Book Review: Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy

888 Challenge #8

In the church at Mellstock, the music has long been provided by the Mellstock Quire - a motley assortment of local workmen and their instruments. But new vicar Mr. Maybold is a fan of progress, and has given the Quire a firm expiration date. Together with the alderman, Mr. Shinar, he wants to see a brand-new organ installed in the church - and new schoolteacher Fancy Day at the keys. The impending dissolution of the Quire is a particular blow to Reuben Dewy, for whom Quire membership is a family tradition, and he attempts to fight the decision. Reuben’s son Dick, however, is less interested in music than in Fancy. Can a mere tranter’s son hope to win the hand of someone who could do so much better; and can he be sure of her when she’s as capricious as Fancy is?

At little more then 150 pages this is the shortest book I’ve read in ages. Being so short, not much happens - just the demise of the Quire and one uncertain courtship. But it’s still an enjoyable read, and worth it to witness that rare thing - a (mostly) happy ending instead of the usual Hardian doom and gloom. The outside world intrudes very little upon Mellstock, and the villagers are used to following their own ways and customs (as shown by their dislike of Maybold, an ‘interfering’ kind of curchman who’s always visiting his parishioners rather than letting them alone). As such it’s all very idyllic and well-suited to a tale of romance that ends with a wedding and not a funeral.

Yet the story’s sunlight is not without shadows, and it’s not quite so straightforward as it was in the movie. All the other women are poor and tired, settled into dull if comfortable lives alongside their husbands (well, except for Fancy’s stepmother, who’s . . . not quite all there). It makes it impossible not to wonder whether Dick’s plans for the business will succeed, or whether he and Fancy will end up like all the rest. And the last sentence throws up all kinds of questions without any hope of answers. It turns out to be a more thought-provoking read than it at first appears.

Rating: B

Now reading: Antony and Cleopatra - William Shakespeare (RRC, EC)
                                The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas (EC)

Book Review: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

Chunkster Challenge #2

After reading innumerable romances of knights and chivalry have turned his brain, the self-styled Don Quixote de la Mancha sets out to take his place among the great heroes of legend. His friends and family are horrified, and relieved when he soon returns home; but the relief is short-lived, for he hires his neighbour Sancho Panza as squire and sallies forth again. Technically sane, Sancho nevertheless has a remarkable ability to believe anything, if he only puts his mind to it - though he doesn’t, like his master, see everything that crosses his path as the manifestation of some noble adventure. Don Quixote sees armies in flocks of sheep, castles in inns, and of course giants in windmills. The pair travels around Spain, righting wrongs - or trying to - Sancho dreaming of the government of an island his master has promised him, Don Quixote hoping to win the newly-disenchanted Dulcinea. Along their journey they meet a variety of people - some they help, some they are hindered by, and some who just want to have a good laugh at their expense.

The second-biggest of my Chunkster Challenge reads, this was a mammoth undertaking: nine-hundred-plus pages that turned slowly thanks to seventeenth-century prolixity. But while it could be tedious at times, it could also be a lot of fun. Clownish Sancho and the delusional Don are unlikely people to go about rescuing the world’s unfortunates, and they fail at least as often as they succeed. It’s intended as a satire upon the chivalric romances of previous centuries, but you don’t need to be acquainted with them to appreciate the parody. The closest I’ve come to Don Quixote’s preferred literary fare is looking at a massive library copy of one volume of Orlando Furioso and noting with amusement that it still hadn’t been checked out. After reading Don Quixote, I have a pretty good idea of the kinds of magical intervention and improbable feats they contained. I do wonder, though; did the old tales feature romantic troubles miraculously resolved, with rakish nobles suddenly reforming and vowing to be good husbands? Or was that not part of the satire but an eye-roll-inducing flaw?

The high point came early, when the shepherdess Marcella - decried as cruel for remaining unmoved by the pleas of her many suitors - delivers them all a fabulous set-down, proclaiming that she os her own person, and no amount of devotion should oblige a woman to feel anything in return. Unfortunately the book was marred by some very lowbrow stabs at humour and sheer long-windedness. Some days it took force of will to get through more than twenty pages, particularly toward the end, when the Don and Sancho were enjoying the dubious hospitality of the Duke and Duchess (i.e. being made the butts of numerous and elaborate jokes). I felt the entire episode dragged on far too long, and that the lengths they went to for ‘fun’ verging on cruel. Yet I’m glad that I have now read the novel that gave the English language such things as quixotic, Lothario, and tilting at windmills.

Rating: B-

Now reading: The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (888C)

Book Review: The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne

2008 TBR Challenge #6

In the eyes of the Puritan settlement of Boston, Hester Prynne stands doubly condemned - first for bearing a child out of wedlock, then for refusing to name her partner in sin. She is sentenced to wear a scarlet letter A upon her dress, marking her as an adulteress for as long as she remains in the town. Hester retires with her daughter Pearl to a forest cottage, and in time her needlework and her charity gain her a measure of acceptance.

