s the civilized, cultured man? This is how Phillips casts the sceptered isle in its glory. To be sure, he also creates an English narrator who insists that Catholic plots against the realm do exist and, if not crushed, would cause widespread bloodshed. Since he’s utterly credible, the question then becomes how to square the civilization and the savagery; and of course, there is no real answer.

My only objections to this novel — have I mentioned the too-revealing jacket flap? — concern Mahmoud’s role as a political actor. How could such a guileless innocent occupy any court position, let alone that of a physician, with the power to kill as well as heal? After all, history records how Ottoman crown princes, on attaining the throne, might have their brothers strangled with a silken cord, as Murad did. Only the politically adept would survive such an atmosphere, or even be invited into it.

Similarly, as the narrative progresses, Mahmoud learns a thing or two about survival — not easily, mind you, and requiring excruciating mental gymnastics, which Phillips ably portrays. For that reason I don’t entirely accept the end, which the author fudges somewhat, unwelcome in itself.

Nevertheless, I invite you to read The King at the Edge of the World and be amazed at Mahmoud’s ingenuity — and his creator’s.

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.

Drinka Pinta Deatha Day: Murder by Milk Bottle

02 Monday Nov 2020

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Review: Murder by Milk bottle, by Lynne Truss
Bloomsbury, 2020. 320 pp. $27

The summer of 1957 has witnessed plenty of deadly violence in Brighton, England, and Constable Twitten longs for a respite. But he’s not going to get one. Three more victims soon bite the dust in rapid fashion, sending this seaside resort town into a tizzy over the August Bank Holiday weekend. What’s more, all three met their end courtesy of milk-bottle shards. This is a rather unfortunate coincidence, since the Milk Girl, a lovely young woman hired by the dairy industry, will be making a publicity appearance, opening a milk bar. Or is it a coincidence?

Consider to the influence of an ice cream competition, judged by the local police inspector, Steine. Don’t forget the beauty contest, widely believed to be rigged, or the barber competition, which has a similar reputation. For good measure, we have a stampede of docile milk cows, a girls’ school with a troubled past, and Mrs. Groynes, char lady at the police station, whose real profession is running organized crime in Brighton.

Incidentally, she’s the only organized person in the station, for the police are utterly incompetent. Constable Twitten, though he sees much, as his first name, Peregrine, would suggest, makes a hash of interpreting it, as his last name implies. He’s perennially blind to the attractive young women who keep falling in love with him, the anti-James Bond. He also has a gift for saying the wrong thing at precisely the wrong moment, so these women may be better off without him. More educated than either Sergeant Brunswick or Inspector Steine, he correctly assumes he’s got more on the ball. But he can seldom convince them of anything, and his manners don’t help. Mrs. Groynes mentors him, when it suits her purposes, fully aware that no matter what Twitten says, he’ll remain the only copper in Brighton who knows she’s a criminal.

As I hope you’ve gathered by now, Murder by Milk Bottle is a riot. I’ve never laughed so often at a mystery, one that recalls British film comedies from the 1960s about blundering police, criminals, or both. (See, for example, The Wrong Arm of the Law, released in 1963, in which Peter Sellers plays a mobster named Pearly Gates.) But Truss has her own style, often witty, very often madcap, never taking itself too seriously. The plot churns merrily, with wry twists and clever turnabouts. You know that the bunglers will bungle, yet will somehow triumph in the end; you just don’t know how. The mystery narration itself is so clever that you’ll keep guessing (wrongly) until the end. And will the characters learn anything? I doubt it.

Truss’s prose is a treat, full of commentary, as with this passage about a dispatcher for roadside assistance:

Mr. Hollibon was an ardent smoker with all the hallmarks of a man who has inhaled warmed-up toxins continuously for more than thirty years. The puckered skin, deep-stained fingers, disgusting cough: he flaunted them all with pride. An army doctor had once asked if his cough was ‘productive,’ and he had replied, truthfully, ‘Yes, very.’ Leaning forward now, he alternately coughed and struggled for breath until (yes!) A veritable torrent of expectoration was produced. And then, pleased with himself, he lit a fresh fag to celebrate.

But there’s also plenty of wordplay. My favorite is the Cockney rhyming slang, in which the phrase “best whistle” refers to whistle and flute, meaning suit; or “boat,” short for boat race, meaning face. But there’s also Twitten’s predilection for psych talk, which is ridiculously funny, and the name of the girls’ school, Lady Laura Laridae (Laridae is the class of sea birds that includes gulls). And finally I’ll cite the author’s play on the famous advertising phrase of the dairy industry, Drinka Pinta Milka Day, which a waggish Brighton newspaper publisher, considering all the mayhem, turns into Drinka Pinta Deatha Day.

None of this surprises me, given Truss’s fame for Eats, Shoots & Leaves, her plea against the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, as Professor Higgins put it in My Fair Lady. But I tell you, if she wishes to write a mystery revolving around death by comma (Oxford or inverted), I’m down for that.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher through my work for Historical Novels Review.