Man Booker Nominee – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.18 THE MARRYING OF CHANI KAUFMAN by Eve Harris /2014/the-marrying-of-chani-kaufman-by-eve-harris/ Mon, 07 Apr 2014 13:08:05 +0000 /?p=25800 online pokies facing a major crisis. Rabbi Zilberman's wife, Rivka, is no longer a contented spouse, mother, and homemaker; she is restless, edgy, and depressed. Adding to the tension is the fact that one of her sons, Avromi, a university student, is acting strangely. He is secretive, stays out late, and avoids telling his family where he has been.]]> Book Quote:

“The bride stood like a pillar of salt, rigid under layers of itchy petticoats. Sweat dripped down the hollow of her back and collected in pools under her arms staining the ivory silk. She edged closer to The Bedeken Room door, one ear pressed up against it.”

Book Review:

Review by Eleanor Bukowsky (APR 7, 2014)

In The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, Eve Harris discloses the secrets of a Chasidic community in Golders Green, London, focusing on the tribulations of three families: the Kaufmans, Levys, and Zilbermans. The Kaufmans have eight daughters, one of whom, nineteen-year-old Chani, is seeking an intelligent, animated, and good-natured husband. The Levys, a well-to-do couple, want only the best for their son, Baruch, and plan to settle for nothing less. The Zilbermans are facing a major crisis. Rabbi Zilberman’s wife, Rivka, is no longer a contented spouse, mother, and homemaker; she is restless, edgy, and depressed. Adding to the tension is the fact that one of her sons, Avromi, a university student, is acting strangely. He is secretive, stays out late, and avoids telling his family where he has been.

Harris goes back and forth in time, creating a well-rounded portrait of a community whose members prize tradition, virtue, and spirituality. If anyone deviates from prescribed standards of behavior–by dressing immodestly, showing too much interest in secular matters, or flouting religious law–he or she risks censure or, in some cases, ostracism. However, the author indicates that many Chasidim have a great deal to be grateful for: particularly the support of relatives, friends, and neighbors and the peace of mind that comes from knowing one’s place in the world.

The cast includes the young and not-so-young, the experienced and naïve, the affluent and those struggling to get by. We observe Chani Kaufman navigating the dating scene with anticipation as well as trepidation. We also meet Baruch Levy, a twenty-year-old who fears that he is not ready to shoulder the responsibilities that marriage entails. Manipulating the matchmaking strings is the smug and calculating Mrs. Gelbmann, a shadchan who relishes the inordinate amount of power that she wields. Readers’ hearts go out to Chani’s mother, a long-suffering matriarch who, at forty-five, has already borne eight daughters and is thoroughly burned out.

Ms. Harris is knowledgeable about the Hasidic lifestyle, and portrays her flawed and troubled characters with understanding, insight, and compassion. Her decision to relate events out of chronological order is initially bewildering. However, it allows us to stand back and consider complex situations from a variety of angles and viewpoints. The author presents the limited options available to young people like Chanie and Baruch. Should they adhere to the accepted laws and customs handed down by their parents or follow a different path that might be more to their liking? Chani wonders, “What was it like to roam freely in the world and not have to think about your every action and its spiritual consequence?” For men and women who find the constraints of a sheltered and choreographed existence limiting, the choice to remain strictly observant is a difficult one. The Marrying of Chani Kaufman is a provocative, enlightening, and engrossing book, written with skill and flair, in which the author explores universal themes that will resonate with anyone who has clashed with loved ones, suffered unbearable losses, and has had to make difficult, life-changing decisions.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 41 readers
PUBLISHER: Grove Press, Black Cat (April 1, 2014)
REVIEWER: Eleanor Bukowsky
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Eve Harris
EXTRAS: Excerpt and an interview with the author
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> HARVEST by Jim Crace /2014/harvest-by-jim-crace/ Wed, 15 Jan 2014 13:24:16 +0000 /?p=25007 Book Quote:

“Two twists of smoke at a time of year too warm for cottage fires surprise us at first light, or they at least surprise those of us who’ve not been up to mischief in the dark. Our land is topped and tailed with flames. Beyond the frontier ditches of our fields and in the shelter of our woods, on common ground, where yesterday there wasn’t anyone who could give rise to smoke, some newcomers, by the lustre of an obliging reapers’ moon, have put up their hut -four rough and ready walls, a bit of roof- and lit the more outlying of these fires. Their fire is damp. They will have thrown on wet greenery in order to procure the blackest plume, and thereby not be missed by us. It rises in a column that hardly bends or thins until it clears the canopies. It says, New neighbours have arrived; they’ve built a place; they’ve laid a hearth; they know the custom and the law. This first smoke has given them the right to stay. We’ll see.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill I. Shtulman (JAN 15, 2014)

Jim Crace’s Harvest reads like a simple moral fable of a tiny and remote medieval English village, destroyed externally and internally by the conversion of farms into sheep pastures, but wait! There is far more to it than meets the eye.

Mr. Crace is particularly interested in pairings: everything comes in twos, right from the opening pages.. Two signals of smoke rise up: one signaling the arrival of new neighbors who are announcing their right to stay; the second, a blaze that indicates the master Kent’s dovecote is gone and his doves taken.

Both subplots radiate from these two twinned smoke signals. The stories, narrated by Walter – the manservant of Kent who was paired with him from the start by sharing the same milk – is both an insider and an outsider (yet another pairing). He is not of the village although he has become part of it.

Yet the kind Kent is soon paired with someone else: his pragmatic and heartless cousin, who has come to declare his right to the farm. He has plans for the peaceful agrarian village: “this village, far from everywhere, which has always been a place for horn, corn and trotter and little else, is destined to become a provisioner of wool.” The cousin arrives at a particularly fortuitous time: despite evidence to the contrary, the town has wrongly blamed and pillored the outsiders, an older and younger man, and has placed them in gruesome confinement. The woman who was with them has had her head shorn – much like the sheep to come – and is now in hiding, ready for revenge.

Mr. Crace writes like a dream. His prose is rich and rhapsodic. One example:

“The glinting spider’s thread will turn in a little while to glinting frost. It’s time for you to fill your pieces with fruit, because quite soon the winds will strip the livings from the trees and the thunder through the orchards to give the plums and apples there a rough and ready pruning, and you will have to wait indoors throughout the season of suspense while the weather roars and bends inside. “

Pure poetry.

And he pairs THAT – the beauty of his prose – with some substantial themes that resonate for today’s times our close-minded distrust and demonization of outsiders. Our disregard for the true “tillers of the land” in the pursuit of the almighty profit motivation. Our fall from innocence into mistrust and exile. A munificent harvest that reaps nothing but dollars.

