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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.

Washington, 1942: Louise’s War

11 Monday Apr 2022

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Review: Louise’s War, by Sarah B. Shaber
Severn, 2011. 194 pp. $28

American involvement in World War II is six months old, and everybody and her sister flocks to the nation’s capital to find a job. Louise Pearlie, whose husband has died years before and can’t bear to remain in rural North Carolina, has brought her excellent secretarial skills and work experience to the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence organization. Gossip has it that the Allies will invade North Africa within months, hence the OSS search for maps of the coastline and experts who understand the beaches.

A 1943 poster for the Office of War Information by George Rapp (OWI poster 55, courtesy Library of Congress; public domain)

One such authority is Gerald Bloch, a French Jew married to a school friend of Louise’s. From what little news she’s received, Louise gathers that Gerald and Rachel are stuck in Marseilles, while reports say that the Vichy government has made sure that no Jews will receive exit visas. Deportation looms, and Louise, who owes Rachel a huge debt, wishes she could help.

Theoretically, the OSS could claim that Gerald Bloch would provide necessary information concerning the upcoming invasion. But the file on him goes missing during the confusion ensuing from the fatal heart attack suffered by the director of Louise’s section. At first, she thinks nothing of this, but soon, at tremendous risk, she sets out to discover how and why a sensitive dossier could simply vanish, and whether recovering it would save the Blochs.

It’s an excellent premise, if a mite dependent on coincidence, but Shaber’s narrative has a lot going for it. For starters, I like how she’s drawn Louise. Growing up poor and churchy, Louise doesn’t quite know what to make of the big city, where old values get shunted aside in the business of making war. The tremendous crush of people in a hurry and under pressure, with ambition and money to spend, offers temptations she’s not used to, but which attract her. Her parents want her to remarry, but she enjoys her independence, even if she wonders what it would feel like to have the financial security and creature comforts she’d never afford on her own.

That said, Louise also knows that many, if not most, men expect women to keep quiet and use their brains only to help solve male problems, for which, of course, they’ll receive no credit. But her common sense doesn’t prevent her from wanting what might not be good for her. I like that complexity.

The other winning facet of Louise’s War is the atmosphere. Whether it’s fabric shortages, the bus company’s refusal to hire Black drivers, people trying to get around the sugar ration, or the habit of traveling GIs tossing letters out train windows, knowing that someone will stamp and mail them, Shaber knows her ground and deploys details with skill. Here, Louise rolls her eyes at the portrayal of women in a popular magazine:

In its cheerful stories women skipped off to work in full make-up with neatly coiffed hair pulled back in colorful do-rags, carrying lunch pails full of healthy home-made food. Their overalls didn’t get dirty no matter how filthy the job. If they weren’t married with an obliging mother at home caring for their children, they were engaged to a shop foreman or a military officer. None of them were war widows or lived in boarding houses or had to park their children in crowded day nurseries.

Given that keen eye and grasp of psychology, I’m surprised to stumble across a cardinal error. Louise’s first-person narration works just fine, but, for some reason, Shaber shoehorns brief, usually first-person, sections belonging to minor characters, ostensibly to reveal information Louise couldn’t know. Since these look as clumsy as they sound, you have to ask, Does the reader need to know? I doubt it.

Pretty much everything would have kept until Louise manages to discover it, and her ignorance could have heightened the tension, complicating her attempts to parse conflicting evidence. As it is, the story telegraphs answers to a couple major questions when, with little effort, the author might have shaded the account of events to create doubt and keep the reader guessing along with Louise.

Less glaring to the general reader, though unfortunately common in fiction, the Jewish characters don’t feel genuine, which turns them into a narrative convenience. I also object to how certain authors consistently say “Nazis” to identify those who invaded other countries and committed mass murder and expropriation, as though “ordinary” Germans distanced themselves from those crimes.

I can’t help think that the author, or her publisher, wants to separate people we like from those we can hate with abandon. Too bad. Similarly, the novel presents a likable, admirable protagonist, born and raised in North Carolina, who befriends the Black women servants in her boardinghouse without a second thought. That seems a little easy.

Nevertheless, in other ways Louise’s War brilliantly presents a city during conflict, a heroine whose voice draws you in, and a mystery that will keep you turning the pages.

