Effortless reads
I’m not quite sure about that title: I wanted to convey that it is about the reading of books that aren’t literarily complex, that don’t challenge you in any way, but simply present a story that is hopefully enjoyable, fairly light-hearted, and not taxing to read. But I’m not sure that’s strictly true of any book, simply because if it’s too much that way, you may have a compensatory challenge to not be actively irritated by it! I read two such books recently, one more successful than the other at distracting me and not irritating me.
The first, less problematical one, was Philippa Flynn’s Year of Panic and Piracy, by Jacqueline Firkins. I have to confess that it was the word “piracy” that drew me, considering that I have made my way through too many clichéd books (and movies!) about adult children who return to their roots because they A. lost or quit their job, B. got dumped by someone, or C. had some kind of catastrophic loss of income or physical problem from which they need time and space to recover. And “going home” almost always conveniently features a grandmother’s house sitting empty, an aunt who has left an unexpected bequest, or a town that needs (for instance) the big-city fancy-schmancy doctor to change her perspective and become, instead, a beloved general practitioner in a small town. Said book reliably features a house rehab, a rediscovered old boyfriend who has magically become available / appealing, or a meet-cute of someone new who’s not their typical “type” but nonetheless has the pecs and the personality to win them over.
But piracy! that’s more like it. I’m a little sad to say that there’s not any actual piracy in this book, but there is a real ship and a pirate facsimile, and I settled for those. (You should know I am similarly sucked in by anything to do with circuses.)
Philippa has been a college history professor for a while, and has discovered that (at least in her current position) it is a world of misogyny and disappointment. She presents ideas that are rejected, only to see them greeted enthusiastically and implemented when recycled by one of her male colleagues. Promotions and decent office space aren’t forthcoming, and tenure definitely hasn’t been all it was cracked up to be. A brush with a near-death incident (she’s almost swallowed by a giant sinkhole) causes Philippa to re-evaluate her current existence, and what follows is a shucking-off of all her heretofore solemn commitments. Her grandmother, Iris Flynn, a successful novelist who specialized in pirate romances, left her old house at the seaside to Philippa when she died, with the stipulation that her reclusive writing partner be able to live in it as long as the house remained in Philippa’s possession, which he has for some years now. But it’s a big house, it’s her house, and it’s about the only place she can think of where she can retreat and live off little money while considering her options.
What she doesn’t discover until she arrives is that the writing partner is decades younger than her grandmother, and is also the male model who appeared on the cover of Iris Flynn’s saucy novels about a bare-chested swashbuckling pirate king.
There’s a lot more to the story, but I think that sums it up pretty well in terms of expectations. The complications introduced to the plot by things like difficult familial relations, financial awkwardnesses, and the lure of sailing away in an actual masted sea-going ship made it much more entertaining than I expected it to be, and all in all I was pleased with my foray into this genre.
The second book, for which I had higher expectations, actually turned out to be the less successful of the two, at least for me. It was by Rhys Bowen, an author whose books I have read before, mainly from her historical mystery series about Molly Murphy, a young Irish lass who flees her homeland under a cloud and takes up residence in New York City, where she solves mysteries in late nineteenth-century America. This book wasn’t a mystery, although there are a few mysterious sub-plots to be found; it is, rather, historical fiction about World War II, mostly set in the south of France beginning in 1938.
Mrs. Endicott’s Splendid Adventure has a beginning somewhat reminiscent of the 1989 British movie Shirley Valentine, although some of the facts are reversed. Shirley, a working-class woman, is lured away from her mundane life by a spontaneous friend who wins a trip for two to Greece, while Mrs. Endicott, definitely on the business end of upper class, is blindsided by her husband’s request for a divorce and his plan to move her out of their beautiful home and into his former bachelor pad where he had his affair with the pending second wife. Both, however, are fleeing from the gloomy weather and staid British lifestyle, lured by fantasies of a better life in Europe. Mrs. Endicott decides that rather than being relegated to such a humiliating position after a life of catering to her husband’s every need and whim, she will seek out her fantasy. She retains a lawyer to get her a healthy sinecure and settlement, then steals her husband’s Bentley and sets out with her housekeeper, Mavis, who has been on the receiving end of her own husband’s fists too many times, and her elderly acquaintance, Dora, who has an equally compelling reason for departure, for the south of France.
