A Man In Uniform

Good Morning Flower!

It was a dark and stormy night, seriously. It followed what had been an already stormy day. We had a blizzard. In twenty hours we got sixteen inches of snow. Lovely to look except up close when shoveling it, but I get ahead of myself. When the clean up seems incalculable hours away having snow whipping by your window as you sit wrapped up in cuddly warmth reading is atmospheice not backbreaking work.


Lucky me, I had a book I had been looking forward to for my blizzard reading: A Man In Uniform by Kate Taylor. I read her first novel, Madame Proust's Kosher Kitchen and absolutely loved it. This new novel is based on The Dreyfus Affair. In 1894 a French court found Captain Alfred Dreyfus guilty of treason and he was sent to Devil's Island. The arrest and trial were widely criticized and became the most publicized civil rights outrage of it's day. It took about ten years for Dreyfus to be exonerated. This scandal was as much about the workings of the military in France, anti-semitism and the power of the press as it was about selling military secrets. Sounds like the bones of a terrific novel, right?

Taylor's book begins after Dreyfus is sentenced. A comfortably bored Paris lawyer, François Dubon is approached by a mysterious woman who is convinced of Dreyfus' innocence and is willing to pay Dubon to try to get an appeal for Dreyfus. Dubon is intrigued by the woman and thoughts of recapturing the excitement of his radical youth and takes the case. This begins the attorney's double life. His marriage and family, mistress, prosperous practice and social standing could all disappear when what began as a lark (with a little seduction thrown in) becomes a mission.

Sad to say but A Man In Uniform is mediocre at best. The characters are two dimensional and the connect the dots plot is as surprising and suspenseful as a Tic Tac Toe match. There is good writing in the scene setting and period details but Taylor does not capture the built in drama of the events or create her own drama. Madame Proust's Kosher Kitchen really is one of my favorite books so I was anticipating adoring A Man In Uniform as well. Oh well. On the plus side Kate Taylor is talented and will write other novels that I will want to read.

Happy

The Weird Sisters

Happy After Christmas Flower!

Is it a good idea to read a novel about three sisters with issues right before you are going to be spending the holidays with your own sisters with issues? The novel is The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown. I have five weird sisters myself so this seems like a perfect match. In the book the sisters are grown women trying to outrun themselves and the usual family baggage we all have. Well maybe not quite so usual. I'm going to go out on a limb here by saying that very few of us were raised by a Shakespearean scholar so maybe our baggage is as big but a little less erudite.


Rosalind, Bianca, and Cordelia are soon to be all at home together for the first time in years. To say that the three of them have never been close is an understatement. In truth they have been at odds with one another their whole lives. The only thing they seem to have in common is their deep love for their parents. Rosalind is the daughter who has stayed local. She wears many hats: career girl, caretaker to her parents and adoring fiancee but all those hats disguise her own fear of leaving the safety of her parents. Bianca has been in the Big City living up to Cosmo's expectations and Cordelia has been primarily out of touch and indulging in finding herself. All three of the sisters is at a crossroads in her life and has come home to nurse bad decisions as much as to help their Mother. Dealing with their Mother's illness and Cordelia's unexpected pregnancy will physically unite them. Whether or not they will overcome their animosity and become real sisters....well, you'll read it and see.

The Bard manifests himself everywhere in this novel: the title (the witches in Macbeth), the daughters names (think As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and King Lear), the plot and there are quotes from the plays all over the place. Every family has their own language. The jokes that only they get, the shorthand concocted by childish mispronunciations, misconceptions and lore in the Andreas family the native tongue is Shakespearean. I came to The Weird Sisters with only the most cursory High School knowledge of Shakespeare and I was able to get it all and enjoy it all.

Is The Weird Sisters chicklit? Sure. So are books by Anita Shreve and Allegra Goodman. It's a novel that women are going to be drawn to, not men. Is it wonderful? Yes it is. This is author Eleanor Brown's first novel and she does a terrific job. She alternates the novel's action by giving each sister her own point of view in alternating chapters without using first person---YEA! Not every second of The Weird Sisters is new and different but Brown has added plenty of her own surprises to this sisterhood novel. The writing is assured, the storyline is compelling, the relationship between the sisters is believable, there is a lot of humor and the Shakespeare theme is fun. It unifies the novel in a different way while it stretches your brain a bit without beating you over the head.

