The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman

The Midwife's Apprentice (1991) by Karen Cushman is the third Newbery Award winning novel that I have read for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge hosted by Marg at The Intrepid Reader and Baker.  I have been choosing these Newbery books because they are well written and let's face it relatively short.  But I need to move on soon to adult medieval historical fiction and I plan to do so with my next choice.

But for now it's The Midwife's Apprentice and once again this novel, though written for kids, doesn't sugar coat life in the middle ages, particularly for the poor.  The young heroine of this novel who at the beginning is called Beetle by the sneering villagers has no family or place to live.  She doesn't remember her mother or her father: 

"Someone, she assumed, must have borne her and cared for her lest she toddle into the pond and changed her diapers when they reeked, but as long as she could remember, she had lived on her own by what means she could—stealing an onion here or helping with the harvest there in exchange for a night on the stable floor. She took what she could from a village and moved on before the villagers, with their rakes and sticks, drove her away. Snug cottages and warm bread and mothers who hugged their babes were beyond her imagining, but dearly would she have loved to eat a turnip without the mud of the field still on it or sleep in a barn fragrant with new hay"

Beetle is about 12 or 13 when the book begins and she sleeps wherever she can find shelter, scavenges for food.  It's a dangerous existance and Beetle's situation was probably the life most orphan kids lived throughout much of history.  But then Beetle's luck changes when she meets a midwife, Jane Sharp, who decides to take her in as an apprentice.  But the midwife is not a motherly figure.  Jane is mean and constantly ridicules Beetle.  But working for the midwife gives Beetle food and a place to stay and then one day at the county fair Beetle has a wonderful time and it's a turning point in her life:

"What a day! She had been winked at, complimented, given a gift, and now mistaken for the mysterious Alyce who could read. Did she then look like someone who could read? She leaned over and watched her face in the water again. 'This face,' she said, 'could belong to someone who can read. And has curls ... And this is me, Beetle.' She stopped. Beetle was no name for a person, no name for someone who looked like she could read. Frowning, she thought a minute, and then her face shone as though a torch were fired inside her 'Alyce,' she breathed. Alyce sounded clean and friendly and smart. You could love some- one named Alyce. She looked back at the face in the water. 'This then is me, Alyce.' It was right". 

The newly named Alyce goes on from there and despite her hard beginnings she has a good heart.  She rescues a cat from a group of bullies and the cat becomes her loyal companion.  Alyce also finds a home for a six year old orphan boy named Edward.  And she begins a friendship with a young boy named Will who is indebted to Alyce for saving his life.

I liked the book well enough.  It's well written but of the three Newbery winners I have read this year my favorite continues to be Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! by Laura Amy Schlitz.

Now In November by Josephine W. Johnson

"Now in November I can see our years as a whole. This autumn is like both an end and a beginning to our lives, and those days which seemed confused with the blur of all things too near and too familiar are clear and strange now. It has been a long year, longer and more full of meaning than all those ten years that went before it. There were nights when I felt that we were moving toward some awful and hopeless hour, but when that hour came it was broken up and confused because we were too near, and I did not even quite realize that it had come.

In 1935 Josephine W. Johnson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her novel Now In November.  I had never heard of this novel or author but the plot, a family trying to survive on a farm during the Great Depression, interested me.  It's an era I have always been curious about and maybe overly romanticized with images of people finding inventive ways of cooking and saving and the lessons that can help us today.  But reading Now In November is an eye opener as to what life was really like during the Great Depression and there was nothing romantic about it.

Now in November is set on a farm in the Midwest in which the Haldmarne family: father, mother and their three daughters, Kerrin, Marget and Merle try to survive a season of drought. The daughters are very different.  Kerrin the eldest has a fiery temper.  The youngest daughter Merle in comparison has an inner peace that Marget admires.  Marget the middle daughter is the worrier and also a thoughtful and observant narrator:

"And then it came to me as it did at times when the woods seemed all answer and healing and more than enough to live for, that maybe they wouldn’t be always ours—that a drouth or a too-wet year or even a year over-good when everyone else had too much to sell—could snatch them away from us, and a scratch on a piece of paper could cancel a hundred acres and all our lives" 

Now In November encompasses one fateful year in the life of this family and what they go though which is considerable.  I had so many passages underlined that it was hard to know what to share.  Marget has so much to tell us not only about farm life but about the toll that looming poverty can tale on a family or on anyone.  Is it safer therefore to live without too much hope.  Marget wrestles with these questions which are just as relevant today.

The Pulitzer comittee knew what they were doing in 1935 when they awarded Josephine Winslow Johnson their highest honor.  Now in November is not a light read. There is tragedy and heartbreak in this novel but alot to reflect upon as well.  

White Horse by Erika T. Wurth

"There was something strange, mysterious even, about the White Horse tonight. Normally, it was merely an Indian bar. My Indian bar. But there was a milky, dreamy quality to the red lights swinging over the pool tables, like the wind from the open doors was bringing them something new, something I’d pushed away for as long as I could remember" - Erika T Wurth, White Horse

Meet Kari James, the narrator of White Horse by Erika T Wurth.  Kari is a 35 year old Native American woman living in Denver.  She loves Steven King novels, heavy metal music and when not waitressing can be found taking care of her disabled father or at her favorite bar The White Horse.  

