What I Read in March 2013

Vasily Grossman, A Writer at War with the Red Army, 1941-1945. Grossman, the author of the novel Life and Fate, was a journalist with Red Star, the Soviet army newspaper, during the entire Great Patriotic War, from Stalingrad right through to Berlin. This book is made up of excerpts of his reportage from those years with explanatory text by Antony Beevor and Luba Vinogradova.

Michael Connelly, Trunk Music. The fifth in the series devoted to Los Angeles homicide detective Hieronymus Bosch, this one has has plenty of twists and false starts, with a pleasant surprise at the very end. Harry’s my man.

Ha Jin, In the Pond. Young man who works in Chinese fertilizer factory practices his calligraphy at night and perfects his brush strokes. Young man’s bosses refuse to recognize his talents and obstruct his opportunities. What happens then to this energetic small frog “in the pond”?

Pat Barker, The Eye in the Door. This novel, set in England during World War I, is a sequel to Barker’s Regeneration. We follow the lives of real and fictional characters struggling with the moral and psychological trauma of a war that never should have been. The eye is the door observes you when you are imprisoned for your pacifist beliefs.

David Lodge, The British Museum Is Falling Down. In this 1960s comic novel, the Museum is not really falling down, but one of the regular inhabitants of its famous Reading Room is certainly in a state of near collapse.

Richard Francis, Fruitlands: The Alcott Family and Their Search for Utopia. In a test of their Transcendentalist beliefs, Bronson Alcott and Charles Lane led Alcott’s family, plus occasional others, in an attempt to create utopia. Fruitlands, the farm where they pursued their ideals was both more and less than they expected.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions. Kilmore Trout, prolific but unrecognized science fiction author, goes on a road trip to an arts festival where he meets Dwayne Hoover, Pontiac dealer. Damage ensues. I am late to the party and this is my first Vonnegut. It was ok, but I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read it in high school.

Julian Barnes, Arthur and George. This novel recreates the interaction of famous writer Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, and the unjustly imprisoned George Edalji. Based closely on the historical record, the men and their situation are brought to life, vividly and believably.

Alastair Cooke, The American Home Front 1941-1942. I hope you remember Alastair Cooke, the original debonair host of Masterpiece Theater on public television. As a young reported for the BBC, Cooke made a road trip all around this country in the early days of America’s participation in World War II. He did report on the activities related to the war, but he also provides for us now a snapshot of the U.S. in the early 1940s.

Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Part memoir, part writer’s guide, On Writing shows us a man who writes because he has to and because it brings him joy. His parting thought for writers, including bloggers: “Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and about enriching your own life as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay?”

Julian Barnes, Arthur & George

Arthur is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of consulting detective Sherlock Holmes, and George is George Edalji, an English solicitor of mixed parentage, Scots and Parsee. Based on faulty evidence, George is convicted of a crime he did not commit and spends several years in prison. When free again he wants to have his innocence acknowledged. Arthur wants “not only a free pardon but also a large sum in compensation.” George disagrees,

 “The money is not important. I want my name back again. I want to be readmitted as a solicitor. That is all I want. To be allowed to practice again. To live a quiet, useful life. A normal life.”

The magic of Arthur & George comes from Julian Barnes’ careful, step-by-step depiction of the characters of these two men. They come from different backgrounds but are joined by the cause which Arthur has taken up. This is my favorite kind of historical novel. It is based on the facts as we know them, but we meet the people, hear them talk, listen in on the thoughts that the author imagines for them. It sounds a far stretch, but it reminds me of Mary Renault and The King Must Die, where she took the well-known legend of Theseus and the Minotaur and brought those ancient beings to life if a way that makes perfect sense to readers who live a different world.

The early 20th-century world of Arthur and George is closer to ours than ancient Greece is. Arthur lives in a time when rapid changes in technology affect his sense of the possible. For him, the possible includes Spiritualism and communication with the beyond.

