Tag Archives: humor

Are We Downhearted?: Dear Mrs. Bird

31 Monday Dec 2018

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Review: Dear Mrs. Bird, by AJ Pearce
Scribner, 2018. 281 pp. $26

Emmeline Lake has always wanted to be a journalist, and since it’s 1940, and London is being bombed almost nightly, how better to do her bit than as an intrepid reporter? She already volunteers for the Auxiliary Fire Service, answering telephone calls during Luftwaffe raids. But though she enjoys the work and the camaraderie, Emmy believes she has more to her and more to give. So when she sees an ad from what she thinks is the London Evening Chronicle for an assistant, she applies right away. Her friend Marigold, known as Bunty — don’t ask why; this is England — encourages her to celebrate the start of a sparkling career in reportage. Emmy, the optimistic, hopeful sort, eats it up, and pretty soon, everybody who knows her is congratulating her on her big break into journalism.

Aldwych Underground station used as an air-raid shelter, 1940 (courtesy Imperial War Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons)

It never occurs to Emmy that, as a junior assistant, she’s more likely to find her typing skills an asset than creative get-up-and-go. Nor does the way she practically walks into the job for the asking set off any alarm bells. Rather, she makes the unhappy discovery that she’s on a different floor from the Evening Chronicle, and it might as well be the moon. Emmy has gotten herself a job as typist to the redoubtable Mrs. Henrietta Bird, the Dear Abby of Woman’s Friend magazine, though a more apt description might be Dear Queen of Hearts. Mrs. Bird doesn’t exactly say, “Off with her head!” But she does shout, and she refuses to answer, or even read, any letter that has the least bit of Unpleasantness in it. The few replies she writes suggest that her empathy, if she ever had any, was jellied in aspic sometime around 1911. There may be a war on, and women are asked to bear many burdens of which men know nothing, all while remaining completely unflappable, cheerful, and physically attractive. But Mrs. Bird knows nothing of this and would rather not hear about it.

Emmy cares, however, and knows how to respond, or thinks she does. And since her boss is often out, that leaves the chance open for mischief, or, as Emmy sees it, offering help to those in need. I’ll leave you to guess what happens.

Pearce captures a certain spirit of the time, an honest, cheery, keep-your-chin-up mood for which beleaguered Londoners enduring the Blitz became famous. Lissa Evans, for one, has written about the other side of that spectrum, those who pretended selflessness or patriotism but were really on the take. Yet there’s no doubt that young women like Emmy existed, and if part of Dear Mrs. Bird seems fanciful, it’s also irresistibly charming:

Today, London was operating under a low and dreary grey sky, the sort that looked like a giant boy had flung off his school jumper and accidentally covered up the West End. Braving the cold, I was wearing a smart blue single-breasted serge suit, my very best shoes, and a little black tilt hat that I had borrowed from Bunty. I hoped I might look both businesslike and alert. The sort of person who could sniff out a scoop and get the measure of it in a moment. The sort of person who is not feeling as if her heart might positively explode.

Humor’s the key to this novel, and I love Pearce’s touch. For instance, of the drinks cabinet in Emmy and Bunty’s flat, the women have decided that if the Germans invaded and broke in, “we would push it down the stairs at them. The full extent of the British Empire was featured in a rather confident orange and we thought that would make them quite wonderfully cross.”

But these people also know pain and hardship as their city’s being blown to bits. Dear Mrs. Bird contains touching moments when war intrudes, and it’s impossible — undesirable — to keep a stiff upper lip. In such a strained atmosphere, estrangements are sometimes inevitable, and Pearce never lets her heroine sail through life. With the bombs falling, that would be ridiculous. The ending does seem a bit contrived, but it’s also funny, and to object would be churlish. Dear Mrs. Bird is a delightful book.

