The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey published 1951 is a classic in the mystery/ crime genre, a unique sort of crime novel involving a 20th century Scotland Yard Detective determined to solve a 500 year old mystery involving Richard III (The English King who ruled from 1483-1485). Was Richard responsible fo the deaths of his two nephews, the Princes in the Tower as they have been called, or has he been unfairly maligned by history? Josephine Tey makes a good case for why Richard might be innocent and I found this book to be both entertaining and educational.
And so when The Daughter of Time begins we are in England during the early 1950's and Alan Grant is a detective with Scotland Yard. He is in the hospital recuperating from an injury. He is bored and frustrated. Friends bring him books he has no interest in reading and then one of his closest friends Marta Hallard a theater actress brings him a portfolio containing dozens of portraits of famous historical figures. It turns out to be just what the doctor ordered since Alan is a specialist in reading faces. He spends an enjoyable day in bed looking at each portrait, speculating about who they were, their character traits, etc. But then he comes to one photo he has overlooked:
"It was the portrait of a man. A man dressed in the velvet cap and slashed doublet of the late fifteenth century. A man about thirty-five or thirty-six years old and clean shaven ... a judge? a soldier? a prince? Someone used to great responsibility, and responsible in his authority. Someone too conscientious. A worrier, perhaps a perfectionist ... Someone, too who had suffered ill-health as a child ... He turned the portrait over to look for a caption. Richard the Third. So that was who it was. Richard the Third. Crouchback. The monster of nursery stories. The destroyer of innocence. A synonym for villainy".
What bothers Alan Grant is how he could have read a face so wrong "mistaken one of the most notorious murderers of all time for a judge" and so Grant decides to investigate. Who was Richard the Third, what made him tick, and what really happened to his two young nephews? But how do you begin an investigation confined to your hospital bed? And how to discover the truth about a crime that happened five hundred years ago?
Detective Grant uses the tools at his disposal. He discusses the case with the hospital staff and it turns out one of his nurses knows a good deal about Richard III and directs Grant to an influential biography of the man written by Sir Thomas More. But Grant discovers there are serious problems with More's biography, gossip and inuendo reported as fact.
Detective Grant realizes that he needs to start from scratch to learn the truth about Richard III. Once again his friend Marta comes to the rescue. She introduces Grant to a young American scholar, Brent Carradine who is at the British Museum doing research about the Plantagenet period in English history. Brett jumps at the chance to help Alan and as they hash out the case together they uncover a great deal. Richard was not a ruthless King and Edward IV had older children who would have inherited the throne before the nephews so their murder made no sense. Grant and Carradine go on to discover that during Richard's short life (he died at age 32) there were no accusations that the nephews were dead or even missing. Grant comes to the conclusion that the nephews were therefore alive when Henry VII who suceeded Richard took power and could he have been the real killer?
One thought that occured to me as I was reading The Daughter of Time was did Josephine Tey uncover all this evidence of Richard's innocence and if so where were the historians down through the centuries? Well actually after the Tudor line ended the historians of the 18th and 19th century took a look at this case and questions began to arise. But in the 20th century regarding Richard's innocence Josephine Tey has done a great deal to bring this case to the modern day public's attention and with over 700 reviews on Amazon its clear that readers are still interested. I recommend The Daughter of Time for mystery lovers and history buffs alike.
Wednesday, July 17, 2019
Thursday, June 27, 2019
The Adventures of Augie Marsh by Saul Bellow
"I am an American, Chicago born -- Chicago, that somber city -- and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way".
The Adventures of Augie Marsh by Saul Bellow took the literary world by storm when it was published in 1953 and today it is considered one of the great novels of 20th century literature and I am in full agreement. There isn't much of a plot to the book though. Augie goes about his life haphazardly in an effort to find his place in the world. That said, what makes this novel so good is the writing, a "cascade of prose" as it has been described. The amount of talent and work it must have taken Saul Bellow to produce this classic is awe inspiring.
And so when The Adventures of Augie Marsh begins it is the 1920's and Augie is a young boy growing up in a poor section of Chicago. Augie lives with his mother Rebecca, his older brother Simon, his younger mentally disabled brother George and Grandma Lausch. The father is absent and Augie's mother is a sweet woman but timid. Grandma Lausch runs the show and she is not a loving presence.
it's not a happy household and Augie leaves home while still a teenager. We follow him as he tries to make his way during the Great Depression. Augie will take on many jobs and get involved in all kinds of off the wall schemes. But whether it's his brother Simon, his friends, employers, romantic partners who try to enlist him in their plans there is something stubborn about Augie. He will go along for a time but then sabatoge those plans that others have made for him so he can be free to follow his own path. He's just not sure what that path is.
