Warlight and The Witch Elm

I blame the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Really.

After the last few weeks of focusing on the Senate Judiciary Committee and their Supreme Court confirmation hearings I was just not in the mood to read a novel in which a white youth can't be bothered to see the world through anybody else's eyes.  I definitely wasn't in the mood to read TWO novels with that kind of protagonist.

Warlight, by Michael Ondaatje, and The Witch Elm by Tana French, are two novels that couldn't be more different.  Warlight is the story of a boy growing up in post-World War II London.  His parents leave he and his sister for a year, ostensibly to travel to the other side of the world due to his father's job.  The people that they are left with are unusual to say the least and it becomes clear very soon that the parents have lied to the children and there is more going on than meets the eye.

The Witch Elm is a crime novel in which the protagonist is beaten to a pulp in the first fifty pages by two burglars, causing a loss of memory.  This becomes important when skeletal remains are found and the protagonist can't remember details that might lead to the discovery of who killed the victim.

But despite their differences, they seemed to have basically the same premise.  The male protagonist  is so self-centered that he spends his youth oblivious to what is going on around him.  In Warlight, Nathaniel can't even be bothered to know the real names of the adults who are ostensibly in charge of him.   Ostensibly he can't remember them years later because he was so traumatized by his youth. 

Oh c'mon.

In The Witch Elm, Toby remembers his teen years at school as being a pleasant time where people occasionally play pranks on each other.  He is shocked to learn, years later, that others have memories of bullying and sexual assault.   HE doesn't remember that.

Oh c'mon. 

I rapidly lost interest in both of these characters.  I found myself utterly bored by Nathaniel's story.   But it's a short novel so I finished it.  I was annoyed by Toby and his white male privilege from the first few pages of The Witch Elm and rapidly found that I didn't care what happened to him.   I kept reading because, up until now, I have loved Tana French's books.  It never improved.  I was never shocked (or even surprised).  Even her writing style in this novel annoyed me - far too much exposition.

So all in all, I didn't care for either book and I can't recommend either one.  Especially after the last few weeks and the Senate Judiciary Committee.  

Transcription by Kate Atkinson

The thing about time is that it changes everything and nothing.  Juliet Armstrong, the main character in Kate Atkinson's new novel Transcription, considers this as she dies.  Juliet is hit by a car while crossing a street in 1981 after a Shostakovich. In her dying moments, she remembers attending the 1942 premier of the Shostakovich Leningrad Symphony at the Royal Albert Hall while World War II was being fought:

The Russians had been their enemies and then they were their allies, and then they were enemies again.  The Germans the same -- the great enemy, the worst of all of them, and now they were our friends, one of the mainstays of Europe.  It was all such a waste of breath.  War and peace.  Peace and war.  It would go on forever without end. 

Atkinson opens the novel with Juliet's death in 1981.  But time in an Atkinson novel doesn't always run in a straightforward linear fashion.  Transcription is no different. We are immediately transported back to 1950, when not-quite-30 year-old Juliet is a producer of children's radio programming for the BBC, and then even further back to 1940 when a very young Juliet is recruited to work for MI5, Britain's domestic counter intelligence agency.

Juliet, still recovering from her mother's death, doesn't particularly like the man who interviews her for the MI5 job and doesn't seem to particularly care if she gets the job.  The answers she gives to many of his questions are out-and-out lies mostly because she doesn't think it is any of his business but partly because hiding the truth seems to come naturally to her.

Later she learned that Miles Merton (for that was his entire name) knew everything about her - more than she knew herself - including every lie and half-truth she told him at the interview. It didn't seem to matter. In fact, she suspected that it helped in some way.

Being able to lie with a straight face is a good talent for a spy, but at first Juliet is not given any spying duties.  Working for MI5 may sound exciting but Juliet's principal job is typing transcripts of meetings of "fifth columnists" - British citizens sympathetic to the Nazis - whom Juliet and her MI5 team refer to as the "neighbors." (The fifth columnists meet in a flat in Pimlico while MI5 is right next door listening to everything they say.) Juliet makes tea, cleans things and types.  She wants to do more.  She is also somewhat enamored of her boss, Perry Gibbons, whom everyone except Juliet seems to know is gay. The lynchpin of the operation is an MI5 operative named Godfrey Toby.   It is when 1950's Juliet runs into Godfrey Toby on a London street, and he pretends not to know her, that she begins to think back about that operation and her life during the war.  Then she receives a mysterious message warning her that she will "pay" for what she did.  What exactly did she do?

