If you have never read anything by Harriet Simpson Arnow, you could not do better than starting where she did, with this, her first novel. I was prepaIf you have never read anything by Harriet Simpson Arnow, you could not do better than starting where she did, with this, her first novel. I was prepared for it to be less devastating and less perfect than The Dollmaker, but I need not have feared–it was flawless.
This is the story of Louisa Sheridan, a young girl who signs up for a 7-month stint teaching in a one-room schoolhouse in the Appalachian hills of Kentucky. Arnow knows these hills, she knows these people, and she understands the undertaking of teaching here, as she did that job herself. What she does with all that knowledge is weave a story that rings so true that you feel it is happening to you.
Her characters are presented with such finesse that you feel you know each of them, and she does it with the same scarcity of words that you would have gotten if you had walked into the hills in the 1930s and sat down at a kitchen table. As you would expect, there are secrets and troubles and a great deal of pride in such a remote community. Louisa does not always understand what is going on around her, but she comes to respect these people, the hard lives they lead, and the difficult choices they make.
Louisa had never been grateful for anything, but from Corie she learned gratefulness and thankfulness for all things: dry wood, rain when the spring was low, cold snaps that cured up colds and made a spell for killing hogs, sunshiny days, snowy days (they meant good crops), hard frozen bare ground for it was then that the children did not wet their feet or ruin their shoes.
Louisa learns a great deal from these people she has come to teach. She finds there is something lovely about them, something brilliant and joyful and yet haunting and sober; something that is missing in the civilised life she left behind. And there is a darker side that defines them just as surely as the sound of the fiddle and the old folk songs.
Chris’s laws were of the hill law, older than the modern mechanism of law, rooted in freedom and living in people rather than in books.
How marvelous that Arnow captured this time on paper and left it for us to time travel back into, insulated from its cruelties of poverty and place. I don’t think she has taken any great liberties with reality. I think you could have found these people, not so long ago, living and breathing.
If you want to read a truly fabulous review of this book, read this one by my friend, Lori:
Lizzie Greystock is a stunningly beautiful girl of little fortune who wishes to be important. She snags the illustrious Lord Florian Eustace, who convLizzie Greystock is a stunningly beautiful girl of little fortune who wishes to be important. She snags the illustrious Lord Florian Eustace, who conveniently dies, leaving her a widow with a small child and a considerable fortune. But Lizzie is greedy. She has in her possession the family jewels, a diamond necklace worth an astounding amount of money, and she refuses to relinquish the necklace to the family lawyer as part of the estate of her son. She insists the jewels were given to her by her husband and are hers alone.
The ensuing battle for the diamonds and the consequences that arise are the stuff of which this novel is made. There develops a mystery concerning the whereabouts of the necklace that is beautifully done, so that there is always a tension and a guessing game for the reader. Lizzie has a handsome cousin who is a member of Parliament but has much less money than is necessary for the life he is leading. Frank becomes another central figure in the developing plot, and at times it is like watching Cruella de Ville play with the puppies.
To be always acting a part rather than living her own life was to her everything.
Like so many of the other characters in this book, particularly the male ones, the reader finds it difficult to always dislike the lying, scheming, conniving Lady Eustace. There is just a tad of genuine pity one feels for anyone who has so much wealth and position conferred upon her, recognizes so little of her good fortune, and reaps such heaps of destruction upon herself and others. It would have been nice to have seen her in black and white, but color kept creeping in on me and I could not help feeling she was, in fact, fairly put upon by the men who often seemed nothing short of bullies. I came to hate the pompous family attorney, Mr. Camperdown, and to be against him was to be for Lizzie.
In contrast, we have the almost perfect, ever faithful Lucy Morris. Lucy is infinitely more likeable and absolutely less interesting. It is not difficult to see why Frank Greystock loves Lucy and yet cannot get his eyes or his mind off Lizzie. Lizzie’s money would save him, but the reader cannot help knowing that her immorality and her dishonesty would sink him. I spent a lot of this novel screaming “no� at our Frank.
I was completely enthralled with both Lizzie, the character, and her tale. We are never misled regarding her honor…she has none; we are made privy to her actions and thoughts, and none of them improve our view of her. However, don’t most of the people around her choose to be her dupes?
Of course she had lied to him and all the world. From the very commencement of his intimacy with her, he had known that she was a liar, and what else could he have expected but lies?
I think one of the most interesting aspects of this novel is how often Trollope proves to us that people believe what they wish to believe. Those who protest her innocence and those who condemn her as evil are equally wrong. She is both; she is neither....more
The Lighted Heart, written by Elizabeth Yates (McGreal), is a memoir of the days in her life when her husband, Bill, lost his eyesight and they both fThe Lighted Heart, written by Elizabeth Yates (McGreal), is a memoir of the days in her life when her husband, Bill, lost his eyesight and they both found a new and exciting life at a farm in the mountains of New England.
I sought out this book after a marvelous review by my friend, Terris. Much to my surprise, I found Yates was a well-known author of children’s books and a winner of the Newbery award. I’m sure her ability to paint visual pictures with words was one of her strengths in her writing, and I suspect much of that came from the necessity of painting them for her husband as his eyesight waned and then failed.
That night I made jelly, adding the jars of grape to the other jars on our cellar shelves. In the morning, when the sun came in through the small high cellar windows, it put a band of light along the shelves. The jars, with their different colored contents, shone–delicate pink of crabapple, rich red of blackberry, mellow gold of peach, dark blue of blueberry, wine purple of grape.
