Death Comes To Pemberley & A Severed Wasp

 Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James

From what I've read, I understand this to be P.D. James' tribute to her favourite author, Jane Austen. It's a sequel to Pride and Prejudice, similar in style and language and using the same characters. 

At first I was happy to be back at Pemberley and among old friends, but then I began to notice that my friends were changed. They were saying things that didn't seem to suit the personalities I remembered, and the whole tone of the book was different. Austen wrote a book light in tone with a little bite in its good-natured sarcasm. In James' book the tone is more melancholy and there is little of the witty banter between the characters that made Pride and Prejudice sparkle. That one was called a "comedy of manners"; this one is a tradegy about a murder. It's also about an unfaithful husband, an illigitimate child, and a suicide, topics Miss Austen tended to stay away from.  

The story takes place 6 years after Elizabeth and Darcy were married and they are now residing at Pemberley with their 2 young sons and Darcy's sister, Georgiana. The night before their annual ball, all is thrown into confusion when Elizabeth's sister, Lydia, arrives in a panic saying that her husband, Wickham, has been murdered. If you've read Pride and Prejudice you may think that's not altogether bad news, but murder is murder and some of the men rush out to find him. When they do, he is alive and kneeling over the body of his comrade, Denny, weeping that it's his fault and that he has killed his very good friend. The rest of the story tells about the investigation into what happened and how, who the guilty party is, and the secrets the investigation reveals.

I'm sure it's not easy to write about previously established characters and keep them true to the original author's intent, but this one goes a little too far off track. "Elizabeth knew that she was not fomed for the sad contrivances of poverty" didn't feel like something Austen's Elizabeth would think or say. And when Darcy concluded "The price he had paid in bribing Wickham to marry Lydia had been the price of Elizabeth", it sounded nothing like his Austen character. He had intervened in that situation out of his feeling of responsibility, not to purchase Elizabeth's affection. And the suggestion that Elizabeth's affection could have been bought is not at all true to her character. 

I do enjoy P.D. James writing and this one wasn't bad as a murder mystery, but it messed with the characters too much for me.

A Severed Wasp by Madeleine L'Engle

Beautifully written, as expected, but with enough secrets and tragedy to fill a season of soap operas. The main character, Katherine, a retired concert pianist, returns home in retirement to give out more wise advice to others than any one person could or possibly, should. Though I knew I should like and admire her, she was a bit too stand-offish to get close to. I loved the setting (a cathedral in New York City), and all the art and music references, but the pace was slow and the plot a little too much to be believed. All that said, it's not a bad story and the good writing alone is probably reason enough to read this one.

Flowers of Darkness

 Flowers of Darkness by Tatiana De Rosnay

Clarissa, an aging writer, has left her husband after finding out he has a double life, a second home where he lives with....I'll leave that for you to find out. Clarissa (and I) are shocked and disgusted in equal proportions and she begins a new life while I try to erase icky images from my mind. 

The more interesting storyline begins when she moves into a building designed for artists - painters, poets, writers, etc. The building's corporate owners are intent on providing a place where creative people can create without worrying about mundane daily things. Set a few years in the future, advanced tech takes care all that. Clarissa has named her apartment's AI housekeeper/overseer Mrs. Dalloway. 

"Mrs. Dalloway, turn on the kettle. Mrs Dalloway complied. Clarissa left most household matters to her. The heating, air conditioner, alarm, shutters, lighting scheme, automatic cleaning system, and all sorts of other tasks were under Mrs. Dalloway's expert supervision."

Before long she begins to suspect that not only is she being watched and recorded, but also possibly being drugged. During an inexplicable, middle of the night fire drill, a neighbour, Jim, mentions his apprehensions about the building and they agree to meet away from home to share concerns. A few days later Jim is missing, his apartment is empty, and Clarissa knows for sure that something is very wrong here.

Despite the odd secondary story line about Clarissa's husband, this was quite a riveting book that I read (too) far into the night. These days I find almost any story about the use of advanced tech for less than ethical purposes interesting, but this one had a few twists and turns that turned it into a real page-turner toward the end. 

Alas, once you get to the end it just fizzles out. I was left with so many questions that I was sure it must be followed by a sequel, but no, it's a stand alone novel. So I don't know what happened to Jim, how Clarissa gets out of her contract with the building, how or where she's going to live now, or if there will be any legal consequences to the corporation.

It's a good story, but I do wish I had more answers.