“The plowing’s done. The seed is spread. The weather is reminding me that rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere forever and a day. Its seed is pungent and high-seasoned. This is happiness,” Walter reflects. Magnificently evoked, unsettling, and at times painful to read as the village life implodes, Harvest is yet another testimony to Mr. Crace’s vast talents. For me, it is an undeniable 5-star novel.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 77 readers
PUBLISHER: Vintage (September 20, 2013)
REVIEWER: Jill I. Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Jim Crace
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> WE NEED NEW NAMES by NoViolet Bulawayo /2014/we-need-new-names-by-noviolet-bulawayo/ Sun, 05 Jan 2014 14:15:44 +0000 /?p=23551 Book Quote:

“We are on our way to Budapest: Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Sbho and Stina and me. We are going even though we are not allowed to cross Mzilikazi Road, even though Bastard is supposed to be watching his little sister Fraction, even though Mother would kill me dead if she found out; we are just going. There are guavas to steal in Budapest, and right now I’d rather die for guavas. We didn’t eat this morning and my stomach feels like somebody just took a shovel and dug everything out.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe (JAN 5, 2014)

NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel, We Need New Names, is the story of Darling, a young Zimbabwean girl living in a shantytown called Paradise. She is feisty ten-year old, an astute observer of her surroundings and the people in her life. Bulawayo structures her novel more like a series of linked stories, written in episodic chapters, told loosely chronologically than in one integrated whole. In fact, the short story “Hitting Budapest,” that became in some form an important chapter in this “novel,” won the prestigious 2011 Caine Prize for African Writing.

In addition to Darling, the stories introduce her gang of close friends. They are vividly and realistically drawn and we can easily imagine them as they roam free in their neighbourhood and also secretly walk into “Budapest,” a near-by district of the well-off… One of their goals is to get a glimpse how the other side lives, but primarily to find food and anything useful to trade. They enjoy climbing over walls, peeking into gardens and houses, and heaving themselves into trees to get their fill of guava, a fruit that can temporarily lull their constant feeling of hunger… but with unpleasant consequences.

Darling’s story is bitter-sweet: her father has left the family for the mines in South Africa and her mother ekes out a living, trading in the border region. Darling is left in the care of her grandmother, Mother of Bones. They all had a better life once, and Darling went to school then, but the family was expelled from their “real” house during an earlier political unrest in the country. In the first half of the book, the backdrop is Zimbabwe in the early years of independence and issues of poverty and inequality, violence and suppression of human rights, disappointment with the lack of democracy, are touched upon without breaking the flow of the young protagonist’s authentic voice. Consistently, Bulawayo stays with voice of her young protagonist whose natural curiosity helps her to make sense of the things she doesn’t quite understand. She expresses her views in often comical ways in a mix of unusual imagery and associations, as astute descriptions of life as she sees and understands it from her limited experience that is mingled with her witty interpretation of stories she hears from adults. Her language can be crude and raw, but also gentle and sensitive. I very much enjoyed the vibrant fresh voice of Bulawayo’s young protagonist.

Darling has an aunt in the USA and she often tells her friends of her and that she will move to America to live with her aunt and to experience everything that goes with wealth and comfort: her American dream. It is not surprising, however, that life, when she has arrived in Michigan, is quite different from what she imagined it to be. Still told in episodic chapters, Darling appears to lose her vibrant and innocent voice; it becomes more mature and even, but also flatter. Also, the stories are no longer as closely connected as they were in the first part. While giving insights into her daily life and that of her close family, we lose the astute and wittily critical observer we have come to like and engage with.

Darling’s life follows more or less the usual paths of young (or older) people arriving on visitors’ visas and staying on under the radar. Darling makes every effort to “fit in” and to adapt to the realities she encounters. She adopts an American accent that her mother and her friends on the phone have difficulty understanding… Darling still thinks of “home,” her mother and her close friends, but… with nostalgia as well as resignation into the impracticality of such a visit. In the chapter, “How They Lived,” written in a voice that is not Darling’s, Bulawayo generalizes the experience of immigration and the efforts immigrants from all over the world put into sounding happier than they are, not telling friends and family back home honestly how their lives have turned out in order not to sound discouraging and ungrateful. A strong story in its own right, but will Darling be able to draw any lessons from it?

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 139 readers
PUBLISHER: Reagan Arthur Books (May 21, 2013)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: NoViolet Bulawayo
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> TRESPASS by Rose Tremain /2010/trespass-by-rose-tremain/ Mon, 18 Oct 2010 21:32:26 +0000 /?p=12988 Book Quote:

“As Kitty walked toward the water, she wondered: Doesn’t every love need to create for itself its own protected space? And if so, why don’t lovers understand better the damage trespass can do? It made her furious to think how easily Veronica was colluding with the unspoken open-endedness of Anthony’s visit – as though he was the one who mattered most to her, who had the right to come first and always would, and it was up to her, Kitty, to accept this hierarchy with grown-up grace and not make a fuss.

And of course Anthony knew all this. He no doubt enjoyed the knowledge. Enjoyed seeing ‘V’s little friend’ relegated to second place. It was possible that he’d let his stay drag on into summer or beyond, just to persecute her, to do his best to destroy Veronica’s love.”

Book Review:

Review by Bonnie Brody  (OCT 18, 2010)

Rose Tremain is not only a prolific writer, but she is a great one. Each of her novels is different in theme, tenor, and topic. Trespass, her most recent book, is a dark, eerie and grim themed novel with a definite gothic undertone. Set in the southern part of France, in an area known as the Cevennes region, the land itself is portrayed as something feral and alive, so filled with lush growth, insects, snakes and sounds, that it has a life of its own.

In this region live a sister and brother, Audrun and Aramon Lunel. Aramon lives in the family home, Mas Lunel, that he inherited from his father. Audrun lives in a small bungalow in sight of Mas Lunel. Aramon is a misanthropic, mean-spirited drunk who has let his home go to ruin. It stinks, the olive groves are overgrown, and the hunting dogs are starving to death. Audrun hates her brother for reasons that are divulged towards the middle of the book. She inherited some land from her father and she loves to walk on it. In her bungalow, she feels like an outcast, seeing few people and staying very much to herself. Her only peace comes from her home and land. One day as she is doing her daily walk on her land, she sees Arumel stealing some of her saplings and fallen brush. Feelings of hate roil up in her but she lets him take the wood with her permission.