The novel ends in Paris after the war where Augie is living with his wife. Its been a long journey to get where he is and on the surface it sounds like Augie is settled but the reader suspects otherwise. The Adventures of Augie March has been called the Great Novel of the American Dream and Augie is a character always looking for what's over the next horizon and there is something very American about that.
I found The Adventures of Augie Marsh a very difficult book to summarize and my apologies for giving such a bare bones description. There are so many moving parts to this book, adventures, characters, jobs etc that I found it impossible to recount it all. But what I do want to reiterate again is the quality of the writing. I thought about quoting passages but its the sort of writing that needs to be read in context. Saul Bellow would later say that The Adventures of Augie Marsh was the novel where he found his voice and it was a voice worth finding.
The Adventures of Augie Marsh fulfills the category - choose a very long classic for my 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate
The Adventures of Augie Marsh by Saul Bellow took the literary world by storm when it was published in 1953 and today it is considered one of the great novels of 20th century literature and I am in full agreement. There isn't much of a plot to the book though. Augie goes about his life haphazardly in an effort to find his place in the world. That said, what makes this novel so good is the writing, a "cascade of prose" as it has been described. The amount of talent and work it must have taken Saul Bellow to produce this classic is awe inspiring.
And so when The Adventures of Augie Marsh begins it is the 1920's and Augie is a young boy growing up in a poor section of Chicago. Augie lives with his mother Rebecca, his older brother Simon, his younger mentally disabled brother George and Grandma Lausch. The father is absent and Augie's mother is a sweet woman but timid. Grandma Lausch runs the show and she is not a loving presence.
it's not a happy household and Augie leaves home while still a teenager. We follow him as he tries to make his way during the Great Depression. Augie will take on many jobs and get involved in all kinds of off the wall schemes. But whether it's his brother Simon, his friends, employers, romantic partners who try to enlist him in their plans there is something stubborn about Augie. He will go along for a time but then sabatoge those plans that others have made for him so he can be free to follow his own path. He's just not sure what that path is.
The novel ends in Paris after the war where Augie is living with his wife. Its been a long journey to get where he is and on the surface it sounds like Augie is settled but the reader suspects otherwise. The Adventures of Augie March has been called the Great Novel of the American Dream and Augie is a character always looking for what's over the next horizon and there is something very American about that.
I found The Adventures of Augie Marsh a very difficult book to summarize and my apologies for giving such a bare bones description. There are so many moving parts to this book, adventures, characters, jobs etc that I found it impossible to recount it all. But what I do want to reiterate again is the quality of the writing. I thought about quoting passages but its the sort of writing that needs to be read in context. Saul Bellow would later say that The Adventures of Augie Marsh was the novel where he found his voice and it was a voice worth finding.
The Adventures of Augie Marsh fulfills the category - choose a very long classic for my 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate
Wednesday, May 22, 2019
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad is a writer I have been meaning to read for years. I knew he had written some of the great classics in literature. What I didn't know is that prior to beginning his writing career, Conrad had spent his early years at sea starting out as a sailor and eventually rising to the level of ship's captain with the British Merchant Service. He uses this knowledge about sea travel to marvelous effect in Lord Jim published 1900, a novel that deals with guilt and redemption.
And so, when Lord Jim begins it is the late 19th century. Jim, the title character, is a young English maritime officer who has grown bored with his profession. As a young boy he read stories of high drama at sea, a chance to be a hero and test oneself against the elements. But Jim has been sailing for a few years and his voyages have been uneventful.
And then Jim accepts a job on the Patna, a ship carrying 800 passengers on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The voyage starts out routine but suddenly at night the Patna hits something and begins sinking. Jim watches in horror as his fellow officers and the captain get into one of the few lifeboats prepared to abandon ship with the passangers sleeping below. Jim doesn't want to get into the lifeboat:
"He was not afraid of death perhaps, but I'll tell you what, he was afraid of the emergency. His confounded imagination had evoked for him all the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats swamped - all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever heard of. He might have been resigned to die, but I suspect he wanted to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance".
And so at the last moment, with Jim fearing the chaos that will ensue, he jumps into the lifeboat. A day or two later a French ship rescues Jim and the officers and they learn that the Patna miraculously has also been rescued. All of the passengers are safe. An inquiry is held back in England. Jim's fellow officers don't bother to show up and their sea licenses are revoked. Jim insists on attending the inquiry believing possibly that he can convince the court that he behaved differently somehow than his colleagues. However his officer's licsence is revoked as well.
It is during the inquiry that we are introduced to the novel's narrator Captain Charles Marlow who attends the inquiry and though Marlow doesn't appprove of how Jim behaved he is empathetic. Maybe he sees some of himself in Jim. Throughout the book Marlow tries to figure out Jim's psychology. What is he searching for in terms of finding peace? It's not a fascination I shared at first. I didn't judge Jim for what he did. Who knows how any of us would have behaved? But it seemed that Jim didn't so much feel guilt as shame and he was angry about that. He was angry a good deal of the time.