The Guest Book

 The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

Three generations of the Milton family, at their summer place on Crockett's Island, Maine, view the world from a position of privilege with a set of particular standards and values. They believe themselves generally good people, open-minded and kind, and so they are on the surface, but a time is coming when they will have to face the darker things beneath.

The book addresses a lot of different issues: racism, antisemitism, homosexualism, elitism and probably a few other isms I'm forgetting. It also raises the issue of American-Nazi sympathizers leading up to the Second World War. It won't give you any answers but it will help you ask questions, which I think is what good fiction should do. Some reviewers have complained of the book tackling too many problems at once, but life is like that isn't it? Problems don't come one at a time no matter how much we wish they would. If it was a bit of a stretch to have it all affecting this one family at this particular time, it made for an interesting story and good reading. 

Kitty and Ogden Milton and their children are the first of three timelines; then Moss, Evelyn, and Joan, the now grown children, are the second; and the third is Evie, Joan's daughter, and Evie's son, Seth. The list of characters is long, with some from different generations having similar names, so when the narrative changed from one timeline to another within a chapter and without any warning, it left me momentarily confused, but it sorted itself out after a few lines. I found most of the characters believable, if not particularly relatable. Life in a summer mansion on a private island is not in my experience, but, again.....good reading.  

The book is long - 559 pages in my mass market paperback edition - but the story was good so the length wasn't an issue for me. The only thing that was an issue was the size of the book. Because it was small and thick, my aging hands found it hard to hold open and were relieved to come to the end of it. I should stop buying these smaller editions, but they are so much less expensive than the larger versions that I get excited about the bargain and forget about the hands. But back to the book...   

Sarah Blake is a good story-teller and a beautiful writer. Some lines I found myself reading and re-reading just for the pleasure of the words and phrasing:

"Soundless, the year wheeled round on its colors. Summer spun down green to gold to gray, then rested, rested white at the bottom of the year, rocking the dark of winter; rocking, then rolling slowly, wheeling up again through a dun brown, a mouse gray, until one day the green whisper, the lightest green. soft and growing into the next day, then the next until suddenly, impossibly, it was spring again."  

Another sentence that particularly appealed to me was "The sun burned with a bright fervor, dismissing the fog and sharpening the afternoon." I thought of how I might have written that sentence and couldn't come close to anything so lovely. "...sharpening the afternoon" changes the way I look at sunny days now. It really is wonderful how reading can help you see things in a new way.

One last quote: "...the piano threw the music into the cavernous room, the notes tossed high and shivering down between the couples, onto the hair of girls and the shoulders of the men. This was one of those nights everyone would remember, it was clear to her even from here in the dark, one of those nights that spring, glistening and electric, upward through the surface of ordinary days: We were here."  So beautifully written, all you can do is sigh and recall summer nights of your own.

 The Guest Book is a good story to get lost in for awhile, and that's always a good thing. 

The Murder at Sissingham Hall

 The Murder at Sissingham Hall by Clara Benson

A country house murder mystery, the first in the Angela Marchant series. When Charles Knox returns to England after 8 years away, he is invited to a gathering at the elegant home of his ex-fiance, the beautiful Rosamund, and her much older husband, Neville Strickland. There Charles gets re-aquainted with old friends and tries to get used to seeing Rosamund as nothing more than that. 

The occasional tension arises but the visit moves along fairly well until, two days in, he awakens to the household in an uproar. Neville has been found dead in his study, apparently from falling and hitting his head on the corner of the mantel. Of course it wasn't an accident and each character is now a suspect.

I love stories set in English manors - the beautiful rooms and grounds, the elegant, well spoken characters - who hasn't dreamed of a life like that? The trouble is, I feel like I've read this story several times before. Different manor, different character names, slightly different circumstances, but basically the same mystery. And like those other ones, once the case was solved the who, what, when, where, and how were dumped in one spot, this time going on so long that I nearly lost interest. 

Pleasant reading but too similar to others before it, and Angela Marchant, who the series is named for, seemed to be only a minor character. I suspect things might get more interesting as the series progresses.

How To Know a Person

 How to Know a Person by David Brooks

This is another audio book I wish I'd read in a paper edition. I did take notes but it's not the same as having a well-underlined book to refer back to, so this one goes on my lengthening list of hard copies to track down. They're readily available at full price of course, but where's the fun in that? I'll look for a good used copy simply because I enjoy the hunt. 

It was the subtitle that first got my attention: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Who doesn't want that? In a culture where we spend more time looking at screens than at people I wonder if anyone truly feels seen anymore. Brooks believes the greatest gift you can give someone is to make them feel seen, and with gentle wisdom and generosity of spirit he teaches us how to begin. 