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

Coping with a Tyrant: A Room Made of Leaves

03 Monday Jan 2022

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Review: A Room Made of Leaves, by Kate Grenville
Text, 2020. 317 pp. $33AU

During Sydney’s colonial infancy in the late eighteenth century, there lived John Macarthur, a man credited with introducing the sheep breed that would make Australian wool famous, and himself, a fortune. But what if he wasn’t the innovator he claimed to be, nor a gifted leader and businessman, but merely a bully on the make who got lucky? Indeed, let’s suppose that his luckiest break, though he wouldn’t have called it that, was to marry Elizabeth Veale, who left behind a diary telling what may or may not be the real story?

Portrait of Elizabeth Macarthur, artist unknown, 1794-1796, State Library of New South Wales, presented by Sir William Dixson, 1935 (via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Such is the premise Grenville spins, and what a compelling story she derives from this tight space between truth and fiction. There was no such diary, but turning Elizabeth’s letters to England on their head, Grenville imagines the meaning between the lines as opposite to their literal sense, for, after all, husband John reads them before they cross the ocean — yes, he’s that controlling, and worse.

Through the Macarthurs’ marriage, Grenville retells the story of English colonialism in Sydney, because John is a schemer, and Elizabeth, the often appalled onlooker. The author could have overplayed this and made her protagonist a progressive thinker who rails, in her head, against the maltreatment of the indigenous populations. Rather, as a feeling person, Elizabeth has the capacity to put herself in someone else’s viewpoint, but she has few illusions that she’s any more compassionate than her countrymen, because she takes no action. That criticism may exaggerate, but it’s not far-fetched, for Elizabeth, as a victim of brutality, can surely recognize that in others.

However, relations between husband and wife drive the story. Elizabeth has wit, spirit, and excellent diplomatic survival skills, but she’s had to learn them, on the fly. Her girlhood is a series of abandonments and disappointments, leavened by her beloved grandfather, who, though inflexible in his religious and moral code, encourages his granddaughter to have an inner life and to love nature. Unbeknownst to her, these are two essential weapons in her war of self-defense against her future brute of a husband.

I won’t reveal how she becomes shackled to such a blight on the human race, but I will tell you that the key pleasure in A Room Made of Leaves comes from Elizabeth’s slow but steady education. Catering to his view of her, and of women in general, she pretends to be incapable of serious thought, by which she learns to placate, flatter, outwit, and soothe John, who’s half as smart as he thinks he is. His greatest talent consists of hatching conspiracies to ruin men who haven’t treated him like “a gentleman.” As is often the case with malicious snobs, he knows he has no real claim to that status, and he takes pleasure in his successful cabals, the more vicious, the better.

He’s just as dangerous at home, where he expects complete fealty. Elizabeth takes steps not to change him — heavens, no — but to protect herself as best she can, enough to create a place in her mind where she views herself as worthy, capable, and by no means powerless. That the power largely exists in thought and outlook may not seem like much, at first glance. But Elizabeth’s triumph is that no matter how Macarthur imprisons her in his iron fist, she’s free to think what she likes. And, once in a while, to do more than that.

That’s the inner life her grandfather fostered in her. As for the nature, that’s Australia itself. Interestingly, among the few English residents of Sydney who aren’t convicts, such as the Macarthurs (he’s a military officer), practically no one besides Elizabeth even seems to notice how beautiful the land is. In one of her favorite spots, the room named in the title, she realizes how the scenery can help her spirit:

Each step [down] revealed a new marvel: a view through the bushes of a slice of harbour rough and blue like lapis, a tree with bark of such a smooth pink fleshiness that you could expect it to be warm, an overhang of rock with a fraying underside, soft as cake, that glowed yellow. The wind brought with it the salt of the ocean and the strange spicy astringency given off by the shrubs and flowers. There was an almost frightening breadth and depth and height to the place, alive with openness and the wild energy of breeze and trees and the crying gulls and the brilliant water. Alone, a speck of human in a place big enough to swallow me, I looked about with eyes that seemed open for the first time.

Since A Room Made of Leaves purports to be a diary, the chapters are very short, sometimes only a page. I’ve never liked that style of narrative, which can easily become fragmented, offering undeveloped, shallow bits. But here, Grenville creates a cohesive whole, and though the individual scenes may feel cut short, the ensemble achieves a profound depth. I recommend this novel.

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.

