Lempiere's Dictionary

Happy Weekend Flower!

Lucky me I've discovered another new-to-me historical fiction novelist. Reading, It's like a wonderfully bottomless pit of delights. They keep cranking them out and I get to keep reading them. This latest find is Lempiere's Dictionary by Lawrence Norfolk.

In 18th century London, John Lempiere, is furiously researching and writing his dictionary of classical mythology. He is sure that the publication of his definitive study will challenge scholars and make his fortune. His father's brutal murder has made obtaining financial security overwhelmingly important. Papa's death has also brought to light an intriguing and terrifying connection between his family and the all powerful Dutch East India Company. Might John actually be entitled to half of that monopoly's money? Decades old murders, greed, the Dutch East India and the recent deaths of acquaintances in ways that mirror the mythology John is studying are interfering with John's publishing plans. Should he abandon his work and investigate his claim despite the dangers or should he retreat to the safety of silence?


Author Lawrence Norfolk has applied his research on the period (everything from preparing a pen to dog training) to good use. The sights, smells and mindsets of the time engulf you. The light he shines on the 1700's illuminates an irresistible story. The Byzantine plot and rapid introduction of ideas and varied characters demand your complete attention. This is a novel that you commit to, it's not the book to leave in the car and read catch as catch can but if you have the time to dedicate to Lempiere's Dictionary your efforts will be rewarded with well written historical speculation, fact, mythology and conspiracies galore.

When Lempiere's Dictionary was first published in 1991 it was Lawrence Norfolk's debut novel and it won the Somerset Maugham Award that year. He was since written two other novels: The Pope's Rhinoceros and In The Shape of the Boar--both of which I have added to my acquire list and look forward to reading.

Happy

Sex and Stravinsky

Hello Flower.

I'm not generally speaking a big reader of contemporary Women's Fiction. Novels with a modern setting that follow the travails of women looking for love, raising children, saving a marriage, divorcing, caring for elderly parents, dealing with siblings, pursuing a career and learning how to knit. No matter how wonderful the main character is or whatever surprises the plot might hold, I'll take a pass. That's not to say that there are not well written, terrific books out there that I am missing. I'm sure there are. I just don't want to read about the same concerns I face every day. My life is fine but I would rather read about someone else's thank you very much.


There are occasional exceptions. When a friend or colleague whose taste I trust wants to share/force feed me a Women's Fiction novel they loved I'll give it a try. Sometimes it works out (It did quite nicely recently with The Weird Sisters.) but more often than not I find that I can't make it past the next crisis on page 41 and I give up.

There is however a writer I consider to be the antidote to Women's Fiction. It is Barbara Trapido, my friend. Oh Barbara Trapido! ~~sigh~~ Barbara Trapido is my bellwether for novels about modern women. There is nothing out of the ordinary about her storylines. No one is starting a not for proffit to help the urchins of the world, there isn't a killer lurking in the background of the heroine's life and no intrepid reporter eager to tell the world of an upcoming pandemic. Still, she dazzles me. Her plots are what could have happened to you if...or just like what your friend told you about that woman she met on the train. Classic women's fiction stuff but in Trapido's hands there is a left of center reality to the situations that captures me.

Trapido's latest novel is Sex and Stravinsky. This book covers two families and their skeletons over twenty years in Oxford and South Africa. In 1970's Oxford Caroline McCleod is a beautiful, capable, I-can-make-your-mismatched-napkin-rings-into-your-next-kidney force of nature. She is a graduate student, married to Josh, (Oh Josh, Josh, Josh. Josh the little South African---ready?---getting his PhD in mime studies. There's a cross to bare.) mother to Zoe and happy. When cold hearted Mom and mean-spirited younger sister (Mom loves sis best) arrive from Australia demanding to be supported Caroline comes close to abandoning all in favor of doing anything to get her Mother's love and attention.

Josh had a seemingly happier childhood than his wife. He was raised in South Africa by politically active parents whose ideals he replaces with his own vanity. Husband Josh might have married Caroline on the rebound. Back home in South Africa he was in love with ballerina Hattie but she threw him over and Josh scurried off to Oxford. Hattie married successful but emotionally harsh architect Herman. She spends her time squirreled away physically and emotionally from her husband, beefy sons and pouty daughter writing novels about ballet.