Serendipity plays a large part in determining the three women’s fates, when the Bentley breaks down in a small fishing town without a garage. Their necessarily extended stay, coupled with the rumors of impending war, cause them to decide to settle there, and Mrs. Endicott daringly rents and re-habs an abandoned villa where they hope to weather the war unnoticed. But when the Germans cross the Maginot Line into France, things quickly become more fraught than expected.
I have to say that for about the first half of this book, I enjoyed it more than Philippa Flynn. I identified with the protagonist, both as to the stifling nature of her former existence and the wonderful adventuresome independence she embraced when she let herself imagine a different life. The whole thing has a bit of a Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris vibe that I really liked. I enjoyed the side characters and the adaptations the British women had to make to fit into their new environment. But as the story went along, there were some things that just didn’t work for me.
First of all, the war impinged very lightly on them until two-thirds of the way through, but then as its challenges became more apparent, I felt like Bowen made strange and somewhat unlikely choices for how to include it. And when things did happen, rather than letting the tragedies be a stark contrast with the characters’ former idyllic existence, she made all but one loss temporary and did that thing that I heartily dislike, which is to tie up each and every person’s situation with a big fat bow, until absolutely everything is resolved into a happily-ever-after ending that feels wrong unless it’s attached to an obvious romance novel, which this was not. Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed the potential of reconciliation with the husband that was portrayed in Shirley Valentine, and the fortuitous meeting of someone who would help her achieve her dream of a Dior dress in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris; but in both cases, there was some air left in the story. There was room for things to go either way, there were possibilities that took the imagination beyond the last page into the future, whereas in Mrs. Endicott it wrapped up and wrapped up and wrapped up…and ended.
It was by no means a bad book, and I’m sure others might not find the number of faults with it that listed themselves in my head; but the open feel of infinite possibilities with which it began felt shut down by the end and left me disappointed. Go watch Shirley Valentine or the lovely 2022 movie of Mrs. Harris portrayed by Lesley Manville (or read the novel by Paul Gallico) instead.
Upstairs and down
I discovered two weeks ago that there was a brand-new installment of the Ashmore Castle series by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles and, because I had read the last one almost a year ago, decided to reread that one and then the new one. So I have just spent almost two weeks reading The Mistress of Ashmore Castle again, followed by Rivals at Ashmore Castle, also apparently known as The Fortunes of Ashmore Castle? They both have exactly the same plot description—perhaps the name is different in the States than it is in England?
The publishers are going all out to exploit comparisons to Downton Abbey, The Crown, and Bridgerton, but I think the most apropos is the similarity to Upstairs, Downstairs, considering that we get to eavesdrop and spy on the people and the relationships amongst both the “quality” and the servants. And sometimes, of course, there is the scandal of a crossover between those classes.
Harrod-Eagles has done a nice job keeping both personal and historical content going, so that you get a real sense of context from these novels. There is a particular focus, via several characters, on the gradual inroads made by business into upper-class society; a mere 20 or 30 years previous, no one in the titled class would have considered marrying or even befriending a “tradesman,” but as familial wealth declines and business advances, both marriages and forays into new enterprises are undertaken by people from both sides of that divide, and in the process we get to see some of the innovations coming to early 20th-century England in 1905. There are also further glimpses into the women’s suffrage movement and the tentative breaking down of barriers to careers for women, although that’s a fairly small part of this story.
These things are only the backdrop, however, for the continuing soap opera that is the Stainton family, and many changes are made both above and below stairs.
Giles is home from Egypt, chastened by his boneheaded misunderstanding of the feelings of the lovely Italian Julia, and has retreated somewhat reluctantly into the arms of his loving wife, Kitty, and the management of their property and family. Richard, Giles’s younger brother, is still mooning over the impossibility of a relationship with his father’s former mistress, Molly, who has decamped to America to shepherd her daughter’s brilliant career as a concert pianist. But Richard finally decides that he has had enough of the frivolous life (and also of being poor and dependent on his brother) and focuses his energies on creating an innovative new business supplying milk to London with the help of Nina’s husband, Joseph Cowley, the wealthy and good-natured entrepreneur. Nina still struggles with her feelings for Giles but is attempting to channel them into her marriage while dabbling in politics against her husband’s wishes.
Rachel has struggles of her own; she wants to be with Angus (she does! really!), but is also reluctant to give up her social successes and many flirtations for a much less extravagant lifestyle as a tradesman’s wife; luckily, she isn’t free to make that commitment until she turns 21, since her mother is determined to marry her to a nice Russian prince or some such, so as long as she can resist other offers, she can keep partying. Alice, meanwhile, has found an outlet for her passion by focusing on her art, with both positive and negative outcomes. And Sebastian and “Uncle Stuffy” both unexpectedly explore a future with new partners.