In another part of the valley live Veronica and her life partner Kitty in a home called Les Glaniques. They are totally and passionately in love. Kitty is a watercolorist of very limited talent and Veronica is writing a book called Gardening Without Water. Veronica is originally from England and is very close with her brother, Anthony Verey, who still resides there. Anthony is a narcissistic antiques dealer. He likes to refer to himself as “the Anthoney Verey.” He was once the talk of the town, invited to every party and known by everybody worth knowing. He calls his antiques his “beloveds.” With the downturn in the economy, Anthony is facing an existential crisis. Where once he could fall asleep by counting all those who envied him, he now is selling very little and invited places very infrequently. He and his sister, Veronica, have always been very close; however, he does not like Kitty. He decides to visit Veronica and stay for an indeterminate length of time. Though Veronica is thrilled about this visit, Kitty has reservations.

Once Anthony gets to his sister’s, he falls in love with the region and decides that he wants to purchase a home in the Cevennes region. Interestingly, he wants to buy Mas Lunel. He still has a lot of money and can spend 450,000 Euros on this home. Only one thing bothers him – Audrun’s bungalow is visible from the estate and he finds it an eyesore. Aramon, with dollar signs in his eyes, tells Anthony that he believes the bungalow is built illegally on his land and that he will get a surveyor to prove it. Then they will be able to tear it down. A series of events begins that set into motion acts that have irreparable results.

While staying with Veronica and Kitty, Anthony does his best to intervene in their relationship, trying to drive a rift between them. They become afraid to share their feelings and passion as they once did, suspicious that Anthony is on the other side of the door or the wall listening to them. Once like one, they grow further and further apart.

Trespass is a powerful word and in this novel we see it used in all its meanings. There is the basic trespassing on land, people trespassing on other lives and ignoring boundaries, the cultural implications of trespassing on the land of another culture, and the trespassing on honor and truth. Throughout the book, there is a darkness, a grim forboding of things to come. In some ways, this reminded me of the best of Joyce Carol Oates, and the way Oates portrays the darkness of characters and the dangers lurking in the ordinary day to day world. Tremain’s characters are rich. They come alive for us and we flinch at the darkness within their souls along with the pain within their hearts. She is a fine writer and this is one of her best books to date.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 13 readers
PUBLISHER: W. W. Norton & Company (October 18, 2010)
REVIEWER: Bonnie Brody
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Rose Tremain
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of: 

The Road Home

Bibliography:

]]> CLOUD ATLAS by David Mitchell /2010/cloud-atlas-by-david-mitchell/ Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:15:41 +0000 /?p=10569 Book Quote:

“The Ghost of Sir Felix whines, ‘But it’s been done a hundred times before!’ – as if there could be anything not done a hundred thousand times between Aristophanes and Andrew Void-Webber! As if Art is the What and not the How!”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd (JUL 19, 2010)

While David Mitchell is undoubtedly a talented writer, and ideas abound in the centuries-spanning, globe-trotting narratives that make up Cloud Atlas, I couldn’t help but feel slightly disappointed with this book. Of course, it’s entirely possible my disappointment was born from high expectations: Mitchell has been lauded as the best of a generation, and before the recent release of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Cloud Atlas was widely trumpeted as his best book. And while Cloud Atlas is a highly-entertaining smorgasbord of styles – a little something for everyone – it is also a post-modern comment on the ontological status of narrative that doesn’t fully come off.

The novel consists of six stories, each told in a different literary style: 19th century travelogue; high-style epistolary; paperback thriller; contemporary picaresque; a sci-fi dystopia; post-apocalyptic yarn.

Adam Ewing is an American solicitor sent to Australia to handle a client’s estate in the mid-19th century. The journal Ewing kept of his travels aboard the Prophetess, published post-humously by Ewing’s son, forms the 19th century travelogue. Robert Frobisher is a louche Englishman who has installed himself as an amanuensis for an elderly and infirm composer, Vyvyan Ayrs. While at Zedelghem, Ayrs’ estate in rural Belgium (circa 1931), Frobisher reads a copy of Ewing’s journal. He also writes a series of letters to his friend and former lover, Rufus Sixsmith, that form the epistolary part of the book. Sixsmith is a Nobel-prize winning physicist, who writes a damning safety report about a potentially lucrative nuclear reactor. The resultant conspiracy and cover-up is uncovered by tabloid journalist, Luisa Rey, who finds and reads Frobisher’s (now 40-year-old) letters after Sixsmith is murdered. This fast-paced thriller becomes the third section of the book.

Timothy Cavendish, a racist misogynist, is entering the twilight of his life. He is also a vanity publisher in contemporary London. After one of his authors kills a critic who wrote a scathing review of his memoir, Knuckle Sandwich, the author is jailed, and Knuckle Sandwich starts flying off the shelves. With the author in jail, the chronically insolvent Cavendish is only too happy to keep the money for himself. Problem is: the author has three violent brothers out to give Cavendish a knuckle sandwich of his own and claim their fraternal rights to the fortune. Too hot for Cavendish’s comfort, he flees London, but not before picking up an manuscript submission for the road: a thriller about an unsafe nuclear reactor and a journalist named Luisa Rey. Somehow Cavendish gets himself imprisoned in a nursing home. The fourth story, the story of Cavendish’s imprisonment and escape, is eventually made into a movie which is watched in the fifth story, set in future Korea.

In Korea, now called Neo So Corps, corporations rule. People are genetically engineered to perform menial jobs and pure-bred citizens have an enforceable civic duty to consume. Sonmi-451, a genetically-engineered worker, is awaiting execution. A state archivist has been sent to interview Sonmi about her life and crime. Sonmi’s last request is to finish watching an early 21st century film she’d started: The Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish.

The sixth and final story is set in post-apocalyptic America. Civilization has been destroyed and human existence has devolved to the tribal. The island-dwelling Prescients are the most technologically advanced tribe. They are intent on making anthropological studies of the more primitive land-dwelling tribes. Meronym is sent to live with a valley-dwelling tribe to write an ethnology on their culture and customs. Zachry, the oldest male of her host family, tells the story of Meronym’s time with his people. Zachry finds the video archive of Sonmi’s interview when he goes through her possessions, intent on finding evidence that she’s a spy.

Mitchell nests these stories, one inside the other, like Russian dolls: upon reaching the mid-point of the first story, the second story starts, and so on. The sixth story, Zachry’s yarn, is the only one read uninterrupted, after which the second half of the fifth story – Sonmi’s interview – is picked up. In short, the structure is: 1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Although, it sometimes feels like a gimmick to ratchet up suspense, the nested narratives are actually a structural metaphor for the cosmology Mitchell builds Cloud Atlas around.

The nature of the time has stumped philosophers for millennia. For the ancient Greeks and Hindus, time was circular, the universe destined to swing between cycles of creation and destruction. For the ancient Hebrews, time was linear. For Mitchell, at least in his Cloud Atlas world, time is a series of “presents” layered like onion skins or nested like Russian dolls. And in his nested-time world, the actual past (what really happened ) is eventually lost to the virtual past (our explanations/stories about what happened). Conversely, our virtual future (our hopes/expectations for the future) is lost to the actual future (what actually happens). The actual future becomes the actual past, which becomes an ever-evolving virtual past. In this way, narratives, like people, pass in and out of existence, from virtual to actual to virtual again. Mitchell sets out to explore the relationship between this coming and going, between the actual and the virtual, between unreal elements of human life – our myths, beliefs, stories – and the physical world.