With all but one person. The physician known as Roger Chillingworth has seen what no-one else has: the identity of Pearl’s father. And he has reasons of his own for wanting to stamp out any chance at contentment that Hester or her lover might try to take.

For the time in which it was written. this is a remarkable book; focussing on a ‘fallen’ woman without condemning her, but rather the Puritan regime which judged her so harshly. Hester is a very sympathetic character, and I loved seeing the attitudes of the towspeople toward her change as they saw the quality of her conduct under the burden of the scarlet letter. Chillingworth’s motives were soon obvious,, but he still made an effective . . . well, I guess you could say villain. Certainly his presence was a malevolent one, although he scarcely did anything; it was psychological villainy, in keeping with the nature of the rest of the book’s drama. If it was longer, it would have run the risk of being boring; and as it was, my mind didn’t lack opportunity to wander off and start comparing Pearl to the typical possessed child of the horror genre. (Not that she was possessed, merely unpredictable and to Hester’s imagination a little sinister.) I should confess here that I made it shorter than it is, by skipping the entire Introduction on Chris’s advice.

The slow pace I could live with, but some of the dialogue was more of a problem. There were moments when Pearl, though little more than a toddler, spoke just like an adult. Admittedly I’m no expert either on the seventeenth century or small children, but to me it sounded wrong. Still, it’s a book I definitely recommend.

Rating: B

Now reading: Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes (CC)
                                The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafón (888C)

Book Review: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

This first of a three-volume collection reproduces the original magazine publications of Conan Doyle’s stories from A Study in Scarlet to Holmes’s apparent death. (From which he had to be resurrected to appease the mourning public.) The cases range from murder to the most baffling of non-criminal mysteries, but they all share the unique methods of the detective. Nothing is too small for Sherlock Holmes to notice, and his deductive abilities leave both Watson and the police far behind.

The idea of reproducing the originals is an interesting one, but hard on the eyes; you need small type to fit two columns onto and ordinary-sized page. That inconvenience aside, I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to become acquainted with the great Sherlock Holmes at last (and with his brother Mycroft, last seen haunting Thursday Next). In a (very) few instances I was able to grasp the significance of clues before Holmes revealed his reasoning, but much of the time I was as at sea as the police. Everything made perfect sense once explained, even seemed obvious; and I’d love to be able to exercise such brainpower myself (but I suspect modern life has made picking up clues from appearance much more difficult that it was). The time period of the writing also makes itself felt with touches of Victorian melodrama; some stories have links to vengeful Mormons, the KKK, Indian jewels and Australian bushrangers. Despite the best efforts of his biographer Watson, Holmes does seem rather inhuman; just a vessel for that remarkable mind. But then, does anyone read these stories for the character development? It’s all about the deductions.

Rating: A-

Now reading: The Tomb of Agamemnon - Cathy Gere
                                Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes (CC)

Book Review: Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

2008 TBR Challenge #2

High society in the little village of Cranford is dominated by women; the gentlemen are apt to spend a lot of time away. The result is revealed by a frequent visitor to the village. She watches them all: efficient, managing Miss Jenkyns and her timid sister Miss Matty; patient Miss Jessie; and the rather high-and-mighty Mrs Jamieson, and the rest. And over the years she accompanies them on such adventures as Cranford has to offer, from deaths, marriages and bankruptcies to burglars, magicians and even a headless ghost.

The most noticeable characteristic of Cranford is its near-total lack of plot. There are some threads that span more than one chapter, but essentially it is a series of events sharing location and narrator and separated by indeterminate periods of time. Yet it works beautifully. Miss Mary Smith’s sharp observations bring the town and its residents to memorable life (Mrs Jamieson’s horror at the egalitarian ways of her titled relation particularly sticks in my mind). The chronology was hard to pin down and I soon gave up trying to work out how much time had passed between one chapter and the next. And I came to decide that it didn’t much matter; Cranford seemed a place where things carried on in their own way, without being much influenced by outside events. It has a character and charm all its own and is well worth a visit.

Rating: A-

Now reading: Britain A.D. - Francis Pryor
                                Sophie’s Choice - William Styron (TBRC)
                                The Bourne Supremacy - Robert Ludlum

Book Review: A Doll's House and other plays by Henrik Ibsen

In A Doll’s House, perhaps the most famous - and at the time, most scandalous - of Ibsen’s plays - the doll is Nora Helmer. Indulged by her husband, who treats her as a decorative and none-to-bright ornament, she has concerns which he knows nothing about. When scandal threatens the family, the doll finally decides to think for - and of - herself. The League of Youth is a political comedy in which the charismatic Stensgard throws himself into local political manoeuvring, beginning with the founding of the League. But before the campaigning can get underway, the characters end up at increasingly tangled cross-purposes. And in The Lady from the Sea, a mystery form as the past comes back to haunt Ellida Wangel, who grew up on an island and cannot bear to be far from the ocean.