“They’re much more than color and taste,� I said to Bill. “They’re all the warmth and fun of summer, and the memory of long days lapped in light.�
Elizabeth and Bill took on the farm in New Hampshire in 1939 and the book, I believe, covers about the next fifteen years. It was published in 1960 and I found that Bill had died in 1963. That was sad, but how remarkable that the quality of his life never failed and that he added so much to the lives of so many others. Elizabeth died in 2001, at the age of 95. It was hard for me to imagine that she had survived so many years without him considering the amazingly close life they had shared.
Upon reading an observation she made after attending the marriage of a young friend, I could not help thinking that if anyone understood both the impact and sacredness of the wedding vow, it was Elizabeth Yates.
It looks so easy, this journey with another through life, for everything has been doubled–the dreams as well as the zest–and the direction seems sure and straight. But what if something happens to change the direction? What if “worse� looms larger than “better,� “sickness”becomes more than “health,� “poorer� takes over “richer�? From now on two are joined in a relationship with needs that deepen and grow. With it there is the promise made on a golden occasion and bound by a golden circle.
I could go on and on about this marvelous little book. I felt, when I had completed it, as if I had been extended a privilege in having been allowed to read it. There was a residual glow, as if I had spent time with a friend. It was a reminder that we do not choose our fate but we do choose how we deal with it; that a life that is harder and simpler is sometimes also better; and that what we get out of life is sometimes determined by what we put into it.
In my scouring for information on this wonderful woman, it has come to my attention that she wrote a three-volume autobiography later in her life. I am on a search for it....more
A fugue is a musical movement in which melodic lines run independently but also merge to create a harmony. In an amazingly adept and perfect way, RumeA fugue is a musical movement in which melodic lines run independently but also merge to create a harmony. In an amazingly adept and perfect way, Rumer Godden has created a fugue in her novel, telling individual stories, with individual voices, but layering them atop one another to show both the passage of time and the continuity of time, simultaneously.
Our main human character is Roland Ironmonger, an elderly retired soldier, who finds himself about to lose the lease on the family home the Ironmongers have occupied for the last one hundred years.
‘Even a little boy like you has a past, a present and a future. You were a baby, you are a boy, you will be a man.� ‘And then dust,� says Roly. ‘But I am always here, Lena. Like they say at school “Present.� I am always present so why not only one?�
I say he is our main “human� character, because the house itself is a character of the novel, holding the human history and echoing it back through shifts of past, present and future. Roland is Roly as a child, Rollo as a young man, and Rolls as an elderly gentleman, and his lives are lived concurrently through the auspices of the house.
In the house, the past is present.
It sounds complicated and strange, but it is done so skillfully that it is neither; it is seamless and natural. There are multiple symbols and themes: the plane tree outside the door that represents the family tree as well as the force that roots one to a specific place; the recurring number threes that recall to us the constant changing of time from past to present to future and back again; the chiming clocks that begin outside the house in the world at large and then narrow down to the chimes from the hallway, the bedrooms, the nursery, telling us that time is on the march whether it is acknowledged or not, and that it can be viewed from any given perspective, but it can never be reversed or life relived.
But � said Rolls looking at the picture. But I do remember, and I experience what happens; not only what happens when I was not there, but what was not there at all. What did not happen. What only might have been. Might have been. At the very words this new revivifying warmth crept into his veins again. He could not repress it. He had to let it come. The house is a repository of secrets, he excused himself. Then can’t mine repose here too?
It is these secrets, held by each of the characters, defining who they are behind the masks and roles they assume, that are revealed to us as the book progresses. Griselda, Selina, Rolls, Lark, Pelham, even Eye, are not exactly as they seem to the others, and the struggle is real for them between what they are expected to be, have been molded to be, and what they are.
It is a story about life, about loss, and about the nature of life itself. It begs the question of how much we are allowed to choose of the life we lead and how much is beyond our control. It is a story of generations, interactions and continuation beyond the self, through others.
Your death is a part of your life. Heads and tails on a coin that you spin every day; any day; not only this day. To be born and to live and to die is quite usual. Perfectly fair.
This book was so captivating for me that I stopped reading it two chapters in, went online and bought a Kindle copy so that I could mark the dozens of passages I wanted to preserve, and began it again. I have found in Rumer Godden another of those writers that I believe wrote just for me; one of those who speaks directly to my heart when she writes; one I want to share with the world and yet wonder if the world will be able to understand what I do when I read her words. I loved Greengage Summer and knew I wanted to read all she had written. This book exceeds Greengage Summer by miles. I am excited for what might lie ahead....more
Years ago I saw the movie, Charly, with Cliff Robertson. I thought, having seen the movie, that there was really no reason to read the book. I was wroYears ago I saw the movie, Charly, with Cliff Robertson. I thought, having seen the movie, that there was really no reason to read the book. I was wrong. What a poignant, sad and moving tale this is, told from the point of view of Charlie Gordon, who goes from retardation to genius and experiences the world from two completely different human conditions. That it is written in Charlie’s own words is inspired. As Charlie begins to understand things about his life and recover his memories, there is a kind of sadness that goes with the knowledge that is bittersweet.
I could not help thinking about the story in the news last week that Down’s Syndrome has been almost eradicated in Iceland through the use of abortion. I wondered if this book didn’t speak volumes about the dangers of wanting everyone to be perfect and how much we might be missing when we discount the value of those who have disabilities, physical or mental.
I am sorry I waited so long to read this, but I treasure the experience. This one will go right into my favorites folder.