Marlow tries to set Jim up with other jobs at sea under a different name but then someone would mention the Patna at the new place he worked and Jim would walk off. Why couldn't Jim find some other career and most important where was his gratitude that the 800 passengers had survived? Jim is upset that the image he had of himself didn't measure up in a crisis but you can recover from shame and humiliation. It's alot harder to recover from the kind of guilt he would have suffered if the passengers had drowned.
Jim finally lands a job managing a trading post on a remote island where they have never heard of the Patna. It's a chance to prove himself and start anew. He falls in love with a young woman named Jewel and the native people see him as a great leader (Lord Jim) due to his protecting them when he first arrives. Jim has found peace and his friend Marlow who visits notices the change. Jim cares about the local population and has a number of ideas to make improvements on the island. This ideal circumstance though cannot last. I won't go any further as to why except to say that my image of Jim changed. He shows himself in the end to be the romantic, mysterious young man that Marlow suspected he was all along and very brave as well.
I recommend Lord Jim. Book four on my 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic tragic novel.
And so, when Lord Jim begins it is the late 19th century. Jim, the title character, is a young English maritime officer who has grown bored with his profession. As a young boy he read stories of high drama at sea, a chance to be a hero and test oneself against the elements. But Jim has been sailing for a few years and his voyages have been uneventful.
And then Jim accepts a job on the Patna, a ship carrying 800 passengers on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The voyage starts out routine but suddenly at night the Patna hits something and begins sinking. Jim watches in horror as his fellow officers and the captain get into one of the few lifeboats prepared to abandon ship with the passangers sleeping below. Jim doesn't want to get into the lifeboat:
"He was not afraid of death perhaps, but I'll tell you what, he was afraid of the emergency. His confounded imagination had evoked for him all the horrors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, boats swamped - all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea he had ever heard of. He might have been resigned to die, but I suspect he wanted to die without added terrors, quietly, in a sort of peaceful trance".
And so at the last moment, with Jim fearing the chaos that will ensue, he jumps into the lifeboat. A day or two later a French ship rescues Jim and the officers and they learn that the Patna miraculously has also been rescued. All of the passengers are safe. An inquiry is held back in England. Jim's fellow officers don't bother to show up and their sea licenses are revoked. Jim insists on attending the inquiry believing possibly that he can convince the court that he behaved differently somehow than his colleagues. However his officer's licsence is revoked as well.
It is during the inquiry that we are introduced to the novel's narrator Captain Charles Marlow who attends the inquiry and though Marlow doesn't appprove of how Jim behaved he is empathetic. Maybe he sees some of himself in Jim. Throughout the book Marlow tries to figure out Jim's psychology. What is he searching for in terms of finding peace? It's not a fascination I shared at first. I didn't judge Jim for what he did. Who knows how any of us would have behaved? But it seemed that Jim didn't so much feel guilt as shame and he was angry about that. He was angry a good deal of the time.
Marlow tries to set Jim up with other jobs at sea under a different name but then someone would mention the Patna at the new place he worked and Jim would walk off. Why couldn't Jim find some other career and most important where was his gratitude that the 800 passengers had survived? Jim is upset that the image he had of himself didn't measure up in a crisis but you can recover from shame and humiliation. It's alot harder to recover from the kind of guilt he would have suffered if the passengers had drowned.
Jim finally lands a job managing a trading post on a remote island where they have never heard of the Patna. It's a chance to prove himself and start anew. He falls in love with a young woman named Jewel and the native people see him as a great leader (Lord Jim) due to his protecting them when he first arrives. Jim has found peace and his friend Marlow who visits notices the change. Jim cares about the local population and has a number of ideas to make improvements on the island. This ideal circumstance though cannot last. I won't go any further as to why except to say that my image of Jim changed. He shows himself in the end to be the romantic, mysterious young man that Marlow suspected he was all along and very brave as well.
I recommend Lord Jim. Book four on my 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic tragic novel.
Tuesday, May 07, 2019
The Destruction of Hillary Clinton by Susan Bordo
In the months after the 2016 Presidential election Hillary Clinton retired for a bit from public life. She stayed at her home in Chappaqua trying to regroup. It had been a brutal campaign with chants of "lock her up" at Trump rallies and you would think that the Hillary haters would be relieved that they hadn't seen or heard from their nemesis for awhile. But instead accusations of why is she hiding began to be heard. She's a sore loser etc. I remember Jeanine Pirro at Fox for example prowling the grounds near Hillary's home with a nasty smile on her face whispering into her microphone about how there was no sign of Hillary yet.