As it turned out, the plays appeared in the book in reverse order of preference. First was The League of Youth - more politics! I can’t think, offhand, of any author who’s managed to make politics interesting, and Ibsen was no exception. The more farcical aspects of the plot were amusing, but it’s telling that I had to check the book to remind myself of the main character’ s name. A Doll’s House won me over by the end with a fine appeal to my feminist instincts, but it took me a while to warm up to it. Yes, Torvald Helmer was a bit of a jerk who treated his wife like a child; but she let him do it and happily played along with his infantilisation of her. She also struck me as silly and spendthrift, and even though she found a backbone I still had doubts about her ability to survive on her own. My favourite was The Lady from the Sea. I like a bit of a mystery, although this one didn’t end the way I thought it would (I think I’ve read too many ghost stories).

Rating: B

Now reading: The Man Who Knew Too Much - G. K. Chesterton
                                Marley & Me - John Grogan
                                Rescuing Rose - Isabel Wolff

Book Review: The Woodlanders by Thomas Hardy

To repair an old wrong, George Melbury had long determined that his daughter Grace should marry his neighbour Winterbourne’s son. To make the gift as valuable as possible he gives her the best education he can afford. He sees his error, however, when at last she returns home more fitted for life in a large town than the obscure village of Little Hintock, and is caught between his old vow and his ideas of what’s best for Grace. She is content to do whatever is wished of her, though Giles Winterbourne is as much in love with her as ever. When the disaster that has long been looming over Giles falls, Melbury sees a way out in the form of local doctor Edred Fitzpiers. The actions of various characters - Melbury, Grace, Giles, Fitzpiers, Mrs Charmond, Marty South - all intersect in such a way as to ensure that happiness seems without the reach of all.

I think I would have liked this book better if I had liked the heroine better. Caught between two classes, she could have been interesting as she tried to reconcile her own wishes with those of her father. But Grace didn’t seem to have much by way of wishes and was largely content to do whatever was thought right. And such opinions as she did have were terribly prone to vacillation and never agreed with circumstances. Finally, a few of her bad decisions stuffed the ending for me even though with Hardy disappointment for all was pretty well assured from the start.

That’s not to say I didn’t like it; I did, even if I preferred Marty South to Grace Melbury. The village of Little Hintock was surrounded and insulated by the forest, which came to life on the page, without seeming claustrophobic. Other places were mentioned, and even seen, but it was hard to imagine that they could have anything to do with Little Hintock, which seemed a cosy world unto itself. Fitzpiers was well-drawn, as befits a character originally intended to have been the title one. As it is he remains central - it is his presence and actions that precipitate the events of the book - but it is the natives of Little Hintock who form the heart of the story. As such the ending is fitting, leaving those who remain to get on with their lives after Fitzpiers’s disruption. Not a happy ending, but one that carries a sense of inevitability thanks to the intricate interweaving of people and events, cause and effect which is the best thing about the book.

Rating: B

Now reading: The Man Who Knew Too Much - G. K. Chesterton
                                Marley & Me - John Grogan
                                Rescuing Rose - Isabel Wolff

Book Review: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

2007 TBR Challenge #12

When Lucy Graham makes the leap from village governess to Lady Audley, her future seems secure. Her new husband dotes on her (even if her stepdaughter doesn’t) and as mistress of Audley Court she has all the fine things she could want. But her angelic facade hides a secret, one that could bring her new life crashing down around her ears. Her indolent nephew Robert doesn’t look like much of a threat, but the right motivation can work wonders. Her maid seems devoted, but has other, more pressing concerns. And the biggest, least expected danger of all is perilously close to arriving on her doorstep.

Whatever you expect a Victorian ‘novel of sensation’ to contain, you’ll probably find it here. Attempted murder, secret passageways, blackmail, abandoned children, family estrangement, false identities, madness, burglary, lies and deceptions galore . . . and that’s just off the top of my head. It doesn’t take a great deal of imagination to work out what Lady Audley’s secret is; the mystery is how and why she pulled it off and whether Robert will uncover the truth. And be able to prove it. There was also the question of what happened to George Talboys. The disappearance - apparently with a perfectly good explanation - of a friend he’d only recently encountered after years apart seemed not quite sufficient to spur someone of such inertia into such prodigious action. I only really accepted his actions after he abandoned the notion of quitting solely to stop George’s sister investigating by herself.

In some ways it’s reminiscent of The Woman in White, though from what I recall of Collins’s book, lighter on the detective story and heavier on the melodrama. But if you can overlook the frequent flights of descriptive fancy, it’s entertaining, especially when the mystery deepens and Lady Audley begins to fight back. I’m not sure about the ending, though; I still can’t decide whether she was telling the truth, but her fate was the best possible outcome for all concerned. Either way, she’s an intriguing character. The only woman in the book to outwardly conform to the Victorian ideal of decorative sweetness and light (as opposed to tomboyish Alicia, cold Phoebe and strong-willed Clara), she is the furthest removed from anoyne’s ideal and perhaps the biggest schemer since Becky Sharp - but much less likeable.