Of course the two families will find themselves in the same place at the same time and changes will ensue. There are dramas a plenty in Sex and Stravinsky: misplaced loyalties, hidden paternity, separated twins, career setbacks, unhappy marriages, troubled teenagers, etc. All the staples of Women's Fiction but Trapido handles them with intelligence, candor and unexpected and (actually funny) humor.

No one gets away with anything in a Trapido novel. She makes her characters accountable for their decisions. Caroline has suffered through an unhappy childhood and that's sad but she isn't allowed as an adult to play the blameless victim of a wicked Mother. Caroline's inability to step away from a relationship that will never bring her any satisfaction may cause her and her daughter's downfall. Josh has spent most of his life playing the adolescent and running away when challenged by life. Now as a husband and father he has to grow up or say good-bye to his family.

Trapido moves between her characters skillfully and swiftly. There is an artful precision to the dance (dance is present throughout this novel) of changing partners, identities and misplaced goals that Trapido presents in this book. Caroline, Josh, Hattie and their daughters each discover their purpose but can they stay dedicated to its pursuit? Sex and Stravinsky is a wonderfully enjoyable life lesson in what happens when you let your dreams take a back seat to the desires of others.

There is not another writer of Women's Fiction out there with the vision, style and talent of Barbara Trapido. That's the great news. The really bad news is that none of Barbara Trapido's excellent novels --and I love them all--are in the print in the U.S. I first discovered her years ago when Penguin U.S. did a couple of her novels. This was before I was in a position to handsell the hell out of them and therefore single handsell-ed-ly create a lucrative market for her novels on this side of the Atlantic. I have spent years recommending her to sales reps and other publishing people but to no avail. You may find her in a local library or second hand shop. If you do you are in luck. I don't trust to fate. I buy her books from a U.K. bookshop and gladly pay the shipping. That is real love.

Happy
 
P.S. Have to say it--I love the her covers as well!

The Mistress of Nothing Lady's Maid

Hi Flower!

Like many other people I have been watching and loving Downton Abbey on Masterpiece Theater. It's well written, well acted and gorgeous looking, isn't it? The Upstairs Downstairs of it all created a perfect storm in which I read two novels: The Mistress of Nothing by Kate Pullinger and Lady's Maid by
Margaret Forster. Both of these books are, like Downton Abbey about strong, entitled women and their devoted maids.

The Mistress of Nothing takes it's start from real life. Lady Lucie Duff Gordon wrote her famous Letters from Egypt in the 1860's after being forced to go there from her home in England because of consumption. Although Gordon was a famous entertainer and trendsetter in England she was not rich. So when she was forced to leave her family and go away for her health she was only able to bring one maid along with her, Sally Naldrett. Once in Egypt both women go native. They abandon their Victorian expectations and the social conventions of their times. For the first time in their lives they experience freedom of mind and body. The two also become friends rather then mistress and servant. They learn Arabic, dress in traditional Egyptian clothing and are accepted and welcomed into the local Egyptian community.

Lady's Maid also takes historical fact and expands it into a novel. It is the story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning as told through the eyes of Barrett's maid, Lily Wilson. Wilson as Barrett called her, was instrumental in getting Barrett's correspondence to Browning during their romance. When the famous couple eloped to Italy Wilson accompanied them. Wilson lived her life through Barrett's. She was Barrett's maid, companion, confidante, nurse and support through every crisis and success.

The working lives of Sally Naldrett and Lily Wilson put them each in a position to contribute to literature and history and yet they remained far away on the outskirts of both. It was clever of Pullinger and Forster to use peripheral people in the lives of the well known as the conduits for stories of the celebrities and for their hypocrisy.

Sally and Wilson are each lulled into a false intimacy with Gordon and Barrett through their own loyalty and proximity. The maids have spent their adult lives in a servitude of adoration. They are encouraged to see themselves as valued members of the family. Free thinking and modern women that Gordon and Barrett are they pride themselves on the equality and respect they have for their servants. That is until Sally and Wilson both cross a line. In each case they are frightened about their future but confident that Gordon and Barrett whom they have cared for, nurtured and seen through countless hardships will stand by them.