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

Every Commandment Broken: Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army

08 Monday Oct 2018

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Review: Conrad Monk and the Great Heathen Army, by Edoardo Albert
Endeavour Quill, 2018. 215 pp. £8

The narrator of this clever, funny picaresque set in ninth-century England tells you what’s what right away. A “vain dissimulator and crafty poltroon,” as he describes himself, Conrad has no use for compassion, empathy, selflessness, altruism, or physical discomfort and believes that bad luck immediately descends if he ever does anything remotely involving them. As it happens, though, Conrad is also a monk — don’t ask — which makes him a little different. Especially from his companion, Brother Odo, who actually takes his vows seriously and seems not to notice that Conrad has broken every commandment and a lot else.

The story begins in a pigsty, appropriately enough, where Conrad and Odo hide from Danish raiders sacking their monastery. In plotting how to escape imminent death or, at best, enslavement, Conrad persuades the credulous, trusting Odo that he has a plan, and no matter what it looks like, it’s for the best and hews strictly to Christian principles. As a consequence, though Odo has moments of doubt, he generally construes Conrad’s most craven acts as noble self-sacrifice, berating himself for not having done as well or for not having realized their true significance. Conrad, he believes, is a paragon of Christian virtue. This is often hilarious, and no matter how many times Conrad lies, appears to ally himself with the Danish invaders, or conspires to enrich himself at others’ expense, Odo sticks by him.

In less inventive hands, Conrad Monk could have been a one-joke story, growing tiresome quickly. Not here. Albert has created a protagonist infinitely skilled at falsehood, flattery, skulduggery, and shameless self-aggrandizement, who cheerfully admits to himself, nay, revels, in his character. And he needs to be that slippery, because “no-and furthermore” happens every other page. How does he escape the Danish warriors approaching the pigsty? Or the mad Saxon king who insists on dying a religious martyr, with Conrad alongside? I won’t tell you — and don’t read the jacket flap — but trust me, these evasions, like many others to follow, are ingenious.

The flap also pretends that Conrad Monk offers a “highly informative trip through the Anglo-Saxon world,” “painstakingly accurate depictions of history,” and “character-driven fiction.” I think even Conrad would blush at those claims. Albert has researched his ground thoroughly — no argument, there — and his descriptions, like the following of a feast, are very evocative:

But of course it dragged on and on, as these things do, with maudlin warriors staring into their cups and telling tearful tales of comrades lost and battles won, while the king’s scop went from telling the tale of Edmund’s heroic forebears through songs of war and dragon-haunted peace to drunken riddles and, finally, blessed incoherence, as his fingers missed the strings of the lyre and his tongue fought a losing battle with his ale-addled wits; he sank into a snoring heap by the fire, a sleep from which not even a volley of thrown bones could wake him.

But come on. Conrad Monk is about as plot-driven as it gets, and nobody will read it to learn about Anglo-Saxon culture, very little of which emerges in its pages anyway. Albert explains that he’s tried to follow historical sources when possible, and that’s commendable. But Conrad’s voice sounds indelibly modern, which is part of the fun, and if you ever ask, “Could his exploits really happen?,” you’re missing the point. Conrad Monk is a funny book. Humor as a theme or approach needs no defense, and dressing it up as something more serious only undermines the joke.

Disclaimer: I obtained my reading copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

The Old Lie: The Fifth Servant

12 Monday Feb 2018

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Review: The Fifth Servant, by Kenneth Wishnia
Morrow, 2010. 387 pp. $26

On Good Friday, a young girl in Prague is found murdered, her throat cut. Since the year is 1592, suspicion automatically falls on the Jews, and since that evening also marks the start of Passover, why, that settles it. Whoever killed her must have used her blood to bake matzoh. Never mind that by Jewish law, blood is ritually impure, literally untouchable, or that matzoh must be made of flour and water. The infamous blood libel has had a long, sturdy life, and in late sixteenth-century Prague, just about every Christian believes in it implicitly.

In taking this ancient lie as its premise, The Fifth Servant pushes its characters (and the reader) to look closely at bigotry and hatred while also inviting laughter. To explain that, I could say that oppressed people need humor to survive, and that Jewish humor, especially of the ghetto or shtetl variety, is well known. But that’s only half the story. This remarkable novel promises a wild ride even in the front matter, which compares the word shamus, or private detective, with its Yiddish ancestor, shammes, or sexton of a synagogue.