Rating: B

Now reading: The Man Who Knew Too Much - G. K. Chesterton
                                Marley & Me - John Grogan
                                Rescuing Rose - Isabel Wolff

Book Review: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Young New York lawyer Newland Archer is about to do his duty to family and society by making a suitable marriage. The bride-to-be is May Welland, beautiful but sheltered and kept as ignorant as possible of the ways of the world. Then the careful ordering of the high-society world of the Archers and Wellnads is upset by the arrival of May’s cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska. She has deserted her husband and now plans on making it official with a divorce. But such a scandal is unthinkable to her family, and they prevail upon Archer to talk her out of such a rash course of action. Much better, to them, to live discreetly apart. He agrees, and soon falls for his fiancee’s older, worldly cousin, and begins to wonder whether the approved choice of bride was the right one after all.

I procrastinated over writing this review before my exams because I was having a hard time thinking of a single thing to say. More than a month and a half later, I’m not faring much better. I can’t sat that it was bad, but . . . can I say it was good? Hmm . . . there were things I liked about it, such as the touches of dry humour and the fact that Newland Archer recognised, and pondered, the double standard regarding pre-marital behaviour for men and for women. Apart from that, there wasn’t really anything I liked about him . . . not that I disliked him, either. May at first seemed too sheltered to be at all interesting but then showed her calculating side; while it was nice to see her show a bit of character, I didn’t like her scheming. Ellen was conventionally unconventional, and the other characters had faded from memory so much that I had to refer back to the book before writing. (And I still can’t think of anything to write about them.) I do recall that, thanks to all the intermarriage, a lot of them had other people’s surnames as their first names, which created a little confusion.

As for the May-Ellen dilemma, it was clear what Archer would end up doing, and what the result would be: a life of neither happiness nor regret but merely dull contentment. A sentiment which applies rather well to the reading of this book. As a mildly satirical picture of a particular segment of a particular society, it worked okay. In terms of plot and character, it was mostly forgettable.

Rating: C

Now reading: Doomsday Book - Connie Willis
                                The Constant Princess - Philippa Gregory
                                Lady Audley’s Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Book Review: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

Book to Movie Challenge #2

At the age of ten, Fanny Price is taken from her impoverished, overcrowded Portsmouth home to live at Mansfield Park under the care of her aunts, Lady Bertram and Mrs. Norris. Painfully shy, her attempt to settle in isnt’t helped by her being overshadowed by her more outgoing cousins, Maria and Julia, or her Aunt Norris’s efforts to make sure she doesn’t get ideas above her station. While she is being groomed for a lifelong role as companion to her Aunt Bertram, the one thing that makes life at Mansfield pleasant is the kindness of her cousin Edmund. By the time she’s seventeen Fanny does have hopes above her station, in spite of all Aunt Norris can do to put her in her place, but her dreams of marrying Edmund seem further away than ever when the Crawfords arrive in the neighbourhood. The dashing Henry flirts indiscriminately with both the Bertram sisters, even the engaged Maria, while Edmund falls for his sister Mary. Unfortunately for him, the lovely Miss Crawford is unwilling to give up material pleasures to marry a clergyman who will never be rich or keep a house in town. In the end, Fanny’s reservations about the pair are proved correct as scandal and heartbreak descend on Mansfield.

I’ve been puzzling for days over what to write about this book. Like many Austen fans, I’m going to have to list it as my least favourite of her works. Fanny Price is unspirited, mousy, easily tired, and unable to enter into the fun and frivolity shared by most of her cousins. In fact, she is generally disapproving of said fun, and I had to remind myself of the mores of the time to appreciate her reasons. I did admire her adherence to her principles during the ill-fated amateur theatricals (even if it was motivated as much by shyness as by morals) but I never really warmed to her, or Edmund. I didn’t entirely believe in the happy ending, either; while they were a well-matched couple. bound to share a comfortable, respectable, and rather dull life together, he was still longing for Mary Crawford within twenty pages of the end. Although Austen cleverly left it up to the reader to decide how long it took for him to marry Fanny instead, I couldn’t help thinking, ‘rebound!’

The most interesting characters were the Crawfords; it was hard to decide whether they were as calculating as they sometimes seemed or just thoughtless. (I was in one of the computer labs at uni last week, and saw the title page of a business presentation on an unattended screen - authored by Mary Crawford. Since Austen’s Mary was a bit of a gold-digger, I’m guessing the real one’s parents weren’t familiar with Mansfield Park.) I was glad to see Aunt Norris get her just deserts at the end, but at the same time wished it could have happened after Fanny’s sister came to Mansfield; Susan would probably have been a match for her and I would have enjoyed seeing how the two of them put up with each other.