Atkinson has written an old fashioned spy novel, combined with a 1950's paranoid thriller all wrapped up in a post-modern novel. (Actually, not being an English major I have no idea if post-modernism is the correct term, but it seems right.) 

In some ways the novel is an homage to John Le Carre and his George Smiley novels.  Godfrey Toby even looks a bit like Smiley:

It was him, she knew it was him.  The same (somewhat portly) figure, the bland, owlish face, the tortoiseshell spectacles, the old trilby.

As George Smiley is breathtakingly ordinary, so is Godfrey Toby.

Juliet used to think that someone who seemed as ordinary as Godfrey Toby must be harboring a secret -- a thrilling past, a dreadful tragedy -- but as time had gone by she'd realized that being ordinary was his secret.  It was the best disguise of all really, wasn't it?  

In some ways, the novel reminded me a bit of the (unfortunately cancelled) BBC television show The Hour:  a bright, woman producer dealing with red tape and bureaucracy and sexism of the BBC during the paranoid 1950's.

But, as with all Atkinson novels, this novel is its own unique self and not a replica of anyone else's work. This is, as with Atkingson's other novels, a novel of ideas.  The "true self" is a theme of this novel.  Not just Juliet's true self but also the other people that Juliet encounters during her life.   In the 1950s Juliet thinks about this:

She fingered the strand of pearls at her neck.  Inside each pearl there was a little piece of grit.  That was the true self of the pearl, wasn't it?  The beauty of the pearl was just the poor oyster trying to protect itself.  From the grit.  From the truth. 

Also, as with other Atkinson novels, this is a novel about women and how they must deal with a world in which they must often hide their true selves.  Especially from their bosses, who are inevitably men.  Here, Juliet is listening to Perry, her boss, ramble on:

A girl could die of old age following a metaphor like this, Juliet thought. "Very nicely put, sir," she said.

Juliet is never what she seems and she constantly reminds herself that means no one else is what they seem.  She has a "long-held belief that appearances were invariably deceptive". 

In the 1940's Juliet is given the opportunity to take on false identities and actually be a "spy" for a short time as part of one of Perry Gibbons' operations.  As "Iris Carter-Jenkins" Juliet is asked to infiltrate a right wing group.  As "Madge Wilson" Juliet pretends to be a bereaved sister. Juliet is a natural at this but in the 1950's, looking back, she thinks that she has been "too many people"  and wonders about her true self:

And then there was Juliet Armstrong, of course, who some days seemed like the most fictitious of them all, despite being the "real" Juliet.  But then, what constituted real?  Wasn't everything, even this life itself, just a game of deception?

As a snapshot of life in two of Britain's oldest establishments (MI5 and the BBC) and a snapshot of life during the war and immediately after the war, this is a fascinating novel.  I did think, however, that the plot slightly got away from Atkinson at the very end..  

However, all in all, I greatly enjoyed this novel.  For me, the best parts (as with all Kate Atkinson novels) were the touches of humor that Atkinson brought to an otherwise serious story.  Juliet's private thoughts can be very funny.  For instance, here is  the first time that Juliet eats a lobster and is instructed to pull the legs off and suck out the meat:

Despite some reluctance, she followed his instructions.  After all, it seemed a shame to be boiled alive for nothing.

Or Atkinson's description of the miniature schnauzer, Lily, when one of the MI5 bosses informs Juliet that the dog is to be looked after by Juliet until her owner returns:

The dog, which had been gazing uneasily up at Oliver Alleyne, now turned its attention to Juliet. She hadn't realized that a dog could look doubtful.

Any Kate Atkinson novel is to be savored for the writing and this one is no different. 

January 2018 Reading

I miss doing a monthly summary of all that I've read so I thought I would try it again.  We'll see how long this lasts.