Below stairs, Mr. Moss suffers two losses, Afton considers his role, new footman Frederick is perhaps more than he seems, and Dory fearfully contemplates a change of status.
From train crashes to unexpected marriages to forbidden passions, the theme of this latest installment seems to be upheaval. I will definitely continue to read this series with anticipation and enjoyment.
Meanwhile…
I have needed to play catch-up with Harrod-Eagles’s other series that I have followed for many years, the Bill Slider police procedurals. There were two books I hadn’t yet read, so I picked them up from Kindle Unlimited after I finished the Ashmore books. I read the first one, Easeful Death, then started the second one, Deadly Force, only to realize that what was once gripping now felt somewhat stale. (I have, after all, read 25 of them!) I don’t know whether I have permanently run out of steam on these or whether it’s just a temporary boredom because I wasn’t in the mood for mainstream mystery right now, but I decided to put the second one aside for the moment in favor of a new book I discovered in a reading group; it has something to do with pirates, so it sounded more fun than solving yet another grim murder. I’ll report back soon.
Calamities
Calamity is somehow such an East Coast word, isn’t it? and specifically more of a Southern one. I mean yeah, its word origin traces back to Middle French and, before that, Latin, but it’s not a word that you hear frequently in conversation in, for instance, California or the Pacific Northwest. We’d be more likely to call it a disaster or a catastrophe or a tragedy, I think. But when I saw the title The Calamity Club on the cover of Kathryn Stockett’s new book, I immediately thought Deep South. And sure enough, the setting is Oxford, Mississippi, about as Deep South as you can get, and it takes place in 1933, in the depths of the Depression, too.
There are many forms of calamity to be found in this book, large and small: Eugenics, racial inequities, misogyny, abuse, abject poverty, alcoholism, suicide, infidelity, betrayal, crushing back taxes, and pure-dee meanness, as my Okie dad would have characterized it. But despite all that, the book somehow manages to convey both a hopeful tone and a sense of humor that lift it out of the dark despair of reading, say, Demon Copperhead, The Goldfinch, or The Poisonwood Bible. Out of that trio I finished the first two but not the third, and to make it through Demon Copperhead I had to read it in three chunks, interspersing it with lighter, more positive books in between. But I remained both engrossed in and entranced by The Calamity Club throughout, and looked forward to each day’s chapters.
Much of that is due to its passionate, intense, and brilliantly realized characters. Although one could argue that there is an ensemble cast many of whom hold equal weight, the two main protagonists who stand out are Meg, an 11-year-old girl abandoned at age nine and currently a resident at the Oxford orphan asylum, and Birdie, a young spinster recently come to Oxford to borrow money from her self-involved sister’s wealthy husband to save her mamma and meemaw (grandmother) from losing their home.
Although Meg is bright and engaging, her spirit is systematically being crushed by the inexplicable hostility expressed towards her by the director of the orphanage. After two years, she is slowly letting go of her initial hope that her mother will return for her and realizing that, as one of the “big girls,” she also has little hope of being adopted.
Birdie and Meg cross paths when Birdie accompanies her sister to the orphanage where Frances does volunteer work, and the director persuades her to put the books in order (she’s a bookkeeper) before the next inspection of the facility. Birdie is appalled and later haunted by Meg’s circumstances, while Meg finds a kindred soul and an unexpected source of support in Birdie. This short-term encounter is the scaffolding on which several of the later plot points are built.
The story has many turns and many themes, provided by the circumstances and issues of these and other characters in the context of the Great Depression. The story features both extraordinary acts of kindness and shocking inhumanity as it explores its various calamities, some inherent to the prejudices and inequities of the day and others rising from the empathy or callousness of the people involved.
There were a few moments when I felt like Stockett dwelt too long on a story thread while I grew impatient to find out what happened next but, apart from wishing for a tiny bit more editing, I found this book to be pretty flawless. There was never a moment when I grew weary of the story—I kept on wanting to know what happened to the very end, which in some ways came too soon. Although telescoping information in a kind of wrap-up allows the reader to extrapolate the likely fate of every one of the characters, there isn’t a detailed or tidy resolution for this cast. But perhaps leaving those to the imagination are part of the brilliance of this book.