 Science is leading the way, and will bring the scoffers low as it always does. For who would have believed in radio waves? Who would have believed in X-rays? Who would have believed in argon and helium and neon and xenon, all of which have been discovered in the last years? The invisible and the impalpable, which lie just below the surface of the real, just beneath the skin of things, are increasingly being made visible and palpable. The world its purblind inhabitants are at last learning to see.

Barnes does not make an argument for Spiritualism. That would not be historical. Better yet, he lets us see how, for Arthur, belief in an unseen world is consistent with everything else he knows.

George does not credit Spiritualism, but he does believe in the law and in justice. The law has not delivered justice in his case. After all Arthur’s efforts, the final result is like that well-worn formulation: mistakes were made. Mistakes were made, but no one takes responsibility for making them, now or in George’s day. Arthur explains :

 “As from today, we have a new concept in English law – guilty and innocent. George Edalji is a pioneer in this regard. The only man to be granted a free pardon for a crime he never committed, and yet to be told at the same time that it was quite right he served three years’ penal servitude.”

This reminds me of invading Iraq. It was a mistake, but it just happened somehow. Too bad – and now we should move on. Ultimately, that is what Arthur and George do also.

Mickey Haller for the Defense

It all started with The Lincoln Lawyer, a movie based on the novel by Michael Connelly. Not Lincoln, as in Abraham, but Lincoln as in Town Car. Mickey Haller carries out his law practice from the comfortable back seat of his Lincoln. Why have an office, when one of your ex-wives can handle all the phone calls from the comfort of her home?

This sounds sleazy but Haller grew on me. Connelly writes the popular Harry Bosch series of detective novels, and The Lincoln Lawyer is the first of a new series – defending the apparently indefensible. Did the client do it? Haller doesn’t want to know.

In the next book in the series, The Brass Verdict, Connelly brings his two major characters together. Haller and LAPD Detective Harry Bosch work at times in opposition and at other times together. Some of their discoveries are related to the matter at hand, while others are more personal. What discoveries? You won’t hear it from me. Read the book.

I like legal thrillers/mysteries. I thoroughly enjoy the people and puzzles of Scott Turow, and I liked John Grisham until he got too bloody for me. What pleases me is a puzzle, interesting characters (some of whom I can like), no obvious sadism, and an organized way to find the answer. Courtroom dramas can do that. So could Agatha Christie in her day, but the country-house settings palled after a while.

Connelly has written two more since the Brass Verdict: The Reversal and The Fifth Witness. Bosch also plays an important role in The Reversal, but is mostly a by-stander in the other book. Connelly seems to signal a future change in direction for Heller in The Fifth Witness. Whether he will be guilty of that or not remains to be seen but, meanwhile, he is entitled to the best defense he can buy.

What I Read in September 2012

September was a vacation month for us. What with travel by plane and train (no driving) and quiet evenings in the hotel room, I was able to do an unusual amount of reading.

Two by the New Zealand mystery writer, Ngaio Marsh, creator of Inspector Alleyn. Colour Scheme:It is wartime New Zealand and someone is suspected of signalling to the enemy. Night at the Vulcan: Young aspiring actress watches the scenes of a murder investigation. Marsh enjoys building his situations slowly — Inspector Alleyn often does not appear until halfway through the book. When he does appear, rational investigation is all.

John McPhee, Irons in the Fire. This collection of the writings of the prolific John McPhee includes pieces on cattle branding and rustling, forensic geology (do you know where this handful of sand or soil came from?) and recycling America’s millions of used tires.

Connie Willis, Fire Watch. This collection of short stories introduces us to the Oxford historians who visit the past to learn what really happened.

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives Tale. Those two old women — is it possible they were young once? Bennett gives us a humane, but wry, account of the lives of two sisters in industrial England.

Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation. The author of David Copperfield and A Christmas Carol provides an idiosyncratic account of his tour of the United States in the 1840s.

David Lodge, Therapy. Neurotic — but successful — television writer requires psychotherapy, physical therapy, aromatherapy and acupuncture to keep going. No neurotic is ever really cured, but he is helped by the rediscovery of an old love and a pilgrimage.