This is what hatred looks like and it's not a pretty picture. Hatred can't leave someone alone and the question is why? Why the Hillary hate dating back to 1992 when she became First Lady? And how big a factor does Hillary's gender play in all this obsessional rage and what role did it play in 2016? I have searched for a book to answer these questions. I assumed it had yet to be written but actually Susan Bordo tackled this subject back in 2017 when she published The Destruction of Hillary Clinton and it has turned out to be the book I needed.
Susan Bordo is an English Lit and Women Studies Professor at Kentucky State University. She is the author of a number of books, one of which, Unbearable Weight, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Ms. Bordo makes clear at the beginning of The Destruction of Hillary Clinton that by destruction she does not mean Hillary Clinton the woman who as the author notes is "as resilient as they come". Instead what Bordo is referring to is that while we have had rough Presidential campaigns before in our history what happened in 2016 was different, "an all-out assault on the character and candidacy of Hillary Clinton".
As to how we got here Susan Bordo takes us back to 1992 and Bill and Hillary Clinton's arrival on the national stage. Hillary was a new kind of First Lady. A Yale Law School graduate, first female partner at her law firm. She was opinionated, smart and had kept her maiden name while Bill was Governor of Arkansas. When you first enter public life you can slip up. Hillary's exasperated comments during Bill's campaign for example about how she wasn't going to sit home and bake cookies was unfortunate. Ditto for Bill Clinton's remark about how if people elected him they would "get two for the price of one". Hillary apologized for the cookies remark but for her enemies its never enough. They have been parsing every word she utters for almost thirty years and I marvel at her strength. Subjected to the same treatment I would have been a basket case by now.
Susan Bordo writes about all of this and tells us that being from the same generation as Hillary she has always felt a kinship with her which many younger women figuring the battles have all been won, cannot understand. Bordo quotes Hillary's experience back in the early 1970's taking her law school admission's test as an example of what her generation faced:
We had to go into Harvard to take the test, and we were in a huge room, and there were very few women there, and we sat at these desks waiting for the proctors or whoever to come and all the young men around us started to harrass us. They started to say, "What do you think you're doing? If you get into law school, you're going to take my position. You've got no right to do this. Why don't you go home and get married".
The majority of Susan Bordo's book focuses on the 2016 campaign and as Bordo sees it the destruction of Hillary Clinton's campaign was book-ended by two factors. One was the interference in the general election by FBI Director James Comey pertaining to Hillary's emails which Bordo discusses at length. The other factor involves Bernie Sanders' supporters
These people in so many ways are my natural colleagues, and most are as upset as I am by Trump's victory. But they played a big role in the thin edge (not a landslide as Trump would have us believe) that gave Trump the election. For while Trump supporters hooted and cheered for their candidate, forgiving him every lie, every crime, every bit of disgusting behavior, too many young Democrats made it very clear (in newspaper and internet interviews, in polls and in the mainstream media) that they were only voting for Hillary Clinton as the "lesser of two evils," "holding their noses," tears still streaming down their faces over the primary defeat of the person they felt truly deserved their votes. Some didn't vote at all."
Susan Bordo is writing here I believe about a small segment of Bernie Sanders' supporters. Most who voted for Bernie in the primaries had no problem voting for Hillary in tne general and I saw a statistic that bears that out. But its also true as we head to 2020 that Democrats need to pull together whoever the party nominates be it Biden, Harris, Sanders, Buttigieg etc. No staying home this time or going third party.
The Destruction of Hillary Clinton was published in April 2017 and alot has happened since then but the book doesn't feel dated. And if fifty or sixty years from now America has still not elected a woman President people may come back to Susan Bordo's book to learn the reasons why.
This is what hatred looks like and it's not a pretty picture. Hatred can't leave someone alone and the question is why? Why the Hillary hate dating back to 1992 when she became First Lady? And how big a factor does Hillary's gender play in all this obsessional rage and what role did it play in 2016? I have searched for a book to answer these questions. I assumed it had yet to be written but actually Susan Bordo tackled this subject back in 2017 when she published The Destruction of Hillary Clinton and it has turned out to be the book I needed.
Susan Bordo is an English Lit and Women Studies Professor at Kentucky State University. She is the author of a number of books, one of which, Unbearable Weight, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Ms. Bordo makes clear at the beginning of The Destruction of Hillary Clinton that by destruction she does not mean Hillary Clinton the woman who as the author notes is "as resilient as they come". Instead what Bordo is referring to is that while we have had rough Presidential campaigns before in our history what happened in 2016 was different, "an all-out assault on the character and candidacy of Hillary Clinton".
