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Tag Archives: tropes

Island Idyll: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

08 Monday Feb 2021

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1946, authorship, book review, eccentric characters, epistolary novel, German Occupation, historical fiction, humor, London literary scene, Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows, narrative warmth, romance, tropes, vignettes, World War II

Review: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
Random House/Dial, 2008. 290 pp. $17

Early 1946, Juliet Ashton, a British journalist and author of lighthearted essays, tires of her book tour and finds little inspiration in London, where (male) gossip columnists and pundits resent her success. She’s also looking for Mr. Right and, at age thirty-two, despairs of finding him — or even knowing who he’d be, if she tripped over him in broad daylight.

Intrigue comes via letter: A man on the island of Guernsey has acquired a book, second-hand, that once belonged to Juliet, who left her name and address inside the front cover. Since the Germans occupied the island during the recent war, no bookshops exist there any longer; and since he likes the book, selected essays by Charles Lamb, could Miss Ashton please give him the name of a London bookshop that could sell him more? And, by the way, she might like to know that, partly because of her old book, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society came into existence.

Girls evacuated from the Channel Islands in 1940 to Marple, Cheshire, try on clothes and shoes donated by America (courtesy Ministry of Information and Imperial War Museum, London, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

Naturally, this piques Juliet’s interest, so she writes back, sparking an avid correspondence between the several members of the literary society and herself. Meanwhile, Juliet writes and receives other letters — from the publisher (also a friend), his sister (another friend), an obnoxious American who’s courting her, and other Guernsey residents who don’t belong to the literary society but have opinions about it, and the participants, they must share. Many of these acquaintanceships cross. To no surprise, Juliet comes to believe — hope — that her next book will revolve around the German occupation of the island.

I usually avoid epistolary novels, but this one manages to work, chiefly because the milk of human kindness runs like a river through its pages, and I enjoy the portraits of the island eccentrics. They have names like Isola and Dawsey, and there’s a fellow with a more commonplace moniker but singular taste — he’s read only one book in his life, by Marcus Aurelius, and his friends show great patience every time the society meets, when he lectures them about it.

Humor peppers the letters, as with Juliet’s publisher’s remark about her American suitor: “He’s all charm and oil, and he gets what he wants. It’s one of his few principles.” Or Juliet’s observation that, because Charles Lamb taught Leigh Hunt’s youngest daughter how to say the Lord’s Prayer backwards, “You naturally want to learn everything you can about a man like that.”

You may have concluded by now that the authors have striven for an Austenesque touch, and you’d be right. (Austen’s books also make a cameo appearance.) As a series of vignettes about good-hearted characters, Guernsey succeeds, and though at times treacle threatens, the narrative mostly avoids that pitfall. If you’re looking for an edge, you won’t find it here, but there’s longing and pain to leaven the story.

Some epistolary novels suffer from contrivance, particularly the looseness with which the entries logically connect, but that doesn’t bother me here. If you read Guernsey, don’t expect high stakes or a gripping storyline; the significant questions are too mundane, as in, will Juliet find a writing subject for her book and, in the bargain, true love?

Nothing wrong with that, but we’re talking light entertainment, purely. Guernsey doesn’t take itself too seriously, and therein lies its charm. Perhaps because letters say only so much — or these letters do—I don’t find Juliet a full, memorable character, so her concerns don’t compel me. But they don’t have to; characters like Isola, who makes herbal potions that everyone politely avoids, dabbles in phrenology, and fashions herself a would-be Miss Marple, carry the load, such as it is. Unfortunately, the American suitor is a caricature of the rich, narcissistic male; his opposite, a central figure of island life deported by the Germans for wartime acts of resistance, reads more like an ideal than a real person. The minor characters, consequently, steal the show.

For the most part, Guernsey capably straddles that perilous territory between humor and hideousness, offering a glimpse of the Occupation, in seemingly different version from its Continental counterparts. Maybe the authors airbrush a few things, but in the main, I believe their account. I do wish they hadn’t introduced a French refugee incarcerated at Ravensbrück, who seems to need only a few months on the island, among new friends, to become whole enough to cope. Sure.

But these are quibbles. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society makes fun reading, a short, not-too-sweet tale of warmth and humor.