H. G. Wells, When the Sleeper Awakes. It’s the Rip Van Winkle theme, updated. Wells imagines the world a man finds when he wakes from a 200-year catatonic sleep. It’s not a good world, and the result of his struggles to change it are ambiguous.

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone. A classic detective story involving a missing jewel, a lovers’ quarrel and, ultimately, a murder. Echoes of Sherlock Holmes before Sherlock Holmes was created.

Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities. It is Vienna, 1913, and the Emperor Franz Joseph commands a disparate empire. We celebrate his success, but we do not know that war is coming, the Emperor will die, and the empire will be no more.

Connie Willis, Blackout. Three young Oxford historians use their time machine to drop from the 21st century into World War II Britain — a time of the evacuation from Dunkirk, the air battle for Britain, the London Blitz, and the fear of a German invasion. The historians know that the Germans do not invade, but they cannot share their knowledge with the “contemps”, the locals of that time. This book has a companion sequel, All Clear, so I expect to post on the two books together.

Elizabeth Jenkins, Jane Austen. I enjoyed this warm and detailed biography of the author of Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen was not the dried-up spinster some imagine but rather a bright but somewhat shy member of a large family. She fully participated in the lives of her parents, her sister, her brothers, their children and her many other relatives.

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

This prototype mystery-detective-horror-suspense novel has something for everybody. The Moonstone was written in 1868, before Sherlock Holmes, but after Poe’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. Poe introduced the concept of the analytical detective who perceives the clues others have dismissed and then dispassionately examines them to solve the mystery. Wilkie carries the concept much further, with his Sergeant Cuff who equally loves roses and solving a good puzzle. Collins also introduces more characters, more possibilities and false clues, and a dash of horror — the shivering sands –. as well as a sense of humor which you never find in Poe. Sergeant Cuff:

I like to be tender to human infirmity–though I don’t get many chances of exercising that virtue in my line of life. You think Mr. Franklin Blake hasn’t got a suspicion of the girl’s fancy for him? Ah! he would have found it out fast enough if she had been nice-looking. The ugly women have a bad time of it in this world; let’s hope it will be made up to them in another.

The literary structure is a series of narrative reports by the various participants in the mysterious disappearance of the Moonstone, a valuable diamond to which a sinister legend attaches. Since each narrator can tell only what he knows, the reader is left to extract for each the necessary clues to solve the puzzle.

Collins offers us something else which is missing is Poe and only glanced at in the Sherlock Holmes stories: compassion for the minor characters. For example, he sympathetically depicts the servant girl who loves in vain but preserves the clues. The Indians who seek the Moonstone while disguised as jugglers may be ruthless, but they have their cause. The mixed-race physician’s assistant has valuable information and explains why he breaks through social barriers to provide it.

I have attempted to make my poor friend’s loss of memory the means of bettering my acquaintance with you. I have speculated on the chance of your feeling a passing curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my being able to satisfy it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on you? Perhaps there is some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived has his bitter moments when he ponders over human destiny. You have youth, health, riches, a place in the world, a prospect before you. You, and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me with the world that I am leaving, before I go. However this talk between us may end, I shall not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing that.

At heart, this is a moral story. Character will out. The cheats and liars are defeated. Those who truthfully say they have done no wrong, have indeed done no wrong. Collins gives them full justice in the end.

What I Read in January 2012

My View While Reading

Two weeks in Florida treated me to more time to read but left me short on computer access to keep up with my posts. This tree was my best view from my reading chair when I lifted my eyes from the page on a sunny afternoon.

H. G. Wells, Tono-Bungay. I begin the new year with this non-science-fiction novel by the author of The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. Tono-Bungay is a tonic, a harmless patent medicine for the masses and the basis for a fortune which does do great harm in pre-World War I England.

Ngaio Marsh, Artists in Crime. An Inspector Alleyn mystery in which he meets attractive artist Agatha Troy. I knew, from reading later books in the series, that they marry — but not here, not yet. They meet. They are mutually attracted, he solves the crime. I am confident they will get together sooner or later. Wait for the next book.