He talks about Illuminators and Diminishers. Illuminators are easy to be around, people who look for the good in you, show affection, tolerate mistakes, and don't try to fit you into a category. They want to know you, to illuminate you - who you are. They see you as a unique creation, a deep well of experience and capabilities, a treasure to be discovered. Diminishers tend to keep the light on themselves, tell you their stories, their opinions, their experiences. They want to be known but show little interest in knowing you; they listen to your story, then one-up you with theirs. Instead of using the opportunity to ask about your story they redirect the conversation back to themselves and miss an opportunity to get to know you better.

He's not saying we are strictly one or the other; at times we are Illuminators and at others we are Diminishers. His goal is to help us become more illuminating and less diminishing so we can help the people we encounter feel more fully seen. 

I don't think anyone could read this book and not gain something from it. Highly recommended!

Catching Up

It's been a difficult month. My brother passed away at the end of March - an unsettling death after a challenging and complicated life - and though I've been reading, I haven't had the energy or the focus needed to write and post about the books. Having been through the loss of several family members you'd think I'd be used to the way the mind goes numb and leaves you trying to remember how to put one foot in front of the other, yet it still takes me by suprise.Time is suspended and everything seems to happen in slow motion. It's like wading through a substance thick and heavy, but invisible. Usually, when the arrangement-making and all the activity is finished and you're settling back into your regular daily life, time resumes its natural flow and you move on as best you can, but nothing seems normal yet. Moving on feels unnatural, unkind, and unfair, but today I'll make a small attempt at a start by writing at least a few words about each of the books I've read over the past few weeks...     

How to Read a Poem and Fall In Love with Poetry by Edward Hirsch

This wonderful book reminded me why I love poetry and introduced me to some poets with whose work I was unfamiliar. One of them is Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet whose plainspoken words pack an absolute punch to the gut every time I read them. I'm hoping to have a copy of her Map: Collected and Last Poems on my shelf soon. 

This book taught to read more slowly and attentively to find deeper meaning in poetry and prose alike. It's a book that will stay on my desk and that I expect to return to often for reference and inspiration.  

The City Where We Once Lived by Eric Barnes

This was a re-read that I loved as much this time as I did the first time, which you can read about here. This story gets to me in a way that few do: the main character's awful, unrelenting pain, the slow climb from bleak despair to hopefullness for him and for the city, and the blessed thought that no matter how bad circumstances get, human beings can still be human and connect and care about, and for, one another. It remains one of my favourite novels. 

Miss Hargreaves by Frank Baker

Another re-read, one I didn't enjoy as much the second time. I remembered it as having a lighter tone but on this reading found it to be quite serious, even dark at times, which can probably be put down to my own frame of mind at the time. Struggling with questions of life and death is apparently not the best condition under which to appreciate wry humour and irony. In less fraught circumstances I'd have received it differently, so I think it's best to stand by my original comments, found here.

Timeline by Michael Chrichton

A sci-fi book that takes you back to the 15th century and spends - for me - too much time there. A group of scientists and tech geniuses figure out a way to use quantum physics to travel to - not another time, but another dimension in which is it now another time. Splitting hairs, maybe, but I found the concept interesting. What I found a bit tedious was their all getting trapped in that other reality and taking a long time to get back. Their time there - then? - is filled with knights, sword fighting, and many frantic attempts to avoid being caught, all of which add up to a good Middle Ages adventure story for people who like those, but it isn't what I'm looking for in a sci-fi novel. Credit where credit is due, it gave me something to read that I didn't have to think too much about at a time when that was exactly what I needed. Michael Chrichton has done that for me a few times over the years with The Andromeda Strain, Sphere and Congo, so if you're looking for a page-turning escape from your own reality for awhile, this will probably do it.

Gentlmen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos 

I probably should have enjoyed this more than I did. It's meant to be comedic, but I was annoyed with the main character, Lorelei Lee, most of the time. She comes across as a bit of an airhead, but is, she insists, a woman of morals. She is also a master manipulator, charming men into giving her expensive clothes, jewels, trips, etc, and they let her manipulate them because she's a sexy blonde who looks good on their arms and strokes their vanity. Nothing is said about what they get from her in return for their extravagant gifts, but it seems the more obvious from not being stated outright. 

I finished the book unable to decide if she's really dumb, really smart, or some weird hybrid of both. In any case it seems to end happily enough for her, but this story of men and women using each other while pretending affection was more sad than funny to me. To be fair, this might not have been the best time to read it, but I liked it so little I can't imagine giving it another shot.