I have seen the film version of this, but it was a while ago so my memory’s a bit hazy. I do remember it being somehwat modernised; in the movie the scandalous couple were caught in flagrante, whereas in the book they simply ran off together. Unfortunately a favourite quote from the film - the foolish Mr Rushworth inviting people to his recently landscaped estate to see the new ruins - turned out to be a screenwriter’s invention. Another invention was Fanny’s fondness for writing; they actually used some of Austen’s early writing as hers. Beyond those few points all I can remember is an enjoyable movie; and being Austen, the book is enjoyable too, even if it is more serious and less sparkling than her other works.

Rating: B

Now reading: My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier (RIP2C)
                                The Code Book - Simon Singh

Book Review: Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott

More than a century after the Battle of Hastings, the Saxons and the Normans still aren’t getting along. In Yorkshire things aren’t improved by the meddling of Prince John, who takes it upon himself to find an advantageous, Norman husband for the Saxon princess Rowena. This is not at all to the liking of her guardian Cedric, a proud Saxon who wants nothing to do with the invaders - and to marry his ward to Athelstane, another descendant of Saxon royalty, in the hope that the two together will form a powerful figurehead for a Saxon rebellion. So determined is Cedric, in fact, that he disinherited his own son when that young man began to entertain hopes of marriage to Rowena, and to acquire Norman ways. Now he’s back from the Crusades in the guise of the Knight of Ivanhoe, and his reappearance sparks a collision of the various plans that are afoot. John’s plot to usurp his brother’s throne; Cedric’s schemes of rebellion; Maurice de Bracy’s plan to seize Rowena for himself and Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert’s similar designs on the Jewess Rebecca: all come together in a castle siege, which will only be lifted with help from some unexpected quarters.

I finished this book a week ago and have been mulling over it ever since, trying to work out what to say (and, yes, catching up on my backlog - still). It’s the first book I’ve read by Scott and I will be on the lookout for more. The various schemes all intersected neatly and the action could be quite thrilling. The cast of characters was enormous, and while there were moments when I had to pause to remind myself of just who someone was, other were wonderfully memorable. Like Athelstane, a descendant of Ethelred the Unready, who inherited his ancestor’s nickname due to the length of time it took him to make up his mind about anything - except if there was food involved. And I loved Rebecca: smart, courageous, principled, and the antithesis of the wilting damsel in distress. Plus any novel the features Robin Hood and company is bound to be fun; I had to laugh at Friar Tuck protesting too much over the fine victuals that just happened to be in his hermitage.

But it’s not perfect. The dialogue tended toward the archaic and could be challenging to read. The character of Isaac, Rebecca’s father, was funny for a while, with his dithering and the way his wealth varied according to who he was talking to, but he quickly began irritating me. I wished he’s just stop whining and put a sock in it. And one thing that bugged me all the way through was the negativity with which the Jews were regarded by most of the other characters. It wasn’t universal, and it was historically accurate, but I still found it hard to tolerate for long periods at a time.

Rating: B-
A not-so-modern phenomenon: I had thought that authors writing sequels to other people’s books was a relatively recent invention, but not so: Thackeray continued Scott’s tale to incorporate the ending he thought it should have had.
What’s in a name?: I have to admit to being a trifle horrified when I discovered that Ivanhoe had been christened Wilfred. Wilfred? No doubt a decent enough name in the twelfth century, but these days it doesn’t exactly say ‘dashing hero’, does it?

Now reading: Sentimental Murder - John Brewer
                                The Silmarillion - J.R.R. Tolkien (TBRC)
                                Three Comedies - Ben Jonson
                                Nocturnes - John Connolly (RIP2C)

Book Review: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

As Miss Brodie never fails to remind her students, she has reached the prime of her life. And she is determined that, before they transfer from the Junior school to the Senior, they shall receive all the benefit of it. So while the girls dutifully hold their history or mathematics books open in front of them, Miss Brodie prattles on about everything from skin care to her admiration for the organisational abilities of Mussolini. This doesn’t sit well with the powers that be at the Marcia Blaine School for Girls, who have noticed that the ‘Brodie set’ are well-informed generally but largely useless academically. And being the 1930s, her opinion of continental dictators and her entanglement with the singing master incur even more disapproval. But it is Miss Brodie herself who inadvertently engineers her downfall, when she attempts to use one of her old girls as a proxy to achieve what she cannot. Only then does the headmistress finally persuade one of Miss Brodie’s girls to betray her.

