Quick Takes

Just popping in here with some quick thoughts about a few of the books I've read recently. First up is Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler. Part of Hogarth's Shakespeare series, which commissions current authors to reinterpret some of Shakespeare's classic plays, this novel offers a modern version of The Taming of the Shrew. This was my first time reading anything by Anne Tyler, who is one of those quietly but widely renowned authors, and I was really impressed with her writing. Her style, at least in this book, manages to convey a compelling drama while still being rooted in the ordinary little facets of everyday life. I also appreciated the direction went she with the story. A modern reinterpretation of The Taming of the Shrew could easily go a very cliche route--I'm imagining something in which Kate is portrayed as some kind of driven "career woman" who needs to be softened. Instead, Tyler takes a more subtle, unexpected route, casting her Kate as the 30 year old daughter of an eccentric scientist whose blunt personality starts to veer toward bitterness as she feels increasingly trapped by her life circumstances. The romantic lead she clashes with is her father's research assistant, an Eastern European immigrant whose visa is about to expire. It's the type of pairing you don't read about every day, and it plays out in a very satisfy way.

Next is a Persephone book, Few Eggs and No Oranges, the wartime diary of Vere Hodgson that spans the years 1940-1945. You might say that this falls at the more utilitarian end of the diary spectrum. It's not a memoir in which Hodgson has wrapped up her experiences in a neat and tidy package, nor is it secret diary in which she's revealed her innermost thoughts and feelings. Instead, this is a diary that she wrote and circulated among relatives living abroad as a way of updating them on her life in London during the war. She chronicles each day in a brisk way, succinctly recording the work she does, the increasingly skimpy food rations that she eats, and the endless air raids she experiences. There is very little plot beyond this sometimes repetitive chronicling, yet it is compelling in its own way. It gave me a new and deeper understanding of World War II from simply absorbing the daily grind of it through Hodgson's eyes. In a similar way, I also grew to love Hodgson as her wonderful, resilient character was revealed from witnessing several years' worth of her daily activities. At around 600 pages, I'll admit this may not be a book for everyone, but it's a real treasure for anyone who's interested in WWII and the female writers of the period.

Finally, a book that didn't quite his the mark for me: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie. I was excited to read this mystery after seeing it highly praised on a few of my favorite blogs in recent months. It's widely thought of as one of Christie's best, with a completely unexpected ending that was apparently very innovative for its time. Unfortunately, I think the vague allusions I had read about this amazing ending were exactly what spoiled the novel for me. From page one I found the characters to be a little dull and the plot a little hard to get into, but I kept reading on high alert, looking at the book from every angle to try to guess the ending. I did eventually hit on it, which made the end of the novel feel like more of a big letdown than a big reveal.

What are you reading these days?

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Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty is the story of a group of kindergarten parents whose seemingly petty schoolyard dramas hide deeper secrets that escalate into a criminal act. That's not exactly the kind of story that would normally attract me, but I was intrigued enough to give it a try after learning that Reese Witherspoon had optioned the rights and is making it into a miniseries starring herself and Nicole Kidman. Still, I was skeptical as I started the book. I had just come off a string of mediocre reads and, for the first hundred pages or so, it seemed like this might be another one. As the momentum began to build, though, I found myself more and more drawn in. This turned out to be a completely enjoyable book that left me thinking about it days after finishing.



My initial lack of interest in the book stems from its synopsis, which makes it sound like something campy and melodramatic. Instead, it's smartly written on many levels. Moriarty's characterization and dialogue is pitch perfect. She balances out the novel's darker plot points with many funny moments, as well as with scenes that offer spot-on commentary on various modern-day social issues and themes. Even better is the way the novel is structured. In most mysteries, the plot surrounding a crime leaves the reader trying to figure out who did it and what the motive was. Here, not only are those two questions unknown, but the actual details of crime itself it a big unknown until the end of the novel. Moriarty cleverly unravels this bit by bit throughout the book. There are a few surprise twists that I was able to guess, plus one final twist that I did not see coming at all. This is a perfect summer read that's thought-provoking in an entertaining way. I can easily imagine this translating onto screen and can't wait to see the miniseries adaptation.