Kari's life is lonely but considering her younger years:  drugs, bad boys, suicidal thoughts, the overdose of her best friend, the stability that Kari has found in her 30's may be unfulfilling but it is calm which is how Kari likes it.  But then Kari's cousin Debbie walks into the White Horse with a bracelet she found that belonged to Kari's Mom: 

"My mother. The woman who had abandoned me when I was only two days old. The woman who my father had been so devastated over he began to take long drives, a bottle of Jack between his legs. The woman who had made it so that I had to care for my dad like a baby, instead of the other way around, after he’d gotten into an accident that had left his body but taken his mind"

But the moment Kari touches her mother's bracelet she feels an energy.  Her mother is trying to tell her something.   Kari starts seeing visions and worries that she is going crazy.  But the visions push her to investigate what really happened to her mother Celia.  Did she abandon Kari or was it foul play?  And if so by who and why?

Erika Wurth is a very talented writer. Kari James is tough, brave and a good person in the way she cares for her father and looks out for her cousin Debbie.  The book did drag for me though because Kari doesn't have light moments or a sense of humor which is understandable considering her past.  

But it did make it hard for me to warm up to Kari until the last part of White Horse when she finds out what really happened to her mother, Celia.  And in the end you sense that Kari may finally be able to put her demons to rest.  I would say that for me this is a 3.5 read and Erika Wurth is an author to keep an eye on.

The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix

One of the hot new authors I have been wanting to read for some time is Grady Hendrix.  And now that I have read his bestselling horror novel The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires (2020) I have things to say but first a summary of the plot.

 

The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires takes place in the 1990's and the setting is Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina.  Patricia Campbell is one of the residents of Mt. Pleasant.  She is also the heroine of this story.

And when the novel begins Patricia has alot to deal with. She is a mother of two surly teenagers. Her husband Carter a busy doctor is rarely home. Patricia is also taking care of her mother-in-law Mary who lives with them and cannot take care of herself.  And in addition to all this Patricia belongs to a local book club with a few of the other neighborhood women.  

Their book group focuses on true crime.  Each month these women get together to read "the classics":  Helter Skelter, In Cold Blood, Zodiac, The Stranger Beside Me.  Patricia loves this group.  The books they discuss are fascinating and the women form a friendship and a bond.  Finally Patricia has something for herself.  

And things are going well until a stranger, James Harris, moves into the neighborhood.  James is handsome and mysterious.  Patricia is quite taken with him at first.  James listens to her, he's charming, he's attentive.   But when children in another part of town start dying Patricia begins to suspect that James isn't who he says he is and James is on to the fact that she knows.  But how can Patricia save her family, her neighbors and her book club from James when no one will believe her?  

Thoughts - I have never read a book quite like this. The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires is funny, tells a good story and at the center is the heroine Patricia Campbell who is sympathetic and brave.  Readers will root for her as she discovers a strength she never knew she had.

But oh boy, the last 30% of this book.  Wow!  I mean I knew The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires was a horror novel.  No doubt about that after chapter twelve which comes earlier in the story.   But why wasn't chapter twelve enough?  We already know what a monster James Harris is and so why not spend the final chapters of the book focusing on how Patricia and her friends try to stop him?  

And the Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires does focus on how the book club members band together to take care of James.  But in the last third of the book Grady Hendrix also turns the horror spigot on full blast.  James is a vampire, a psycopath, a rapist, a child molester and we are spared nothing in terms of the violence he commits. And I found this over the top violence gratuitous.  And yet it's a measure of Grady Hendrix's talent that despite all this I couldn't put the book down.  I had to know how it would all end.  

And so if you still want to read The Southern Book Club's Guide To Slaying Vampires,  proceed with caution.

I Await The Devil's Coming by Mary MacLane

I am not sure how I first heard about the writer Mary MacLane but in 1902 her diary "I Await The Devil's Coming" caused quite a sensation.  People were scandalized that a nineteen year old woman living in Butte, Montana could write such a book.  Mary boldly recorded her nonconformist thoughts and opinions into her diary and her words resonated particularly with young women of that time.

"I have the personality, the nature, of a Napoleon, albeit a feminine translation. And therefore I do not conquer; I do not even fight. I manage only to exist. Poor little Mary MacLane!—what might you not be? What wonderful things might you not do? But held down, half-buried, a seed fallen in barren ground, alone, uncomprehended, obscure— Weep, world,—why don’t you?—for poor little Mary MacLane!"

I Await The Devil's Coming became an immediate bestseller but as with most books eventually fell into obscurity.  But today Mary MacLane's diary is once again available thanks to Amazon and Project Guttenberg and its author has been described as an early feminist, a bohemian free spirit, the first flapper.  And there is no doubt that if Mary were alive today she would have her own blog.

But is I Await The Devil's Calling worth reading?  I rated the book three stars on goodreads because Mary MacLane is a talented and fearless writer.  Her memoir is also interesting from a historical perspective.  What were young women like in 1902 and what were they writing in their journals?  

