The Correspondent

 The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

An elegantly written story told in letters sent to and from Mrs. Sybil Van Antwerp, a well-spoken, sometimes prickly lady in her senior years. She writes letters every day to any number of people: her brother, friends, strangers, officials with whom she doesn't agree, authors with her thoughts on their books, and anyone else with whom she wants to share an opinion. She writes regularly to one unnamed person whose letters she keeps in a desk drawer and never mails.

 Sybil can be stubborn and judgemental, qualities which have hurt people over the years and driven some away. She carries the pain of a long ago action, or rather inaction, that did great harm, something she has never told another soul but which has cast a shadow over all her days and affected every relationship in her life. With age, and through letters sent and received, she little by little comes to see where she has been wrong, and in time is able to begin to make amends and seek forgiveness. 

 Sybil can be frustrating but I came to respect and admire her so much I can now call her one of my favourite fictional characters. I'll want to read the book again to spend more time in her company and enjoy her beautifully written letters.

This is a story about the mistakes we make and the suffering they cause, the giving and receiving of forgiveness and grace, and the finding of peace after years in the storm. And besides all that, there's a very entertaining romantic storyline as two quite different gentlemen come courting. 

 I loved it - the story, the characters, the writing, and the excellent narrating of the audio version by Maggi-Meg Reed. 

This is a treasure of a book.

Standing in the Rainbow

 Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg

Fannie Flagg has been on my radar for a while, but the only one of hers I've read was A Redbird Christmas and, sadly, I found it not very memorable. Still, something made me want to try one more and this was available at my local library so here we are. 

It's almost 500 pages long, about 150 pages longer than my interest lasted. It centers around Dorothy and Doc (Robert) Smith, Doc's mother (referred to Mother Smith) and the Smith children Anna Lee and Bobby. They have a boarder - with no hotel in the town most people take in boarders - named Jimmy, and eventually they take in another, Betty Raye Oatman, a teenager who travels constantly with her gospel-singing family but longs for a more settled life.

Other characters include Anna Lee's friends, Norma and Patsy Marie; Bobby's friend, Monroe; neighbour Beatrice Woods, a blind singer; Tot Whooton, a put-upon hairdresser whose mother is forever wandering off and needing rescuing; and Ham Sparks, a young entrepreneur who eventually marries Betty Raye and becomes Governor. His journey to that position seems unlikely, and when his term ends and he "runs" the completely inexperienced Betty Raye for Governor, it feels almost farcical.

 All these characters stories, over the almost five decades covered in the book, revolve around Dorothy's as she hosts a radio show, called The Neighbour Dorothy Program, from her living room. With Mother Smith on piano, she showcases singers, interviews people of interest, shares local news, and reads letters from her listeners. While she's busy with that, Doc runs a drug store and fills the townsfolk's prescriptions, Bobby indulges a sense of adventure that gets him into endless trouble, and Beatrice dreams of a different life than the one this town can offer her.

My interest in the plot waned when it stopped making sense, and in the characters when they stayed firmly on the page and never became quite real. It's a pleasant story about pleasant people in a pleasant place, but it doesn't offer much beyond that and it doesn't ask much of the reader other than to accept a few improbabilities. I wanted to like it and I feel sorry that I haven’t anything better to say about it.  

Trains and Lovers / Wintering

 Trains and Lovers by Alexander McCall Smith

Four strangers meet on a train traveling from Edinburgh to London, and after a few pleasantries begin to talk about the part trains have played in their lives and relationships.  

Andrew is a young Scot who tells them about viewing an old painting in which a train caught both his attention and that of his female colleague. David, a quiet American, sees two men saying good-bye at a station and remembers with sadness a long-ago love of his own.

Hugh, English, once disembarked at the wrong station, was instantly attracted to a complete stranger on the platform and invited her to have dinner with him that very evening. Kay, returning from a trip to her father's birthplace in Scotland, is herself Australian and tells them the story of her parents falling in love while running a railway siding in the Outback.

The stories are uneven in length, I think I'm remembering that correctly. Some of the travelers are more inclined to talk than others, though it isn't always clear if some of their words are directed at their seatmates or are simply their own private thoughts.  

Alexander McCall Smith is gifted at making ordinary things and people interesting and he does that well here. I've always enjoyed his writing and the authentic characters he creates. Trains and Lovers is a stand alone novel, but I think I'll get into one of his series before too long, maybe the Corduroy Mansions books.

Wintering by Katherine May

Wintering is a self-help book that encourages us to embrace our "winters", those times when difficulties disconnect us from our normal work/life busyness and leave us feeling on the outside of things. That's a positive goal, and I probably should have gotten more out of it than I did, but I just couldn't get into it. I found it repetitive in spots, and was bored when she overworked certain points. I pushed myself to finish it for book club, but didn't find much in the way of fresh insight or anything more in it than what we all learn from simply living. She can be funny and there are a few good stories in there, but it wasn't enough to save this one for me. 

The Bookshop on the Corner/Still Life/A Room of One's Own

The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Coglan 

A young woman loses her library job in England, buys a van or maybe a bus...it wasn't quite clear which, in Scotland, fills it with books and starts her own mobile bookshop. I'm not sure why it's called The Bookshop on the Corner. I thought she might eventually sell the van and settle in a permanent location but that didn't happen. Maybe she parked the bus on a corner and I just missed that detail. Anyway, she rents an apartment from a grouchy farmer she can't stand and then - no surprise - falls in love with him and he with her. This is the third one I've tried from this author and I know they are very popular, but I haven't enjoyed any of them so this will probably be my last one.