Revisiting The Woman in White

It's been quiet around these parts lately not because I haven't been reading, but because I've been reading too much. Or, more accurately, I should say that I've been reading too many things at once. I had three books in progress over the past few weeks, which didn't leave a lot to blog about. One of these books was The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins, which I was rereading. This time around, some of the tensions in the plot and conflicts between characters left me feeling so stressed out that I had to lay the book aside for a while. It would be very hard to argue that Collins isn't a master of suspense. That said, The Woman in White is not without its flaws--a fact that became apparent as I revisited it this time around.

The Woman in White begins on a dark night when artist Walter Hartright encounters--of course--a mysterious young woman in white. They meet on the deserted road and Walter escorts her for a small leg of her journey into London. Shortly after they part, he overhears a passing conversation that leads him to deduce that the woman had escaped from an asylum. In the following days, Walter takes a position as a drawing instructor to half-sisters Laura Fairlie and Marion Halcombe and is unsettled to learn that their family may have a connection to the mysterious woman. Walter's narrative during this opening section is one of the strongest parts of the novel, setting a moody and atmospheric tone for what's to come. Because it's so good, it feels a bit disappointing when the novel switches narrators. We see much of the plot unfold through a series of devices like Marion's journal entries, letters from peripheral characters, and recorded testimonies from household servants. Aside from Marion, most of the characters who take a turn narrating are long-winded and irritating at best, completely unlikeable at worst, which can make some of their sections feel a bit tedious. It makes for a novel that you want to race through, both so that you can find out what happens next and so that you can move on to a different narrator.

The character of Laura Fairlie was another element that was slightly irritating upon this second reading. She's portrayed as kind, innocent, and delicate--traits that are all pretty typical for heroines of that time period, but that tended to grate after 600 pages worth of Walter and Marion tiptoeing around her fragile constitution. Although Laura is cast as the romantic heroine and the center of the novel's mystery, it's the active and competent Marion who is the stronger female protagonist (though Collins doesn't let her get away without having a few moments of simpering herself).

Although this rereading brought out some of these flaws for me, it didn't change my overall favorable opinion of the novel. The issues that stood out might even be attributed to the fact that it was first published as a magazine serial--making its overall success as a self-contained novel a testament to just how good of a mystery writer Collins was.

What do you think of The Woman in White? Or is there any other book that you enjoy in spite of its flaws?

Ghost Stories for Winter Nights

Sometimes the winter season puts me in the mood to read cozy, Pym-esque books. This year, however, all I've been in the mood for are mysteries, dark thrillers, or ghost stories, as evidenced by the facts that I'm currently re-reading The Woman in White and that I only seem to want to watch moody TV shows like Broadchurch. In case you happen to be feeling the same, I thought I share a quick recommendation for Simone St. James, a Canadian author whose books I discovered last summer summer. Her three novels, The Haunting of Maddy Clare, Silence for the Dead, and An Inquiry into Love and Death take place during the inter-War years. They follow three different young women who are on their own in life and who find themselves in unusual jobs that throw them into the midst of mysteries with supernatural twists.

The fact that St. James's novels have so many common elements could easily turn them into cliched retellings of the same story. What saves them from this, though, is the way that St. James seems to take pains to develop her casts of characters in unique and interesting ways. In spite of the basic similarities of their circumstances, all of her protagonists are uniquely and vividly drawn. The same is true for the love interests they meet along the way--all former soldiers whose battle with the metaphorical ghosts of war create an added layer of depth as they battle more tangible ghosts in the course of the novels. Although it's obvious that St. James has a formulaic approach to her writing, it's one that works and that exceeds expectations thanks to her attention to detail and character development.