Egypt by another name
I picked up a Kindle deal for a new YA fantasy a few weeks back, and finally got around to reading it. The book is His Face is the Sun (Throne of Khetara #1), by Michelle Jabès Corpora, and it’s being billed as something that the readers of several other teen fantasy writers (Bardugo, Mafi, Tahir) would enjoy. And although I believe that is true, I’m not sure they should have focused it so relentlessly at the Young Adult market. In fact, I often feel that way when it comes to fantasy and science fiction.
In other genres (realistic stories, romance, coming of age), the audience can be clearly demarcated as teens, ages 13-18 or whatever—many adults aren’t interested in teen angst-ridden 15-yo first love stories. But with fantasy, if the world-building is thorough and convincing and the protagonists are engaging, I often feel these books are done a disservice not to be marketed widely. This one, for instance, ended up pretty quickly in the bargain Kindle bin (I think I paid $1.99), and it shouldn’t have, because it’s a really beguiling read. So adult fantasy lovers, pay attention and check it out, because if you enjoy it, there are two more books to come. (Also, this series is directed at more mature teens, due to some frank content, just fyi.)
The kingdom of Khetara is a faintly disguised Egypt, with some of the same gods under the same names and also under different ones, and similar dynasties of rulers and conquered peoples. It could almost be historical fantasy, but the author chose to create her own stage within the auspices of Egyptian history. There are priests and oracles, there are competitors vying for the pharoah’s throne, there are rebellious mistreated commoners, all set against a background of desert, river, village, palace, and temple, brought to life in beautifully detailed descriptions (that don’t slow the story at all). There is a mythology-based magic system that winds through the entire story in an organic manner and, although there is a little romance, this is primarily an epic fantasy focused on history, politics, magic, and destiny.
The main characters are four people who couldn’t be more different: Princess Sita, one of the triplets to whom the current Pharoah is father; Nefermaat, a bewildered young village girl who, after a spontaneous vision brought on by the annual parade for the goddess Bastet, has been whisked from her home to the capitol to train as a priestess; Raetawy, leader of a rebel group of farmers oppressed by the pharoah’s punitive taxes; and Karim, a young grave robber who unearths more than he bargained for and sets in motion some of the events envisioned by Neff and anticipated by Sita’s brother Mery, who is determined to rule Khetara sooner rather than later.
Although four protagonists is a lot, Corpora does a wonderful job of developing each of them with clear personalities and motives, and separates their subplots (politics, magic, rebellion, and fortune-seeking) while intersecting them at the appropriate moments to keep us intrigued. (Oh, and there’s a delightful fifth narrator—only encountered a few times—who further draws things together.)
I was completely involved in this story from beginning to end and, when I encountered that cliffhanger and realized that this book had just been published in May and I would have to wait at least a year for the next one, was sorry that I had read it so quickly. I will do a reread when the sequel comes out, to catch all the delightful detail that I may have skimmed over while trying to absorb the book as a whole. If you ever thrilled to the stories of adventures down the Nile, hotly contested dynasties and mysterious portents, you will want to read His Face is the Sun.
Cozy with nuance
I don’t remember who recommended this book to me; maybe I just read a review of it somewhere, or it popped up in my Kindle best buys or something. But probably someone told me about it because the main character is a librarian. (When you yourself are a librarian, people do that.)
Fried Chicken Castañeda, by Suzanne Stauffer, is a first book for this author, who was also a librarian for 20 years in New York City and Los Angeles, and then got her Ph.D. at UCLA in 2004 (I missed her by a year!) and went on to teach at the School of Information Studies at Louisiana State University. She is also a historian of libraries (you can see a list of her published papers on Wikipedia.
But the protagonist of her book, Prudence Bates, is bored with her career at Cleveland Public Library, and decides to go on hiatus to try something new. It’s early 1929, and Prudence has thus far led an extraordinarily limited life. Her father died a few years back, and her life choices have been truncated by the desire to spare her mother solitude. She wanted to go away to college, but instead attended one close to home so as not to leave her mother alone. She wanted to be an anthropologist who travels for research, but instead chose library science because she could get a local job to be there for her mom. But now her mother and Prudence’s nice enough but, yes, rather boring boyfriend are both pressuring her to settle down, and she’s so tired of fending them off that she almost succumbs.
