A recent positive review of Charles Todd's* latest Ian Rutledge novel appeared recently in the NY Times. I was reminded that I had one of these books lying around, laid aside because it didn't appeal, so I picked it up again. It still doesn't.
I read the first in this series, A Test of Wills (1996). Rutledge, a Scotland Yard inspector, is recently returned from the Great War and still suffering shell shock. He's been called to a Warwickshire village to investigate a murder--a job foisted on Rutledge because it's politically sensitive, with one suspect having royal connections. Everyone's under suspicion, though, for one reason or another.
I expected the shell-shock theme to draw me in, since I'm fascinated by the western front and its horrors. And that was the strongest part of the book. But the investigation itself was boring, with Rutledge revisiting the same suspects and asking the same questions again, and again, and again. The mystery wouldn't be drawn out to book length if only certain characters would just answer his questions. Worse, the whodunit's resolution is as soap-opera ridiculous as it gets, the kind of thing where you just put the book down and groan.
In fact, soap operas seem to be a major influence on the book. No one can just answer a question. There must be an indrawn breath, a look of panic, a trembling, a choking back of tears. They twist their handkerchiefs, they turn in alarm, their shoulders are stiff and angry. Whatever happened to the famous sangfroid of the British upper classes? What about the drinks tray always present, to settle one's nerves?
Sheesh, the suspects are more shell-shocked than the inspector. And he at least has a good reason.
*The NY Times informs me that "Charles Todd" is the nom de plume of a mother-and-son writing team, Charles and Caroline Todd.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Monday, January 24, 2011
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth (1801)
(Text is based on 1803 edition—Oxford World's Classics).
Belinda was a favorite novel of Jane Austen's; the theme of a heroine using reason and not sensibility to choose a lover is one she would take up herself. Not to the reader's surprise, Belinda's own judgment makes her reject any match to a man she can't esteem, even when love might be involved. Today's readers may find this an obvious choice, but the introduction explains this was not so among contemporary reviewers, who preferred heroines to be less logical and more feeling.
The story does follow Belinda and how she learns to use her own judgment in the marriage market. But just as important (and way more interesting) is the parallel story of dissipated, fashionable Lady Delacours, Belinda's guardian, who hides a dark secret beneath her sparkling celebrity.
Lady D.'s sparkling flow of witty talk is well portrayed (maybe because Edgeworth was known for the same wit), and her celebrity-like selfishness is too; at some points she seems like a classic case of borderline personality disorder. It's all very entertaining, like reading a tabloid. Nevertheless, she can't go on like that, in part because of the big secret. Belinda is considered a novel of female formation, but it's also a novel of transformation for Lady D.
Lady Delacour is unable to stop the paranoid self-concern at first, no matter how kind and reliable Belinda is, and I appreciated the realism of that. The chief flaw of this novel is that as soon as crisis is reached, that transformation is far too easy--almost as easy, and cheap, as "it was all a dream." Around this point (roughly halfway through) I began to get impatient with the very long-drawn-out account of Belinda's suitors and which is right for her and how he can prove it. As much fun as this was to read, eventually the novel felt fat and out of shape.
Belinda was a favorite novel of Jane Austen's; the theme of a heroine using reason and not sensibility to choose a lover is one she would take up herself. Not to the reader's surprise, Belinda's own judgment makes her reject any match to a man she can't esteem, even when love might be involved. Today's readers may find this an obvious choice, but the introduction explains this was not so among contemporary reviewers, who preferred heroines to be less logical and more feeling.
The story does follow Belinda and how she learns to use her own judgment in the marriage market. But just as important (and way more interesting) is the parallel story of dissipated, fashionable Lady Delacours, Belinda's guardian, who hides a dark secret beneath her sparkling celebrity.
Lady D.'s sparkling flow of witty talk is well portrayed (maybe because Edgeworth was known for the same wit), and her celebrity-like selfishness is too; at some points she seems like a classic case of borderline personality disorder. It's all very entertaining, like reading a tabloid. Nevertheless, she can't go on like that, in part because of the big secret. Belinda is considered a novel of female formation, but it's also a novel of transformation for Lady D.