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

No Quarter: Wolves of Eden

04 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by Novelhistorian in Reviews and Columns

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1866, book review, Civil War, common soldier, Dakota Territory, extermination, historical fiction, Irish, Kevin McCarthy, kill or be killed, Native Americans, no and furthermore, race hatred, Sioux, tropes, U.S. Army

Review: Wolves of Eden, by Kevin McCarthy
Norton, 2019. 350 pp. $26

It’s late 1866 at Fort Phil Kearny, Dakota Territory, in the Black Hills. Custer’s Last Stand is still ten years in the future, but as this story begins, massacre is the order of the day. The Sioux and the U.S. Army show no quarter, and murder and mutilation — sometimes in reverse order — harden hearts.

Into this bloodbath come three soldiers from Nebraska, most particularly Captain Molloy and Corporal (later Sergeant) Daniel Kohn. Their orders: to investigate the killing of a sutler and his wife, who ran a brothel near the fort. With so much bloodshed going on, it’s a wonder the army would take the trouble to send a mission of inquiry, especially when nobody likes a sutler, a camp merchant who charges extortionate prices for necessaries and amusements alike. Moreover, most of the soldiers are native Irish, including many veterans of the barely concluded Civil War, and they distrust all officials, not least investigators.

Since Captain Molloy, native Irish himself, quickly winds up in the fort’s hospital with a broken leg, he leaves the sleuthing to Kohn. How he’ll fare, and what really happened to the sutler and his wife — as opposed to rumor or appearances — forms the plot.

Red Cloud, a gifted Lakota chief, in Charles Milton Bell’s 1880 photograph. In the late 1860s, he conducted a brilliant defense of Native American land in the Dakota Territory against great odds (courtesy South Dakota Historical Society, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain)

However, the narrative begins with Michael O’Driscoll, one of two key suspects, writing down in his jail cell the truth as he witnessed it, for Captain Molloy’s eyes. Michael’s brother, Tom, is also implicated in the murder. So Wolves of Eden starts with a prologue and a trope, the manuscript that tells all. And this account is written by a man who’s got an eloquent pen and a superb eye for detail, even as he claims he’s hardly lettered.

Despite that, Wolves of Eden works as a tale of hard men in a kill-or-be-killed world. Sometimes you look around in vain for a character with whom to feel sympathy — reader, be advised — but the narrative feels splendidly authentic. I believe this is how the common soldier lived, thought, and fought, and though Michael comes to appreciate his adversaries’ bravery and tenacity, even to toy with the idea that their cause is just, he still hates them, in virulent terms.

There’s a lot of hatred in this novel, which can test a reader’s resolve. But McCarthy performs several valuable services. First and foremost, he exposes the U.S. government’s willingness to exterminate Native Americans for the benefit of gold prospectors or “settlers,” who have entered the territory illegally. Secondly, McCarthy portrays that hatred as the war’s driving force on the ground, and the fighting men feel lonely in their struggle, knowing that only the participants understand what’s going on, certainly not officials at their desks in Washington. Finally, the author gives voice to Irishmen who made up a substantial part of American armies during the 1860s. Throughout, the Civil War lurks in vivid memory, and Michael will never forget it:

It was the wager a boy made when he took on in Uncle Sam’s big show in the South seeking a new start in the world. Never mind the racking fear we felt or the night visions or nerves that snapped like bullwhips or jangled like jailer’s keys. Never mind hands that shook & would not stop shaking so that a tin mug of coffee was hard to sip without slopping down a poor boy’s tunic. Never mind all that because in truth no soldier in this world does ever think he will be one a bullet picks to visit.

Since he’s writing from the fort stockade, the story answers whether he’ll swing for the murders. McCarthy does well keeping the pages turning, though Wolves of Eden isn’t a mystery. He calls it a thriller, but I don’t see that; there are setbacks but few examples of “no — and furthermore,” and the prologue gives away too much, as they always do.

I believe the Irish characters implicitly and all the soldiers, except Daniel Kohn. He’s supposed to be Jewish, but since he has little inner life to speak of, he could be anybody, despite his ability to speak Yiddish and the constant insults he receives. He has only one redeeming trait, his devotion to his alcoholic captain, whose life he’s trying to save. Yet since he’s the driving force behind the investigation — which Molloy seems to wish to restrain —Daniel’s single-minded obduracy, which pays little attention to rules of evidence, tickles my cultural antennae. Is he meant to be a Judas, intent on betraying Christian men? Fie. Does he represent the canard about the harsh Jewish God compared to the forgiving, Christian one? Fie again.

I can’t pretend to know what the author intended. All I do know is that I’m put off from reading his other books.

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

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