But as much as I appreciated Mary MacLane's candor and talent I found myself struggling to get through I Await The Devil's Coming.  Her diary is not very long and it started out great for me but the deeper I got into her book the more I wondered was I reading a diary by a bold nonconformist or a depressed young woman who lived during a time when depression was not discussed or treated: 

"Often you hear a dozen stories of how the Devil was most ready and willing to take all from some one and give him his measure of Happiness. And sometimes the person was innately virtuous and so could not take the Happiness when it was offered. But Happiness is its own justification, and it should be eagerly grasped when it comes.  A world filled with fools will never learn this. And so here I stand in the midst of Nothingness waiting and longing for the Devil, and he doesn’t come. I feel a choking, strangling, frenzied feeling awaiting—oh, why doesn’t my Happiness come! I have waited so long" 

Mary writes often in her diary about her feeling of nothingness and how she has no one to talk to including her parents and siblings.  No one understands her as she sees it and Mary's one close friend moved away.  And so as Mary tells us she awaits the devil's coming to bestow her with happiness, badness fame, anything to take away the emptiness she feels.  And its an emptiness that seems to have plaged Mary MacLane all her life even after she aquired the fame she sought.  Sadly her life was a hard one and Mary was found dead in a hotel room in 1929 at the age of 48.

I don't know that I can recommend I Await The Devil's Coming.  I struggled to get through it..  But I am glad Mary MacLane's books are available to a new generation to inspire them to say what they feel in their journals regardless of what others might think.

The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny

I am like a broken record when I say that the Louise Penny Three Pines Series just keeps getting better and better and The Beautiful Mystery the 8th book in the series is excellent.  I rated it five stars on goodreads and after I did I wondered should I reserve five stars for the classics and national book award winners.  But then I thought no.  A book should be judged within its genre and by that criteria The Beautiful Mystery is a five star read.  

And what makes The Beautiful Mystery different than the prior seven novels in the series that I have read is that the fictional little village of Three Pines and its residents: Clara, Peter, Ruth, Olivier, Gabriel, Myrna do not appear in this novel.  Instead this book is set in a monastery Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups located on an island in a remote part of Quebec.

Twenty-four monks live at the Saint-Gilbert--Entre-les-Loups.  They are entirely self sufficient and were living in isolation with no one knowing of their existence until they decided to make their beautiful music, the Gregorian chants, available to the outside world.  

The monks became famous overnight with money from CD sales pouring in but they continued their cloistered life not allowing anyone from the outside to enter the Saint-Gilbert--Entre-les-Loups.  But then one of the monks, the choir director Frere Mathieu, is found murdered in the garden.  Chief Insp. Armand Gamache and his first lieutenant, Insp. Jean-Guy Beauvoir, make their journey to the monastery to find out which of the monks committed the murder and why. 

We learn in The Beautiful Mystery about the monastic life, Catholic Church history, the Gregorian chants and so much more.  There is also a sub plot involving Armand Gamache and Jean-Guy Beauvoir and that sub plot interested me a good deal.  We get a deep dive into the character and insecurities of Jean-Guy Beauvoir and though he is not an easy character to warm up to, I am starting to find him fascinating and will be eager to get on to the ninth book in this marvelous series.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helen Hanff

These days if you are looking for an out-of-print book it's often a click away on Amazon.  But in 1949 for Helene Hanff, a free-lance writer living in New York, finding the out-of-print books she loved was not easy.

But then Helene saw an ad from an antiquarian bookstore Marks and Co located at 84, Charing Cross Road London, England.  Helene sent off a letter inquiring if they had three books she had been trying to find.  The manager, Frank Doel, wrote back letting her know that he would be sending Helene two of the books she requested.  The Leigh Hunt essays would be harder to find but he would do his best to locate that book as well.

And so began a twenty year correspondence (1949 - 1969)  between Helene Hanff, Frank Doel and the staff at Marks and Co.  Their letters are collected in the book 84 Charing Cross Road published in 1970 which has gone on to be a much loved classic.  Most of the letters in the book are from Helene and here is part of a letter dated March 25, 1950 she wrote to Frank:  

"I require a book of love poems with spring coming on.  No Keats or Shelley, send me poets who can make love without slobbering - Wyatt or Jonson or somebody, use your own judgement.  Just a nice book preferably small enough to stick in a slacks pocket and take to Central Park" 

In the years after World War II Helene discovered that foods and products were still being rationed in England and so as a thank you for the books they had been sending her, Helene began to send gift packages that the Marks and Co staff really appreciated.  

At the heart of 84 Charing Cross Road is Helene's friendship with Frank and the Marks and Co staff and also her love for English literature. Helene Hanff didn't care for fiction but she had a deep knowledge of English poetry and essayists and it's a pleasure to read her interesting and opinionated views about books and authors.

Frank and his staff were always hoping Helene would come to England to visit and she wanted to go but as a struggling freelance writer it was not affordable. She finally did make it to England but by that time Frank had passed away and the bookstore had closed down.  But the book 84 Charing Cross Road has become a classic to treasure and reread.  Also the movie starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins is wonderful.  I have seen it more than once and it's available online.