Special thanks to Candi, who pushed me to read this wonderful book. ...more
There is an afterword in my edition of this novel, written by the daughter of Elizabeth Taylor, explaining why she feels this is Taylor’s most personaThere is an afterword in my edition of this novel, written by the daughter of Elizabeth Taylor, explaining why she feels this is Taylor’s most personal novel and detailing a few elements of true experience contained within. This novel was written as Taylor was dying. She knew she was dying. She fought hard to complete it before she did. That alone, her emphasis on being sure it was finished, tells you the importance she put in what she was trying to say.
Blaming is about loss, guilt, and responsibility–the responsibility we have one toward another as we go through life. As is the usual case with Taylor, it seems such a subtle and ordinary tale in so many ways. Amy, Nick, Martha…they are not extraordinary people, they are in many ways mundane, but Taylor seems to tell us repeatedly in her work that no individual is mundane, we simply fail to see beneath the surface and observe what is unique about them.
The interesting dynamic in this tale is between Amy and Martha, two women who are thrown together by circumstances, and who are seeking such different things from one another. Having recently become a widow, I felt Taylor excruciatingly accurate in painting what it is to lose a spouse, to navigate the way your own life changes, but also the manner in which it changes the way others see you.
But the worst of all was when she simply dreamed the truth � that she had lost him, came with relief from such a nightmare to realise bleakly that it was not. It was a bad way in which to face a day.
I found this passage particularly poignant, for it often still happens to me and I suspect it might be so for years and years into the future. Amy is speaking to Gareth, both of whom have lost spouses:
“Last night I was watching the telly, and I suddenly took it for granted that he was sitting there, too, in his chair; like old married things, we always sat in the same chairs� well, you also know that� and I turned to him. I almost saw the shape of him out of the corner of my eye. ‘What rubbish!� I said aloud, meaning the television. Can you imagine it?� “Yes.�
The title is both clever and telling. There is a lot of blaming that goes on in the novel. Thanks to the resident servant, Ernie, some of it is delightfully humorous. (This is another of Taylor’s skills–she treats depressing subjects, but she sprinkles humor in just the right places and in just the right amounts.) While Ernie's blaming is completely for others, most of the blaming here is self-directed and sadly justified, because we are all so self-absorbed and often downright selfish that we forget to be attentive to others, when perhaps we should.
Amy began to think that we all leave everything too late.
Perhaps this is what Taylor most wants to say. We leave it too late–all of us. There comes a moment when we will no longer be able to say or do what is generous, kind, thoughtful, or deserved; when we will regret our pettiness, our tendency to take things for granted, our selfishness–a time when we will have to live with the blame....more
I have become enamored of yet another almost forgotten female author, Dorothy Whipple. This remarkable novel will resonate with me for a long time, I I have become enamored of yet another almost forgotten female author, Dorothy Whipple. This remarkable novel will resonate with me for a long time, I am sure, as it embodies so much of what makes us individual and human.
When Penelope was caught out in a mispronunciation she laughed, but when Christine made a mistake, she blushed and felt humiliated. It was fortunate for her peace of mind that she did not know how many she made.
Does that not give you an immediate understanding of who these girls are?
At the heart of the novel is a home, Saunby, a priory converted into a private home at the time of Henry VIII (think Downton Abbey, but scale down) and now held by Major Francis Marwood, who inherited it from his father and has gradually allowed it to deteriorate and farm holdings to be sold. At the beginning of the novel, Marwood is living alone with his aging sister and his two daughters, aged eighteen and twenty, who still occupy “the nursery�, and struggling to pay his bills and sustain his lifestyle. He rations the electricity, but he spends unwarranted amounts on his annual Cricket match weekends.
But, things are about to change as Marwood decides he needs a housekeeper/organizer and marries a local spinster, Anthea, thinking she will help him economize without affecting his indulgences. The stage is set for upheaval and turmoil, but it comes in anything but the ways I had expected.
He stalked stiffly with Anthea hanging on his arm, and his daughters saw him from the nursery windows. They were so astonished that they watched the trio out of sight. Later in the morning they saw them again. Rain was blowing like the smoke over the scene when the trio passed on the skyline, this time in single file; the Major in front, Rough dodging at his heels, and Anthea behind, holding her hat on. “The start and the finish,� said Penelope. “Stories without words.�
Every time I tried to second-guess Whipple, I was wrong. She is so adept at sorting out human feelings and how differently each person reacts to the same stimuli, that she made me constantly nod my head in agreement with the twists I had not anticipated. She is also able to convey the complexities of individuals, so that just when you are beginning to admire someone, you see a flaw, and just when you are beginning to revile someone, you find a strength.
In addition to the family stories, there are parallel stories involving the staff at Saunby. These stories are just as interesting and captivating as those of the family, and there is no feeling at all that anything is superfluous or distracting from the main theme. And, of course, there is Saunby itself.
She saw for the first time that the history of Saunby was a sad one. It had been diverted from its purpose; it had been narrowed from a great purpose to a little one. It had been built for the service of God and the people; all people, but especially the poor. ‘And now it only serves us,� she thought.
On one last note, there is a running reference to a scarecrow that is so beautifully symbolic of one of the characters lives that it seemed divinely inspired to me. Ah, to write like this!
This is my second Whipple, but happily I have another already purchased and waiting on my Kindle. Now to get settled again so I can read!
When Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger bWhen Emmett Watson is given an early release from Salina, a juvenile prison, due to the death of his father, he has a plan. He will take his younger brother, Billy, and they will head for Texas and a new life. But, he hasn’t figured on Billy, who has a plan of his own to find their long lost mother, whom he believes is in California. His plan involves following The Lincoln Highway from their home in Nebraska to San Francisco, but there is almost an immediate wrench in the works with the arrival of two of Emmett’s fellow inmates who have escaped Salina. What ensues is a mad road trip and a lot of character revelation.