Here's what I read in January:

The Medicus Mystery Series by Ruth Downie.  I spent the early part of the New Year catching up on all the Ruth Downie Medicus mysteries.  About  year ago I read her first book in the series, simply entitled Medicus.  Since I am a big fan of Lindsey Davis' Roman mysteries I thought I might like it.  I did, but it took me a while to get back to them.  Finally I loaded up on the rest of them through the beginning of January and filled the very cold nights reading away.  There are now seven published novels with the eighth coming this year.  Although they are Roman, most of the action takes place in Brittania where Gaius Petreius Ruso is a doctor to the Roman legions.  Ruso is from the south of Gaul (France) and has joined up to make some money to pay off the debts left by his deceased father and to escape his ex-wife. Two of the books move out of Brittania, one into Gaul and one into Rome, but Downie constantly returns her hero to Brittania, specifically the area up near the border with Sccotland where the "barbarians" live.  Hadrian is building his wall during this time.  Her books seem well researched, her main character is appealing, the other characters are interesting and  it is a time period I'm interested in.  She does particularly well writing a male character that thinks the way women assume that men think (I have no idea of course if they really think that way.)  She also allows him all the prejudices of his time and doesn't make him perfect.  While I think I like the Lindsey Davis books a bit better, this is a good series and I'll continue to read it as books come out.

Manhattan Beach by Jennifer Eagan. I'm not sure what to say about this.  Full disclosure, I wasn't wild about A Visit From the Goon Squad.  I liked this novel better.  It kept my interest through most of the story.  She created a very believable world.  The story includes graphic descriptions of what it was like to go down in a diving suit during WWII that I found difficult to read because they made me claustrophobic.  There was an entire section set on a merchant marine ship that I found fascinating.  But it felt like she didn't know how to end it so, she just ended it.  And a key part of the story is how one character avoids sure death - and I found it completely unbelievable.  All in all, I think Jennifer Egan is just not for me.

Niccolo Rising by Dorothy Dunnett.  This was a re-read.  Lots of people I follow on Twitter are reading this series so I decided to re-read it.  I'll probably write about the whole series when I finish the re-read (and there are eight novels).  Dunnett is one of my favorite authors.  I read this novel when it first came out and then re-read it before every succeeding novel in the series came out.  But I didn't re-read it after the end of the last novel and I find myself interpreting the story in light of what ultimately happens to all the characters eight novels from now.  

Do Not Become Alarmed by Maile Meloy

Two families are on a cruise down the coast of Central America.  They meet a family from Argentina on board.  As with most cruises, the ship puts in to port most days and there are options for excursions.  One day the mothers and kids decide to go zip lining in Costa Rica (although the country is never named) while the fathers go to play golf.  Disaster ensues. 

I have little tolerance for "children are in danger - and the parents are full of angst" novels because I mostly think it is a cheap trick to keep the reader turning the pages.  And this is that kind of novel.  So, if you like that kind of thing you might like this for a beach read.  If you don't, don't bother. 

A few thoughts.

There are six children ranging in age from about 5 to teenager.  Two are white, two are bi-racial and two are Argentinian.  All of these kids are wealthy.  There are also two other Latino children who become involved, both of whom are poor.  It was never completely clear to me why Meloy decided to create a bi-racial couple with children but I had a sneaking suspicion that it was so she could have bad things happen to the Latino children (but not the white children) and still have a defense that this wasn't racist.  But the fact is, the only kids to whom physically bad things happen are not the American kids.  This really bothered me.

A particularly bad thing happens to the 14 year old Argentinian girl.  Not a particularly surprising thing, given the circumstances; but a bad thing.  This kind of bad thing is never the victim's fault although people often blame the victim.  Meloy does pretty much everything to make it seem like it was her fault.  

The happy ending for one of the kids was resolved so easily with no apparent complications, which I found completely unbelievable.   Maybe that's just because we're living in an age of such intense anti-immigration feeling.  But I think it was unbelievable even before the last year. 

A person I know who writes mystery novels once said that all the best novels rely on coincidences that aren't noticed.   I was distracted by all the coincidences in this novel. 

Finally, if you've ever read A High Wind in Jamaica you don't need to read this novel.   It was better and you've pretty much already been spoiled for plot twists. She isn't trying to pass anything off here; the book opens with a quote from that novel.  But basically this is a retelling of that story. It may be that Hughes' novel worked better for me because it mostly told the story about the children and didn't dwell on the psychological angst of the parents. 

House of Names by Colm Toibin

When I was a small child my father worked as a textbook editor at McGraw-Hill.  One of the perks of his job was that he could bring home samples of children's textbooks.  Programmed reading was the rage at the time: children working at their own pace, teaching themselves to read and checking their own work. My sisters and I had an entire set of programmed readers. 