If Mitchell is to be held to the laws of logic, then the first three main characters – Adam Ewing, Robert Frobisher and Luisa Rey – are fictional (within the fictional). If Luisa Rey and Rufus Sixsmith are just characters in a novel manuscript, then Robert Frobisher and Adam Ewing must be “fictional” as well. Mitchell doesn’t ground us in the actual until Cavendish reads the Luisa Rey manuscript, and by then we’re foaming at the mouth to see how it’ll all tease out.

The problem is: Mitchell pushes the consequences of his ontology too far, overburdening the already strained logic of his book. As fictional characters, Ewing, Frosbisher and Rey are part of the virtual past, ontologically on par with the actual future. That is, they’re just as real as Sonmi, Zachry and Meronym. This is a wonderfully interesting premise, and left like that –as a philosophical implication to ponder – it would have been enough. Instead, Mitchell forces his idea literal: not only are all these characters – the fictional and the actual – equally real, they all seem to be incarnations of the same soul.

Actually, it’s this pandering to the literal that is the fatal flaw of this book. All Mitchell’s grand ideas – his cosmology, his trite meditations on our will to power – are put in the mouths of his characters; spoke aloud the reader can’t help but catch them. This can get annoying if you’re like me, and prefer your themes to remain the unseen mechanism behind the story.

These problems notwithstanding, Mitchell is one hell of a writer, and this is one hell of an entertaining book. Mitchell moves between literary styles with astonishing ease, leaving this reader with little doubt that he is a shockingly talented writer.

Cloud Atlas is a book that will astonish and annoy you in turn, but for all its faults, it never fails to be entertaining. For that reason alone, Cloud Atlas is worth delving into.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 196 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House Trade Paperbacks (August 17, 2004)
REVIEWER: Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: David Mitchell
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

]]> THE QUICKENING MAZE by Adam Foulds /2010/the-quickening-maze-by-adam-foulds/ Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:27:29 +0000 /?p=10352 Book Quote:

“John turned his face to the sun, the light split into beams by the branches. One of them, the size of an infant’s vague kiss, played warmly on the corner of his eye and forehead…Overhead, the weep of birds. The touch of the world. Glad of it. Yearning across it, for home. All the world was road until he was home.”

Book Review:

Review by Jill Shtulman (JUN 28, 2010)

Somewhere toward the end of this inventive and imaginative novel, peasant nature poet John Clare muses about “the maze of a life with no way out, paths taken, places been.”

In reality — and much of this book IS based on reality — each of the characters within these pages will enter into a maze — figuratively, through the twists and turns of diseased minds, and literally, through the winding paths of the nearby forest. Some will escape unscathed and others will never emerge. But all will be altered.

At the start of the novel, John Clare has been incarcerated in a progressive (for the times) institution called the High Beach Private Asylum. It doesn’t take long for the reader to come to the understanding that this seemingly sane poet is not unjustly imprisoned, but is in fact, stark raving mad. Shortly thereafter, John Clare is joined by Septimus Tennyson, the mad brother of the famous Alfred Lord Tennyson, who also takes up residence; he may belong outside its walls but just by a smidgin because of his gloomy constitution.

The owner of the asylum — Matthew Allen — displays fairness to the inhabitants, yet he has demons of his own. He has escaped a dodgy past as a debtor and has lost the respect of his parsimonious older brother. One of his older daughters, Hannah, is just coming of age and has developed an unrequited crush on Tennyson. Other characters, such as the brutal right-hand man Stockdale and the delusional and fervent Margaret-turned-Mary, drift in and out of the narrative.

The Quickening Maze slips slightly when it delves into a subplot about a doomed mass-produce decorative woodcarvings invention, in my opinion. It helps to know that in reality, this happened, and Tennyson lost most of his inherited fortune as a result. After reading The Quickening Maze, it is nearly impossible to not go running to check out what parts of this book are based on truths. Yet it does not slip enough for me to deprive the reader of a satisfying experience.

Without spoilers and with a nod to the poet Robert Frost (who is NOT mentioned in this book), John Clare will try on various personage from the past, including Lord Byron and Shakespeare himself; his mind will travel “to where it bent in the undergrowth.” Hannah will need to lose her path to find the one that has “perhaps the better claim.” Matthew Allen will slip on his path and go back down one that he has already precariously traveled before, forgetting “how way leads on to way.” And the famous Tennyson? He, too, will forge forward on the path that bcomes his destiny and he will be remembered “aged and ages hence.” As Hannah states, “To love the life that was possible: that also was a freedom, perhaps the only freedom.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 42 readers
PUBLISHER: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 29, 2010)
REVIEWER: Jill Shtulman
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Adam Foulds
EXTRAS: Reading GuideBooker Prize interview with Adam FouldsGuardian review of The Quickening Maze
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Another look at poetry:

The Booker Prizer winner:

Bibliography:

]]> THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY by Philip Hensher /2010/the-northern-clemency-by-philip-hensher/ /2010/the-northern-clemency-by-philip-hensher/#comments Sat, 10 Apr 2010 13:39:48 +0000 /?p=8832 Book Quote:

“At this point, Alice realized that that was how it was always going to be from now on. The moment of frank openness—a short moment, no more in their lives—like an eye opening and shutting again in sleep, had gone away. Because the news had come when there was an audience, in front of whom pretence had to be kept up: from now on it had never been the case that Katherine had done anything wrong, that she had ever been in danger of being prosecuted and taken to court. Alice could feel the buttress-like projections of the last few weeks dissolving like pissed-on bubble bath. That was how it was to be.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (APR 10, 2010)

Special –> interview with Philip Hensher!

The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher is a sprawling novel that explores the lives of two middle class families against the backdrop of the Thatcher era. The novel, which begins and ends in Sheffield, spans the years 1974-1994, and as the history of the Glover and the Sellers families unfolds, replete with adultery, deceit, and scandal, significant social shifts in the country take place. Author Philip Hensher explores two decades in the lives of these people–relationships sour and fail, and new, unexpected relationships are formed. By 1994, the characters have all endured a range of experiences including forced early retirement, illness, and alienation. On a national level, the changes are also dramatic: The Miners’ Strike, the Right-to-Buy Scheme (the sale of council homes) and the privatization of the UK electric industry have all taken place, and the characters have had some role to play in the changes.