Jane Smiley, At Paradise Gate. I am an admirer of Jane Smiley and her deft handling of the problems of (mostly) normal people. An old man, a partner in a long-term, often stressful marriage, lies dying. The daughters and a granddaughter gather. The wife copes.

Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture. This book derives from the “last lecture” delivered by Randy Pausch, while living in his last months with pancreatic cancer.

Frances Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans. Fanny Trollope was the mother of the better-known Anthony Trollope and a successful writer in her own right. In 1827 she took several of her children to seek their fortune in the New World. She was both fascinated and disappointed by the new republic. Her observations, often relieved with a little humor, scandalized us all.

Emile Zola, Germinal. This disturbing novel depicts the lives of coal miners in 1860s France and their unsuccessful strike for better conditions and pay. Free-market capitalism justifies all, then and now.

John LeCarré, A Most Wanted Man. I have long admired John LeCarré and his intricately-plotted spy novels, but I am sorry that I read this one. It left me angry at the abuse of power by all sides in our current War on Terror.

Frances Trollope, The Widow Barnaby. Since Fanny Trollope, best known for her critical Domestic Manners of the Americans, was a best-selling novelist in her day, I thought I would try one. The widow is flirtatious, maritally ambitious, outrageous — and dresses in poor taste. What will she do next! Trollope knew a thing or two about keeping the reader involved.

W. E. B. Dubois, The Souls of Black Folk. Pioneering sociologist DuBois depicts the situation of Blacks in the South forty years after Emancipation. “Souls” are not just the spiritual souls, but the entire consciousness of a people who, after centuries of slavery, receive little support in the freedom they have gained.

Pamela Neville-Sington, Fanny Trollope: The Life and Adventures of a Clever Woman. Fanny Trollope is best known for her critique of the young United States, Domestic Manners of the Americans. It was her first published book, and she was 53. In the next 24 years she wrote six travel books and 35 novels. They were best sellers in their day. Oh, and she was the mother of Anthony Trollope. This well-written biography tells all.

Laura Lippman, Charm City

I like a mystery series with a female investigator and a strong sense of place. Count me in for Sue Grafton’s A, B, C books set in a fictional version of Santa Barbara. I also enjoy Sara Paretsky’s stories set in Chicago. Books about smart women who know where they are really appeal to me.

I read the first f Laura Lippman’s Tess Monaghan series several years ago, Baltimore Blues, and immediately added her to my list. My method for dealing with these series is crude. I see a book in the library or at a book sale. I buy it and read it. Other than liking to begin at the beginning, I don’t insist on chronological order. So sometimes I wonder who these characters are and why everyone (in the book) seems to know them, while I don’t.

This brings me to Esskay the dog. In many of the books Tess has a rescue greyhound dog with an affectionate nature and an undiscriminating appetite. Actually dogs are useful in the investigating business — people talk to people with dogs. Where did this animal come from? She was not in Baltimore Blues. Now, thanks to a good connection on BookMooch, I have the second book in the series, Charm City. Here appears Esskay, and I like her very much.

I have to take her home… We’ll figure something out. If Spike wanted me to take care of this dog, there must be a reason.

Smugly now, the dog took her position in the back seat, insisting on standing, just as she had the first night Tess had taken her home. But this time, Esskay was more firmly rooted, holidng her stance on the turns. A week ago, a day ago, even five minutes ago, Tess had firmly believed dogs could not smile. Yet this one was practically leering in her delight.

Writing a Woman’s Life

Carolyn Heilbrun had two careers: as a university professor and feminist critic and, under the pen name Amanda Cross, as the author of 14 detective novels. Writing a Woman’s Life tells us a bit about both, as Heilbrun (in 1988) reflects on the difficulties of writing a woman’s life.

I take the title in two senses. The first, and most obvious, is the matter of biographies of successful women, writers especially. A woman without a man is too often presented as someone who “failed” and thus was driven to the expediencies of intellectual effort and career ambitions. After Eleanor Roosevelt died, her longtime friend and confident Joseph Lash wrote a book about her life after FDR died entitled Eleanor: The Years Alone. Eleanor Roosevelt called her own book about that same period On My Own. Lash did not understand that one person’s loneliness may be another person’s freedom to express and to achieve. Heibrun’s comment on this setting free:

The true representation of power is not of a big man beating a smaller man or woman. Power is the ability to take one’s place in whatever discourse is essential to action and the right to have one’s part matter. This is true in the Pentagon, in marriage, in friendship, and in politics.