As to how we got here Susan Bordo takes us back to 1992 and Bill and Hillary Clinton's arrival on the national stage. Hillary was a new kind of First Lady. A Yale Law School graduate, first female partner at her law firm. She was opinionated, smart and had kept her maiden name while Bill was Governor of Arkansas. When you first enter public life you can slip up. Hillary's exasperated comments during Bill's campaign for example about how she wasn't going to sit home and bake cookies was unfortunate. Ditto for Bill Clinton's remark about how if people elected him they would "get two for the price of one". Hillary apologized for the cookies remark but for her enemies its never enough. They have been parsing every word she utters for almost thirty years and I marvel at her strength. Subjected to the same treatment I would have been a basket case by now.
Susan Bordo writes about all of this and tells us that being from the same generation as Hillary she has always felt a kinship with her which many younger women figuring the battles have all been won, cannot understand. Bordo quotes Hillary's experience back in the early 1970's taking her law school admission's test as an example of what her generation faced:
We had to go into Harvard to take the test, and we were in a huge room, and there were very few women there, and we sat at these desks waiting for the proctors or whoever to come and all the young men around us started to harrass us. They started to say, "What do you think you're doing? If you get into law school, you're going to take my position. You've got no right to do this. Why don't you go home and get married".
The majority of Susan Bordo's book focuses on the 2016 campaign and as Bordo sees it the destruction of Hillary Clinton's campaign was book-ended by two factors. One was the interference in the general election by FBI Director James Comey pertaining to Hillary's emails which Bordo discusses at length. The other factor involves Bernie Sanders' supporters
These people in so many ways are my natural colleagues, and most are as upset as I am by Trump's victory. But they played a big role in the thin edge (not a landslide as Trump would have us believe) that gave Trump the election. For while Trump supporters hooted and cheered for their candidate, forgiving him every lie, every crime, every bit of disgusting behavior, too many young Democrats made it very clear (in newspaper and internet interviews, in polls and in the mainstream media) that they were only voting for Hillary Clinton as the "lesser of two evils," "holding their noses," tears still streaming down their faces over the primary defeat of the person they felt truly deserved their votes. Some didn't vote at all."
Susan Bordo is writing here I believe about a small segment of Bernie Sanders' supporters. Most who voted for Bernie in the primaries had no problem voting for Hillary in tne general and I saw a statistic that bears that out. But its also true as we head to 2020 that Democrats need to pull together whoever the party nominates be it Biden, Harris, Sanders, Buttigieg etc. No staying home this time or going third party.
The Destruction of Hillary Clinton was published in April 2017 and alot has happened since then but the book doesn't feel dated. And if fifty or sixty years from now America has still not elected a woman President people may come back to Susan Bordo's book to learn the reasons why.
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
The Wreath by Sigrid Undset
A few years ago Elizabeth Scalia at her website The Anchoress posted her thoughts about a biography of St Catherine of Sienna by Sigrid Undset. It was a glowing review and so I filed away Ms. Undset's name as someone I might want to read in the future. Now, thanks to the 2019 Classics Challenge - choose a classic in translation, that day has arrived. But instead of Sigrid Undset's biography of Catherine of Sienna, I decided to go with another book, The Wreath published 1920. It's the first book in Ms. Undset's highly acclaimed Kristin Lavransdatter series (The Wreath, The Wife and The Cross). Three historical novels set in fourteenth century Norway which revolve around the life of Kristin Lavransdatter.
The Wreath, begins with Kristin Lavransdatter at about age six and ends with her marriage at age seventeen. She is a very well drawn character and Sigrid Undset does a wonderful job depicting her thoughts, her conflicts, her dreams. Other interesting characters appear in The Wreath as well: Kristin's parents Lavrans and Ranifrid Bjorgulfson, Kristin's betrothed, Simon Andresson and Erlund Nikulausson the man she really loves. I was concerned that I might have trouble keeping straight the different Norwegian names of the chatacters but after a few pages it was fine and I got drawn in to Kristin's world. Kristin age six for example accompanying her father on a journey, the furthest she has been from home:
"Kristin had thought that if she came up over the crest of her home mountains, she would be able to look down on another village like their own, with farms and houses, and she had such a strange feeling when she saw what a great distance there was between places where people lived ...she knew that wolves and bears reigned in the forest, and under every rock lived trolls and goblins and elves and she was suddenly afraid, for no one knew how many there were but there were certainly many more of them than Christian people. Then she called loud to her father, but he didn't hear her because of the wind".
Later in The Wreath when her younger sister Ulvhild is seriously injured, Kristin contemplates becoming a nun and that if she enters the convent God will perform a miracle and make Ulvhild well:
"But Kristin didn't want to do it; she resisted the idea that God would perform a miracle for Ulvhild if she became a nun. She clung to Sira Eirik's words that so few miracles occured nowadays. And yet she had the feeling this evening that it was as Brother Edvin had said -- that if someone had enough faith that he could indeed work miracles. But she did not want that kind of faith; she did not love God and His Mother and the saints in that way. She loved the world and longed for the world.