Benyamin Ben-Akiva, a Talmudic scholar newly arrived from Poland, is the shammes in question, the fifth of his calling in a ghetto with four synagogues. This makes him literally a fifth wheel, and he’s easily the squeakiest in town. Benyamin has three days to solve the crime, or the ghetto will pay, probably with its destruction. This doesn’t exactly come as a shock to him.

Holy Week and Eastertide were especially risky, and a gambling man would say that we were long overdue for some old-fashioned Jew-hatred. Every year the Jews got thrown out of somewhere. The lucky ones merely got beaten up, had their property stolen, and escaped with their books and the clothes they happened to be wearing at the time. But one Easter a while back, a mob of enraged Christians had practically burned down the entire Jewish Town, leaving only the black and stone shul and a few crummy houses that refused to fall over. Three thousand people murdered in one weekend, all because some idiot said that a Jewish boy had thrown a handful of mud at a passing priest.

Still, how can Benyamin do anything when Friday evening is not only the first Passover seder but the Sabbath, and he may undertake no labor? Moreover, since the crime took place outside the ghetto, and the authorities have closed the gates to Jewish traffic, how can he possibly gather clues or question witnesses? Finally, how can Benyamin carry out his investigation when several rabbinical authorities oppose him and his rationalist methods? It’s that heretical way of thinking, they believe, that caused the trouble in the first place. If everyone were properly devout, they argue, there’d be no blood libel.

Rabbi Judah Loew’s tombstone in the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague (courtesy MKPiekarska, via Wikimedia Commons)

But Benyamin has one respected ally, Rabbi Judah Loew, a rationalist himself (and a historical figure, incidentally). Between the two of them, using Talmudic logic and wisdom from the Torah and other texts, they try, little by little, to crack the mystery surrounding the girl’s murder. But the odds are heavily against them, and you won’t be surprised to hear that “no; and furthermore” greets them at every turn — excuse me, neyn; un noch, since Yiddish is the key language, here.

Along the way, Wishnia re-creates sixteenth-century Prague, Jewish life of that era, and a world of intellectual ferment alongside brute superstition. I’ve never read a mystery in which the sleuths are Talmudic scholars, quoting references from sacred writings to support the inferences they draw from observed facts. (For that matter, even the ghetto’s whores are learned enough to enter the debate.) That can be very funny, especially when they have to explain themselves to Christians, who believe that drawing inferences from anything must be an example of Jewish witchcraft. Such humor carries a dangerous edge, of course. But even among his fellow Jews, Benyamin has to overcome suspicion of his origins, scholastic pedigree, and ways of reasoning. For instance, when one skeptic asks, “How come I haven’t heard of you?,” he replies, “Because the angels who sing my praises do it beyond the range of normal hearing.”

At times, Benyamin’s commentary wears thin; a little less archness would have worked a lot better. And the reader unfamiliar with Hebrew or Yiddish may feel at sea, though the text explains the many quotations and expressions. (There’s also a glossary at the back.) But such is the draw of The Fifth Servant that it pulls you into its world and doesn’t let go – for laughs and heartache, both.

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

An Irresistible Tale: The Hummingbird’s Daughter

17 Monday Oct 2016

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Review: The Hummingbird’s Daughter, by Luis Alberto Urrea
Little, Brown, 2006. 495 pp. $15

This beguiling novel defies first appearances, and a lucky thing for me, or I wouldn’t have read it.

Set in late nineteenth-century Mexico, The Hummingbird’s Daughter tells the early life of Teresa, the so-called Saint of Cabora. Born the illegitimate, half-Indian child of a well-to-do rancher, Teresa shows remarkable aptitude from a young age. She learns to ride a horse better than most men, to read, to dispute, and to remain serene in the face of insult, all of which appalls and enthralls her natural father, Don Tomás, who–extraordinarily–welcomes her into his house. She also studies with Huila, a salty, old herbal and spiritual healer, eventually surpassing and supplanting her; that too appalls and amazes Don Tomás, who worries what will happen. The young girl travels to far-off lands in her dreams, converses with God, delivers babies, and develops a large following, which, as Don Tomás has predicted, can come to no good.