In The Mistress of Nothing, Pullinger does a very good job recreating Egypt in the 1860's. It's a fascinating look at a native culture outside of the colonial system of the time. The novel hums along interestingly covering Egypt, medicine and the relationships between Sally, Gordon and their local dragoman, Omar, until it gets to Sally's crisis. Just when the conflict in this story truly begins, the drama ends. Overall The Mistress of Nothing was a disappointment. The only surprise for me was that the book was the winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award in 2009.

Lady's Maid is a wholly convincing, absorbing study of the relationship between unequal people who live in each others pockets. Forster's portrait of regimented, cold, Victorian England juxtaposed with warm, languorous Italy is marvelous. It is Forster's intricate dissection of what it is like for a servant, even a treasured one, to live within and yet outside of a family that is the payoff in this novel. There is a powerful subtly to Forster's writing that I was completely astonished by. I would read any of her other novels in a heartbeat.

Happy

Galore Is Galorable

Hello Flower!

Have you heard of the novel, Galore? I hadn't. I hadn't heard of it's author, Michale Crummey either--too bad for me. I was sent a copy of it by a generous Canadian friend. Thank you lovely Canadian. Galore isn't due to be published here in the U.S. until March.

Galore is a swallow you whole kind of novel. Speaking of which when the story begins the townspeople of Paradise Deep pull a man out of a whale. I have to suspect that even in the great whaling times of the early 19th century you just didn't see that every day. The whale has beached itself on the shore of this remote village in Newfoundland. When it dies the citizens come together to butcher the whale and gather the blubber for lamp oil. Then just like Uncle Jed's bubblin' crude out from the whale comes an all white dude. True story or so the folklore of Paradise Deep goes. The next hundred years in Paradise Deep are filled with the flux of public opinion, the curse of Judah (The whale man who unsurprisingly never loses his fish smell.) and the savior Judah, blood feuds, ill-fated love affairs, the moneyed of the town verses the hand to mouth, opera singers, paternity questions, alcoholics, scrimshaw, a witch/healer and the kind of legends and characters that come from a very creative writer building a larger than life history.


Galore is a perfect name for this novel by Michael Crummey. It's a word I associate with the word lavish and Galore is a lavish novel. There is a lavish amount of characters, story lines, fish and Newfoundland brought to you in 100% lavish writing. Many writers strive to create a entire community with it's own natural folklore, but who succeeds? In recent memory I'd have to say We The Drowned and Galore both do and...no one else.

If your favorite novels are slim studies of the interior life of characters who have a crisis the level of a hangnail then by all means skip Galore. Only read Galore if you adore terrific writing, invention, unique characters and lots of storytelling. --Oh yeah and historical fiction that doesn't mention a single Tudor, Borgia or Kennedy.

Happy
 
P.S. Some others have liked Galore as well: Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book, Caribbean & Canada and the Canadian Authors Association Literary Award; Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Book Award, and the Winterset Award.

The Quickening

Flower!

It's been a while since I read a pioneer novel. October I think, The Wake of Forgiveness. It seems like there was a time when every other book I read took place on a prairie or a homestead. I was influenced by Laura Ingalls Wilder at an early age. What changed? Are there less novels settling the west these days? I don't know about that. Did I become more interested in reading about hardscrabble lives in India and China? Probably.


The Quickening by Michelle Hoover is a prairie tale. It's 1913 and both Enidina Current and Mary Morrow are farmer's wives. Their places are adjacent and this rather than like minds makes them friends or rather friendly. Enidina and Mary are very different. Enidina is happy in her hard work life while Mary chafes under the yoke of the plow. Years go by, both families grow and more or less remain close. There are small betrayals and conflicts but proximity and loneliness has decreed that the Currents and the Morrows will be in and out of each others lives. When the Great Depression arrives and all of their small worries escalate into daily struggles to survive the relations between the two families come to a breaking point. Long held resentments, secrets and slights take on an importance magnified by dire economic circumstance.

Michelle Hoover is quite a strong writer. This is a finely structured, well defined novel that despite that has spontaneity of situation in the plotting. That coupled with the vivid honesty of Enidina and Mary's uneasy relationship makes The Quickening an unlikely page turner.
 