Jean Brodie, with her name-dropping and peculiar obsessions, is a memorable character, but I can’t say the same for most of the others. It’s been less than a fortnight since I read it (I’m quite backlogged), but even though they were enjoyable at the time many of them are blurring in my memory and I can’t even remember all their names. But then, there wasn’t much time to get to know them; it’s a very short book that I read in a single day. It felt short, too; there was quite a bit of repetition so the actual content was really even less than its one hundred and something pages. (Even the review is short; I find myself uncharacteristically lost for book-related words.) There was a bit of a mystery surrounding the identity of the girl who betrayed her which kept me turning the pages, but when it was revealed it wasn’t overmuch of a surprise. The biggest question, for me, was whether eleven- and twelve-year-old girls would be as preoccupied with sex as the Brodie set were. Then I remembered certain girls I went to primary school with and realised that yes, they would.

Rating: B-
A record?: I think this may be the shortest review I’ve written yet.
Favourite bit: The way the art master’s portraits always seemed to reflect something of Miss Brodie.

Now reading: The Thieves’ Opera - Lucy Moore
                                The French Lieutenant’s Woman - John Fowles
                                The Shape-Changer’s Wife - Sharon Shinn (RIP2C)

Book Review: Daisy Miller and other stories by Henry James

First in Switzerland, then in Italy, Mr. Winterbourne meets fellow American Miss Annie ‘Daisy’ Miller and her family. He vacillates between being attracted by her outgoing chatter and being repelled by it. Sometimes he believes it to be a sign of innocence, other times he suspects it as proof of ill-breeding or worse. Certainly her indiscriminate striking-up of friendships with porters and fortune-hunters is viewed by polite society as a mark of someone not fit to associate with. Winterbourne’s best efforts to make her understand why people are snubbing her come to nothing, and Daisy’s refusal to change her ways leads to tragedy.

Accompanying the quite brief (especially by James’s standards) Daisy Miller are three even shorter pieces. Longstaff’s Marriage chronicles the unexpected effects of unrequited love; Four Meetings describes exactly what the title suggests and manages to tell a character’s whole story in the process; and Benvolio is the tale of a young man who cannot reconcile the two sides of his nature.

Henry James in short story form is easier to read than Henry James in a novel, although he does revert to his customary long-windedness in Benvolio. That was the collection’s weakest link, with even the narrator admitting that the title character could get a little tiresome. The three preceding tales more than compensated; highly readable with interesting, well-observed characters. And if the endings weren’t happy, they were fitting. The conclusion to Daisy Miller in particular had an air of inevitability; something had to go wrong, and sure enough it did. That story was a vivid depiction of how people and their actions can be misinterpreted, and what can happen when the holders of opposing views stubbornly cling on to them. But I still wanted to reach through the pages to give Daisy a good prod and wake her up a bit; she could not - or would not - see how other people might misread her behaviour. (Honey, it’s the Victorian era; reputation is everything.)

Of the ‘other stories’, my favourite was Longstaff’s Marriage, despite its being a little improbable even for the notoriously sentimantal Victorians; I liked the bookish spinster who narrated it. Come to think of it, I generally do like bookish spinsters - and I am not going to infer anything from that!

Rating: B
Happy endings: . . . has James ever written one? Or, for that matter, a strong-willed female protagonist who hasn’t been brought down by fate or man?
The right ending?: After reading Four Meetings, I had a very good idea as to the Countess’s identity - but was it the one James intended his readers to have? Or am I just reading too much into a certain phrase?

Now reading: The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera (ATC)
                                In Cold Blood - Truman Capote

Book Review: My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin

Armchair Traveller Challenge #1

Thanks to her father’s misplaced ambition, Sybylla Melvyn is reduced from the relative comforts of Bruggabrong to the harsh life of Possum Gully. Instead of owning three stations, the family now has one property, and that one poor and drought-ravaged. Her lofty, independent spirit rankles under the daily drudgery; her mind is filled with music, literature, and world events, things far above her current place in life. Her obvious disinclination for her new, hard life causes her mother to constantly berate her for her uselessness, and remind her of her unfitness for any of the careers a woman in the 1890s could pursue. For Sybylla, this is just one more burden to bear; for she knows that she is cursed with an ugliness of form and temperament that will leave her forever unloved and alone.

Her apparent salvation arrives when her grandmother offers to take in one of the children. With the drought and her father’s increasing drunkeness, her mother had already stated that Sybylla should relieve the family of her presence. At Caddagat she has all the things she dreamed of; books to read, a piano to play, green lawns, ease and comfort, and relatives who don’t condemn her as useless. There she meets the wealthy owner of the neighbouring station of Five-Bob Downs. As much as she likes Harold Beecham, she is determined to knock some of the conceit out of him, to pay him back for toying with her by pretending to care for her. By the time she succeeds she has learned, through her mother’s continued hostility, that there are worse things in life than Possum Gully, and her unloveable spirit proves to be a curse indeed.

I decided to start the Armchair Traveller Reading Challenge at home; I figured it qualified because it’s set in the country and it’s been years since I’ve set foot out of the city. And the setting was the highlight of the book; I could really picture the people and the places which Sybylla encountered. The characters were also vivid and the writing style was lively and engaging. Sybylla’s narration of her story brought her to life and I’m sure she will prove one of the more memorable characters I’ve encountered. She is quite unconventional, and by the final page her story is just as much so.