The last, and most difficult, of the programmed readers drew on the Greek myths for their stories. These were the books that I read over and over.  As I grew older, I would search my public library branch for more stories of the ancient Greeks.  One of my favorites was a young adult novel, its name long-ago forgotten, about the Trojan War.  That book led me on a search for more stories of the men and women who populate the tales of the Trojan War:  Priam, Helen, Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas, Agamemnon.  Eventually I read the Iliad and the Odyssey.  And over the years I've seen productions of Greek tragedies and operas based on them.

I've never, as an adult, found a novel based on Greek myths or tales, especially tales related to the Trojan War, that has swept me away in the same way that I was swept away to ancient Greece as a child. But I always have hope. 

House of Names by Colm Toibin, is a retelling of the story of the fall of the House of Atreus.  As the story goes, Agamemnon, the supreme commander of the Greek armies during the ten-year long Trojan war, returns home after the fall of Troy and his wife, Clytemnestra, murders him.  In his bath.  It was beyond his comprehension, apparently, that she would be nursing a bitter rage toward him for sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia to the gods at the start of the war to insure favorable winds for the fleet.  The murder of their father of course screws with the minds of their remaining two children:  daughter Electra and son Orestes. Orestes, who stays away for years, eventually returns and murders his mother to avenge his father. 

Toibin retells this story from the point of view of Clytemnestra, Electra and Orestes, the novel being divided into parts that take the point of view of one specific character.  For the women, he takes a first person perspective.  For Orestes he takes a third person omniscient perspective.  The women are, of course, unreliable narrators although they are sure of their own perspectives.  We are no more sure of the story of Orestes, partly because he is portrayed not only as young but, frankly, as a little simple.

If you are, like me, a person who reads historical novels to be transported to another time and place this is probably not the novel for you.  Toibin's ancient Greece could be anywhere.  There is a lot of telling and not showing.   The story is, of course, horrifying.  His Iphegenia does not go calmly to her murder but struggles and screams.  There is blood and gore.   And the treatment of her mother is horrific.  It is easy to see why Clytemnestra plots revenge.  It also easy to understand how her other children are unable to understand the state of mind of their mother.  Orestes is too young to really understand what is going on and Electra is appalled that their mother would take a conniving cousin of their father's as her lover.  Clytemnestra, as is usual with adults, doesn't take the time to explain her motivations to her children.  And of course, there IS the lover. 

In the stories of ancient Greece the gods influence the actions of humans which is a hard concept for modern people to understand. Toibin dispenses with the problem of the gods by having Clytemnestra reject all religion.  Which is a bit too easy since presumably religion was an important part of life in ancient Greece.  Orestes is too young to worry about the gods and Electra, well Electra is (as usual) the most difficult to relate to whether there are gods or not.  

His style in the first section (Clytemnestra's version of the murder of Iphinegia) is spare, I assume because he is trying to evoke a translation of ancient Greek?  The parts of the story about Orestes are the easiest to read, with the third person style.  But the landscape and peoples he encounters could be ancient Britain or Ireland as much as ancient Greece.  Toibin explains Orestes' long absence by creating a kidnapping situation from which he and two other boys escape.  The other two boys ended up being, for me, far more interesting than Orestes.

One of the more distracting parts of the novel for me was figuring out the passage of time.  The Trojan War lasted 10 years but in this re-telling it feels as if Agamemnon is gone for only a relatively short time.  And there isn't really a reference to the Trojan conflict.  For all any reader of this novel would know, Agamemnon was simply gone on a war of conquest.  There is no mention of the concept that Helen was abducted much less that she existed much less that she was Agamemnon's sister-in-law much less that she was the sister of Clytemnestra.  In the original tales, Orestes is gone a long time, enough time to grow to manhood.   But again, it feels as if he is gone only a few years.   Electra never seems to age in this story. 

But the real problem for my was that, by the end of the novel, I found that I didn't really care what happened to any of them.  

Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

The age of Hamilton (the hit musical, not the man) is spawning a new interest in eighteenth century America, something that seemed impossible just a few years ago.  Characters sporting powdered hair, breeches and tri-corner hats are no longer assumed to be beyond the understanding of today's audiences, but are understood to harbor the same emotions and flaws that one might find among one's own neighbors.  Or at least on any modern cable television drama. 