A woman whose primary assignment is to provide emotional support for another person (male or female) rarely has the power necessary to achieve in her own right.

The second sense of writing a life is how women see the narrative of their own lives. Independence and ambition are not in the stories with which they are familiar.

Had they done so [read Freud's work], they would have recognized his clear assertion that women daydream erotic scripts, men ambitious ones. Freud saw men as able to combine the erotic and the ambitious–there may be a woman in the dream for whom the tasks are undertaken–but for women, the ambitious is not considered as an alternative.

Those who want to tell a different story with their lives may be seen as damaged or even socially dangerous. In my own childhood the parental ideal was the “well-adjusted child”. For girls, that ideal meant the one who conformed.

Misfits are often our most gifted children and, for girls, those most likely to require a different story by which to write their lives.

Louisa and the Missing Heiress

Louisa is Louisa May Alcott acts as the detective in this mystery set in 1850s Boston. Author Anna Maclean has a promising premise here — take a known historical or literary figure and use her as a fictional character. Elliot Roosevelt did something similar in his mystery series in which his mother, Eleanor Roosevelt, was the sleuth. This sort of thing works best when the story uses believable aspects of the real person’s character. For example here, Louisa is presented as energetic and impatient, with a thirst for justice.

This book didn’t work very well for me. The development of the mystery was very slow. The action mostly consisted to Louisa going from tea party to tea party and talking with the principal suspects, meanwhile expressing great concern for her reputation. A historical novel in which a real figure appears must draw on the known character of that person, while providing a believable setting. Louisa here is energetic and impatient, with a thirst for justice. True enough, if a bit obvious, but she also expresses some gratingly modern opinions. The other figures — Abba and Bronson Alcott and sister May — are conventionally as we would expect them to be, without much sparkle.

What I Read in November, 2010

Bess Streeter Aldrich, The Rim of the Prairie.
This 1925 novel celebrates their progress of the pioneers who broke the sod in Nebraska. At the same time, it reminded me that we have lost the magic of the landscape and an earlier way of life.

Franz Kafka, The Trial. Josef K must be guilty of something, since he has been arrested and is on trial. As I interpret The Trial, it could happen to anyone.

Jhumpa Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth. More short stories from the author of The Namesake. Lahiri does the immigrant experience with an Indian twist.

David Malouf, Ransom. King Priam of Troy visits the Greek hero Achilles to ransom the body of his son Hector, whom Achilles has slain. That is all and that is everything.

I also read the following books on which I have not posted:

Mark D. Fullerton, Greek Art. This was a re-read for the presentation about Greek Sculpture which I am currently preparing. With no expertise in this area — but a lot of appreciation — I have to crib from the experts. Although more concerned than I am about disputes in the field of stylistic dating, Fullerton is readable and very helpful in interpreting the meaning of classic statues and reliefs. Meaning matters. Why else would you spend vast amounts on public sculpture?

Anne Tyler, Noah’s Compass. I enjoy Anne Tyler’s books and have read most of them. This one is rather slight. Man retires, man has little purpose in life both before and after retirement, man considers love affair, man backs out, life goes on. Tyler seems to specialize in the disappointed. The ones here are less compelling that the characters of Saint Maybe or Digging to America. The ending was flat. Sometimes you read a book and think the author is trying too hard. In this one, I think Tyler should have tried a little harder.

Ngaio Marsh, Photo Finish. Another of the Inspector Alleyn series, this time with an interesting New Zealand setting (Marsh’s native turf). A real puzzler this one, very like an Agatha Christie, with everyone a suspect and everyone not quite able to have done it and a masterful Alleyn explaining it all to the assembled suspects in the final pages. )See my post about Final Curtain.)