Yet it was this remarkable character that made the book fall a little flat, and dragged it down from what I initially thought would be an A. She is utterly convinced of her own unloveableness and nothing anyone can say or do will change her mind. She can’t muster any belief in herself, even when doing so could have enabled her to seize a golden opportunity. Her negativity got quite wearying and I wanted to shake her. But at the same time, I could understand, for Sybylla is a lot like me. Which was half the problem; I read to escape, which doesn’t work too well when the book contains a character who reflects so much of the worst of myself. In another way, though, it was a benefit; even if I didn’t much care for the way it ended, I knew that it was the only outcome possible, for I knew what the result would be if she took the alternative. She would have been forever waiting for it all to come crashing down, as would I. And perhaps having seen the effect Sybylla has on me will make me more mindful of the effect I must have on others.

Despite this it is a wonderful book, for the portrait it paints of a place and time, and the extraordinary fact that it was written by a girl of sixteen.

Rating: B+
Nothing changes: Sybylla writes that if people really want to know what drought is, they should see Goulburn; and until recently you could have said the exact same thing.
Worst of the lot: Of all Sybylla’s wretched farm chores, the one I’d least like to do would have to be liftng cows. I don’t expect the cows would be very co-operative.

Now reading: The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
                                Madame Bovary, C’est Moi! - Andre Bernard

Book Review: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Newly-minted solicitor Jonathan Harker is sent by his employer to Transylvania to conclude some house-purchasing business with a foreign nobleman. Count Dracula seems like an ideal host: welcoming, hospitable, snd geniunely interested in everything his guest can tell him about England; but he gives Jonathan the creeps. He never eats, drinks, or appears by daylight; he has neither mirrors nor servants; he delivers strange warnings and has a peculiar reaction to the sight of blood . . . Soon Jonathan realises that he’s literally imprisoned in a nightmare from which his only escape could well be death - if not at the hands (or teeth) of Dracula, then at those of the castle’s other residents.

In Whitby, Mina Murray is becoming increasingly worried. Her fiancé is missing somewhere in Eastern Europe, and her friend Lucy Westenra is behaving oddly. From bubbling over with news of receiving three proposals in one day and of her impending wedding, she has become vaguely anxious and has resumed her childhood habit of sleepwalking. Things get worse after a violent storm and the accompanying arrival of a Russian ship occupied only by a large dog and a dead captain. The dog disappears, and soon so does Lucy, whom Mina discovers in the churchyard across the bay with a tall dark figure bending over her . . . After this latest sleepwalking misadventure, Lucy goes into a decline. Her rejected suitor Dr John Seward - director of a lunatic asylum which contains a most unusual patient - sends for his old mentor. Van Helsing diagnoses the problem at once, but fate seems to be against his efforts to save Lucy from death - or from something worse.

By the time Mina has retrieved Jonathan from Buda-Pesth and settled into life as Mrs Harker, Van Helsing has recognised the extent of the threat facing the capital and its ‘teeming millions’. He recruits the Harkers and the three friends who all loved Lucy to help him rid the world of the monster. But Dracula is cunning; he attacks his hunters in a way they never expected and flees the country and it will take a dash across Europe in the face of mortal and spiritual peril to stop him.

Last summer I discovered how fun it can be to amuse myself and freak out my mother by reading ghost stories during power outages; and I originally intended to save Dracula for the same purpose if I didn’t get round to reading it during the Banned Book Challenge. But the temptation was too much to resist and I’m glad I caved; reading this by lantern-light in a dark and silent house would have been altogether too atmospheric. There were several moments where, had the story been on the screen and not the page, I would have been peeking through my fingers. (Which is a completely nonsensical reaction, but I do it anyway.) The chilling effect is heightened by the novel’s being composed of journals, letters, newspaper articles, telegrams, and one very eerie ship’s log. Since the only person who really knows what’s going on - Van Helsing - is operating on a need-to-know basis, the other narrators, and hence the reader, remain largely in the dark as to what’s coming next and just what Dracula is capable of. Previous vampire experience is unlikely to help, as Stoker’s creations are different things from the Undead of Anne Rice, Laurell K Hamilton, or Joss Whedon. Having read or watched all three, part of the fun came from comparing the abilities and characteristics of the various vamps. I don’t want to give anything away, but at least one common vampire preconception will fall. There are some quite gruesome moments, too; you don’t want to discover, like I did, exactly what the lunatic Renfield was up to while eating dinner. It was enough to put a damper on even my appetite.