The novel begins with the Glovers throwing a party for neighbours of a middle-class housing estate. The guests admire the furniture and speculate about a handful of trivial things, including whether or not a new Sainsburys will be built and what the family about to move into “number eighty-four” are like. Katherine Glover’s party has two purposes. The acknowledged purpose is to bring everyone together to meet the new neighbours. This plan fails as the neighbours haven’t yet made an appearance. But there’s another design to the party; Katherine, bored with her marriage, is infatuated with her boss, Nick, and the party really is thrown for his benefit–although he doesn’t bother to show up.

The very beginning of the book belongs to the Glovers. Quiet Malcolm Glover works at a building society and buries his unhappiness in the dual distractions of his immaculate garden and the excitement of a civil war battle recreation society. Katherine and Malcolm have three children: 16-year-old Daniel, confident and successful with girls, 14-year-old Jane, who’s not particularly attractive but is intelligent and observant, and 9-year-old Tim. After years of staying at home, Katherine Glover’s new job at a tiny corner florist is the most exciting aspect of her life. Katherine transparently gushes with nauseating anecdotes about her boss, Nick, while her husband and children, although quite thoroughly sick of the subject, are unwilling to tackle her about her fixation. The Glovers’ party leads to domestic disaster and the beginnings of a relationship with the Sellers, who’ve moved from London just in time to witness some embarrassing events at the Glover home.

It’s perhaps inevitable to compare the dynamics of these two families–very similar in age and material circumstances, and the vivid attention to detail brings these characters and their relationships to life. After almost two decades of marriage, Katherine Glover, for example, struggles to remember her husband’s favourite dinner. Their marriage eroded by years of boredom is on the verge of collapse:

“She couldn’t remember having sex after 1962—but she couldn’t remember buying Malcolm socks either, although she must have done. Maybe it had been a part of her unremarkable domestic routine that had gone on automatically.”

Bernie and Alice Sellers enjoy a lighter-hearted relationship and seem like newlyweds in comparison. Unfortunately while they are closer as a couple, they remain distant from their children. 14-year-old Francis experiences horrible difficulties in his new school, and then there’s Sandra, a precocious girl who is very predictably going to be a handful.

Hensher is spot on when it comes to the domestic details of these families, and not just the seemingly simple stuff such as the food and the furniture. He also captures the petty bickering between siblings, the political disputes between generations that devolve to repetitive, scripted shouting matches, the well-worn ability to ignore the real issues within the family structure in favour of the more tangible and less-dangerous topics, and the slow building of fictions which conveniently gloss over the past.

The Northern Clemency is not an overtly political novel. The characters struggle with day-to-day problems and the vast political changes taking place in the country are seen largely as background noise. Bernie for example, doesn’t seem to connect the Miners’ Strike and the stockpiling of coal with forced early retirement and the privatization of the electric industry. The bigger picture exists for the reader. The book’s most political character is Tim, a difficult boy whose childhood alienation leads him to Marxism. In adulthood, Tim is extremely well versed in Marxist theory including, presumably, social relations and commodity fetishism, but he is incapable of internalizing his belief system. Emotionally damaged, he’s comfortable lecturing in a classroom and viewing his fellows beings from a position of isolation and hostility while he arrogantly and ironically commodifies his personal relationships.

The novel isn’t strictly linear and neither is it divided up into chapters. Instead, this huge novel (700 plus pages) is divided into “books” which cover specific episodes or chunks of time. Naturally given the sheer breadth of this novel, the tale includes quite a cast of characters. Nick, a shallow cipher, appears at salient moments, and other minor characters drift in and out of these pages, and it’s these sorts of moments that emphasize the intricate fabric of British society–from the preposterous consumerism of the drug dealers, and the Sheffield-uprooted, aging stripper, to the desperation of the miners who are engaged in the fight for survival. If, like me, you are a fan of Victorian multiplot novels, then The Northern Clemency is a feast, and it’s going to be one of my Mostly Fiction reads of 2010.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-0from 41 readers
PUBLISHER: Anchor (February 9, 2010)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: British Council bio on Philip Hensher
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and ExcerptGuy Savage’s interview with Philip Hensher
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More favorite British authors:

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]]> /2010/the-northern-clemency-by-philip-hensher/feed/ 1 THE LITTLE STRANGER by Sarah Waters /2009/little-stranger-by-sarah-waters/ Sat, 19 Dec 2009 16:30:11 +0000 /?p=6887 Book Quote:

“Is that so surprising, with things for that family so bleak? The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of these corners. Let’s call it a – a germ. And let’s say conditions prove right for that germ to develop – to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this ‘little stranger’ grow into? A sort of shadow self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr. Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy, malice, and frustration….”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie (DEC 19, 2009)

With The Little Stranger author Sarah Waters departs from the settings, characters and style of her first three historical novels, Tipping the Velvet, Affinity, and Fingersmith, all set in Victorian England. Nor is this book like her more recent The Night Watch, a sensitive and passionate love story set in wartime England. The Little Stranger is a sinister, Hitchcockian-like tale of a haunted house, ghosts and madness. It provides a most chilling, unputdownable read.

It was the summer of 1919, almost a year after the end of World War I, when the boy, (Faraday, our narrator), first saw Hundreds Hall, the Ayres’ family estate in Warwickshire, England. His mother used to work at the Hall as a servant. The event that brought him there was an “Empire Day fete.” He and other local children made the Boy Scout salute, received commemorative medals and had tea. Although no one was allowed inside the main house, an impressive building of the Georgian period, his mother still had connections with the servants, so mother and son quietly entered by a side door. The boy was awed by all he saw. Such riches! To him this was a magnificent mansion, owned for generations by people way above his social class. Years later, he was to remember the building’s elegantly aging beauty, the “worn red brick, the cockled windows, the weathered sandstone edgings,” and the extraordinary gardens, the like of which he had never seen or experienced outside of churches. He was thrilled by the polished wooden floors, “the patina on the wooden chairs and cabinets, the bevel of a looking glass, the scroll of frame.” Hundreds Hall is to play as big a role in this novel as any living character.

Young Faraday was an obedient boy, however he suddenly did something totally out of character. He was fascinated by one of the white walls “which had a decorative plaster border – a representation of acorns and leaves.” He took out his pocket knife and pried one of the acorns loose. It really wasn’t an act of vandalism, although others might think so. He merely wanted to possess a piece of such grandeur.

The Ayres family was, by no means, part of the blue-blooded nobility….just moneyed country squires, to the manor bred. At this time, Mrs. Ayres was in her early twenties and quite lovely. Her husband was just a few years older. The couple had a little girl, six year-old Susan, upon whom they doted. Their happiness was not to last.