This book is a metaphor for life. Like life, you may plan the trip, think you know exactly where you are going and how to get there, in fact, plot it out neatly on a map, but it is not only unlikely, but impossible, that your plans will be followed, for life has a mind of its own. Just when you seem to be on track, life will throw you a detour, a roadblock, a missed turn or a side trip. What you will find, if you are perceptive, is that the journey is far more important than the destination, that what makes it worthwhile, or not, is usually the company you keep along the way, and one true friend to share your room in the Howard Johnsons is worth a suite of rooms in the Hilton alone. What you will also find is that you have your own destiny, with disappointment and heartache, and while you share the road with others, the choice for your future is yours alone.
Towles has created a cast of characters that are distinctive, believable, lovable and pitiable, but never dull. I find him to be the best of the modern writers, proving time and again that he can write about completely different subjects in equally enthralling ways. I count A Gentleman in Moscow and Rules of Civility among my favorite books. I wondered if he could do it again. I am not on the fence; I loved this book. ...more
I never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smilI never thought to read this novel because I know the story too well from watching the movie countless times. It is one of my favorites…that Luke smile that Paul Newman perfected, that vivid depiction of the cruelties of the chain gang, the proof that unmitigated power, even over criminals, is a bad thing. In fact, there is very little to separate the criminals from the guards in this book, which put me in mind of The Shawshank Redemption (another movie I have watched too, too many times.
Ah, but this is not a movie review, it is a book review, and this book is stupendous. The descriptions are riveting, you can hear those chains rattling, you can feel the sweat trickling off the brows of these men, and you can feel the stifling air in the box. I think the reason there is a great movie adaptation of this book is that Donn Pearce wrote a great book in the first place.
Luke is a petty criminal, sentenced to two years for decapitating a street full of parking meters while intoxicated. He is also a war hero. But the line between hero and criminal is very thin, and it may be that Luke deserves punishment for crimes other than those he is charged with. The crime he is not guilty of is thinking of himself as a hero. He knows he is flawed, but he also knows no one can take who he is away from him unless he lets them, and that sense of individuality is the source of all his troubles. You just know from the beginning that he is not going to do an easy two years and wave goodbye.
The characters here are strongly delineated and the plot line is tight and perfect. The descriptions of the environment are completely realistic, and you know Donn Pearce did not come to his understanding of this world through library research. He’s got some experience with incarceration, the nature of prison life, and the conventions that helped the men make it through days that must have seemed both endless and repetitive.
If you are one of the few people on this planet who has never seen the movie, I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you want a glimpse inside a 1950s power trip, read this book. If you don’t mind gritty and realistic looks at the underbelly of society, and how it beats down the human spirit, you couldn’t do better than this.
John Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very weaJohn Campton is a renowned painter, an American living in Paris for years and more French than American in reality. His ex-wife has married a very wealthy banker, and the two of them vie for the love and attentions of their only son, George. Although Julia, the ex-wife, is also American, George was born on French soil, so he is of dual citizenship.
At the beginning of the story, Campton is planning a trip for himself and George, a chance to spend some private time together, but before they can embark on their journey, hostilities reach a breaking point and World War I erupts as Germany invades Belgium. Campton considers his son an American, but the French have him on their military roles and he is conscripted into the French army.
What ensues is a story full of sorrow and enlightenment as George and his father navigate the changing, and sometimes conflicted, feelings toward the cause before them. As the casualties begin to pile up and people begin to understand the nature of the conflict, Campton must struggle with his desire to keep his son safe and his realization that this war and its demanded sacrifices belong to every man, and most particularly to every Frenchman.
The killing of René Davril seemed to Campton one of the most senseless crimes the war had yet perpetrated. It brought home to him, far more vividly than the distant death of poor Jean Fortin, what an incalculable sum of gifts and virtues went to make up the monster’s daily meal.
What is the most unique about this book is that we follow the war, the loss, the effect through the eyes of a father. There are so many other books that show us the war from the soldier's point of view, but this is the angst of the ones who cannot participate and can only watch as all they love is put at risk. We are walked through Campton’s attempts to understand his son’s experiences and developing attitudes with only secondhand information to draw on.
He says he wants only things that last—that are permanent—things that hold a man fast. That sometimes he feels as if he were being swept away on a flood, and were trying to catch at things—at anything—as he’s rushed along under the waves� He says he wants quiet, monotony � to be sure the same things will happen every day. When we go out together he sometimes stands for a quarter of an hour and stares at the same building, or at the Seine under the bridges. But he’s happy, I’m sure� I’ve never seen him happier � only it’s in a way I can’t make out�
This is Edith Wharton at her best, as she deftly tears apart the surface of these two people and shows us everything that lies beneath. All the secondary characters, as well, are fully drawn and engaging, down to the elderly landlady who loses her son and then her grandsons to this spreading horror. And, while men die in droves, Americans in Paris wait and watch for America to understand what is at stake and enter the fray.
While reading, I thought of other novels I have read that have brought WWI home to me. All Quiet on the Western Front and Testament of Youth came to mind, and I felt Wharton was a significant addition to the canon, for she reveals yet another side of the horror. However, this novel is more universal than that, because it also deals with the intimate relationships that bind and separate people, the petty jealousy that prevents sharing and the small moments of understanding that create bonds that are unbreakable. So that, in the end, you might learn to see life, not only from your own view, but from that of others.