Happy

Lives Of The Monster Dogs

Flower!

While I was reading Mr Chartwell I was reminded of another novel about dogs with human characteristics, The Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis. This book was originally published in 1998. It was a strong seller for us in it's day. Sadly, it is currently out of print but it is very much worth the effort of finding a copy at the library or a used bookstore.


The Lives of the Monster Dogs is about a community of dogs who become celebrities when they arrive in NYC in 2008 dressed to the nines 19th century style. They were the brainchild of Augustus Rank a mad Prussian scientist. In the late 1800's Rank established a secret town in the wilds of Canada. His own evil Brigadoon. There he set to work creating his Monster Dogs. Rank's plan was to create an independent yet completely loyal dog-soldier. He used his surgery skills to give them human hands and voice boxes and breed them to be super-intelligent. After Rank died his work was refined and completed by his disciples. At some point the dogs turned against their creators and they made their way to NYC.

The media is enchanted by these up scale refugees. They are the new big thing. They are courted by high society. It makes no difference whether anyone believes in the dogs or sees them as a hoax they still fascinate the public. They are elegant and sophisticated but they have a hard time adjusting to this new, modern world. Once in New York City they construct an amazing castle for themselves and then barricade themselves inside.

The narrator of the story is a young woman named Cleo Pira. She is one of the few, human friends the dogs have in their new homeland. Cleo is lonely and sees her own isolation mirrored in the dogs. She becomes the dog's press agent and liaison between them and the world, but she cannot protect them.

The Lives of the Monster Dogs was an engaging, stimulating science fiction novel about humanity, loneliness and celebrity culture. There are a few flaws there. The characterization of the dogs isn't as well defined as you would like and occasionally the dialog is a bit flat. However, Bakis puts her own voice to the Frankenstein story in an intriguing and inventive way. She is a strong storyteller and when book number two shows up I'll be very excited.

Happy

Mr Chartwell

Hello Flower, my friend.

Going into Mr Chartwell you should know that Winston Churchill suffered with depression throughout his adult life and referred to depression as "the black dog". Got it? Now you are ready to read one of the more original novels I've read in a long time.


The title character in Mr Chartwell is that black dog. Or something very like a dog. Mr Chartwell is 6' 7", smelly, and resembles a black Labrador. He has quite a few human characteristics: he speaks English, walks on his hind legs, drinks, needs an apartment and is employed. His job is persecuting Winston Churchill. Chartwell has been hounding Churchill for years. In 1964 when the novel opens Churchill is retiring from politics after sixty years. The idea of retirement does not sit easily with him and neither does having the black dog as a companion once again.

Chartwell has his teeth in Esther Hammerhans as well. Esther is a young widow with a room to let. She's naturally reluctant to rent it to Chartwell when he shows up but he has a way of not taking no for answer and soon moves in. Chartwell finds the grieving Esther an easy mark and takes over. Like an unloved and persistent stray Chartwell grabs a hold and insinuates himself into Esther's life. It's the old repulsive fascination thing for Esther. She finds Chartwell hideous and obnoxious and yet is seduced into waiting on him and caring for him anyway or maybe it's just that misery loves company, any company. I won't be forgetting Esther or Chartwell anytime soon.

What is Chartwell after? Can Esther and Winston help each other? Will Chartwell ever leave? Can a novel about depression have a happy ending? What does it all mean? Why isn't this novel a gigantic mess? Questions, questions, questions---most of which I'm not going to answer. Discovery is a big part of the oddball charm of this novel.

I will tell you that the boldness of Mr Chartwell is astounding. This is unique, metaphorical, very humorous novel by a first time author. Don't think that this is all pretentious, experimental, is-anything-ever-going-to-happen writing. There is as much storytelling in Mr Chartwell as there is invention. Impressive. The author, Rebecca Hunt paints vivid word pictures in this excellent debut. She has a clever, winning way with description. Hunt is successful as well in making a depressing subject, Depression, funny. You feel the weight of this debilitating disease and you can empathize but you are smiling while you do it and you have to wonder what for goodness sake is Rebecca Hunt going to write about next?

Happy
 
P.S. Love the cover!!