A Dog Governess

I've written before about the art of Janet Hill. I have to ration myself in looking at her work, though, or else I would be way too tempted to order more prints (and I already own this one, this one, and this one). But after taking a peek at her site recently, I can't help sharing a new series by her that I'm completely smitten with: Miss Moon Was a Dog Governess.

(image via here)

Each piece in the series features Miss Moon teaching a different lesson to her canine charges. You can see them all here.

It would be perfectly reasonable to hang one of each along my floorboards as artwork for Millie, right?

The Double Bind

I'm fresh off of spending some fictional time in Vermont, the setting of both of the last two books that I read. First up was The Double Bind by Chris Bohjalian, a novel that offers up the intriguing premise that Jay Gatsby and Daisy and Tom Buchanan weren't fictional characters from The Great Gatsby, but were instead actual historical figures from the 1920s. In the present-day action of the novel, the protagonist is Laurel Estabrook, a twenty-something woman who works at a homeless shelter in Burlington, Vermont, where she attended college. Laurel is familiar with the Gatsby and Buchanan names, which were notorious in the area of Long Island where she grew up. When she begins working on curating a collection of photos that were left behind by one of the shelter's deceased residents, she finds herself confronted by the Gatsby saga, which seems to have mysterious ties to both the photo collection and to Laurel's own past.

In my mind, one strike against this book was the fact that Bohjalian seemed to approach the Gatsby-related elements of the novel from a point of view that ignored the larger themes of Fitzgerald's novel and reduced his characters to shallow, selfish caricatures. I realize that this is a somewhat common stance (made apparent to me by some of the articles I read surrounding the recent film adaptation earlier this summer), but it's one that is decidedly opposed to my own view of Fitzgerald's work. Bohjalian's focus on only the flaws of the Gatsby characters made me feel slightly at odds with his book, not to mention perfectly willing to notice the flaws of his writing style, which frequently drifted off into unnecessary, cliche descriptions of peripheral details that added nothing to the story. Yet in spite of these two big complaints, I actually found The Double Bind to be a pretty engrossing read. It was clear that events were building to some kind of major revelation, which had me racing through to the end to see if I was correct in the plot twist that I suspected (I was, to a certain extent). Though the ending wasn't quite as satisfying as it could have been, the overall effect of The Double Bind is an entertaining, if flawed, read that will interest--even if it slightly annoys--Gatsby fans.

Are there any books that you've enjoyed, even while disliking specific elements of them?

Friday Fancies

If you've been thinking that it's been too long since you've seen cute beagles on this blog, then you're in for a treat. Millie's current favorite toy seems to be a stuffed Mr. Bill doll that, just like the old time SNL character, says "Ohhhhhh Nooooooo" when you squeeze it. Earlier this week I snapped a picture of her snuggling with it during her pre-bedtime nap. A few days later, my mom sent me a picture of Olive taking an afternoon nap with her own Mr. Bill doll. (Note the missing mouth on hers. Who would think such a sweet face was capable of such mutilation?)

If you happen to be in a market for a dog toy, this one seems to be a favorite. Now for a few more links:

Apropos of the above, ten great dogs from literature.

The Algonquin Hotel in NYC has partnered with Simon & Schuster to create a literary themed hotel suite....

...as it turns out, that's not the only literary hotel in Manhattan.

And don't forget, after this weekend Google Reader will be a thing of the past. I've switched over to Bloglovin. If you have too, you can follow me there.

The Warden

The Warden marks my first foray into the extensive body of work of Anthony Trollope. I'll admit that I chose this one to start with because it's the first installment of his Chronicles of Barsetshire series, rather than because it's plot sounded particularly compelling. In a nutshell (and a somewhat fuzzy nutshell at that, since I'm suffering from a summer cold at the moment!), it's a story about the ethical debate that erupts over the local monetary dealings of the Church of England. The specific controversy surrounds a hospital that serves as an almshouse for twelve elderly and destitute townsmen. It was originally endowed with money from a local clergyman's will, which stipulated a few pence per year be paid to each of hospital's twelve residents. In the ensuing years, however, the hospital's investments have grown substantially, bringing in hundreds of pounds per year as the salary the hospital's Warden, while its residents continue to receive their tiny stipend. This injustice is brought to light by a local young doctor (who also happens to be in love with the Warden's daughter, to further complicate matters) and a battle erupts between the church and the local townspeople, with Septimus Harding, the elderly, peace-loving Warden, caught in the middle.

I can't say that I loved this book, but I was pleasantly surprised by how engaging it was, especially in certain scenes in which two opposing characters were arguing about the issue at hand. There were a few passages in which I actually felt like I was on the edge of my seat as I raced through dialogue. I had to stop and remind myself that--wait a minute--these characters are actually discussing pretty dry points of church fiscal policy. Trollope's ability to pull off this story seems to boil down to his sense of satire, which he turns on each character equally. Things like the narrator's witty descriptive barbs and the names that he christens his characters with (Mr. Bold, Mr. Senitment), kept the book's theme from feeling too pedantic or preachy. 

Have you read any Trollope? Do you have any recommendations for his works outside of the Barchester series?

Revisiting Brideshead

After recently finishing Put Out More Flags, I decided it was the perfect time to go on a slight Evelyn Waugh kick and reread Brideshead Revisited. The two books showcase vastly different sides of Waugh's style. The former satirizes a group of upper class Brits who will seemingly go to any length to hold onto their comfortable lifestyles in the face of the changes of war. Brideshead also looks at a way of life whose disappearance was accelerated by the war, but it does so in a much more nostalgic, bittersweet way. It was apparently written very quickly during a period in which Waugh himself was abroad during World War II and pining for the England home that he used to know. I've read that in his later years, Waugh would cringe and dismiss the work as overly sentimental. His self-criticisms weren't widely shared, though, and Brideshead remains his most famous work.

Brideshead Revisited  is divided into three distinct sections. Sandwiching the main action of the story, the novel begins and ends with protagonist Charles Ryder, a middle-aged officer in the British army, arriving at a lavish country estate that has been requisitioned for his unit. The estate happens to be Brideshead, a house that he was intimately familiar with in his youth. The memories that the house evokes for Charles first take us back to his university days, when he first developed a friendship with Sebastian Flyte, the flamboyant and eccentric youngest son of the aristocratic owners of Brideshead. Each subsequent year of their friendship sees Sebastian take his heavy drinking habit to increasingly destructive levels, until ultimately he goes abroad and falls out of Charles's life. The novel then jumps to a time about a decade after that, when a chance encounter on a cruise ship leads to an ill-fated relationship between Charles and Sebastian's sister, Julia.

To say that Waugh was Britain's version of F. Scott Fitzgerald would be a largely inaccurate analogy. I will draw one comparison between them, though, which is to say that both wrote imperfect novels that manage to perfectly capture feelings of nostalgia for very specific times and places that are drifting away from their characters, even while they are in the midst of living in them. In my mind, some of the most glaring imperfections of Brideshead are that the novel feels imbalanced, with the first half outshining the second, and that Waugh often tries to juggle too many elements, which results in somewhat awkward resolutions for certain themes and characters he introduces into the novel. I'd be forced to elaborate on these complaints if I had to dissect Waugh's writing from a critical point of view. Luckily, I don't have to, and I can continue to enjoying his work for the same reasons that I enjoy Fitzgerald's- for the broad ideas of nostalgia and memory that their novels evoke.