José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, who ruled Mexico for thirty-five years,, photographed in 1910; this novel portrays him, from afar, as a corrupt, malignant figure (Courtesy Aurelio Escobar Castellanos Archive, via Wikimedia Commons)

José de la Cruz Porfirio Diaz Mori, as he appeared in 1910, ruled Mexico for thirty-five years; this novel portrays him, from afar, as a corrupt, malignant figure (Courtesy Aurelio Escobar Castellanos Archive, via Wikimedia Commons)

As a rule, I avoid magical realism. As far as I’m concerned, One Hundred Years of Solitude is aptly titled, because those are the conditions I’d need before I could finish it. My teeth hurt if I have to read how the mystically gifted sweep away evil merely by waving a hand, and how a popular uprising forestalls the vengeance that would ordinarily result. Nor do I care much for macho fantasies in which beautiful women fall into an unscrupulous seducer’s arms without having to be asked twice, and that their love either reforms him, makes the earth move, or both. And much as I detest various aspects of modern life, I groan whenever I come across a narrative based on “the wisdom of the ancients,” as if peccadilloes of the past like witch-burnings, serfdom, or endemic smallpox never happened, or that our contemporary malaise wouldn’t last ten minutes if we could only summon up pseudo-profundities said to be lost to time.

Nevertheless, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, which skates parallel to that last category, is a terrific book. Urrea wins over this jaundiced reviewer for several reasons, chief among them his refusal to let his theme obscure reality. Teresa, or Teresita, as she’s usually known, may be called a saint, a title she dislikes and has never sought, but that only increases her burden to prove herself. Thousands of people flock to receive her healing powers, imputing to her motives, methods, and sympathies that she doesn’t possess. The established church calls her a heretic; the politicians, a traitor who preaches revolution. Men despise her for being a woman beyond their control, even as they dream of raping her. Those who fashion themselves of European extraction hate her as an Indian. Consequently, not only does Teresita fail to bring evil to a standstill–never her intention, anyway–everyone sees in her what they wish, using her for their own purposes. Naturally, the poor young woman tires of it all.

Only vigorous, unbridled prose can carry a narrative like this. Urrea’s grasp of biblical phrasing, Spanish cadences, and florid, earthy expression make this novel a delight to read:

Crows, attracted by the stink and the tumult, spied on them from the treetops, hopping along from tree to tree, peeking out from between the ragged leaves. And buzzards, attracted by the flapping crows, hypnotized by all the wandering meat beneath them, circled and dreamed of putrescence and death, the deliciousness of rot. And unknown and unseen, to the north of the trail only five miles away from the rancho, three dead men grinned under the soil, shot by Rurales for their scant gold and their boots, buried hastily and half-eaten by beetles and voles, tunneling wildcats and foxes, these three leathery travelers vibrated underground as the people passed, shook in their paltry graves as if they were laughing, giggling, their yellow mouths wide in toothy hilarity.

But besides casual violence, lust, and the hardness of life, there’s humor too. I laughed at the burro who dreamed of kicking the children entertaining themselves at its expense, at Don Tomás’s seemingly endless supply of friendly insults, and the various harmless obsessions that grip the characters. The laughter helps see to it that events and actions in The Hummingbird’s Daughter are seldom just one thing but many, depending on how they’re viewed, and Urrea has the sense not to push too hard. For instance, Teresita learns to remember always that she comes from the earth and belongs to it (the essential difference between herself and the corrupt, Westernized church and government). Yet she also comes to appreciate modern conveniences that Don Tomás’s engineer friend, Lauro Aguirre, has installed in the main house. So the reverence for old ways gets tempered, somewhat, or at least makes room for certain pleasures.