There are a couple of other small flaws. You never find out just how Jonathan managed to get from Castle Dracula to the nearby town of Bistritz; I can ony assume that Dracula decided to keep his word. And you do need to accept a hefty string of coincidences: Dracula’s first target on reaching England just happens to be the friend of the fianceé of the poor bloke he just terrified half out of his wits, and her three suitors are all friends, one of whom just happens to live next door to Dracula’s London home and be acquainted with Van Helsing, one of the presumably very few people who could realise what was going on. But by the time this arises, you’re already some distance into the novel and Jonathan’s journal has gotten you hooked. That’s another way in which the alternating first-person viewpoints are so effective; they put you right inside the minds of characters who are having a harrowing time of it. My favourite of all was Mina; from her first appearance it was clear that she was eminently capable, yet being a Victorian novel I expected that the men would find a way to set her aside out of harm’s way and face Dracula without her. And sure enough, they did - then quickly realised what a mistake they’d made. Good thing, too, as it was her intelligence that enabled them to find Dracula at all. She was there to the end, revolver in hand, and showed enormous courage to get there; and she’ll remain one of my favourite characters and this one of my favourite books.

Rating: A
I couldn’t resist: Yes, this was an absolutely fangtastic read!
The real historian: Having read The Historian and now this, I shall have to remember to look for a non-fiction book about the ‘historical’ Dracula

Now reading: Journal to Stella - Jonathan Swift (NF5C)

Book Review: Persuasion by Jane Austen

At the age of nineteen, Anne Elliot became engaged to Frederick Wentworth, a sailor with neither family nor fortune. Her friend Lady Russell was horrified, and persuaded Anne that such a match was beneath a baronet’s daughter. Anne did her duty and broke it off; and the thought that the secret nature of the relationship would prevent any embarrassment consoled her, even if nothing else did. Eight years later she has settled into the quiet life of a spinster; overlooked by her father and her elder sister, and obliged to receive all the complaints of the younger, with Lady Russell remaining her one true friend. Then her father’s extravagant lifestyle catches up with him, and he is forced to let Kellynch Hall and remove with his single daughters to Bath (where even a mere baronet can be of some consequence). As luck would have it, the new tenants are Admiral and Mrs Croft - sister and brother-in-law of the now-Captain Wentworth. And since Anne stays for some time in the area as a guest of her sister Mary and Mary’s in-laws, the Musgroves, it isn’t long before she and her former fiancé meet once more. The past eight years have seen Captain Wentworth make his fortune, but now that he is an eligible suitor for a baronet’s daughter, he concentrates his attentions on the Musgrove sisters Henrietta and Louisa and seems scarcely to notice Anne at all.

She meanwhile attracts the notice of her cousin - and her father’s heir - William Elliot. For years he wanted nothing to do with the family, yet now he is eager for a reconciliation, and perhaps a wedding as well. She puts up with him out of politeness but has no intention of accepting any proposal from him, for she knows that there is only one man she could ever marry. At Uppercross, at Lyme, and at Bath, she watches for any sign that he might still care for her, or at least have forgiven her.

It’s so long since I’ve read this book that, except for a few little bits I remembered of the movie, it was like reading it for the first time. I’m sure I enjoyed it the first time around, and I just adored it the second. Anne is wonderful; I know what it’s like to be forever ignored (though not a home, fortunately) and admired her grace under neglect. And while I don’t know what it’s like to lose someone and then - maybe - get a second chance, I wholeheartedly believed that, yes, that’s exactly what someone in that situation would think and feel. She knows that she has no reason to hope, and she tries not to do so. Yet she can’t help watching him to see if he’s looking at her and listening for any word from him. And who wouldn’t do the same? The side plots always kept me interested - a good thing since Anne and Frederick’s reconciliation naturally takes some time to get going - and were filled with likeable characters, as well as some not so pleasant. The revelation of Mr. Elliot’s motivations in seeking out his uncle left me impressed by how little human nature has changed in the last couple of centuries and hoping that his plans would come to naught. Another thing I liked was that Lady Russell, the instrument of the break-up, was never portrayed as any kind of villain but simply someone who made an error of judgement; an error later rectified when she saw Wentworth’s value , and how her assumptions had misled her.

This being Jane Austen, there was plenty of humour and poking fun at the society of the time. Much of this is directed at Anne’s relatives; her father and elder sister Elizabeth and their determination to maintain the style dictated by the title, Mary and her family using Anne as the recipient of their contradictory grumbles, and the Musgrove sisters developing a sudden passion for all things naval with the arrival of Captain Wentworth. Speaking of whom . . . he remained something of a mystery for a lot of the book, as even when he was present his interaction with Anne was minimal. But that was more than compensated for by the letter than he wrote her when he knew she still loved him. *Sigh* . . .

Rating: A+
Top of the list: When we finally get together the money for a DVD player - the video rental places having long ceased renting videos - I’ll be heading straight for the Ps to refresh my memory of the film version.
How long?: I can’t even remember when I last read this, it’s that long ago. Isn’t that tragic?

Now reading: 1984 - George Orwell (BBC)
                                Blood and Gold - Anne Rice (TBRC)
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