Still Life by Louise Penney

The first in the Inspector Gamache series of novels set in the village of Three Pines, Quebec, this mystery is about the murder of a local artist, Jane Neal. Her recently accepted entry in an art show is about to reveal something one desperate person does not want known. 

Characters include Clara Morrow, a frazzled but sincere woman who was Jane's good friend, and Peter, her detached husband; Ben Hadley, Peter's best friend since childhood; Ruth Zardo, an abrasive woman who long ago interfered with and changed the course of Jane's life; Olivier and Gabri, the easy-going couple who run the local Bistro; the Croft family, all proficient in the use of bows and arrows, the weapon that killed Jane; Myrna Landers, former psychologist now bookshop owner; Yolande Fontaine, Jane's uptight, pretentious niece; Police Inspector Gamache, wise and experienced; and Agents Beauvoir and Nichol, the latter of whom is new to the job, arrogant, and dis-inclined to follow her superior's orders.

Several of the characters are suspected in turn and with a number of red herrings it doesn't become clear who the murderer is till near the end, though I'm sure some readers will figure it out sooner than I did. 

With so many characters, there are a lot of stories to tell and clues appear to be everywhere. I found each page needed my full attention in order not to miss anything. I'm not an avid mystery fan nor a fan of long series, but I like the layered plot and the complicated characters, as well as the easy, intelligent writing style, so I will look forward to seeing where the story goes in book two: A Fatal Grace (also published as Dead Cold).

A Room of One's Own by Virginia Woolf

I read this extended essay again and liked it even better this time around. It was interesting to also be reading at the same time another essay, Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists? by Linda Nochlin. In Woolf's essay she asks us to consider why all the great, celebrated composers and writers of the past were men, when surely there were women born with equal talent. She doesn't accept the ridiculous argument that women simply lacked the intelligence to do anything great, and argues that women have always been more than capable but have never been given the freedom to work. They only need what men have always had - time, space, and money of their own to hone their gifts. 

When I first read the Nochlin essay I thought it was going to be more or less a rehash of Woolf's but found it presents a number of fresh ideas to consider and is very much its own essay. I found her writing a bit heavier going than Woolf's but both essays are important and well worth reading. 

The Lamplighters and The Rule of Four

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

This is a quietly creepy mystery about three lighthouse keepers who simply vanish in 1972. When a relief boat arrives they find the lighthouse empty, locked from the inside, all the clocks set to 8:45, and the table set for a meal. The weather log-book records a storm when there had been none. 

The story moves back and forth from uneasy lighthouse scenes where relationships are strained among the keepers, to two decades later when the keeper's wives, still bearing the emotional scars of the disappearance and resulting questions and accusations, are interviewed by a writer trying to find out what really happened to the men that day. 

This book was hard to put down. The author is adept at creating unease - between the men, and later among their wives - and of bringing the setting to life almost as a character itself. Dangerous waters, conflicting personalities, secrets kept by the wives for years, the pristine condition of the empty lighthouse, and the cover up by the lighthouse keeper's employer all add up to a deliciously tense mystery, making me resent anything taking me away from the book.   

Loosely based on a similar actual event in Scotland in 1900, an inscription says the book is written "in respectful memory" of that event but that these characters and their lives are purely fiction.

The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell

This is about a group of male friends and their adventures and misadventures in their senior year of college. One of them is writing his thesis on an ancient book called the Hypnerotomachia (a book that actually exists in the real world), a diary full of convoluted clues presumed to lead to a hidden treasure. It's all fun and excitement until someone is killed for what they know about the book and they begin to realize that continuing their quest will put them in serious danger. 

Though the mystery of the diary and the unraveling of the clues was compelling reading, I'm not a fan of boy's stories generally, and college seniors or not, these guys are still just boys in so many ways. I find their ill-considered escapades and bad decisions more tiring than entertaining. I want to yell at them - Life is too short...You'll want these years back some day...Don't sabotage your future! I'm probably too old, or have seen too many things go wrong, to be a good reader of adventure stories anymore, but it is an interesting literary mystery.   

The Curiosity

 The Curiosity by Stephen Kiernan

Kate Philo is in the arctic on a research boat collecting specimens for a private lab in Boston, where scientist Erastus Carthage is trying to re-animate dead things flash frozen in the ice. So far they've worked only on tiny crustations, managing to bring them back to life for just a few minutes before they succumb again. 

When they discover the body of a larger creature in the ice they think they might have a a seal, instead it turns out to be the body of Judge Jeremiah Rice who has been frozen there for over 100 years. After a few mad-scientist-type tries, they manage to bring him back to life and he begins to adjust to a world he barely recognizes. When Kate develops feelings for him, he is caught between caring for her and grieving for his beloved wife and children who, to his mind, he has only just lost.

What I liked: 

- The story. It was unusual and interesting to see what the process and repurcussions of re-animation were.

- The questions it raised. As an individual with rights and freedoms, how much control should the lab or any other entity have over where a re-animated human goes and what he does? Is he a free human being or is he a lab experiment, some scientist's project? Is it right to subject a person to reanimation without their previous consent? Whose responsibility is it to provide for him? 

 

What I didn't like:

- The obnoxious news reporter assigned to the project who saw Kate only as a body he'd like to investigate further. He was an old, tired cliche.

- Carthage, the scientist in charge of the project. Also a cliche, evil all the way through, all the time. Quite mad,

- The treatment of protestors who chanted and carried banners outside the lab, angry that anyone but God should try to create life. I'd like to have seen their concerns - some of which were valid - addressed instead of simply portraying them as an angry mob of crazy people.

The story had potential, and I did enjoy the reading of it, but a couple of almost ridiculously stereotypical characters and the missed opportunity to honestly examine important issues kept it from being great.