It is this struggle that Kristin Lavransdatter wrestles with in The Wreath whether to do what God and her parents want and marry Simon or follow her heart and marry Erlund and as the series progresses Kristin Lavrandatter will no doubt be presented with other challenges.
In 1928 Sigrid Undset was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and the comittee singled out The Kristin Lavransdatter novels. It's an exceptional series and not just because of the amount of research Ms. Undset did in accurately portraying fourteenth century Norwegian life but the characters have an authenticity about them as well. I really did feel that this is how people must have thought and behaved back in Medieval times. The Kristin Lavransdatter novels have been greeted with renewed interest in recent years thanks to the very fine translation by Tina Nunnally which makes these books accessible while maintaining the beauty and other worldliness of the prose. This is a series I see myself completing.
The Wreath, begins with Kristin Lavransdatter at about age six and ends with her marriage at age seventeen. She is a very well drawn character and Sigrid Undset does a wonderful job depicting her thoughts, her conflicts, her dreams. Other interesting characters appear in The Wreath as well: Kristin's parents Lavrans and Ranifrid Bjorgulfson, Kristin's betrothed, Simon Andresson and Erlund Nikulausson the man she really loves. I was concerned that I might have trouble keeping straight the different Norwegian names of the chatacters but after a few pages it was fine and I got drawn in to Kristin's world. Kristin age six for example accompanying her father on a journey, the furthest she has been from home:
"Kristin had thought that if she came up over the crest of her home mountains, she would be able to look down on another village like their own, with farms and houses, and she had such a strange feeling when she saw what a great distance there was between places where people lived ...she knew that wolves and bears reigned in the forest, and under every rock lived trolls and goblins and elves and she was suddenly afraid, for no one knew how many there were but there were certainly many more of them than Christian people. Then she called loud to her father, but he didn't hear her because of the wind".
Later in The Wreath when her younger sister Ulvhild is seriously injured, Kristin contemplates becoming a nun and that if she enters the convent God will perform a miracle and make Ulvhild well:
"But Kristin didn't want to do it; she resisted the idea that God would perform a miracle for Ulvhild if she became a nun. She clung to Sira Eirik's words that so few miracles occured nowadays. And yet she had the feeling this evening that it was as Brother Edvin had said -- that if someone had enough faith that he could indeed work miracles. But she did not want that kind of faith; she did not love God and His Mother and the saints in that way. She loved the world and longed for the world.
It is this struggle that Kristin Lavransdatter wrestles with in The Wreath whether to do what God and her parents want and marry Simon or follow her heart and marry Erlund and as the series progresses Kristin Lavrandatter will no doubt be presented with other challenges.
In 1928 Sigrid Undset was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature and the comittee singled out The Kristin Lavransdatter novels. It's an exceptional series and not just because of the amount of research Ms. Undset did in accurately portraying fourteenth century Norwegian life but the characters have an authenticity about them as well. I really did feel that this is how people must have thought and behaved back in Medieval times. The Kristin Lavransdatter novels have been greeted with renewed interest in recent years thanks to the very fine translation by Tina Nunnally which makes these books accessible while maintaining the beauty and other worldliness of the prose. This is a series I see myself completing.
Monday, March 18, 2019
Time to Murder and Create by Lawrence Block
Time to Murder and Create published 1977 is book two in Lawrence Block's bestselling and critically acclaimed Matthew Scudder mystery series. There are a total of eighteen novels in this series, all of which are narrated by Matthew Scudder. He's the ex cop turned private investigator who when he's not working on a case can be found nursing his troubles in bars around Manhattan. In lesser hands Scudder might have come off as a hard-boiled caricature but Lawrence Block is too good a writer for that. I knew from book one, Sins of the Father, that Scudder was a character worth following.
And so when Time to Murder and Create begins we are in NYC and it's the 1970's. The crime rate is high, people are on edge. It's a world before 9/11, cell phones, the internet, texting etc and Scudder is in his favorite watering hole, Armstrong's, waiting to meet a prospective client, Jacob, the Spinner, Jablon. The Spinner back when Scudder knew him from his time on the police force was a small time crook and informer but Scudder hasn't seen him in years and things have changed:
"When a man who side-steps through life by keeping his ears open suddenly turns up wearing a three-hundred dollar suit, it's not hard to figure out how he got it. After a lifetime of selling information, the Spinner had come up with something too good to sell. Instead of peddling information, he had turned to peddling silence. Blackmailers are richer than stool pigeons, because their commodity is not a one-time thing; they can rent it out to the same person over and over for a lifetime. The only problem is that their lifetimes tend to shrink. The Spinner became a bad actuarial risk the day he got successful".