What did such people as Julia do with grief, he wondered, how did they make room for it in their lives, get up and lie down every day with its taste on their lips? Its elemental quality, that awful sense it communicated of a whirling earth, a crumbling Time, and all the cold stellar spaces yawning to receive us�
What an excellent work of art this book is. As I have often said, Edith Wharton is one of the great writers. I am in awe of how she can deliver, over and over again, books that leave such an impression upon the heart, the mind, and the soul. I will not be forgetting this one.
I used half a box of Kleenex reading this Christmas story, written by the amazing Glendon Swarthout, an obviously versatile writer, who can put an uneI used half a box of Kleenex reading this Christmas story, written by the amazing Glendon Swarthout, an obviously versatile writer, who can put an unexpected twist on a story and wrench your heart.
A coming-of-age story, we meet James Chubb, a boy of fourteen, who is living on his grandparents� farm during the depression because his father is unable to find work and feeding a family has become all but impossible. The story is told by a much older James, looking back on his boyhood and the events of one Christmas that changed his life.
I was convinced until Christmas that grandparents were gray and kind and frail and full of legend and soon to die, and that was all.
Do we, as children, not usually view our parents and grandparents in this way, unable to see the young men and women they used to be and taking for granted the wisdom that seems natural but that is hard earned?
To grow up is sometimes just to realize the depths of someone else’s losses and know they can rival your own.
I had not realized that loss could be so long lived. I had not known that tears, like flowers pressed between the pages of a book, could be indefinitely preserved.
Swarthout brings this world to life with description and detail that make it real. There is a description of a soapstone and its use in warming a bed that made me feel the cold of the sheets and the warmth of the stone. There are details regarding a 1928 Rumely Oil Pull Model W Tractor that are as good as a video playing in your mind. I’m lucky enough to have seen the real thing at the Farmer’s museum in Burgess, VA, but if I had never seen one, I’d still have an accurate picture of the machine in my mind from reading this.
As well as the physical detail, Swarthout captures the time and the people of a rural small town beautifully. I was put in mind of Wendell Berry, and as anyone who knows me well could attest, I consider that high praise.
Charity then, unlike that of the present, was for the most part individual and spontaneous rather than impersonal and systematic. It had nothing to do with taxes. It was an act of addition rather than deduction.
I cannot tell you anything really about the story without chancing spoiling it, and that I would never do. To anyone who reads it with a heart that leans toward Christmas sentiment, be prepared to laugh, to cry and to marvel.
* Postscript: Thanks to a GR friend, Wyndy, I thought I would share that The Melodeon was reissued under the title A Christmas Gift and is available on Kindle for $3.99.
It needs a Librarian to link the two differently named editions. I am not able to do that, but wanted others to know in case they were looking for the book....more
How fragile our lives are anyways. How quickly things can change forever.
This is a splendid book, full of human trial and victory, and singing witHow fragile our lives are anyways. How quickly things can change forever.
This is a splendid book, full of human trial and victory, and singing with love and endurance. I developed a deep respect and admiration for Sarah Prine. Living in the Arizona Territory in the second half of the 19th Century would have been a challenge that not everyone could survive. In fact, Sarah herself says
Anyone who hasn’t got some backbone has no business trying to live in the Territories.
I am pretty sure that there is no one who reads and appreciates this book who doesn’t end up in love with Captain Jack Eliot. He is the kind of man who would not escape the adoration of a woman or the approbation of a man. He is an enigma and an awakening for Sarah, and we are so privileged to see him through her eyes, for we recognize his wonderful character while she is still discovering it. His superb characterization is what makes this book a 5-star read. Like Sarah, I found myself always peering into the distance, waiting for Captain Eliot to return.
Captain Elliot has this recklessness about him, and a way of holding on that you don’t know he is holding on, and a way of laughing that is like he takes pleasure in the act of laughing itself. He is better to have around in a scrap than a trained wildcat, though.
All the secondary characters, Sarah’s mother, Jack’s father, Savannah and Albert, the brothers, the children, the myriad of people who pass through Sarah’s life, are painted with exacting care. We are given every sort of strength and weakness, tenderness and meanness alive in the human race, and it was hard to imagine the hardships and tribulations these people, particularly the women, endured.
I marked dozens of passages to remember, for Nancy Turner puts words of wisdom into Sarah’s diary entries that even Sarah does not wholly grasp the sageness of. In fact, one of the most appealing things about Sarah is that she is often still so innocent and naive for a woman who has had such a harsh and serious life experience; and that she has that ability of children to see right into the heart of things and people.
A few of my favorites:
…this has hurt my heart and spirit more than all the other trials, for being forsaken is worse than being killed.
The likes of her isn’t going to listen nor be changed in the mind just from hearing sense. Some people sense is wasted on, and that’s purely a fact.
After a couple of hours the children began playing. They just cannot be sad too long, it is not in them; as children mourn in little bits here and there like patchwork in their lives.
Sometimes I feel like a tree on a hill, at a place where all the wind blows and the hail hits the hardest. All the people I love are down the side aways, sheltered under a great rock, and I am out of the fold, standing alone in the sun and the snow. I feel like I am not part of the rest somehow, although they welcome me and are kind. I see my family as they sit together and it is like they have a certain way between them that is beyond me. I wonder if other folks ever feel included yet alone.
It seems there is always a road with bends and forks to choose, and taking one path means you can never take another one. There’s no starting over nor undoing the steps I’ve taken.
It fascinated me to think that Nancy Turner based this upon an actual diary left by her own ancestor, and that there was an element of truth to Sarah's experiences.