Death Comes to Pemberley

I have such a backlog of books to write about that I have to issue a fair warning that the next couple of weeks will likely see some really brief posts as well as some combined posts as I try to catch up on what I've been reading in the past month. I don't have to go too far back for today's post about a mystery novel I finished this weekend: Death Comes to Pemberley. Not only was this the first novel I've read by P.D. James, but, after spending years trying to avoid them, it's also one of the first of the myriad of Jane Austen "sequels" that I've read. I remember seeing some decent reviews when this one was first published, but wasn't motivated to pick it up until I saw the news that it's been made into a miniseries that's coming to Masterpiece on PBS next year.

The action of the novel picks up about six years after the end of Pride and Prejudice. Elizabeth and Darcy are happily living at Pemberley with their two young sons while Jane and Bingley are settled nearby on an estate of their own. On the eve of the Darcys' annual ball, the festive preparations are shattered by the sudden, unexpected arrival of Lydia and Wickham, who are not formally received at Pemberley. They soon learn that a murder has been committed on the Pemberley grounds and Wickham, of course, is the prime suspect. 

If I had to sum up Death Comes to Pemberley in just one word, it would be tepid. I felt a mild interested in the overall story, but the mystery didn't seem to be very intricately plotted and wasn't suspenseful enough to really capture my attention. It was kind of fun to encounter Austen's characters again, but James actually did a better job of recapturing the minor characters than she did with Elizabeth and Darcy, whose dialogue and thoughts made them seem like bland, diluted versions of themselves. My favorite parts were actually when James ventured outside the boundaries of Pride and Prejudice and brought in characters from Austen's other novels for small cameos, like when it's revealed that Wickham held a temporary job as a secretary for Sir Walter Elliot of Emma fame, and when we learn that the Darcys' housekeeper is related to Mrs. Goddard, who runs the Highbury school that Harriet Smith attended in Emma. If the rest of the plot was as cleverly executed as these little instances, it might have made for a more compelling mystery. 

I'll still be eager to watch the miniseries, if only because I can never resist a British period film.

Cookalong With: The Secret Adversary

I think I've finally found my reading niche among Agatha Christie's mystery series, and it's not with Miss Marple or with Hercule Poirot. It's with Tommy and Tuppence, a Jazz-age sleuthing couple who make their first appearance in The Secret Adversary. 

In 1920, Tommy, a young veteran of WWI, and Tuppence, a former wartime nurse, are both struggling to find jobs and make ends meet. On a whim, they decide to team up and advertise their services as "young adventurers". Surprisingly, they quickly receive a response and are engaged to help track down a missing girl who, years earlier, had secretly smuggled a set of highly secret government papers off of the Lusitania on the night that it sunk. As Tommy and Tuppence set off on the hunt, they soon realize that there's more than meets the eye to their case and their success or failure could have international diplomatic implications. The Secret Adversary was simultaneously the most fun and the most suspenseful of any of the Agatha Christie novels I've read so far. Tommy and Tuppence are extremely likable couple who exude humor and spunk in the face a dangerous enemy whose mysterious identity kept me turning the pages. I definitely plan to seek out the rest of the books in the Tommy and Tuppence series, and hope to read the next one while nibbling on fig and orange scones with Devonshire cream.

When I did my first attempt at a "cookalong with" post, I created a recipe based on a meal that was featured in the book. I should be clear here that this installment is really a fantasy cookalong. These scones don't actually appear in The Secret Adversary and I haven't actually made them yet, but when I saw the recipe on Paper and Salt and read about how Agatha was a voracious lover and eater of cream during her tea time, the connection seemed too perfect to resist. I love having clotted cream on scones and have never found a recipe to make it at home before. The crockpot method sounds easy enough for me to consider trying. If it comes out well, I'll break out another Christie novel in honor. And I'll be sure to blog about it, of course.