Her boss at the library senses her ennui in the nick of time, and proposes that she attend a library program about young women couriers for the Fred Harvey Southwestern Indian Detours, who lead tours from the Santa Fe Railroad depots in the West to explore Native American art and culture. The stated goal by the library director was for her to emulate the presentation by developing similar programming for the library, but Prudence is so entranced by the life these nomadic tour guides describe that she packs her bags and heads out to New Mexico to train for a courier job. She has the college degree they require but not the familiarity with the terrain, so she stops off for a week on her way to the interview in the small town of Las Vegas, New Mexico, to begin to get acquainted with life in this corner of the world that is so different from her native Cleveland.
This book reminded me, for some reason, of the Molly Murphy mysteries by Rhys Bowen. They are not superficially too similar; but both protagonists are young, optimistic, and somewhat cheeky, and they both travel far outside their childhood norms to experience a different kind of life. The story also made me think of Dead to Me, by Mary McCoy, yet another librarian author (this one works at Los Angeles Public Library), because it’s set in a particular part of the past that yields extra interest; that book takes place during Hollywood’s Golden Age, while this one navigates the perils of Prohibition.
Stauffer has done her historical research, with the result that the background is filled with details about Pullman train travel, the fashions of the day, and the specific environment in the small New Mexico town Prudence chooses to explore. But what I liked best is that she didn’t shy away from permeating her narrative with the huge cultural divide of that era between the well-off white folk traveling on the trains and the Indian cultures these people are “touring” from a position that could be described as both superficial and patronizing. She is not at all heavy-handed, but does manage to insert reactions and observations designed to highlight such themes as racism, wealth inequality, and cultural diversity as her heroine gets to know the people who actually live and work in the towns through which she will be leading her tours, employed by the railroad and by the Harvey company.
The mysteries in this book are not quite as compelling (probably because there is so much character development and scene-setting to accomplish), but they are mixed up with a bit of romantic tension between Prudence and Jerry Begay, a Navajo man she meets on the train, that lend an extra spark.
the Castañeda Hotel in Las Vegas in 1926.
It’s not a book I would rave about and recommend to everyone I know; but it was certainly one of the better cozy/historical mysteries I have read, good for a couple of afternoons of entertainment. I would willingly pick up a sequel to find out more about the career of the gutsy Prudence as she pursues her dream. I hope she writes one!
Cream of the crop
I wasn’t going to post any further about my sojourn in the land of Regency Romance, but the last Heyer I reread was so delightful that I just have to share. I have previously mentioned a list of favorites here, and somehow this one didn’t make it onto that list, but I think it may be my new “best-of” pick. It’s The Foundling, written in 1948.
The name of the book is deceptive, because the foundling (orphan) in question is merely one small element in a much bigger story, and most of that story is about Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware (“Gilly”), the seventh Duke of Sale. Gilly is 24 years old, one year away from his majority, when he will take over control of his own estates from his guardian and uncle, Lord Lionel Ware. He is beset by irritations, but not the kind to which there seem to be any solution. He was a sickly child who has grown into a sturdy (if small and slight) adult, but his relatives and the raft of devoted family retainers who work for him will never let him forget that they have had good reason to mollycoddle him for his entire life, and he is constantly thwarted in the simplest of plans. He can’t do so much as take a walk to his club without his valet, his butler, or his agent insisting on ordering him a carriage for fear he will unduly exert himself or catch a chill. So when his young cousin, Matthew Ware, comes to him with a problem he is, himself, unable to solve, the Duke decides that he will take care of it without resorting to the advice of others. He will do so while masquerading as a plain “Mr. Dash,” not dependent on the benefits of birth and wealth; he manages to sneak off on his own, with no luggage, no carriage or horse, and no word to his servants or his uncle about either his intentions or his destination.
This incognito journey into the countryside to confront his cousin’s blackmailer leads to some interesting and signficant encounters that include a runaway schoolboy, a divinely beautiful but completely brainless orphan, and some villainous people and perilous situations. Meanwhile, back at his London abode, the hue and cry to discover his whereabouts is exacerbated by the belief by some that he may have run off due to an adverse reaction to becoming engaged to his lifelong friend, Lady Harriet. Others develop the theory that his cousin Gideon, who is his best friend but also his heir, may have “put him out of the way” in order to ascend to his title and massive fortune!