And speaking of pleasures, that’s what The Hummingbird’s Daughter is, a rollicking tale in which the many pages slide swiftly by.

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

To Life: Fever at Dawn

23 Monday May 2016

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Review: Fever at Dawn, by Péter Gárdos
Translated from the Hungarian by Elizabeth Szász
Houghton Mifflin, 2016. 232 pp. $24

Imagine a Hungarian Holocaust survivor in 1945, receiving medical care in Sweden under Red Cross auspices. He weighs practically nothing, and he has metal false teeth, the real ones having been knocked out by thugs. Miklós’s doctor tells him he has tuberculosis, which will kill him in six months. But Miklós did not endure deportation, imprisonment, and torture only to succumb to an ancient plague, and he refuses to believe the diagnosis. So when he comes across a list of 117 Hungarian Jewish women also recuperating in Sweden, he proceeds to write each one, hoping to find a mate.

"Selection" of Hungarian Jews for either work or the gas chambers, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), May or June 1944 (Courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

“Selection” of Hungarian Jews for either work or the gas chambers, Auschwitz II (Birkenau), May or June 1944 (Courtesy Yad Vashem, via Wikimedia Commons)

The results, by turns poignant and comical, carry this remarkable premise to a satisfying conclusion. But in saying so, I’m giving nothing away, for Gárdos has written this slim novel about his parents, drawing heavily on the bundles of letters his mother unearthed more than a half-century later and gave to him.

However, if Fever at Dawn ends predictably–the jacket flap leaves little doubt–how the narrative gets there is anything but ordained. Miklós, either a warm-hearted con artist or a vivid dreamer (take your pick), promises Lili Reich that everything will work out just fine, both between them and in life. This is a pretty astounding message for someone you’ve met only in brief letters, especially someone who was nearly left for dead at Bergen-Belsen. But Miklós actually believes it; and Lili, at first with reservations, gradually comes to believe it too. How he works that alchemy is marvelous to behold, and at times a little bewildering, because he can’t resist a soapbox. An ardent Socialist, whereas Lili is bourgeoise, Miklós lectures her on the proper way to view the world. It’s not always clear whether he takes himself seriously, but it’s his confidence that touches her, gives her hope.

But we all know the path to true love never did run smooth, and this courtship faces large barriers. For one thing, the two live in distant places, and the rules strictly forbid them to visit. They scheme, wheedle, plot, and attempt to manipulate their caregivers, pretending that they’re cousins–the oldest dodge in the book, which has no chance of persuading anyone.

Meanwhile, another of the 117 women shows up at Miklós’s rehabilitation center. How she manages is never explained, but she calls him her soul mate and expects him to work out every difficulty her presence causes so that they can be together forever. How Miklós gets around that uncomfortable situation, I won’t say. But I have to quote you the author’s description of what Lili and a girlfriend see when the two lovers meet for the first time, at a train station:

Miklós spotted the reception committee in the distance and smiled. His metal teeth glimmered in the weak light of the platform lamps.

The girls glanced at each other in alarm, then looked guiltily back toward the platform where Miklós was advancing through the thick veil of snow. He had to rest for a moment while he coughed. The left lens frame of his glasses was stuffed with scrunched-up newspaper–that day’s Aftonbladet–an operation he had performed in desperation half an hour earlier, leaving a crack free so that he could at least see a little. . . . . his borrowed winter coat, two sizes too big for him, floated around his ankles.

There are very few flashbacks, because neither Lili nor Miklós care to tell the other how they survived the war, or what they went through. But the author wants you to know, so there are a couple harrowing pages that put their romantic struggles into perspective. After sufferings like theirs, and what they’ve gone through to be able even to contemplate love, problems of time, distance, or unsympathetic, priggish administrators mean absolutely nothing. When you’re determined to love, you will.

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

Selfless and Selfish: Rush Oh!