Case Histories

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson is a book that truly bridges the genres of mystery and literary fiction, possibly more than any other book I've read. The plot juggles several story lines as private investigator Jackson Brodie tries to solve three different cold cases. Despite containing so many mysteries, the most interesting part of the novel didn't seem to be the mysteries themselves, but rather the character portraits that Atkinson paints, from Brodie himself to the various victims who come to him, desperate for answers to their own personal mysteries. 

It's entirely possible that I felt this way because, having seen the film adaptation on PBS's Masterpiece last year, I already knew the solutions to all of the mysteries. I picked up the book in spite of this because I enjoyed the film so much, largely because of the atmosphere it created. It was moody and dark, perfect for watching on a Sunday night in early autumn, which is when it aired. I was slightly disappointed that the book didn't evoke quite the same atmosphere for me. The details were mostly the same in both versions (aside from an Edinburgh setting in the movie that differed from the Cambridge setting of the book), but somehow they seemed less vivid in the book. This bothered me less the further I progressed through the book, but it still left me feeling a bit let down, like the experience of reading the story didn't live up to the expectations I had from watching it (that's probably a first, I know). I do think it's an extremely well written novel, though, and definitely worth reading, particularly if you have the benefit of coming to it without the preconceptions that I had.

Charmingly Mysterious

Sydney Chambers and the Shadow of Death is novel comprised of several short mysteries all involving Sydney Chambers, a young vicar in a picturesque English village just outside of Cambridge. There's nothing earth shattering about the mysteries themselves; they flow into one another at a leisurely pace and only one of the plots feels at all suspenseful. That being said, you won't be disappointed if you're looking to read something purely for a dose of idyllic British atmosphere.

I'm going to keep this short and sweet since I'm still winding down from a long weekend trip (pictures on the way!), but I will say that I think it's no small feat to pull off creating a character who's a vicar and also really likable and relatable. In most British novels I read, clergy figures seem to be most frequently portrayed as elderly and a bit tottering. When they are younger, then tend to veer towards the smarmy ridiculousness of Austen's Mr. Collins. As a character, Sydney Chambers avoids these traits completely. Living in the 1950's, he brings an early era Mad Men sensibility to a pastoral and aristocratic world that's not too far off from Downton Abbey, all while meandering through crimes like someone out of an Agatha Christie novel.

The Last Dickens

I’ve talked before about how I'm not that much of a mystery reader, but when I do pick one up, I seem to have the most luck with historical mysteries. Not only do I find all of the period-specific details fascinating and love when real-life historical figures pop up in the story, but the crimes and murders that occur seem, well, just a little bit less creepy when they’re set years in the past, rather than in present day. The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl, is exactly that kind of historical mystery, revolving around the fictional hunt for the second half of the manuscript of Charles Dickens’s final, unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.

The novel follows several different layers of mystery. The primary storyline focuses on James Osgood, Dickens’s publisher in America. Osgood learns of Dickens’s abrupt death from a stroke while his firm is in the middle of publishing Drood in serial form. After his errand boy is murdered and robbed of the latest installment of the manuscript that he’s transporting, Osgood journeys to London to try to track down the missing manuscript and the murderer. Osgood’s mission is broken up with flashbacks describing mysterious occurrences that happened during Dickens’s American tour years earlier, jumps across continents to India, where Dickens’s son is an investigator tracking down an opium thief, and even explores a fourth line storyline about the mysterious life and death of Edward Trood, the trouble-making son of one of Dickens’s neighbors who provided the inspiration for his last novel.

I had previously read and enjoyed one of Pearl’s other novels, The Poe Shadow (as in Edgar Allen). Although I was equally interested in all of the Dickens-related details he covers here, I thought the plot was overly bogged down with all of the separate storylines. Although all of the threads are woven together at the end, it feels somewhat laborious, as if the author had to work just a bit too hard to make it all come together. Narrowing the focus may have made the story flow more easily, and subsequently made me feel more compelled by the novel as a whole. Die-hard mystery fans, or die-hard Dickens fans for that matter, may enjoy this anyway, but I’d recommend the casual mystery reader skip it in favor of The Poe Shadow, or even something like The Alienist.