Post WWII England was a time of great economic and social change. Clement Richard Attlee, a British Labour Party politician, had been in office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for just about one year – not long enough yet to impact the country’s flailing economy – the UK’s most significant problem at the time. The war effort had left Britain nearly bankrupt. WWII had cost the country about a quarter of its national wealth. This meant that strict rationing of food and other essential goods were continued in the post war period. Many families of the nobility and upper classes found themselves with their fortunes greatly diminished by two world wars, and, unable to afford all the servants it took to maintain their estates, rooms were closed off. Mansions crumbled. As the middle class grew, the opulent lifestyles of the rich and famous decreased. Hundreds Hall, and its gradual decline, seem to parallel the country’s reduced circumstances. An entire British way of life that had lasted for centuries was dying.

Almost thirty years after that first visit, the boy, now a country doctor and a very lonely, disappointed man, returns to Hundreds Hall. He is called to the mansion by members of the Ayres family to treat a sick maid. Dr. Faraday is struck dumb as he drives up to the house. His memory of its former grandeur clash with the reality of its present degeneration, which horrifies him. The mansion and grounds have been left to rot and molder, the once beautiful gardens are unkempt and filled with weeds and dried ivy. The family is selling off enormous land holdings in order to keep their home. They subsist on the meager income of the remaining dairy farm.

The family has changed as significantly as their mansion, and are, perhaps, in even worse condition. The husband/father died at a relatively young age, and the beloved Susan died of diphtheria while still a child. Mrs. Ayres has never gotten over her terrible grief at the loss of her daughter – her “one true love.” It is unclear if she is even capable of loving her other children, born after Susan’s death. The Ayres son, Roderick, has been left mentally and physically damaged by the war. Caroline, the plain and eccentric daughter, with her stocky build and hairy legs, seems to be the most mentally stable person in the family. She has long accepted the fact that she will remain a spinster….for who would marry a plain, penniless woman?

There is something oddly unnatural about Hundreds Hall. Faraday first hears of the haunting when he initially visits to treat the maid. She complains that this “isn’t like a proper house at all. Its too big and so quiet it gives you the creeps.” There is something malevolent within – furniture moves, strange stains appear on the walls, footsteps can be heard coming from the deserted rooms on the top floor, doorknobs turn but when the door is opened, no one is there. Whispers are heard from unknown sources and the eerie events become truly frightening when some family members are physically hurt. There is a mysterious fire in Rodrick’s room which almost kills him. The gentle family dog uncharacteristically bites a young girl and has to be put down. Mrs. Ayres, who spends most of the time dreaming of past glories, shows signs of marks and scratches on her body. The external haunting and the family’s internal turmoil seem to merge as the tension continues to build throughout the storyline.

After treating his patient, Faraday is invited to tea, and despite the differences in classes he becomes a close friend of the family which seems to depend on him – his kindness, practicality and stability. Local physicians were never treated as social equals by landed gentry like the Ayreses before the war. The doctor is thrilled by his new upper class connections, especially as he in unable to forget his own humble beginnings, nor how his shopkeeper father and servant mother sacrificed to send him to medical school.

The author spends more than the first 100 pages setting the gothic scenario with the haunted house as the center of activity. Faraday, ever the scientist, refuses to accept any supernatural explanation for the events at Hundreds Hall. A colleague tells him, “that the cause might be “some dark germ, some ravenous, shadow-creature, some ‘little stranger,’ spawned from the troubled unconscious of someone connected with the house itself.”

Scary as the book may be at times, this is much more than a ghost story or historical thriller. There are many different threads woven into this tale. Ms. Waters’ characters come to life on the page, along with their conflicting emotions about their situations and the changing times. Faraday is a superb narrator, although not totally reliable, (obvious to the reader), due to his lack of confidence about class differences. Contradictorily, he has a strong sense of confidence about his education and abilities as a doctor. He also lacks objectivity because of his conflicting feelings about each of the Ayres family members.

This is a most original take on the genre, although a bit too long. The writing could have been tighter at times. Kudos to Sarah Waters, who never disappoints, (at least she never disappoints me)! I highly recommend this book, especially to fans of Alfred Hitchcock – rather than those of Stephen King. Although King fans, like me, might like The Little Stranger too.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 116 readers
PUBLISHER: Riverhead Hardcover; First Edition edition (April 30, 2009)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AMAZON PAGE: The Little Stranger
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Sarah Waters
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of Fingersmith

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]]> THE CHILDREN’S BOOK by A. S. Byatt /2009/childrens-book-by-a-s-byatt/ /2009/childrens-book-by-a-s-byatt/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:38:58 +0000 /?p=5431 Book Quote:

“She lives in a perfect house for a writer at once so enchanting and so down to earth. I suggested to her that there was something witchy about the name Todefright and she immediately put me right. Todefright comes from the amphibian and an old Kentish word for ‘meadow.’ No death or spectres! And it is such a mellow pleasant house….Mrs. Wellwood has seven children, ranging from young men and women to schoolboys, all of whom are the privileged first listeners and readers for Mrs. Wellwood’s spellbinding tales!”

Book Review:

Review by Kirstin Merrihew (OCT 7, 2009)

The excerpt above is part of a woman journalist’s article after she came to interview storyteller Olive Wellwood, who, with her banker/financial writer husband, Humphrey, presided over a seemingly magical household built on legendary riders of the “Paracelsian four elementals: sylphs in the air, gnomes in the earth, undines in water, salamanders in fire.” The building blocks came in the form of old, blended and new fairy tales; ornately ghoulish museum pieces such as the ancient and kobold-studded Gloucester Candlestick; and a secret pastoral tree house where the children could run wild. The Wellwoods and their friends were well-off, fashionable Fabian Society (and other related organization) members who, in the late 1800’s and beyond, believed in raising their children with a minimum of discipline in a rustic but artistically rich environment.

As in every family, the Wellborn children fitted in differently: “No child, it is said, has the same parents as any other. Tom’s parents had been younger and wilder than Robin’s parents would ever be. Harry had never known a family where there were not older children who seemed free and powerful, came and went mysteriously, were not confined to the nursery. The little ones experienced the family as a flock of creatures who moved in clutches and gaggles, shared nurseries and also feelings and opinions. Tom and Dorothy were old, and separate enough to have started thinking about their own futures, away from Todefright, full of tenuous hopes and fears….” However, at some juncture each child must reconsider their place and whether their family life was a lie….

Todefright, each year became the locus of a Midsummer’s celebration, complete with fairy costumes (although, if a child insisted on being a witch instead, she could) where many gathered, including Humphrey’s brother’s family, a neighbor genius potter’s brood, a puppeteer Olive had not seen in years, and a colorful and diverse international group of socialists, anarchists, and Theosophists — including a German sister-in-law and a Russian revolutionary. They put on plays, ate delicious dishes, and talked philosophy, politics, and art.