I am happy that there are two more books featuring Sarah to follow this one. I enjoy Nancy Turner’s writing style and her beautiful descriptions and characterizations. I do not, however, expect the next two will be able to hold up to this one. It is so hard to make lightning strike twice in the same place–let alone three times, and this book is pretty darned perfect to me. And, for anyone who has read it, there is an obvious reason to not expect the same delight can carry through.
My sincere thanks to my friend, Lori, for recommending this book to our little reading group. I am excited that there will be discussion of it and I will not have to let go of these people or this place quite yet....more
This is the first time I have read E.H. Young, but I felt I was on familiar ground, as she is very much like two of my favorites, Elizabeth Taylor andThis is the first time I have read E.H. Young, but I felt I was on familiar ground, as she is very much like two of my favorites, Elizabeth Taylor and Dorothy Whipple. She writes about ordinary people leading ordinary lives that are anything but, because no two people are the same and no two lives are either.
The book, in many ways, is the dissection of marriage…the intact one of Mrs. Blackett and the fractured one of Mrs. Fraser. We are privy to the secret thoughts of these women with regard to their husbands and children and the myriad responsibilities they encounter daily. However, we also see how the world around them is affected by their choices, the taste of freedom both women get and the way they do (or do not) allow society’s rules to color their pleasures.
These are two very different households. Rosamund Fraser is light and breezy and exercises as little interference with her children as possible. They love and respect her and come to her with their problems. This does not mean she has an easy life. Sometimes not interfering takes a lot of courage and discipline.
They were separate people, standing on their own feet, needing no parental props, and all their difficulties lay ahead when she would not be able to help them and, ultimately, every human being was alone. Yet, she wondered, were they all missing what she had withheld, first through light-heartedness and then by design?
Her husband, Fergus, has abandoned the family, and in her household as a paying border is her friend since childhood, Miss Spanner. Miss Spanner contributes the spinster’s view of marriage, sometimes in very amusing ways. I loved this friendship, that, despite its odd inconguity, is deep and true.
There’s no hurry about it and as for not hurting your feelings—what a funny expression that is, by the way—I don’t think I could hurt them if I tried, or you mine. Ours is the best relationship in the world. We haven’t to be careful. We haven’t to think before we speak.
Across the street are the Blacketts. The Blackett children are ruled by an obsessive and controlling father and their mother smolters with dislike for her husband and attempts to bury her feelings from view. Herbert Blackett might be one of the most infuriating male characters ever written. It would be unsafe to put him in arm’s length of me…eyeballs would, at the least, be scratched out.
He liked to believe that, in any case of an absent husband, the woman must be to blame. If he strayed, it was her fault for not being agreeable or clever enough to hold him; if she were guilty as, with Mrs. Fraser, seemed most likely, because this was how he wished to find her, then no excuse was possible, and he had the right to look at her a little longer, with a shade less respect than he would have wished anyone to look at Bertha.
But, even Mr. Blackett gets a fair shake from Young. He is disgustingly pompous and self-centered, and since he can never be wrong, the rest of the world must be; however, he is not always aware of his nature and the person he robs of the most happiness is himself.
Another stand-out element of this book is its treatment of pre WWII England. Neville Chamberlain is busy trying to appease Hitler and we get a glimpse into how that affected the lives of those waiting to hear the news daily. The generation these women represent has been a recent witness to war and all its horrors, and watching another loom on the horizon is not a pleasant experience. They do not continue with life as usual. Rosamund has two sons of just the right age to be involved in such a war, and a daughter with a sweetheart. Young perfectly depicts the mixed feelings that must have been running through every sane person’s veins.
I will close with one of my favorite moments in the book. It resonates, of course, because I am able to embrace exactly what Rosamund is saying. I have seen that look, heard that tone, in the face of the young. Our only consolation might be that we are old enough to know it is going to fade.
But he’s quite young!� Rosamund exclaimed. “He can’t be much older than I am. Yes, that amuses you, doesn’t it? And when I was your age I thought everybody over thirty was practically dead. But we don’t feel like that. We find ourselves just as interesting as we ever did and what happens to us seems just as important....more
I have made countless treks into the Blue Ridge Mountains, growing up in North Georgia and having people in Tennessee. To my shame, I don’t believe I I have made countless treks into the Blue Ridge Mountains, growing up in North Georgia and having people in Tennessee. To my shame, I don’t believe I ever gave a thought to how many people were displaced by the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, how their land was taken from them, or the personal heartache that was suffered in order to give the land over to the enjoyment of the population in general. That is, I never gave it a thought until I stumbled across Wayne Caldwell’s Cataloochee.
Requiem by Fire is the continuation of the Cataloochee story and deals directly with the establishment of the Park and the almost cruel way in which people were evicted from their homes to make it happen. Caldwell is one of the most even-handed writers I have ever encountered. He does not draw black and white pictures, he paints in color. He lays all the facts and feelings before you and he lets you decide. After all, these are human beings and there are all kinds of motivations and emotions that go with that. I understood the desire to protect the area and build the Park, but I mostly felt the anguish of the men and women who had already invested lifetimes into this soil and these mountains, being told they might not even be allowed to be buried next to their kin in their own family cemeteries.
The mountain flavor here is genuine, the dialog perfection. Silas Wright, an old timer, says these words to Jim Hawkins, the newly minted warden who also happens to be born and raised in Cataloochee himself:
”What’s fine at seven in the morning can be awful at midnight. Seven in the morning, a man’s got some small reason to hope he’ll have a good day. Come dark, he knows he ain’t had one, and he’s got eight more hours to put up with whatever ghosts his mind might care to entertain.�
For me, this rang so true.