This is one of Heyer’s most complex and convoluted plots, with something happening every moment. Although the book is named after the fair Belinda (the foundling in question), her part in it is minor except as it motivates some of the adventures of “Mr. Rufford,” the name under which the duke is traveling. It is much less a romance (although there is a bit involved) than it is a coming of age of a man who, restricted from all autonomy since birth, finally rebels against all restraints, and his ensuing complicated adventures are the meat of the story.
I got through it in about 36 hours, because I couldn’t put it down. If you are inclined to try one of Heyer’s books for yourself, may I suggest this might be a good one to assay? (Yes, I am, at this point, speaking in the language of her characters. I think it’s time to move on to other literature.)
Escape from…
I have a number of books on my “TBR” list, but about a week and a half ago I decided to forego all of them for now and retreat into pure denial of everything that’s happening in the world and all the trials of my personal existence by rereading (some for the third time) a string of Georgette Heyer Regency romances.
I started out with three of my favorites—The Grand Sophy, April Lady, and The Convenient Marriage—and then took potluck on the public library website by reading whatever was immediately available, since the idea was a continued getaway rather than a long wait on a hold. And yes, most of her books still have holds on them, more than 50-75 years after their publication!
So I continued on after that with Charity Girl, The Unknown Ajax, and False Colours, which I just started. I have hopes, after this, of snagging Cotillion, Sprig Muslin, and The Foundling, by which time I’m hoping that I will have completely sated my appetite for drawing room drama, complicated toilettes, and witty banter, at least for a good while.
If you are, at this point, losing all respect for me as a reader and reviewer, let me tell you that you are “fair and far out” (under a misapprehension) should you believe that there is no redeeming value to these books. I defy anyone to find a contemporary romance writer who can rival their language, the sometimes labyrinthine plotting, the wonderfully droll characterizations, and the descriptive scene-setting, not to mention the perfectly evoked fashion in which everyone, male and female, is attired.
Perhaps I will follow up this binge by reading Everything I Needed to Know About Life I Learned by Reading Georgette Heyer, by Miss Cooke (2016). Although since this “book” is only 55 pages long, I suspect I could do a better job of writing a similarly titled volume!
Horse
Although I started out as a little girl who liked dolls, as I got older I turned into a horse fan(atic). (My mother continued to collect Madame Alexander dolls on my behalf long after my interest waned.) I went through that stage around 9-13 years old where I read everything horse-related I could find: the Marguerite Henry tales of the wild ponies of Chincoteague; Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell (multiple times); My Friend Flicka, by Mary O’Hara; National Velvet, by Enid Bagnold; and all the Black Stallion books by Walter Farley. With my parents and their best friends, I spent two spring vacations at a “dude ranch” in Arizona, riding daily for two weeks each year (the photo is from there). After that I begged for riding lessons in my home town of Riverside, California, and spent some months riding an ornery “rental” horse named Shadow who dumped me off more than once in the (thankfully soft) dry river bottom of the Santa Ana river. (I wasn’t that bad a rider; I was jumping him over logs and bushes at the time, fantasizing about being Velvet Brown in the Grand National, and he had a spiteful habit of blowing up his belly when his girth was being tightened so that the saddle would go sliding at inopportune moments.)
My ultimate goal was, of course, to have my own horse, and I almost fulfilled that wish; my grandfather, a farmer who was essentially a childlike man notorious for making rash decisions without considering consequences, went to the local livestock auction in Chowchilla one Saturday morning and bought me an unbroken palomino colt. I was overjoyed, but my parents sat me down and explained to me that it wouldn’t be realistic to keep a horse in Riverside, where he would have to be boarded out and I, with my crowded schedule of academics, piano lessons, and thrice-weekly church, would have scant time to see him, let alone ride or care for him. There was also the matter of the expense of both training and boarding him, which we couldn’t really afford. I was devastated, but I was at heart a sensible and agreeable child, with the result that Granddad sold him on to another buyer, and I went back to my books. I never did, however, wholly lose the longing for a horse companion; I wasn’t so much into riding, I just liked being around horses. Their energy and temperament held a fascination for me that has never waned.
It was, therefore, probably inevitable that I would at some point get around to reading Geraldine Brooks’s book Horse. I resisted for a while, for a couple of reasons: First, I’m not drawn to historical fiction; it seems to me that the history so often interferes with the author’s ability to tell a good story, being constrained by actual events (and feeling the need to include them all!). I tend to steer clear of anything “based on a true story.” I have discovered a few exceptions that I love, but mostly I avoid these books for fear of disappointment. (Also, does everyone in the world have to write a book set during World War II?!) The other reason was because I read her book March and, contrary to the popular opinion, didn’t care for it much. Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women books were cherished childhood favorites, and Brooks exploded some of the myth in her tale of Mr. March in ways I didn’t appreciate (and also, I found parts of it vastly boring).