Francis Spufford sets his novel, Golden Hill:  A Novel of Old New York, thirty years before the infamous declaration written in Philadelphia.  On November 1, 1746, a mysterious traveler from London named Richard Smith arrives in New York harbor bound for the firm of Lovell & Company on Golden Hill Street.  Smith presents a bill of exchange drawn upon Lovell & Company for a thousand pounds sterling payable 60 days after presentment - a fortune in that day and age.  During the 60 days that the mysterious Mr. Smith waits for his money, he refuses to tell a soul why he has come to New York, where he came by this fortune or what he will use the funds for, thus commencing much speculation by the denizens of this small city as to his background and his intentions.  Is he a spy?  Is he a representative of one of the ministries of government?  Is he an actor? A Saracen conjurer?  An agent of the French?  Or is he simply a fraud and a scoundrel?

Solving the mystery of Smith and his fortune is not so much the plot of the novel, as an excuse to give us a picture of colonial New York. Eighteenth century New York is as much a character in this novel as any of the human characters.  This is a New York that no longer exists. Indeed it had disappeared by the early nineteenth century, mostly destroyed by war and fire. Not the metropolis that it is today, it occupies only the lower tip of Manhattan island and was small by world standards.  As Spufford points out in his Author's Note, in 1746 the city of New York had a population of only seven thousand while London, the largest city in Europe, had seven hundred thousand.  It is, in fact, a small town compared to London.  And in a small town it is difficult to keep secrets or, indeed, to have a private life. Mr. Smith finds that, within 24 hours of his arriving, "the news was all around the town that a stranger had arrived with a fortune in his pocket."

The people of this colonial city are familiar and yet foreign to Mr. Smith.  He is astonished to discover on his first day in the city that the faces of women are not marked by the pox as they are in Europe. He also finds that New York does not stink as London does.  "A Scene of City-Life, his eyes reported. A Country-Walk, in a Seaside District, his nostrils counter argued. No smells; also, he realized, no beggars."  And the people were taller than he expected.  "He was used, in the piazza of Covent Garden, to stand taller by a head than the general crowd; but here, in the busy bobbing mass of heads, he was no taller than the average."

We explore the streets of old New York with Smith; they are not only described but they are named. Smith chases a thief from the tip of Manhattan up to the commons; he winds through the streets visiting every tavern and dive looking for a particular kind of investigator.  At one point, suspected of being a papist French spy, he is chased through the town by a drunken mob.  One recommendation to the publishers:  a map of Old New York would have been useful to those of us who are not native and could not follow the street by street descriptions in our minds. 

One of the joys of this novel is its depiction of commerce in eighteenth century America and specifically how the shortage of real money (coin money) made transactions difficult. Mr. Smith discovers this when he tries to convert some gold guineas into smaller change in the local currency:

Lovell accordingly began to count out a pile of creased and folded slips next to the silver, some printed black and some printed red and some brown, like the despoiled pages of a prayerbook, only of varying shapes and sizes; some limp and torn; some leathery with grease; some marked only with dirty letterpress and others bearing coats-of-arms, whales spouting, shooting stars, feathers, leaves, savages; all of which he laid down with the rapidity of a card dealer, licking his fingers for the better passage of it all.

"Wait a minute," said Mr. Smith.  "What's this?"

"You don't know our money, sir?" said the clerk.  "They didn't tell you we use notes, specie being so scarce, this side?"

"No," said Smith.

The pile grew.

"Fourpence Connecticut, eightpence Rhode Island," murmured Lovell. "Two shilling Rhode Island, eighteenpence Jersey, one shilling Jersey, eighteenpence Philadelphia, one shilling Maryland ..."

It makes one appreciate the banking genius of Alexander Hamilton after the revolution. But Alexander Hamilton is not yet born, much less arrived in New York to attend Kings College (Columbia University).  Indeed there is no King's College yet.

As the title states, this is a novel of "Old New York" not a novel about the thirteen colonies or even about North America.  Except for one short errand up the Hudson, the action all takes place in lower Manhattan.  There are no visits to the larger city of Philadelphia or up to Boston.  There is almost no discussion of the other colonies.  There is, in fact, little discussion of the vast continent that lies across the Hudson River. At one point someone points out to Smith that New York is crowded with transient persons - they disembark from ships and then leave, the continent "devouring" them.  But Smith is remarkably incurious about the continent, only once or twice reflecting on its vastness. When native Americans are mentioned, it is generally in connection with the war with the French.  And not one native American seems to be residing in New York during Mr. Smith's time there; or at least he never encounters one. 