The idyll conjured at Todefright, the idealism and apparent optimism behind it, was, at first glance, a thing without shadow, without the harsh reality that many British faced just to survive during the late Victorian and the Edwardian periods as well as the early reign of George V. Olive’s unstilled imagination created a separate book for each child and wrote stories for and about them that they could hear and read. In a story for her beautiful, innocent son Tom, called “Tom Underground” his paper alter ego lost his own shadow. Could Olive’s imaginary story also envelop and perhaps predict the real life of her son? As in this story, The Children’s Book gradually reveals ominous shadows that inevitably must have shaped and haunted the Wellwoods and the many with whom they were friends, associates, lovers, and relatives. Idealism clashes with the inescapable murkiness and tragedy of human nature. Despite a desire to live on the high plane of beauty, the novel demonstrates, the human sex drive and other “baser instincts” intrude and mar the rosy picture.

This struggle between shadow and light in life is a major theme in A. S. Byatt’s nearly seven-hundred-page novel. If pressed, one can say it is the dominant theme. However, The Children’s Book also deliberates with professorial thoroughness on the times from 1895 to 1919. Displaying meticulous research and knowledge on each page, the author has provided a broad window through which the reader can learn of many things whilst following the characters: the Bimetallism vs. the Gold Standard debate; the struggle for women’s rights; the unchecked brutality of boys in English public schools; the British war with the Boers; the “enlightened” ways of dealing with unmarried pregnant women; homosexuality and asexuality in that period; class chasms; the beginnings of psychology and psychiatry with Jung, Gross, and Freud; and the horrific “meat” grinder that was the Great War.

On the artistic side, the nuances of throwing, firing, and glazing fine pottery are explored. Some exegetical insights into writing are shared too — for instance, one character gives a lecture on “The Conventions of the Novel,” declaring, “Everything in a novel must end with a marriage — this was still so, although the great novelists had already revealed that life, and love, particularly love, continued after marriage and were not confined by it.” It is interesting to discover whether The Children’s Book adheres to this literary “rule” or whether Byatt disagrees with her character. And Olive confides this about her stories: ” ‘Toby Youlgreave talks a great deal about the Brothers Grimm and their belief that fairytales were the old religion — the old inner life — of the German people? Well, I sometimes feel, stories are the inner life of this house. A kind of spinning of energy. I am the spinning fairy in the attic. I am Mother Goose quacking away what sounds like comforting chatter but is really — is really what holds it all together.’ ” Naturally, the question is, does she hold it all together?

Travel too occupies many characters. A passel of them goes to see the Grande Exposition Universelle de Paris at the turn of the century, admiringly ogling the Palace of Electricity, the Tyrolean Castle, the Water Tower, and the Palace of Woman. Some find it essential to get to Munich, and others to the village of Ascona in Italy. Still others do their duty and fight in Ypres, Belgium. Again, Byatt’s descriptions of most of these trips are filled with vivid images and myriad facts. Often the location is further imprinted on the reader with food. For example, in Germany: “There was soup, full of cabbage, and sausages and large pork cutlets, and a heap of potatoes and a delicious pudding of red berries and cream. Much beer was served in large earthenware jugs.”

The perfect morsels of the moment also serve as deep comfort, as in this touching scene: “She gave more soup to Dorothy, who gave more to Philip, who said it was delicious. Delicate dumplings lurked beneath the golden surface on which a veil of finely chopped parsley eddied and swayed. Steam rose to meet the fine smoke from the candles, and all their faces seemed softer in the quavering light.”

Dorothy, as mentioned previously, belonged to the Wellborn clan, but Philip Warren was an outsider at the beginning of the novel. He had run away from a sickly family that was disintegrating. In a delightful opening chapter that slyly and eruditely salutes Harry Potter and others of that genre, Philip was tracked and cornered by Tom Wellborn and Julian Cain in the bowels of the museum where Julian’s father, Prosper, was Special Keeper of Precious Metals. Olive, who had come to soak up some inspiration at the museum for her books, then took Philip back to Todefright with her and Tom. After a stay there so that he (and the reader) could become familiar with the Wellborn household, he was sent to potter Benedict Fludd, a master craftsman with whom Philip could apprentice as he so dearly desired. Benedict was a man of great passions and no practical business ability, and he overshadowed his own family, stunting them. But Philip persevered there, and in time was joined by one of his siblings.

Philip, Julian, Tom, Dorothy, and other young Cains, Wellwoods, Warrens, and Fludds grew into adulthood during the nearly fifteen years covered in The Children’s Book. They struggled with their fears, their aspirations (or lack thereof), their sexuality, their families, and the wider world. Dorothy and Tom represented best a dichotomy, two sides in which one wanted to grow up and take on a responsible position and negotiate with society as it existed, while the other was a Peter Panish innocent (or a down-the-rabbit-hole Alice) who loved nature but not the often unrelenting, harsh world of men and women. Although this brother and sister did not encompass all the facets of human nature contemplated in this panoramic novel, they best symbolized Byatt’s running theme about the unavoidable tension between the ideal and the real, between compromise and rigidity, between the dreamers and the accomplishers.

The Children’s Book obviously represents enormous toil on the part of its author. Byatt clearly poured countless hours into the completion of this tome. And there are many reasons to admire it and even adore it. It contains a wealth of history, tantalizing studies of artistic minds, several Olive stories shot through with symbolism and a hair-raising dread worthy of the Grimm brothers. It traces families, centrally the Wellwoods, and stokes in the reader a need to know what fates they meet. This Byatt novel is also worth lingering over and re-reading because it is so chock full of all kinds of clever and wise little conversations and observations. In many ways, this is a tremendously accomplished work, and one likely to stay with the reader quite some time

However, it is not without flaws. In its determination to instruct readers on so many aspects of life during the critical years leading up to World War I (treatment of the war itself and a bit of aftermath was almost an epilogue constituting only slightly more than forty pages), the novel sometimes loses focus and wanders away from more important characters to illustrate a slice of life with secondary ones about whom the reader may not care. As the book progresses, Bohemians Olive and Humphrey slide into near non-existence for the reader, which is a disappointment because earlier their feelings were important plot pivots. One can argue that Olive was always an uninvolved, distant mother who was too busy with make-believe that her gradual near-vanishing was poetic justice. One can argue that the universe handed Humphrey more than enough punishment for the way he fell short. However, there were more issues that Olive and Humphrey could have been allowed to grapple with. Instead more than one of their “problems” just conveniently died without fuss. Burying too much, keeping too much silence, while acknowledged as Victorian traits, don’t always good storytelling make. Elsewhere, another major death was also under-dramatized, leaving unanswered potential.