But…horses. HORSE. So I put my name on the library waitlist and was finally granted access to the e-book last week. It was both more and less than I was expecting, and I thoroughly enjoyed some parts while being put off by others.
The story is set in three time periods and jumps back and forth between those and also between multiple narrators in each one. The first takes place in the years just prior to the Civil War, and begins with the birth of a bay foal who will become the famed and gifted racehorse Lexington. The enslaved boy Jarret becomes first his groom, later his trainer, and his fiercest advocate as they essentially grow up together. The other spokesman in this time period is an equestrian portraitist, Thomas Scott. The second (much less significant) storyline is set in New York City’s art world of the late 1950s, from the viewpoint of art dealer Martha Jackson. The third, contemporary tale occurs in Washington, D.C. in 2019, with Jess, an Australian woman who works at the Smithsonian Institution’s Osteology Prep Lab (she articulates skeletons for display), and Theo, a Nigerian-American Ph.D. student writing a dissertation about American equestrian art (specifically focusing on images of slaves in paintings of racehorses). All these timelines are connected by a portrait of a horse and his black groom that Theo discovers abandoned on his neighbor’s curb. The horse is Lexington, the groom is Jarret, and the book weaves together all the connecting threads.
The relationship between Jarret and Lexington is moving, poignant, and sometimes heartbreaking. The back story of the history of American horse-racing, specifically in the South, was fascinating to me, as were the contemporary details about the science of the preservation of natural history and the restoration of paintings.
There is, of course, a subtext to the entire book, which is racism. It is effectively and affectingly dealt with in the pre-Civil War sections by the clear depiction of the sale of humans being much more common and vastly less considered than the sale of horses.
I found the theme less compelling when Brooks moved to the present-day embedded culture of racism in America. The societal injustices of slavery were clear-cut, anger-provoking, and heartbreaking; but I felt like once she approached the more subtle but nonetheless ubiquitous prejudices of the present day, she fell too often into either avoidance or cliché. I particularly didn’t like the egocentric behavior of Jess, who let her initial reaction to Theo become an ongoing mea culpa that was much more concerned with her own embarrassment than it was about her injury of Theo.
Despite those caveats, the depth of the research and Brooks’s deft mix of history, science, and art were enthralling, especially due to her evocative writing. The horse-racing scenes were both powerful and visceral, and the pictures she paints of the various settings and environments are beautiful and memorable. Even with its flaws, I’m glad I read this book.
Reimagining
I just read James, by Percival Everett. Despite being 300 pages, it was a quick read, unlike the story from which it was taken, which took me twice as long to reread. I think there were two reasons for this one going so quickly: One was that it leaned on the presumption that you already knew the original tale and therefore the author gave himself permission to shorthand much of the action and description from that book; the other was that almost the whole story took place in either internal or external dialogue, without a lot of world-building, scene-setting, or exposition.
These things led to an interesting experience if you were hoping to confront this old story from a completely new perspective. I wanted to embrace this book, but I struggled a bit.
The premise that the slaves spoke patois in front of the white “massas” but used the common language when alone seemed a natural outgrowth of their situation; they had to communicate important information with one another without the white people catching on to what was being said, and they had to hide their real personalities behind a façade of ignorance, foolishness, and passivity, so they learned code-switching from childhood. Everett completely enthralled me with this; but then he took it a little too far. I expected the character James to be a bit more than ordinary, given his interactions with Huck and others in the original, but did his life experience really allow him the latitude to become as extraordinary as Everett has written him?
He is painted as an educated man—not just a slave who has learned to read and to speak with a careful use of diction. Would the surreptitious reading sessions in Judge Thatcher’s study in the wee hours really lead to a thorough understanding of the works of Voltaire, Rousseau, and John Locke? Even southern college-educated men of that day were not necessarily cognizant of the intricacies of philosophical thought, so the requirement that we believe it of a man who has had to gain all his education on the sly in stolen moments is a little hard to meet.