Happy

The Wizard and the Crow

Flower, hi.

The book The Wizard of the Crow by novelist and playwright Ngugi wa Thiong'o, is a kind of modern day Frank Capra film set in the imaginary African country of Aburiria. There is a delusional, hubristic ruler with a Yertle The Turtle complex, schemers with all kinds of official titles, a group of rebels plotting an overthrow, yes men devoted to their rulers glory, an greedy Global Bank, men who have plastic surgery to keep their ruler's enemies under surveillance, corruption, poverty and a reluctant everyman hero who happens to be an unemployed wizard that found his powers in a trash heap.


This fanciful, satirical novel is a heavily populated adventure through politics. The Ruler (we never learn his name) longs for the good old days of the Cold War when he could pit superpowers against one another to increase his personal coffers. Now no one seems to need him and a mysterious illness is making fatter and fatter. The novel gets started when the Ruler decides that what needs to happen to maintain his status and respect is to build the tallest building in Africa. Opportunists and government ministers fall out of the woodwork to make this happen. At the same time a young job seeker named Kamiti accidental joins a demonstration against the Global Bank's financing of the skyscraper by the rebels of The Movement of the People and ends up in hiding. In an attempt to confound and frighten the police Kamiti places a sign in front of his hideout proclaiming that a wizard lives inside. Little does he know how this new title will change his life.

Thiong'o has written an entertaining and worthwhile novel where the self interest of those in charge are pitted against the misery they create. The plot continually swings from absurd to biting then on over to ridiculous but it also hits on all the evils of any society not just those in the third world. There is a very let-me-tell-you-a-story feel to this book. That might come from the authors background as a playwright or the oral storytelling traditions of Kenya. The Wizard of the Crow could have used a little editing, but that said the story was never tedious. It had it's predictable moments but it had plenty of surprises as well.

Happy
 
P.S. I think this cover is great.

Kalimantaan

Hello My Friend.

I don't remember when my Read It Or Remove It policy started. Was it this year? Last year? Who can say. I can tell you that I have had some excellent luck with this program. Recently there has been
 A Very Long Engagement and The Observations, both terrific--and that trend continues!


The latest title in R.I.O.R.I. is sadly out of print but happily fantastic. It's Kalimantaan by C.S. Godshalk. As usual I do remember buying this novel and I remember being eager to read it. Alas...I have no memory of what took it's place in the reading queue. Whatever it was I hope it was worth it because as I've said Kalimantaan really is exceptional.

Kalimantaan is based on the true story of Sir James Brooke. Brooke was an adventurer who two hundred years ago acquired/seized a kingdom, Sarawak, roughly the size of England on the northern coast of Borneo. Borneo is an island in the Pacific that is part of the Malay Archipelago. Brooke and his followers ruled Sarawak for approximately one hundred years. Brooke's exploits have already been fictionalized at least once before that I am aware of in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim.

In Kalimantaan, Brooke is Gideon Barr. As the self-styled "Raj of Sarawak", Barr imposes his brand of civilization on the natives whose land he's stolen and any immigrants, missionaries or businessmen who have found their way to his world. His wife, Amelia, views the colonial life and it's contradictions quite differently than her British East India Company admiring husband. In Barr's private country Victorian civilities, self-importance and hypocrisy cover all manner of savagery by the whites and the love of tradition and celebration hide native barbarism. This is an environment that breeds cholera, smallpox and infection as easily as it does tyrants, madness and doom. Godshalk has inhabited Sarawak with varied and fascinating characters. There are not any levels of this society that are not examined and made important to the story.

This is not a novel about pioneers trying to conquer a hostile environment through hard work and sacrifice. Kalimantaan is about colonialism and empire building on a grandiose scale. Damn the locals and full speed ahead. The rewards are great and little is allowed to get in the way of those prizes. Godshalk has triumphed in this magnificent undertaking. There is plot and color to spare. She has woven her many characters complex stories and motives through a long gone world all the while dissecting it's mysteries and cruelties and celebrating it's beauty and culture.