Lady Delacour is unable to stop the paranoid self-concern at first, no matter how kind and reliable Belinda is, and I appreciated the realism of that. The chief flaw of this novel is that as soon as crisis is reached, that transformation is far too easy--almost as easy, and cheap, as "it was all a dream." Around this point (roughly halfway through) I began to get impatient with the very long-drawn-out account of Belinda's suitors and which is right for her and how he can prove it. As much fun as this was to read, eventually the novel felt fat and out of shape.
Monday, January 17, 2011
Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout (2006)
Wow. Elizabeth Strout has a powerful gift for opening up quiet lives, quiet moments, and showing them in 3-D. This, her second novel, is set in late 50s New England, two years after minister Tyler Caskey's wife has died. His young daughter won't talk, and his congregation is becoming increasingly dissatisfied with him. His life is slowly falling apart, but Caskey distracts himself with reading martyrs and saints. He must find a way to reconnect with his daughter, his congregation, and his God.
Strout is so spookily aware of what goes on inside people's heads that at times I felt exposed. Yes, I had those thoughts too, I did that, I saw things that way...but that was PRIVATE, so how did she know? This makes her hard for me to discuss, because pointing out examples makes me feel even more exposed.
I especially appreciate, as mentioned above, Strout's ability to show us people in the round--people that seem easy to dismiss or categorize, sometimes even by other folks in their lives. The overprotective weirdo with the bomb shelter, the annoying harpy with a crush on the minister: they got that way for a reason and they're not just that.
We gain her privileged point of view, of the novelist and perhaps of the good minister too, and almost reach that point where to know all is to forgive all. Perhaps it's one drawback in Strout's work that no one is truly evil or unredeemable, and I believe that some people just are.
This is a beautiful novel, as clear, stark, and lovely as a Maine winter day.
Strout is so spookily aware of what goes on inside people's heads that at times I felt exposed. Yes, I had those thoughts too, I did that, I saw things that way...but that was PRIVATE, so how did she know? This makes her hard for me to discuss, because pointing out examples makes me feel even more exposed.
I especially appreciate, as mentioned above, Strout's ability to show us people in the round--people that seem easy to dismiss or categorize, sometimes even by other folks in their lives. The overprotective weirdo with the bomb shelter, the annoying harpy with a crush on the minister: they got that way for a reason and they're not just that.
We gain her privileged point of view, of the novelist and perhaps of the good minister too, and almost reach that point where to know all is to forgive all. Perhaps it's one drawback in Strout's work that no one is truly evil or unredeemable, and I believe that some people just are.
This is a beautiful novel, as clear, stark, and lovely as a Maine winter day.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
We Two: Victoria and Albert
Or in full:
Before reading this lively and enjoyable account, I thought of Prince Albert as a bit of joke, as in "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"—but also as a symbol of all that was stodgy, moralistic, and ridiculously strait-laced in Victorian Britain. I couldn't have named a contribution he made to the era apart from giving the Queen someone to mourn for decades and lending his name to some public monuments. It is, after all, the Victorian age.
The Albert that emerges in this biography is a much more talented, interesting, and active man than history gives him credit for. He could stand tall in an era filled with remarkably accomplished personalities. He was intelligent, well educated, and musical; Gill reports that "Albert could have succeeded as a professor, geologist, botanist, statistician, musician, engineer, or bureaucrat" (130). He headed up, with brilliant success, one of the most characteristic achievements of the Victorian era—the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851—working tirelessly on this and many other projects.
Was he moralistic and prudish? Yes, and that was just what his Saxe-Coburg handlers wanted. Regency aristocrats had badly damaged the English public's perception of royalty with their licentiousness, free spending, and irresponsibility. Not only that, rampant venereal disease was ravaging the noble houses of Europe—along with rampant social unrest. Both in England and Germany, kingmakers realized that the success of the English monarchy depended on adopting more middle-class, Evangelical values of moral purity. Albert was specifically cultivated to be pure and virginal. So, of course, was Victoria, but Albert's upbringing was very unusual at a time when it was simply expected that aristocratic men would sow their wild oats.