Waif, Reinvented: Vera

30 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: Vera, by Carol Edgarian
Scribner, 2021. 313 pp. $27

Fifteen-year-old Vera Johnson has two mothers, not just one, but neither will truly own her, and the word love doesn’t exist. Arrangement, yes; pawn in a power game, yes. But not love. The inconvenient child to Rose, a flamboyant, wildly successful brothel madam, Vera is farmed out as part of a business deal to Morie, a Swedish immigrant who lives in an aquavit bottle. Though not destitute, by any means—Rose, from a distance, sees to that–the Johnson household is impoverished in other, more important ways.

One is that Morie’s older daughter, Piper, called Pie, is everything Vera’s not: pretty, pliable, too weak to stand up for herself or anyone else, and retreats from tough decisions. Both girls suffer Morie’s whims, self-pity, and attacks with a hairbrush, but these injuries hurt Vera more. And with Pie around, who’ll pay any attention to mousy, cranky Vera?

However, circumstances are about to change—oh, are they ever—for this is San Francisco, and the year is 1906. One night, Enrico Caruso is in town to sing Carmen, and Rose springs for tickets for the Johnsons, though she stipulates that her guests aren’t allowed anywhere near her. That allows Vera the chance to roam, which she enjoys. Not only does she wander backstage (improbably) and catches sight of the great tenor before he goes on stage, she runs into Mayor Eugene Schmitz, an old acquaintance, who rightfully fears he’ll be indicted for graft the following day. San Francisco, corrupt to the core, is the sewer in which he swims.

But later that night, an earthquake devastates the city, and the world literally turns upside-down. Vera and Pie must flee their home and take refuge in Rose’s former brothel, which has largely escaped the disaster, though the madam herself is nowhere to be found. That the very idea of living there revolts Pie on moral grounds, despite the absence of any choice, tells you what you need to know about her. Vera, more adept and flexible, takes charge, with Tan, Rose’s Chinese cook, and his unpleasant, scheming daughter, Lifang, as occasional allies, more often enemies. Within weeks, Vera becomes someone well worth watching, indeed.

San Francisco City Hall after the 1906 earthquake (courtesy Steinbrugge Collection of the UC Berkeley Earthquake Engineering Research Center, via US Geodetic Survey)

The transformation, realistically halting and well earned, makes Vera such a pleasure, and our heroine’s road is steeper than Nob Hill. Her relationship to Rose, as fraught and entrapping as any mother-daughter duo, takes front and center, appropriately so. But San Francisco is a significant character too, and how the city reacts to its tragedy—and who hopes to profit—forms an essential part of the narrative and Vera’s education. Of necessity, she grows up quickly on the outside, but within, retains her teenage longings, and, as such, represents the city’s coming of age as well, an impressive literary feat.

As Vera observes early on about her hometown, “To know her was to hold in your heart the up-downness of things. Her curves and hollows, her extremes. Her windy peaks and mini-climates. Her beauty, her trembling. Her greed.” That passage might apply to Rose as well, though Vera doesn’t know that yet.

So it is that Edgarian establishes Vera’s extraordinary, compelling voice, another pleasure of the novel. With a clear-sightedness that asks no pity yet takes up residence in your heart, this young girl freely acknowledges who she is, an unloved “special bastard,” belonging nowhere:

And though that fact pained me in my early youth, I came to see my place as unique. I was never trapped by pretty frocks and expectations of home and hearth that plagued the other girls I knew; I was a secret, bound by a secret, and if all that binding kept me apart, it also allowed me a certain freedom. My mind was my sole company, and when the old world ended and the new world began, my mind would have to see us through.

You can see the feminism, here—if Vera is about anything, it’s about women and power—but Edgarian doesn’t stop there. As her protagonist learns, aches, and explores the boundaries of a world that suddenly poses fewer restraints on her, the narrative repeatedly returns to what a woman can hope for. Love? Maybe, but not for sale—Vera, though no prude, has firm objections to prostitution as a reflection of unequal power. Security? Maybe that too, but again, the price the woman pays matters, and Vera’s uncompromising, sometimes to her cost, as she realizes only in retrospect.

The novel seems so sure-footed, it’s hard to signal missteps, and none strike me as serious. The narrative glides over a couple difficulties, giving you the impression that they simply faded away. But these rare instances of unearned progression in no way mar a brilliant, evocative portrayal of a young woman looking for a place to stand she can call her own. I highly recommend Vera.