Happy

A Novel Something

Flower,

Are you familiar with the book A Novel Bookstore? The premise is that the bookstore of the title only stocks the best books. Umm...right.

Let me tell you that store would not be stocking this book.

That's all.

Happy

Three Bags Full

Flower!

The world of detective fiction is a mental health half way house waiting to happen. It is a hotbed of psychological scars, neurosis, personality disorders, paranoia, grief, anger and all manner of antisocial behavior. Well the troubled gumshoes can all step aside. They need to make room for a new breed. A precinct made up of wool making, grass chewing, formerly lamb chop filled investigators created by Leonie Swann in Three Bags Full.

 Led by Miss Maple, the smartest sheep in the world, the flock of the late George Glenn are on the case. George, their beloved shepherd has been murdered. A shovel through his shoulder and a suspicious hoof print on his chest. George had taken very good care of them and they will not allow his murder to go unpunished.


However there are a few disadvantages to be a sheep/sleuth. The biggest of which is the language barrier. Luckily for us the sheep were able to learn English because George had sung and read aloud to them. George liked romantic fiction that always seemed to be about red-heads named Pamela but his limited tastes were enough for the sheep to get an understanding of English (Alas they can't speak the language) and human nature. Being bilingual and determined the flock turn their attention to solving George's murder.

How did  Leonie Swann come up with this wonderfully inventive book? I would never have in a million years thought that I who have zero interest in anything to do with animals (Yup. Puppies? I am untouched by the alleged cuteness.) would adore a squad of crime solving sheep. Other than the whole Sherlock sheep thing happening, Swann makes the whole affair realistic. There is an actual mystery, viable suspects and the crime is solved by solid police work, so to speak, but how to tell the humans who done it? The answer comes in a talent contest and amateur dramatics.

Swann packs Three Bags Full with clever literary illusions, dark humor and terrific characterizations--if that's the right word to describe a cast of sheep. You may not be aware of it but the word delightful was invented to describe this mystery novel. True. I have the lab work to prove it.

Happy.

P.S. That cover? Perfection!

The Northern Clemency

Hi Flower.

I have to warn you I'm going to need some extra adjectives here. I might be saying brilliant, wonderful, impressive and glorious so often that I have to resort to using multi-layered as well. Let me apologize in advance for that. I've read The Northern Clemency (picked up solely because it is so very extra chubby) by Philip Hensher and it is fantastic. You can stop reading my puny writing now and go get a copy of it if you want. I won't be insulted.

Clemency starts out in 1970's Sheffield and follows two families:the Glovers and the Sellers. Malcolm and Katherine Glover have three children and have been Sheffield staples forever. Bernie and Alice Sellers, parents of two, are recent arrivals having moved to Sheffield from London for Bernie's new job. The day the Sellers move in Malcolm accuses his wife of having an affair and disappears. The next twenty years bring other catastrophes and passing cruelties both personal and nation wide that have lasting effects on both families.

This a War and Peace type of novel only without all the war part. Clemency is not only concerned with the events of its characters lives but it also details the physical, social, economic and political world they inhabit. Nothing happens in a vacuum in The Northern Clemency. It's a big novel that charts the internal and external world of two generations in one community. A cross section. This is the book for someone who wants to be entertained and at the same time come away with a complete portrait of the times.

Hensher has a firm grip on this tremendous slice of life novel and yet he makes it all feel very organic and realistic. It's as if the neighborhood gossip were giving you the straight skinny over a drink while you perused the March 1973 edition of Ladies Home Journal (Speaking of which a little Can This Marriage Be Saved would not have gone amiss here.) rather than an extremely talented writing is behind it all plotting away, pulling strings and researching every visual element of 70's and 80's decor and food. Nothing occurs in The Northern Clemency that doesn't have repercussions. From the minutiae of day to day domestic life to the events of the time that were felt across the country everything is put into his microscope, inspected and then brought to our attention with magnificent writing.

I was totally impressed and after one quick phone call my local independent bookstore has ordered me an earlier novel written by Philip Hensher, The Mulberry Empire. Yippee!

Happy