And the Saxe-Coburgers schemed wisely. "Albert would be their man, a man in their own image—in all things but one. Albert would be virtuous, he would be clean, and he would be monogamous. As a result, he would have healthy children, and he would found a dynasty that would rule Europe. This grand plan actually came to pass" (109). It's astonishing when you think about it.
As to the marriage itself, Gill is interested in exploring how Victoria and Albert negotiated all the weirdnesses involved in a highly misogynistic society where a Queen happens to rule. Victoria had been told all her life that she needed a man to make decisions for her, and she gave much lip service to this idea, but when push came to shove, she often wanted her own way. She loved and needed Albert, so it's fascinating to see how the political and the personal mix. As Gill says, the "lived reality" of this marriage was "an extraordinary feat achieved against the odds" (14).
Victoria's ability to stand up for herself is all the more remarkable considering how little independence she had growing up: "For the first eighteen years of her life, Queen Victoria was never in a room by herself. Someone was with her not only when she ate and did her lessons and took her exercise but when she slept, washed, and used the chamber pot. . . . [She] once told her daughters that until the day of her accession, she was forbidden to go down a staircase unless someone held her hand" (60).
Yet right from the first, she loved the business of being Queen. She read all the items in her dispatch box, wrote long memoranda, and in essence had a demanding full-time job. Nevertheless, she intended to be a good wife and on her marriage give up the business of governing. And in any case she almost immediately became pregnant; the fertile Queen ended up with nine children. These confinements, often difficult and followed by what we'd now call post-partum depression, also kept her out of public life for long stretches. Again and again, though, she made her mark. As Gill points out, Lytton Strachey did not include Albert among his Eminent Victorians.
This book was a pleasure to read. Gill explains complexities with admirable clarity and liveliness, and she often brings in the telling detail (as above, with poor Victoria unable even to use the chamber pot alone). This dual biography ends with Albert's death, so readers interested in Victoria's life after Albert will need to look elsewhere. One small quibble: considering how careful Gill is to name and thank all her editors, it would have been nice not to see mistakes like "palate" for "palette" and "discrete" for "discreet." But this is a very small quibble indeed for this well-researched, fascinating book.
We Two: Victoria and Albert: Rulers, Partners, Rivals by Gillian Gill (2009)
Before reading this lively and enjoyable account, I thought of Prince Albert as a bit of joke, as in "Do you have Prince Albert in a can?"—but also as a symbol of all that was stodgy, moralistic, and ridiculously strait-laced in Victorian Britain. I couldn't have named a contribution he made to the era apart from giving the Queen someone to mourn for decades and lending his name to some public monuments. It is, after all, the Victorian age.
The Albert that emerges in this biography is a much more talented, interesting, and active man than history gives him credit for. He could stand tall in an era filled with remarkably accomplished personalities. He was intelligent, well educated, and musical; Gill reports that "Albert could have succeeded as a professor, geologist, botanist, statistician, musician, engineer, or bureaucrat" (130). He headed up, with brilliant success, one of the most characteristic achievements of the Victorian era—the Crystal Palace exhibition of 1851—working tirelessly on this and many other projects.
Was he moralistic and prudish? Yes, and that was just what his Saxe-Coburg handlers wanted. Regency aristocrats had badly damaged the English public's perception of royalty with their licentiousness, free spending, and irresponsibility. Not only that, rampant venereal disease was ravaging the noble houses of Europe—along with rampant social unrest. Both in England and Germany, kingmakers realized that the success of the English monarchy depended on adopting more middle-class, Evangelical values of moral purity. Albert was specifically cultivated to be pure and virginal. So, of course, was Victoria, but Albert's upbringing was very unusual at a time when it was simply expected that aristocratic men would sow their wild oats.