 

This is a novel about how normal New York would seem to a Londoner, while at the same time remaining foreign. The people are in some ways more patriotic than Londoners.  Smith is constantly surprised by the fervor with which the people support, and toast, King George II.  But at the same time they are obsessed with the idea of liberty.  The City is in the midst of an ideological battle between adherents of the Assembly, led by chief judge DeLancey ("a massive and statuesque Roman head, finely modeled at ear and nose, like a slightly depraved but very intelligent emperor"), and Governor Clinton ("with a peanut-shaped brow and an anxious expression letting down the blue and gold of his coat").  The Assembly adherents are strongly protective of their sole right over the purse strings; the Governor is desperate for a budget.

War with France is on the minds of the people of New York.  They are bothered by the idea that they are alone on the other side of the Atlantic to fight the French (and papist) enemy on their border. But they are also outraged that the Governor has sent a regiment into upstate New York and expects New York to support them.  In fact the Assembly has not deigned to vote any money for support.  

But this political background is not really the point.  The point is that, while it is a British colony, New York is also different than Britain.  News from Europe about the waging of the war in Europe arrives slowly and late.  Even the name of the war is foreign to Mr. Smith.  King George's war, the local people call it. "We call all our wars, here, by the names of monarchs; as, King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's."  Smith again remarks that they are quite the royalists in New York.  It  turns out that Smith's assumption that New York does not have its own dangers, political and otherwise, is what gets him into trouble time and again.

For all the New Yorkers' talk of liberty, Smith is constantly aware that some in the City are not at liberty.  Enslaved black people populate the City.  They seem to be almost invisible to the white population and yet they are everywhere, carrying on the work that the upper classes don't want to do.  Smith and the narrator are always aware of them, whether they have names like Achilles, a slave of the Governor's staff, and Zephyra, who acts as a sort of chaperone and maid for the Lovell daughters, or the unnamed black musician who plays at a dinner party given by the Lovells. 

And others, while more at liberty than slaves, still find themselves fettered by society.  This is not a society in which open homosexuality is tolerated.  And women are not as free as men to follow their desires.  When women do act on their impulses, society spurns them.

 

For a time it isn't clear whether Spufford is simply trying to do a better job than most white male writers at accurately representing the diversity of a society or whether there is a method to this inclusiveness.  Eventually it becomes clear that all of this diversity is a necessary component of his plot, which is both a delight and a relief.  

In form, this novel walks a line between imitating the style of an eighteenth century author and making it readable to modern eyes.  Not being well versed in the novels of Fielding and other novelists of the time, I can't say if he successfully captures their style.  It was a relief that after the first few paragraphs, he seemed to move into a more modern mode.  A small part of the novel is epistolary and while I generally love epistolary novels, I thought that was the weakest part of the novel although it became clear why the author felt it was necessary.

Most of the novel uses an omniscient narrator who does sometimes break the fourth wall and address the audience in humorous ways.  At one point the narrator admits that the description of a duel had to be researched in a book as the author had no experience of sword fighting and another time the narrator simply gives up on the attempt to describe the rules of a card game.  One of the best moments in the novel is when the omniscient narrator grows bored (or embarrassed) describing a sex scene from the point of view of a male character and suddenly suggests that we look at it from the point of view of the woman, going on to give a perceptive but humorous description. 

There is a romance of sorts in the novel.  The characters, familiar with Shakespeare, compare themselves to Beatrice and Benedick but allow that they aren't really very much like them.  In fact, the play that is never mentioned but seems to be the model for part of the novel is The Taming of the Shrew.  A wealthy man with two daughters.  One, the younger, is lovely and docile and has suitors.  The older may be lovely but is a shrew that no one wants to marry.  Perhaps the newly arrived stranger in town will take her off their hands?  

Shakespeare's Kate is a fascinating and yet frustrating character.  Each actress must make her own artistic decisions about Kate's motivation as Shakespeare never really explains her . And of course she is cured or "tamed"in the end,  the moral seemingly being that whether you are a shrew or not is a choice made solely by the individual.  The cage is of your own making.  Spufford makes it more interesting.  Is the cage of your own making?  Or is it made by society?  Or does it exist because of a part of your nature you can't change?  Or is it some combination? In the end, this is the question that readers will be debating in their own minds (or with friends) after they put down this novel.  