There is a way of life being lost, and as the older Cataloochians reminisce, we realize it was a way of life already abandoned in the valley, years ago. I became very attached to several of these characters, Silas, Mary Carver, and Jim; I cringed at at least one of them, the despicable Willie McPeters, and pitied the young ones, riding off to the city, who would never know what they had lost.
Wayne Caldwell is an amazing writer and a consummate storyteller. I hope to see many more gripping tales penned by his hand before he is through. I know he admires Wendell Berry, he quotes him in his opening to this book, and he is one of a rare handful of writers who might be able to fill his shoes. ...more
I am dead; Thou livest; ...draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. --Hamlet, Act V, Scene II
I find it amazing when an author takes a seed of truth andI am dead; Thou livest; ...draw thy breath in pain, To tell my story. --Hamlet, Act V, Scene II
I find it amazing when an author takes a seed of truth and spins it into a tale that is complete and poignant and full of life. That is what Maggie O’Farrell has done with just the scant knowledge that we have of the short life of Hamnet Shakespeare.
The main character in this novel is not Hamnet, it is his mother, Agnes. She is a woman in touch with the earth, nature, and the intangible, the world that others do not see or choose to ignore. The death of her child has a profound effect upon her, and I saw the main theme of this novel to be how grief affects people, how they cope with loss, how they sometimes fail to cope with it.
How is anyone ever to shut the eyes of their dead child? How is it possible to find two pennies and rest them there in the sockets? To hold down the lids? How can anyone do this? It is not right. It cannot be.
We are told Agnes� story in the present, but also in flashbacks to her meeting with her husband and her life on the farm and in the woods before her marriage. She is a unique, almost wild creature. She flies a kestrel.
She was able to peer into people and see what would befall them. She knew how to help them. Her feet moved over the earth with confidence and grace. This person is now lost to her for ever. She is someone adrift in her life, who doesn’t recognise it. She is unmoored, at a loss.
She is changed by death, by loss, by her inability to stop the evil of the plague in its tracks.
What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any moment, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe.
I loved the pacing of this story, the brilliant writing, and the narrative that drew me in and made me feel the anguish of a mother’s loss. Maggie O’Farrell is a genius. ...more
Why is John Ehle so sparsely read? Is it because his books are hard to come by? This book has 330 ratings and 31 reviews, which is shameful, because iWhy is John Ehle so sparsely read? Is it because his books are hard to come by? This book has 330 ratings and 31 reviews, which is shameful, because it is marvelously written and packed with everything you want from Southern/Appalachian literature. A dynamite story, fear, tension, terrific character development, and descriptions that are heart-stopping.
If you have ever stood and looked out over a stretch of the Blue Ridge, you cannot help perfectly visualizing this scene:
He saw Young. He was leisurely walking toward the north. Now he paused to consider streaks of gold in the east. A holy morning, suitable for worship. Wayland walked over to the edge of the divide, to an overlook, with the North Carolina mountains stretching to the horizon. This morning clouds had slept late, were still filling in the valleys around the peaks, so that the peaks resembled toes of a prone giant.
There was a single hawk on the wing, bathing in sunlight, now it dipped down into the clouds to moisten its wings. Now it rose into sunlight again.
I was standing on that mountain in the first paragraph, but IMHO, the addition of the hawk was a bit of genius that made me want to reach out and touch that sky. At the end of Chapter Five, I could honestly say I have been on a bear hunt. By the end of the book, I had an ache in my chest from holding my breath.
Collie Wright is living alone in a cabin with her 6-month old baby. She has refused to tell anyone who the father of the baby is, and her brothers and father are nervous and anxious to know. Wayland Jackson comes down out of the mountains, where his car has stalled, with his teenage daughter in tow, and finds himself standing at Collie’s door.
We know immediately that this is going to get complicated. There are factions in the mountains, the Wrights, the Campbells and the MacGregors barely existing as neighbors and anything, like a stranger who is a clockmaker moving in with a woman and her child, can set a spark to the flame.
A vital nerve had been touched, old and buried, almost forgotten animosities had been laid bare; mindless were days like this one, and the fears rose out of the bowels, not the mind, and were vital, close to the quick. One death caused others.
This is my second Ehle, and not my last. He can truly spin a tale, as my grandpa would say.
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman.How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. -- Solomon 7:1
I first read this remarkable short story in my high school AP English class. I fell in love with it then, and I come back to it from time to time, as I find it can still deliver an impact, even so many years later and with so much living between reads.
This is the kind of short story that almost demands multiple readings. So much is being said beneath the surface of the story, and Steele is able to plumb the souls of his characters so thoroughly in such a short space. Sometimes summing them up in one line:
It was like him to have cracked his whip above his animals' ears the moment before he pulled them to a halt.
Does that not reveal to you the baseness and thoroughly thoughtless character of the man described? Can you not see this brutish, coarse person?
I know Steele has written other short stories and at least one novel, all hard to come by, but I really need to try to find copies, because he has written in this tale one of the finest short stories of all time.
For anyone who might be interested in reading this, it can be found here: ...more
Like some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
The inimitable Nevil ShuteLike some infernal monster, still venomous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it’s all over.
The inimitable Nevil Shute has an impressive resume as both a writer and an aeronautical engineer. His intelligence shows in his writing, his attention to detail, his understanding of the mechanics of war, and his knowledge of wartime operations. But what makes him a great writer is his ability to tap the souls of his characters, breath life into them, and imbue them with all the heroism and weaknesses that war can reveal.