The Spinner tells Matthew Scudder that he has been blackmailing three people and one of these three is trying to kill him. The Spinner hands Matthew Scudder an envelope with compromising photos of all three. He trusts that if he winds up dead, Scudder will find out a) who killed him and b) destroy the pictures of the other two who as the Spinner sees it played it straight with him and deserve to be let off the hook once he's gone. As to why Matthew Scudder would take a case like this, the Spinner explains it as follows:
"Why I think you'll follow through is something I noticed about you a long time ago, namely that you happen to think there is a difference between murder and other crimes. I am the same. I have done bad things all my life but never killed anybody and I never would".
This is true. Matthew Scudder is not a judgemental man but he draws the line at murder. Some things you don't get to get away with and murder is at the top of that list for Scudder and so he decides to take the case.
As the novels in this series progress through the 1980's, 1990's, 2000's, Matthew Scudder will change. He gives up the booze, finds love and becomes more at peace with himself, all while retaining his wit and cynical view of human nature. An added bonus is that NYC changes along with Scudder so that the 1970's New York when these novels began is very different from the NYC that one encounters in Block's most recent addition to the series published in January of this year where Matthew Scudder decides to come out of retirement to take on one last case.
In the world of mystery and crime fiction Lawrence Block is a legend. He has been compared by fellow writers and critics to the great Dashiell Hammett and having read both authors I can agree. My favorite Block novel is The Girl With the Long Green Heart published 1965 but his Matthew Scudder series is his most popular and so if you have never read Lawrence Block that is also a very fine place to begin.
And so when Time to Murder and Create begins we are in NYC and it's the 1970's. The crime rate is high, people are on edge. It's a world before 9/11, cell phones, the internet, texting etc and Scudder is in his favorite watering hole, Armstrong's, waiting to meet a prospective client, Jacob, the Spinner, Jablon. The Spinner back when Scudder knew him from his time on the police force was a small time crook and informer but Scudder hasn't seen him in years and things have changed:
"When a man who side-steps through life by keeping his ears open suddenly turns up wearing a three-hundred dollar suit, it's not hard to figure out how he got it. After a lifetime of selling information, the Spinner had come up with something too good to sell. Instead of peddling information, he had turned to peddling silence. Blackmailers are richer than stool pigeons, because their commodity is not a one-time thing; they can rent it out to the same person over and over for a lifetime. The only problem is that their lifetimes tend to shrink. The Spinner became a bad actuarial risk the day he got successful".
The Spinner tells Matthew Scudder that he has been blackmailing three people and one of these three is trying to kill him. The Spinner hands Matthew Scudder an envelope with compromising photos of all three. He trusts that if he winds up dead, Scudder will find out a) who killed him and b) destroy the pictures of the other two who as the Spinner sees it played it straight with him and deserve to be let off the hook once he's gone. As to why Matthew Scudder would take a case like this, the Spinner explains it as follows:
"Why I think you'll follow through is something I noticed about you a long time ago, namely that you happen to think there is a difference between murder and other crimes. I am the same. I have done bad things all my life but never killed anybody and I never would".
This is true. Matthew Scudder is not a judgemental man but he draws the line at murder. Some things you don't get to get away with and murder is at the top of that list for Scudder and so he decides to take the case.
As the novels in this series progress through the 1980's, 1990's, 2000's, Matthew Scudder will change. He gives up the booze, finds love and becomes more at peace with himself, all while retaining his wit and cynical view of human nature. An added bonus is that NYC changes along with Scudder so that the 1970's New York when these novels began is very different from the NYC that one encounters in Block's most recent addition to the series published in January of this year where Matthew Scudder decides to come out of retirement to take on one last case.
In the world of mystery and crime fiction Lawrence Block is a legend. He has been compared by fellow writers and critics to the great Dashiell Hammett and having read both authors I can agree. My favorite Block novel is The Girl With the Long Green Heart published 1965 but his Matthew Scudder series is his most popular and so if you have never read Lawrence Block that is also a very fine place to begin.
Tuesday, March 05, 2019
Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
There are always going to be writers that we never get around to reading and for me, until recently, Barbara Pym fell into that category. I knew she was a mid-20th century British novelist. I assumed she wrote well but my desire to read her never materialized. But it turns out many of my favorite bloggers are Barbara Pym fans and I value their judgement and so for the 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by a woman author, I chose Excellent Women by Barbara Pym published 1952. It's one of the best books I have read in some time.
Excellent Women is set in London in the early 1950's. The first person narrator and protagonist is Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her early 30's, which is how she defines herself. Mildred's social life revolves around St Mary's Church. She is good friends with Father Julian Malory and his sister Winifred and when Mildred is not volunteering or attending services at St Mary's she works part time for an agency that helps elderly ladies who have fallen on hard times.