Maisie Dobbs

I'm not that much of a mystery reader. I have nothing against the genre, but for whatever reason, I only seem to dip into it once in a while. What's more is that I've even passed up books in the past, thinking, "Oh, I don't know if I feel like a mystery...". That was the reaction I had whenever I would come across Maisie Dobbs in the bookstore. I was drawn to its post-WWI England setting (I promise I'll move on to a new fictional time and place soon), but always put it down, not quite in the mood to follow Maisie, a maid-turned-battlefield nurse-turned-detective, track down her latest case. I recently read a couple of glowing reviews of it, though, so I finally decided to give it a try.

I was hoping to love this book, if only for its upstairs/ downstairs theme. I think I only managed to like it, however. Although Maisie is logically a very likable character, I didn't feel any strong connection to her. The case she's trying to solve is framed around a large flashback to Maisie's own personal history, which is the more compelling part of the story. As the first book in a series, it's clear that the author was trying to fully introduce Maisie and set her up for future adventures, but the mystery plot suffered as a result, seeming to be relegated to left field and lacking any real sense of drama or tension. I came away with the sense that it was a pleasant story, but not one that I felt personally invested in. I may read another in the series sometime, but I'm not running out right this minute to do so. Which is probably just as well. I don't exactly need more fuel for my Downton- era obsession.

What's your take on mysteries? Do you like to read them? Do you have any favorite authors?

The Hangman's Daughter

I first heard about The Hangman's Daughter quite some time ago when I saw it touted as one of the top selling books for the Kindle. A translation of a German bestseller, it was first published exclusively by Amazon and has since been picked up for wider, print publication.

This was one of the freebies I picked up at BEA, and I'll admit that I wasn't all that excited about reading it (Germany in the 1600's isn't an era I normally like to lose myself in). Luckily for me, the book ended up exceeding my modest expectations. I found myself pulled into the engaging mystery, following a benevolent hangman as he races to discover who or what is abducting and murdering children in his village before a full scale (literal) witch hunt develops. Probably not a something everyone will love, but if a copy happens to fall into your lap, I'd say give it a try.

A Fierce Radiance

I've been having some pretty good luck with my summer reading picks so far. I came to this realization recently when I got completely sucked in to A Fierce Radiance by Lauren Belfer.

A historical mystery very loosely in the vein of The Alienist, it drops you into the middle of 1940's New York, just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and follows a female photojournalist for Life magazine as she become embroiled in a murder mystery involving the development of penicillin.

This isn't a perfect book. I found myself noticing some flaws as I read it, like some rapid and frequent shifts in point of view that didn't always work. That didn't keep me from fully enjoying it, though. There was just too much else to like about it. I loved traveling through the different neighborhoods of historical Manhattan. I loved all of the photography details (all the more so in light of my own recent fledgling attempts). I was fascinated by the facts about the early days of penicillin. And the mystery itself wasn't too bad, either.

Do I dare risk jinxing myself by declaring this book another great summer read?

More Swedes

I'm trying really hard to become a Swedophile. And I think I have a lot going for me besides my recent Swedish book kick. I come from a family of devout Volvo drivers and I've thrown up in two separate IKEAs. But I might be facing a setback because I didn't like The Girl Who Played With Fire all that much. The reservations I had about the first book in the series were magnified by the fact that the entire plot of this one is devoted to revealing backstory about the main character and setting up the starting point for the third and final book that's still to come. Not that these would be bad things if there was something else going on too, or if the twist that's revealed wasn't something I predicted early on. So disappointing...but I'll still read the last book in the series when it comes out, just to complete the circle.

On another note, I've been wanting to give this blog a little facelift for a while. First I thought I would do a new year, new look kind of thing, but January came and went. Then I thought I would unveil something new in honor of the one year anniversary in March. That obviously didn't happen, so I've decided to just unveil some changes little by little. Ten points if you spot the first new addition!