02 Monday May 2016

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Review: Rush Oh!, by Shirley Barrett
Little, Brown, 2016. 353 pp. $25

Where I live, in Seattle, whales are both a cultural icon and a marvel. Only the other week, a gray whale wandered into the locks between Lakes Union and Washington. As you may imagine, that created a stir and a delicate rescue operation, as cetaceans aren’t known for their ability to make U-turns in narrow lanes. I also fondly recall family vacations with the kids in Canada’s Gulf Islands, between the coast of Washington and Vancouver Island, where we often saw pods of orcas swim past, a marine ballet of such beauty that I felt honored, small, and insignificant.

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

Twofold Bay, New South Wales, was an important whaling center (Courtesy Wikemedia Commons; public domain).

So I picked up Rush Oh!, a novel about whaling in Australia during the early twentieth century, with a stone in my heart. Was I supposed to root for the impoverished whaling families who went hungry if they sold no whale oil or whalebone, or the magnificent creatures of the deep? And, once I began reading, what was I supposed to make of the orcas that harried the larger whales into harpoon range in return for a literal cut of the profits? Were they traitors or friends?

However, I’m happy to report that Rush Oh! is a wonderful book, a delicate authorial operation that surprises and enchants with no heavy lifting. Barrett glosses over nothing, neither the brutality of killing and capturing a whale, nor the characters of the men who do this work at Twofold Bay, nor the hardscrabble life of Eden, New South Wales. But this isn’t a novel about whaling as much as it is about love, or the lengths a person can and should go to get what he or she wants. Just as it takes great effort to track and capture a whale, so it does to find love or realize a dream.

At nineteen, Mary Davidson has particular trouble realizing her own–or even allowing herself to have them. In the six years since her mother died, she’s been maid-of-all-work at her father’s whaling station and surrogate mother to her younger brothers and sisters. She cooks for the family and the whaling crews, keeps house, teaches her siblings their letters, and makes sure her father, a respected man of whom she’s in awe, has what he needs. Mary wants more from life but also assumes that servitude is her lot and that she has no choice, either as a woman or as George “Fearless” Davidson’s eldest child. She might have had an easier time had she social graces, a fair face, or the courage to speak up. Those belong to the next sister in line, Louisa; their rivalry frames the story.

Mary hungers for warmth, whether from her father, siblings, or a man, and gets precious little. She notices that the whaling men stop swearing and mind their manners when Louisa’s around, entranced by her looks and “the will-o’-the-wisp way she floated about, avoiding anything that might look like work. The various flaws of her character seemed to pass undetected.”

One pleasure of reading Rush Oh! is Mary’s wry, naive voice, a pitch-perfect narration. You see what she sees and laugh, but you also see what she misses, which is a lot. For instance, Louisa is indeed a piece of work, selfish and willful. But her real advantage over Mary is that she knows what she wants and sets out to get it. Nowhere is the comparison more evident than in Mary’s attraction for John Beck, a newcomer to the whaling crew who may (or may not) have been a Methodist minister. In fact, there are several things he may or may not have done. But Mary falls for him, and the reader senses that hers is a heart about to be broken.

I love witty writing, and there’s plenty here. Consider this passage about Mr. and Mrs. Maudry, the family’s name for a pair of aggressive plovers that

. . . when they were not preoccupied with matters nesting . . . contented themselves with stalking broodingly about the garden and glowering at us. Mr. Maudry in particular possessed a malevolent air similar to that of a Land and Tax officer or Customs agent, an effect enhanced by the plovers’ plumage, in which nature appeared to be imitating the black-collared suit coats of the kind favored by my late paternal grandfather. By all accounts entirely capable of flight, the Maudrys for the most part elected not to, preferring to spend their days instead lurking ominously amongst the jonquils.

About those orcas, known as Killers. They have names, behaviors particular to each individual, a sense of humor, and loyalty to the whalers, who consider it a crime to kill one–especially the Aboriginal hunters, who believe each orca holds an ancestor’s spirit. These creatures actually existed; one, known as Tom, lived about sixty years, and when he died in 1930, the newspapers noted the fact.

All of which underlines how Rush Oh! plumbs the space between truth and fiction, and what you think you know about each.

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