Mildred is an "excellent woman". As described in the novel excellent women are single women who fill their lives volunteering and offering a sympathetic ear and a cup of tea when friends and neighbors come calling with problems. Excellent women are seen as a bit odd and to be pitied by their friends due to their lack of family ties and no one is more aware of this than Mildred. Throughout the novel Mildred makes a number of references to her spinster status in a somewhat joking manner but I sensed a defensiveness in tone which got me wondering if Mildred was as content with her situation as she assures the reader she is.
Still, Mildred's life is reasonably comfortable and predictable but then things take a turn when two new tenants, Rocky Napier and his wife Helena, move into the apartment above Mildred. She gets entangled in their lives eventually becoming a go-between as the Napier's marriage comes apart. Trouble is brewing at St. Mary's as well when Father Julian, who no one thought would ever marry, becomes engaged to the widow, Allegra Gray. Allegra does not get along with Julian's sister Winifred and wants her to move out. Mildred is dragged into this domestic dispute as well.
As a writer Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen and I see the resemblance, the humor, the excellent writing and as with the narrators in Jane Austen's novels, Mildred is a keen observer of the world around her. But maybe what Barbara Pym is also telling us is that observing life is not the same as living it, taking risks and being open to change. There can be a danger in wanting to keep things exactly as they've always been and this is brought home with regard to another character in Excellent Women, Winifred Malory.
Winifred is a sweet and innocent woman who if she knew anything in life it was that she would always have a home in the rectory, helping her brother Rev Julian Malory run St. Mary's. When Julian becomes engaged to Allegra, Winifred thinks it's wonderful. She will simply move into the attic apartment and the three of them can help run St. Mary's together. Allegra though wants Winifred out and at one point suggests that Winifred might want to join a religious order or live in a settlement house in the East End. Avoiding change did not provide Winifred with security, quite the contrary, and so it pays in life to take sensible risks or others will make the decisions for you.
As to how the situation with Winifred, Allegra and Julian resolves itself I leave it to the reader to discover and I hope people will read Excellent Women. I enjoyed this novel a great deal and as with many classics I was left with alot to ponder. In a few months I am looking forward to my next Barbara Pym novel.
Excellent Women is set in London in the early 1950's. The first person narrator and protagonist is Mildred Lathbury, a spinster in her early 30's, which is how she defines herself. Mildred's social life revolves around St Mary's Church. She is good friends with Father Julian Malory and his sister Winifred and when Mildred is not volunteering or attending services at St Mary's she works part time for an agency that helps elderly ladies who have fallen on hard times.
Mildred is an "excellent woman". As described in the novel excellent women are single women who fill their lives volunteering and offering a sympathetic ear and a cup of tea when friends and neighbors come calling with problems. Excellent women are seen as a bit odd and to be pitied by their friends due to their lack of family ties and no one is more aware of this than Mildred. Throughout the novel Mildred makes a number of references to her spinster status in a somewhat joking manner but I sensed a defensiveness in tone which got me wondering if Mildred was as content with her situation as she assures the reader she is.
Still, Mildred's life is reasonably comfortable and predictable but then things take a turn when two new tenants, Rocky Napier and his wife Helena, move into the apartment above Mildred. She gets entangled in their lives eventually becoming a go-between as the Napier's marriage comes apart. Trouble is brewing at St. Mary's as well when Father Julian, who no one thought would ever marry, becomes engaged to the widow, Allegra Gray. Allegra does not get along with Julian's sister Winifred and wants her to move out. Mildred is dragged into this domestic dispute as well.
As a writer Barbara Pym has been compared to Jane Austen and I see the resemblance, the humor, the excellent writing and as with the narrators in Jane Austen's novels, Mildred is a keen observer of the world around her. But maybe what Barbara Pym is also telling us is that observing life is not the same as living it, taking risks and being open to change. There can be a danger in wanting to keep things exactly as they've always been and this is brought home with regard to another character in Excellent Women, Winifred Malory.
Winifred is a sweet and innocent woman who if she knew anything in life it was that she would always have a home in the rectory, helping her brother Rev Julian Malory run St. Mary's. When Julian becomes engaged to Allegra, Winifred thinks it's wonderful. She will simply move into the attic apartment and the three of them can help run St. Mary's together. Allegra though wants Winifred out and at one point suggests that Winifred might want to join a religious order or live in a settlement house in the East End. Avoiding change did not provide Winifred with security, quite the contrary, and so it pays in life to take sensible risks or others will make the decisions for you.
As to how the situation with Winifred, Allegra and Julian resolves itself I leave it to the reader to discover and I hope people will read Excellent Women. I enjoyed this novel a great deal and as with many classics I was left with alot to ponder. In a few months I am looking forward to my next Barbara Pym novel.
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