Speaking more broadly, understanding the novel’s characters and who they love or don’t love can be confusing because some were not as fully drawn as they could have been, and the narrative skips (out ot design or necessity?) some crucial milestones in everyone’s lives. A prime example is Julian whose flagrant sexual preferences seemed fixed and voracious, but then underwent change with rather scant underpinning. Furthermore, for Americans the un-remarked-upon evident acceptance of homosexual behavior even in Victorian England is something not necessarily easily adjusted to, but that is perhaps less a criticsm of the book than a divide between cultures.

Then too the density, the sheer lushness, the perspicacity of descriptions of locales, art works, cuisine, clothes, etc., is often beautiful word-smithing but sometimes leads to impatience about getting on with the plot. Not to mention fomenting a suspicion that what plot exists does so more as a framework for educating readers about the times than for its own sake. One can get “lost” in the author’s excursions into “theories about children and childhood” or the strange behavior in 1906 of Margot Asquith, wife of the British Prime Minister. For some readers, tackling and finishing this novel could become a chore.

But then again, as one character notes, ” ‘To be frivolous is to be human…To be pointlessly skilful is to be human.’ ” The Children’s Book wants to make that point in the form that is more like the rather meandering novels of Jane Austen than some modern fiction that emphasizes non-stop action plots. It is a meditation on being human in a certain by-gone time, and it brings to the fore the worth of people who create both lasting and ephemeral things. Every person ought to be valued for his or her uniqueness and the gifts only he or she can impart to those around them and to posterity. But, Byatt seems to be imparting, the real world, although it provides space for the human need to conjure the mythical and the miraculous, can just as easily function on a plane that plows the sensitive — and the strong — under. Despite the reassurance in the opening quotation about the benign sources of the name “Todefright,” it is an appellation fraught with “death and spectres” too. In German, “Tode” means death. So, deathfright. Sometimes a fright of life too. The Children’s Book warns us with recurring and echoing themes as well as human ensorcelled charm that even when we may strive for high-minded reform and a more utopian society, our humanness, our nature, has other ideas and so do the vagaries, the hardships, and the choices of the lives we are dealt.

If this era in Britain (and European) history and its avant garde intrigue you and you have time to immerse yourself in a “moral enchantment” (to borrow from Jane Schilling’s back cover blurb) of grand proportions, A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book is for you.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 106 readers
PUBLISHER: Knopf (October 6, 2009)
REVIEWER: Kirstin Merrihew
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: A. S. Byatt
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and ExcerptA.S. Byatt on The Children’s Book
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Late 19th century:The Jungle Law by Victoria Vinton

Another prolific and smart British author:

Iris Murdoch

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]]> /2009/childrens-book-by-a-s-byatt/feed/ 2 LOVE AND SUMMER by William Trevor /2009/love-and-summer-by-william-trevor/ Sat, 12 Sep 2009 22:44:20 +0000 /?p=4869 Book Quote:

“He paused at the windows in case a display had changed overnight. None had: draper’s dummies were as they had been since early spring, the spectacles on an optician’s cardboard faces had been the same for longer. Pond’s beauty aids were still reduced, travel bargains still offered, interest rates steady.”

Book Review:

Review by Guy Savage (SEP 12, 2009)

In William Trevor’s novel Love and Summer, past and present don’t collide but instead merge into a shimmering, elusive and painful present. The novel set in the 1950s explores the lives of interconnecting characters following the funeral of Mrs. Eileen Connulty in the Irish town of Rathmoye. Mrs. Connulty was a respectable pillar of the community, and the Connulty family is one of the most affluent in the area. Eileen Connulty was a widow and she ruled the family and the family businesses–a pub, a boarding house, a coal yard and a number of other properties–with a rod of iron. She leaves behind two middle-aged children, a daughter “she was glad to part from,” and a son: “her pet since he first lay in her arms as an infant.” Most of the townspeople mourn Mrs. Connulty’s passing:

“The funeral mass was on the morning for the following day, and when it was over Mrs Connulty’s mourners stood about outside the cemetery gates, declaring that she would never be forgotten in the town and beyond it. The women who had toiled beside her in the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer asserted that she had been an example to them all. They recalled how no task had been too menial for her to undertake, how hours spent polishing a surfeit of brass or scarping away old candle-grease had never been begrudged. The alter flowers had not once in sixty years gone in need of fresh water; the missionary leaflets were replaced when necessary. Small repairs had been effected on cassocks and surplices and robes. Washing the chancel had been a scared duty.”

Mrs Connulty’s death is not equally mourned by everyone. To her daughter, her mother’s passing gives some belated freedom and lifts the oppressive atmosphere in the Connulty home. To Miss Connulty, at least, there’s a sense of impending change.

On the day of the funeral, a young man named Florian Kilderry travels to Rathmoye to photograph the shell of the town’s burned-out cinema. While in Rathmoye he catches a glimpse of young married Ellie Dillahan, and over the course of the next few weeks, the two lonely young people strike up a relationship. No one seems to notice the budding relationship–except Miss Connulty, and watching Florian and Ellie fall in love stirs painful, long-buried memories for the middle-aged spinster.

For readers of William Trevor, this is familiar territory–the Irish Diaspora that still haunts a country devastated by poverty, relationships wrecked by piety, and a society ruled by religious dogma. In Love and Summer, Florian is the by-product of an Irish-Italian match made by feckless, hopelessly romantic parents. While Florian inherited the family home after the death of his parents, it’s a shambles and is rapidly disintegrating around his ears. With no prospects of employment, Florian has put the house up for sale and is gradually selling off the valuables and burning personal property. Florian destroys his past yet faces an uncertain future while many other characters in the novel, Miss Connulty for example, are prisoners to their pasts and their memories.

While Florian’s home is ravaged by neglect and decay, his surroundings are in contrast to the home of Ellie’s much older husband, Dillahan. Dillahan is a character who’s a prisoner of his past, but he survives and endures by absorbing himself into the minuscule repairs required around his farm. Consequently, his farm is in excellent condition but underneath the surface of this immaculate homestead, is the turmoil of Dillahan’s grief and guilt for past events.

These characters merge and then move on into their respective futures in this gentle tale of an Ireland that longs to change while still mired down by immovable religious opinion. Duty permeates everyone’s lives, relationships and marriages, and yet will duty be enough for Florian and Ellie? Or do they want something more from life?

Love and Summer revisits some of the themes of Trevor’s last novel, The Story of Lucy Gault, and while Love and Summer is not Trevor’s strongest novel, yet once again the author shows his skill in recreating a sense of timelessness and a present that is permeated with loss and contaminated with stagnation and slow decay.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-5from 46 readers
PUBLISHER: Viking Adult (September 17, 2009)
REVIEWER: Guy Savage
AMAZON PAGE: Love and Summer
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on William Trevor
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: More William Trevor reviews:

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