And the Saxe-Coburgers schemed wisely. "Albert would be their man, a man in their own image—in all things but one. Albert would be virtuous, he would be clean, and he would be monogamous. As a result, he would have healthy children, and he would found a dynasty that would rule Europe. This grand plan actually came to pass" (109). It's astonishing when you think about it.
As to the marriage itself, Gill is interested in exploring how Victoria and Albert negotiated all the weirdnesses involved in a highly misogynistic society where a Queen happens to rule. Victoria had been told all her life that she needed a man to make decisions for her, and she gave much lip service to this idea, but when push came to shove, she often wanted her own way. She loved and needed Albert, so it's fascinating to see how the political and the personal mix. As Gill says, the "lived reality" of this marriage was "an extraordinary feat achieved against the odds" (14).
Victoria's ability to stand up for herself is all the more remarkable considering how little independence she had growing up: "For the first eighteen years of her life, Queen Victoria was never in a room by herself. Someone was with her not only when she ate and did her lessons and took her exercise but when she slept, washed, and used the chamber pot. . . . [She] once told her daughters that until the day of her accession, she was forbidden to go down a staircase unless someone held her hand" (60).
Yet right from the first, she loved the business of being Queen. She read all the items in her dispatch box, wrote long memoranda, and in essence had a demanding full-time job. Nevertheless, she intended to be a good wife and on her marriage give up the business of governing. And in any case she almost immediately became pregnant; the fertile Queen ended up with nine children. These confinements, often difficult and followed by what we'd now call post-partum depression, also kept her out of public life for long stretches. Again and again, though, she made her mark. As Gill points out, Lytton Strachey did not include Albert among his Eminent Victorians.
This book was a pleasure to read. Gill explains complexities with admirable clarity and liveliness, and she often brings in the telling detail (as above, with poor Victoria unable even to use the chamber pot alone). This dual biography ends with Albert's death, so readers interested in Victoria's life after Albert will need to look elsewhere. One small quibble: considering how careful Gill is to name and thank all her editors, it would have been nice not to see mistakes like "palate" for "palette" and "discrete" for "discreet." But this is a very small quibble indeed for this well-researched, fascinating book.
Monday, January 3, 2011
This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper (2009)
Once again, I've read and hated a highly praised and well-blurbed novel. Supposedly, it's often hilarious and often heartbreaking; it's both poignant and lewd; it's tender and unexpectedly hilarious, not to mention artful and brilliant.
I thought This Is Where I Leave You seemed familiar, stitched out of worn patches cut from other books and movies. Let's examine the elements.
Worse: When he thinks about his wife Jen and what he misses about her, it's always her long smooth legs—"smooth" gets a workout as a favorite adjective for pretty women—and blonde hair. And he's unattractively whiny and cheated-feeling, constantly consumed with resentment over not attracting the hot girls as a sports star, or his brother Phillip, would. Whatever slight self-awareness Judd may show, Tropper has it both ways, with Judd somehow managing to bed not one, but three women in this novel, two of them smooth.
This is where I leave you, Jonathan Tropper.
I thought This Is Where I Leave You seemed familiar, stitched out of worn patches cut from other books and movies. Let's examine the elements.
- We have a loud, dysfunctional, colorful ethnic family brought together by an inescapable family event that triggers everyone's buried resentments, bringing them to the surface, and by the end, tentatively resolving them. It could be almost any ethnicity—Italian, African American, Irish, Greek, Polish—so long as we've got loud, dysfunctional, and colorful. But Jewish allows the narrative structure of sitting shiva.
- We have a man-boy narrator at a crossroads in life, pretty much a nice guy, Tropper would have us understand, but has his faults. Judd discovered his wife fucking his boss (Howard Stern crossed with Rush Limbaugh), of course quit his job, and now is unemployed, facing divorce and alimony, and living in a rented basement. He's soft in the middle, not fat but soft, and life just won't hand him the lingerie models he deserves. Ha ha! He knows that's silly. (Right?) He's just so lonely.
- In the end, we have a renewed appreciation for family, and the stage is set for the crazy adventure that is life.