Alan and Bill Duncan are Aussie boys, raised on the sheep station of Goombargana, and sent off to fight for England in World War II. Janet Prentice is the feisty and capable Wren who falls in love with Bill. The way these three lives wrap around one another unfolds like a Shakespearean tragedy. If you make it to the last page dry-eyed, you are a stronger person than I am.
The story is about the war and, of course, the effect it has on everyone involved, but it is also about the capricious nature of chance, the tricks of fate, the small misses in life that separate misery from happiness and failure from success. I could not help thinking Shute must have seen life and love vanish from him like a wisp of smoke at sometime in his own life in order to portray so perfectly what that kind of mercuriality would feel like. Not one of the lives we see play out in this book would have been the same had there been no war, but would they have been better or easier? Those who go to war will tell you they never felt so alive as when they were so threatened with death.
I love Shute. Everything I have read of his has been better than the 5-stars I was allowed to give it. I had not intended to read this right now, having just read Pied Piper, but Bob convinced me it would be stupid to push this off so that I could read something I could not be assured would be as satisfying.
My conclusion: I am going to let my friend, Bob, pick all my books from now on. ...more
Cauldstone, the mental asylum, is closing. All the patients must be returned to their families or placed elsewhere, so Iris Lockhart is contacted regaCauldstone, the mental asylum, is closing. All the patients must be returned to their families or placed elsewhere, so Iris Lockhart is contacted regarding one of those patients, her great-aunt, Esme Lennox, a person whose existence is wholly unknown to her. Esme’s sister, Kitty, is suffering from Alzheimer’s and Iris’s father is dead. This responsibility falls solely upon her shoulders.
What Maggie O’Farrell gives us is Esme’s story, which is a sad and infuriating one, and Iris’s story which has at least one sad element of its own. Neither of these women does exactly what people expect of them, and one of them has paid a price beyond belief for being independent and different.
She shuts her mouth, closes her throat, folds her hands over each other and she does the thing she has perfected. Her specialty. To absent yourself, to make yourself vanish. Ladies and gentlemen, behold. It is most important to keep yourself very still. Even breathing can remind them that you are there; so only very short, very shallow breaths. Just enough to stay alive. And no more.
Imagine doing that for so long that it becomes an art. Imagine a situation in which you might require that of another human being. Imagine that human being is your daughter, your sister, even your patient. The idea tied my stomach in knots. I have not felt this level of wanting to smash into a cell and free someone since reading Sebastian Barry’s The Secret Scripture.
This is a story about family, about sisters, about love and hate and jealousy and ruin and ignorance and intolerance, and a parent who can calmly turn his back and walk away from the unthinkable.
They have all narrowed down to this black-haired girl sitting on the sand, who has no idea that her hands and her eyes and the tilt of her head and the fall of her hair belong to Esme’s mother. We are all, Esme decides, just vessels through which identities pass; we are lent features, gestures, habits, then we hand them on. Nothing is our own. We begin in the world as anagrams of our antecedents.
That quotation struck me as so true and profound. I have been researching my family line lately and, as I read about the women and men who came before me, I have wished so much that there were photographs that I might search for traces of the familiar. Who knows what parts of those others exist in those of us still here...bits of themselves left behind forever.
I am not surprised to have loved this book. I have read enough reviews on ŷ to know that Maggie O’Farrell is destined to be an author I want to read over and over again. I am excited to have my first one behind me. I cannot imagine they get any better than this. ...more
As soon as I started living with the expectation of having a friend by my side through old age, I found her dead on the kitchen floor. Now the whole wAs soon as I started living with the expectation of having a friend by my side through old age, I found her dead on the kitchen floor. Now the whole world is upside down in thought and action, and my days are filled with worry about what I can’t see that’s waitin� around the corner.
It is what is waiting around the corner for three women living in 1924 South Carolina that makes up the bulk of this captivating debut novel by Deb Spera. What a debut it is! Anne is a wealthy woman, mistress of a large house with servants and owner of a local business on the verge of becoming something more. Retta is a black woman, a descendant of the slaves who once served at this house, and herself still a part of the fabric of its existence, but also an independent minded and strong woman, testing the limits of the world she now inhabits. And finally, there is Gertrude, a white woman living in poverty with her shiftless husband and four daughters--a woman given away in marriage to a cruel man, struggling to find a way out and into a life that might offer more than starvation and fear.
It being 1924, and there being a black woman involved, there is a necessary picture of the racial divide. Retta is, without doubt, my favorite character in the story, exhibiting a strength that draws others to her, particularly the white people who need both her physical and spiritual help. The mindset she is battling against is summed up beautifully in the words of her mother:
She’d say, “We all born the same, we all die the same, ain’t no difference in that truth. But when you a Negro, you got to watch your mouth. What’s said can’t be unsaid, what’s done can’t be undone and what white folk do, don’t concern you. We’re put here on this earth to work, that’s all. If your daddy and brothers would have been happy enough with that fact, they’d still be here today.
That Retta chooses to ignore that advice and become involved in the lives of the white people around her is both remarkable and heroic.
This is a story of women, Some are pitted against the men who control their worlds, and one thing clearly seen is that this is a man’s world and even the most powerful women have very little power outside their own selves.
Men can’t bear what women must. They jump to cry insanity as cause for a woman’s unhappiness; the utterance of the unutterable must be dementia. It’s just too much to consider otherwise.
What happens to these women, as they thread through each other’s lives, is pure magic. I learned to respect them all before the end of the book, and root for their determination not to give in to the harshness of the lives they led. There is so much more I want to say, but to do so would give away plot, and that is not my purpose.
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