This was, to my mind, a central flaw of this book, for the simple reason that we went from perceiving the disguise the original “Jim” presented to the world—the stereotypical shuffle-footed, awkward, ignorant, well-behaved and possibly well-intentioned slave—to yet another disguise for “James”—the cynical, perceptive, erudite man who is playing that character for half his world while laughing about it with the other half. I actually liked that for its dark irony; what I’m trying to say is that there was an opportunity here for us to get to know the real person, but except for some tantalizing and admittedly affecting glimpses here and there, we went from one façade to another. With as much internal dialogue as there was from James, there was nonetheless too little understanding of the man himself. While being able to recognize that he is quick-witted, thoughtful, and compassionate, I didn’t feel that I really understood how he acquired all those positive character traits, because he doesn’t let us in.
The other thing the book thoroughly exhibits is the two-faced nature of slave owners who wish to be regarded as benevolent protectors of their “childlike servants,” but turn on a dime, when challenged, to become brutalists who exult in wielding a belt or raping a child. And again, I found myself applauding the exposure of the stereotypes but wincing at the one-dimensional portrayals—not so much of the slave-owners, but of the slaves! Several other reviewers have noted that the women in this book seem to be present on the page merely to highlight their own ill treatment; they have no agency and almost no personality but are merely offered up as horrifying examples of the results of human ownership. Again, I have no quarrel with exposing the heinousness of the practice, but how much more affecting would the book have been had readers been able to better identify with these women as individuals with personality?
I don’t want to come across as hyper-critical of this book. I admired what he tried to do and was caught up in it while reading it. I am also a fan of his writing style and language, which can be beguilingly beautiful. It actually troubles me to go against the reviewers who gave it unreserved praise (not to mention the National Book Award!). But afterwards, while reflecting on what I had read, I also wished there had been more—more story, more depth of character, more nuance, more exploration. I am curious, now, to read others of his books to see what my reaction to him as a writer might be when not influenced by the rewriting-of-a-classic aspect of this one. I’m sure you’ll hear more about it from me eventually.
Wrapping up
This year it feels more like a winding down than a wrapping up. I read the fewest books in one year since I started doing the Goodreads Challenge 12 years ago. That year I read 75 books; my highest number ever was in 2019, when I read 159 books while working full-time from January to October (I retired from the library in October of that year). You would think it would be the reverse, since I have so much more time now than I did then; but there were some factors at play that ensured I would read a lot more then. First, I was running three teen book clubs, so I had to read one book per month for each club, plus a couple extra books in each age range (the clubs were 6th- and 7th-graders, 8th- and 9th-graders, and grades 10-12) so I would have ideas to propose as the following month’s read. I was also reviewing books for both the teen and adult library blogs (both of which I supervised), so I was heavily invested in spending all my spare time reading new teen and adult fiction to showcase there. And finally, of course, there was a certain amount of reading for my own particular pleasure! I basically worked, commuted, ate, slept, and read, and did absolutely nothing else!
Nowadays there are circumstances that tend to decrease my reading time: With my particular disability, sitting in one position for long periods of time isn’t great for keeping my legs at their best possible condition for mobility. I also watch a lot more on television these days, now that streaming services let you binge-watch an entire five-season show, one episode after another for as long as you can stay awake, as opposed to waiting for one weekly episode for a 12- to 20-week season and then waiting in turn for the following season. And I spend way too much time “doom-scrolling” political stuff online, or keeping up with friends on Facebook. Finally, once I took up painting I started spending at least a few days a week focused on making a portrait or two or a still life featuring items from my antique collection.
Anyway, this year I read a meager-for-me 66 books. Some of them were literary and some of them were chick lit, some were re-reads of beloved stories, and others were authors previously unknown. My statistics include:
23,782 pages, with an average book length of 360 pages
(shortest was 185, longest was 698)
Average rating was 3.6 stars
Some favorite new titles were:
The Unmaking of June Farrow, by Adrienne Young
Starter Villain, by John Scalzi
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers, by Jesse Q. Sutanto
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, by Becky Chambers
All the Dead Shall Weep, and The Serpent in Heaven, by Charlaine Harris
Found in a Bookshop, by Stephanie Butland
I felt throughout the year like I was having trouble discovering books that really resonated with me. Although I had some pleasurable reading discoveries, I never found that one book or series or author that really sucked me in and kept me mesmerized for hours at a time. I found myself reading during breakfast or on my lunch break and easily stopping after a chapter or two to go do something else, rather than wanting to settle in for a solid afternoon of reading. I’m hoping to find more compelling books in the new year. But reading continues to be one of my best-beloved pastimes.