- We have comic, violent little entr'actes that hilariously up-end tense moments. These are carefully studded through the book. After the first one, you can see them coming a mile away. I don't think Tropper meant to do that.
Worse: When he thinks about his wife Jen and what he misses about her, it's always her long smooth legs—"smooth" gets a workout as a favorite adjective for pretty women—and blonde hair. And he's unattractively whiny and cheated-feeling, constantly consumed with resentment over not attracting the hot girls as a sports star, or his brother Phillip, would. Whatever slight self-awareness Judd may show, Tropper has it both ways, with Judd somehow managing to bed not one, but three women in this novel, two of them smooth.
This is where I leave you, Jonathan Tropper.
Saturday, January 1, 2011
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (2007)
Then We Came to the End is a workplace novel set in the very early 2000s, when the boom cycle of the 90s starting reversing and businesses began massive layoffs; here, the business in question is a Chicago-based advertising firm.
Not only does the book employ an ensemble cast of characters, the idea is carried out to the extreme: it's narrated throughout (except for one chapter that's explained late in the book) with the collective plural. It might seem impossible to sustain a "we" narrator throughout, but the book pulls it off with surprising success. The group's members include the agency's creatives—the writers and designers. Characters outside that group are "they."
Layoffs threaten everyone in the group, and some individuals face pretty serious problems: an unplanned pregnancy, a bad divorce, a missing child. Mainly this is a very funny book, but darkness is everywhere around. The "we" provides a strange sort of middle-distance perspective on this, as in the episode when the creatives are putting together a flyer for the missing child. They fall into treating it like any other job, arguing over kerning, pumping "MISSING" up just a little, tweaking and re-tweaking the photo.
I really liked how well Ferris evokes the workplace with its in-jokes and unspoken traditions, its catchphrases, the things people hate about work and love about it. He also captures a particular time and place that rung very true to me. I was working in a boutique PR firm at the time this is set, and I was laid off around the same time the novel's characters are getting shitcanned (they love that word). The endless struggle to fill billable hours when there's no work to do because clients are disappearing is one I remember well.
At first Then We Came to the End comes off hipsterish and ironic, a stance I've gotten tired of, but soon the book's real warmth, its insights about lonely people struggling toward or away from each other, becomes very affecting. This was an ambitious novel to write, and Ferris pulls it off amazingly well.
Not only does the book employ an ensemble cast of characters, the idea is carried out to the extreme: it's narrated throughout (except for one chapter that's explained late in the book) with the collective plural. It might seem impossible to sustain a "we" narrator throughout, but the book pulls it off with surprising success. The group's members include the agency's creatives—the writers and designers. Characters outside that group are "they."
Layoffs threaten everyone in the group, and some individuals face pretty serious problems: an unplanned pregnancy, a bad divorce, a missing child. Mainly this is a very funny book, but darkness is everywhere around. The "we" provides a strange sort of middle-distance perspective on this, as in the episode when the creatives are putting together a flyer for the missing child. They fall into treating it like any other job, arguing over kerning, pumping "MISSING" up just a little, tweaking and re-tweaking the photo.
"I think we're losing sight of what our ultimate goal is here," said Genevieve.The book is full of tangles like these. It's funny, but horrifying, but they mean well, but...No one gets pigeon-holed here.
But we feared that if [the photo] was washed out, people would look right past the flyer.
I really liked how well Ferris evokes the workplace with its in-jokes and unspoken traditions, its catchphrases, the things people hate about work and love about it. He also captures a particular time and place that rung very true to me. I was working in a boutique PR firm at the time this is set, and I was laid off around the same time the novel's characters are getting shitcanned (they love that word). The endless struggle to fill billable hours when there's no work to do because clients are disappearing is one I remember well.
At first Then We Came to the End comes off hipsterish and ironic, a stance I've gotten tired of, but soon the book's real warmth, its insights about lonely people struggling toward or away from each other, becomes very affecting. This was an ambitious novel to write, and Ferris pulls it off amazingly well.
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