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

What Makes a Conspiracy Theory: Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch

23 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch, by Rivka Galchen
FSG, 2021. 271 pp. $27

Life feels fragile in the German Duchy of Württemberg, for it’s 1618, and not only does plague stalk the land, the Thirty Years War brings the passage of armies and their attendant depredations. But in the village of Leonberg, these afflictions only lap around the edges. What really matters is that Katharina Kepler is accused of witchcraft.

Katharina is an old woman, a grandmother who puts more faith in her beloved cow, Chamomile, than in people, young children excepted. Known for herbal remedies and her strange way of talking — she seldom answers a question directly, and asks in turn those that nobody else would dream of — she’s a busybody. She thinks nothing of bursting into someone’s house, whether to bring a gift or tell them how they should be living. The Yiddish word nudnik comes to mind.

She’s the sort who has an opinion about everything, and if you’re really lucky, you’ll get to hear it. She has a way of summing people up in insulting terms: “The crowd of them looked like a pack of dull troubadours who, come morning, have made off with all the butter.” Finally, her son, Johannes, is Imperial Mathematician, and Katharina’s neighbors are always asking her if he’ll cast their horoscopes. Apparently, he knows things about the heavens and writes books. These are suspicious activities, especially if the desired horoscope isn’t forthcoming.

Johannes Kepler, who framed the laws of planetary motion, in 1620, portrait artist unknown (courtesy Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

From this eccentric yet harmless profile emerges the most incredible folklore. The good citizens of Leonberg believe, or come to believe, that Katharina has the power to poison, make people lame, pass through locked doors, cause livestock to sicken and die, and consort with the devil. How they arrive at these fancies — and why — makes a brilliant narrative, at once chilling and hilarious, absurd, yet with the ring of absolute truth.

In a novel like this, especially in the first-person narratives Galchen deploys, voice matters greatly. Here’s Katharina’s, on one of her favorite subjects, the failings of the local authorities:

I know you’ll think it’s not wise… but I’d like to say something about Ducal Governor Einhorn, whom I prefer to call the False Unicorn. He’s not from this area. He was brought in by the marvelous Duchess Sybille, may she rest in peace. The False Unicorn was to defer to Sybille’s judgment in all matters. Then Sybille died so suddenly. The Duke was distracted — with counting soldiers, signing treaties, commissioning lace shirt cuffs.… and so the False Unicorn usurped powers that should have reverted to the Duke. He began to puff up, Einhorn did. He wore his hair longer. He had a new collar made.… I will say that the False Unicorn looks like an unwell river otter in a doublet.

You might suppose, as I did at first, that Galchen owes a debt to Kafka. Not quite. In Kafka’s bureaucratic nightmares, the hand that wields power remains obscure, sometimes invisible. Here, you see the workings, or many of them; more importantly, you see their paranoid, angry underpinnings. Kafka is said to have read his work out loud to friends, causing general laughter. I’ve never laughed at Kafka — maybe that says something about me — but I did at Galchen. Until, that is, the accusations gather steam.

Everyone Knows is a feminist statement, for we have a free-thinking woman blamed for heresies, mostly by other women, interestingly. It’s as though they resent her for doing what they’ve never let themselves even think of. But though misogyny, including the self-inflicted variety, has historically fed attempts to suppress witchcraft, there’s much more here. Galchen has delved into the paranoia that produces conspiracy theories, and her reconstruction of their origins is spot on. Life has disappointed them, hasn’t granted what the conspiracy theorist assumes he or she deserves and, by God, someone will pay. If that’s not a diagnosis of a sickness that threatens this country’s social, cultural, and political fabric, I don’t know what is.

Some readers will find that this novel ends abruptly, and maybe it does. But that doesn’t trouble me. Galchen’s less concerned with what happens than its origins and legacy; she’s not so focused on the plot, and I accept that. More bothersome is the language, entirely brilliant, yet with occasional lapses in diction. Images like troubadours stealing butter or an otter in a doublet strike my ear perfectly, so I’m not prepared for modern idioms like okay, open up, be fine with, or share your story. If Galchen, a careful writer, is trying to suggest that these seventeenth-century Germans are just like us, she’s proven that in other, deeper ways.

And it is precisely those ways that make Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch required reading.