Spufford has now won the Desmond Elliott prize for debut novels as well as the Costa award for first novels (he has written other nonfiction books, but never a novel) as well as the Ondaatje award for books with a sense of place.  With such a striking debut, I look forward to more from his pen in the future.

August Reading

Looking back at August, I almost can't believe how many books I read.  Of course part of the time I was on vacation with lots of time to read.  The sad thing is that, years ago, I always read at this pace.  But the last few years my reading pace has slowed considerably.  But this year, once I got on a roll on vacation, I kept going.  Of course, a lot of my reading was genre (mystery) reading which I enjoy but find easy to fly through.  I can finish a book in a night if it is genre.

Here goes:

Phryne Fisher Mysteries by Kerry Greenwood.  Yes, this series was on my list for July but I finished the rest of the series in August.  I really enjoy these mysteries.  Phryne doesn't take crap from anyone and is a thoroughly modern woman (for the 1920s and even for today).  In the later books I found some of the "skills" that Phryne has a little eye-rolling - it's almost like she is a female James Bond.  But it wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying them.  I look forward to her next adventure.   Recommended

Four Tana French Books:   The Secret Place; Faithful Place; Broken Harbor and The Likeness.   I began reading Tana French last month, starting with her first novel In the Woods.   The books are a series but unlike other crime novel series, she hasn't created a detective who solves all the crimes.   In the first novel our point of view character was a homicide detective in Dublin and we met his partner and other homicide cops.  The second novel is from the point of view of the partner, who is approached by her former boss from the undercover division for a job.  The third novel is from the point of view of the undercover detective and the fourth novel is from the point of view of a homicide detective we met in the third novel.  Her mysteries are good but it really her character development that makes these novels so wonderful.  These aren't light reading and yet they are page turners.  Highly Recommended.

Four Francis Brody Novels:  Dying in the Wool; A Medal for Murder; Murder in the Afternoon; and Woman Unknown.    After finishing Phryne Fisher I decided to look for another series set in the 1920's Post Great-War world.  Brody created an amateur detective, Kate Shackleton, whose husband was declared missing in action in the Great War.  A suburban widow who doesn't want to admit she is a widow, she assists people in finding loved ones lost in the War.  Then someone asks her to solve a real mystery and things get interesting.  I enjoyed these books. Recommended

Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis.   Lindsey Davis is one of my favorite mystery writers.  Her novels are set during the first century AD in Ancient Rome.  This new series features a woman detective, Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of long-time Davis detective Marcus Didius Falco.  These days Flavia is all grown up and a widow.  I always like Davis' depiction of the Rome of yesterday and I've always liked her characters.  It took a couple of novels for her to settle in with Flavia Albia as her main character but with this novel she hit her stride.  Recommended. 

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson.  A "companion novel" to her wonderful novel Life After Life, this is the story of Ursula's brother Teddy who died (or not) in the first novel.  In this novel, he survives World War II - not an easy feat for a flyer.  The story moves back and forth in time between Teddy as a post-war survivor trying to figure out what to do now that he's survived and Teddy during the war when he was sure that he was going to eventually die.  I really liked this novel - although not as much as Life After Life.  Mostly because Life After Life was so unique.  My book club read this book and no one else liked it.  So maybe I'm an outlier.  Highly Recommended.

The Daisy Dalrymple Series by Carola Dunn.   After finishing Brody's Kate Shackleton series I again decided to look for a series set in the 1920's.  The Honorable Daisy Dalrymple has a title but no money.  Her father's estate was entailed.  With the death of her brother during the War followed by the death of her father in the influenza epidemic, a distant cousin inherited the title and the estate.  Rather than live with her mother in the Dower House (and listen to her mother complain about everything) Daisy decides to support herself.  She moves into a house with a school friend/photographer and convinces a magazine that her title will gain her entree into great country houses so that she can then write articles about them.  Unfortunately for Daisy, everywhere she goes she finds a dead body.  Carola Dunn has a sense of humor about this and how unlikely this would be.  In the first novel Daisy meets Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher and the two team up to solve mysteries - somewhat reluctantly on Alec's part.  I'm almost finished with this 22 book series - which seems hard to believe but the first 15 novels or so are pretty short, less than 200 pages each.  I'm enjoying them.   Recommended