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

East African Enmities: The Idol of Mombasa

16 Monday Aug 2021

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Review: The Idol of Mombasa, by Annamaria Alfieri
Felony and Mayhem, 2016. 249 pp. $15

When Justin Tolliver and his new bride, Vera, take up residence in Mombasa, British East Africa Protectorate, early in 1912, they have mixed feelings. They have transferred from Nairobi, where Justin, a colonial police officer, enjoyed his position, near where Vera was born, and her beloved father has his mission. But duty calls: Justin has been promoted to assistant district superintendent. Therein lies a source of marital friction, however, for he loves his work, whereas Vera wishes he’d give it up and become a farmer, as so many colonials do.

Justin promises he won’t remain on the force for long — a year at most — but that year promises to be very busy. He’s not even unpacked in Mombasa before a criminal act takes place that has diplomatic implications. The Grand Mufti of Egypt is in town to exhort the faithful of Islam, collect presents from the British, and remind them that their hold on the protectorate is anything but absolute, depending as it does on the Sultan of Zanzibar’s goodwill. And when a slave belonging to a prominent Muslim businessman runs away and is murdered for it, that should prompt soul-searching among the colonials. After all, Britain has outlawed slavery and claims that this “civilizing” influence justifies their empire. Yet political considerations and racism combine to separate the law from justice, at least as it’s practiced on the street.

Mombasa, buying ivory hunted in the East African interior, 1910-1920, Underwood & Underwood (courtesy Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

This outlook sits poorly with Justin, who believes in the stated moral principle. He also espouses a comparatively liberal outlook concerning the people the British govern. He respects his sergeant, Kwai Libazo, a man half Kikuyu, half Masai, and takes him at his word, an attitude that marks Justin as “soft” among his peers. Back in England, he was a keen sportsman who played games as much for their sense of rules as their competitive aspect. But he’s a newcomer to Mombasa; he must follow orders; and, as an earl’s second son, he faces reverse snobbery, which makes his every move suspect. Other colonials wonder how an English-born aristocrat can even think of being a police officer, while they also turn up their noses at Vera, because he’s married down.

Meanwhile, Vera is fiercely anti-slavery and has far fewer scruples about adopting local customs. She understands that British clothing and manners don’t fit in Africa, and she wants to learn Arabic — imagine! Unlike a proper English wife, she speaks her mind, so Justin hears her views on his moral compromises, another arena of marital conflict. Nevertheless, husband and wife appreciate qualities in the other that they also fear. This setup provides great possibilities.

As befits the British colonial mission, they have their romantic notions about where they are and what they’re doing. For Justin, though Mombasa makes him wrinkle his nose, it also represents an exotic fantasy:

The smell of the salt air called to mind his father’s history books and his own boyhood dreams of adventure. He imagined that this place now smelled much the same as it had to da Gama, aboard the Portuguese carrack São Gabriel when the great explorer entered Mombasa Harbor, the first European to come to this place. This was a reason to be here. This had been a place of adventure for centuries. Whatever else Mombasa was, this was the sort of place that, as a child, he had always longed to be.

If all this seems extraneous to the mystery, rest assured it belongs. Alfieri creates a solid whodunit, with a satisfying ending. Just when you think she’s tipped her hand, she hasn’t. Suspects abound from all cultures and walks of life, including the Reverend Robert Morley and his sister, Katharine. (Is this echo of the actors in The African Queen too cute? Probably.) Still, despite the issues of justice, the marriage subplot, the racial and ethnic hatreds that divide the city, and Mombasa itself, only the mystery kept me reading.

The characters, though they display more than a single trait or two, seem locked into either-or emotional states during conflict, which simplifies them and makes them predictable. Also, Alfieri’s writing style, occasionally repetitive, as in the above example, explains more than it shows and distances me. Sometimes the explanations follow action that’s already clear or restate what’s been narrated before. It’s as though Alfieri or her editor fears that we’ve forgotten the circumstances or motivations and need reminders. Either that, or she doesn’t see how to deepen such moments. It’s too bad, because there’s much on offer, and I applaud the author’s intent and loving portrayal of time, place, and cultural associations. I wish more historical mysteries did that.

Read The Idol of Mombasa, if you will, for the story. But if you’re like me, you’ll wish the rest held up its end as well.

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.

Dante and Derring-Do: The Master of Verona

26 Monday Jul 2021

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Review: The Master of Verona, by David Blixt
St. Martin’s, 2007. 561 pp. $28

In 1314, Verona’s master, Cangrande della Scala, extends patronage to Dante Alighieri, who has been banished from Florence, and his two surviving sons, Pietro, seventeen, and Jacopo, fourteen. The poet has recently published Inferno, to great renown and no little fear of heresy or impiety. But della Scala quickly realizes that Dante’s not the only gifted member of the family, nor the most useful.

Rather, he fixes on Pietro, who longs to escape his father’s shadow (while hoping pater will actually notice him one day and approve). And when Pietro falls in with two other youths — one noble, one from a merchant family pretending nobility — military adventure offers. Della Scala, a twenty-three-year-old wunderkind, dreams of uniting Italy under his banner. His approach to war, diplomacy, and familial politics has much to do with an ancient prophecy that says a figure called the Greyhound will realize that far-fetched scheme. He’s magnetic, generous, and apparently scrupulous, a rare combination. Pietro’s enthralled, and his passion takes him places, often alongside his new friends, the first he’s ever had in his life.

Equestrian statue, no date, of Cangrande della Scala, Museo di Castelvecchio,
Verona (courtesy Eggbread, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Between the derring-do, battle scenes, court intrigue, and the question of occupying many thinkers on the cusp of the Renaissance — do the stars foretell fate, or does free will have influence? — The Master of Verona makes for epic adventure. The thrumming plot, larger-than-life characters and perilous twists and turns evoke an approach like that of Dumas. The pages turn rapidly, numerous though they are. Astrology, poetry, chivalry, prophecy, and love figure here, all entertaining subjects, and I enjoy many of the characters, who take them seriously.

Besides Pietro and della Scala’s sister, Katerina, I particularly like Dante himself, who unfortunately drops out of the narrative. Blixt portrays him as a self-absorbed narcissist conscious of his genius who has little time for his children, except when they disappoint him. The exception? His daughter, Antonia, who, at thirteen, keeps the booksellers in line and acts as self-appointed caretaker of her father’s career. In letters, he calls her Beatrice, which she treasures. Katerina and Antonia are women ahead of their time, seeking power and influence denied them because of their gender.

Otherwise, the novel has wars, a horse race through the streets, trysts, duels, and every action conceivable. Not all are credible, and Pietro’s powers can test belief, especially as he’s received little schooling in the martial arts; but never mind. As an added conceit, Shakespearean characters and situations waft through the narrative, whether the plays belong to Vienna (Romeo and Juliet), or not (Othello, Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing). Note that Blixt is an actor and director, and you can tell: His approach is theatrical, to say the least.

As a storyteller, he offers brio, panache, and a command of historical detail:

Inside the city walls, the streets were all but impassable. Spectators, gamblers, merchants, peasants, petitioners — all had traveled for days to vie for what lodging they could find. The decent rooms were already rented out to triple or quadruple capacity.… Many visitors, even noble ones, were forced to sleep on dirty floors, or in stables, where the beds were somewhat more comfortable. But fully half the people in the city were not sleeping. Other attractions called — treats and spectacles and mythical beasts, lights and sounds and smells.

However, as this passage suggests, Blixt sometimes trowels on the detail, drawing back the authorial focus and distancing the reader. This narrative technique, which can seem static, undermines the drive he achieves with the storyline and makes you work to stay connected. The author also indulges in information dumps, swelling the dialogue with facts and background, at which the reader’s eye grows impatient. Or this reader’s does. If these facts matter to the story, and I’m not sure they always do, better to show them through action, rather than have people explain them to each other.

I doubt fourteenth-century people, or those anytime, would speak the way Blixt has it, unless they’re all pedants. Then again, these folk often think like moderns, however intently they hew to the philosophical framework of their era. Present-day vocabulary dots the dialogue, and when characters discourse on various subjects, they occasionally refer to knowledge that lies in the future. They also speak incorrect French, admittedly a minor quibble, though indicative of carelessness of writer or editor that emerges elsewhere.

But it’s the discursive, lecturing quality that hampers the novel most. The final chapters are particularly striking for that, as the narrative struggles to wrap up convolutions and contradictions through speechmaking. It’s an unsatisfying, melodramatic conclusion.

For a wild, evocative ride, in which action carries the day, The Master of Verona makes for entertaining reading. Less would have achieved more.

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

Love and Murder: Death of a Showman

19 Monday Jul 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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