Booklog for Charlotte

When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson

This is my fourth Kate Atkinson book (Life After Life, A God in Ruins, and Case Histories) and I have loved each one. This one and Case Histories feature Jackson Brodie, a former policeman who became a private investigator. The appeal of all her books for me are the characters that you come to love, however improbable they are. 

There's Reggie, a teenager who manages to live on her own after her mother dies. She works as a mother's helper for a kindly, warm-hearted, perfect-in-every-way doctor whose only mistake was to marry a small-time bumbling crook. Reggie studies the classics--she has ambitions--with a dying (and dotty) woman, Ms. MacDonald. A train derailment occurs on a track just behind the house where Reggie is dog-sitting for Ms. MacDonald. She goes to help and saves the life of Jackson Brodie at the horrific scene. He is taken to the hospital and has temporary amnesia and doesn't know that his ID has been switched by a murderer just released from prison. The murderer had killed the mother and two siblings of the perfect doctor when she was a child. It is assumed he will be coming back to finish his task of wiping out the family. This brings me to another feature of this book:  coincidences are rampant. The characters go about their business as if this all makes sense.

Jackson Brodie, in this and Case Histories, goes against type of detective fiction policemen/investigators. In this book he more often seems to be acted upon, rather than being the actor. An old love interest of his turns up in this book; Louise is a policewoman who would much rather work than spend time with her kindly husband, especially if his relatives are visiting. She's not good with the work/life balance thing.

This is a 624-page book (I never tired listening to it) and it has lots of plot lines which have tangential connections. It is complicated and impressive and often funny. Much of the action takes place in Scotland and so it was a treat to listen to this book. 

Kate Atkinson, When Will There Be Good News?, Little, Brown and Company, 2008, 624 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

The Kappillan of Malta by Nicholas Monsarrat

Because of a planned visit to Malta next year, I googled "books set in Malta" and began with this one. It is remarkably good at putting you in the place and I feel I have walked the hill of Valetta, wandered through Sliema, and taken the ferry to Gozo myself. The main character is a priest who honors his noble birth and ancient family, but prefers the humble life of caring for his people. And he's called on for much caring as he lived through the bombing and siege of World War II. The Italians began bombing in 1941 with the Germans joining in so fiercely that the George Cross was awarded to the island early in 1942 by King George.

When the church Father Salvatore had been building for years was destroyed on the first day of bombing, he moved the alter to the nearby Cottonera Lines, part of the city's fortifications built in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this novel people sheltered there in the catacombs along with hundreds of friars who had been in residence for centuries. As the siege wore on, finding food, taking in more whose homes were bombed, and generally trying to manage this underground community was the work of the beloved Father Salvatore.

The structure of the book is admirable. Chapters detailing a particular day for Father Salvatore during the war alternate with stories he strategically tells those who live in the catacombs when their spirits need to be raised. The six chapters are labeled "hexameron,"  referring to the six days of creation; these stories are about key moments in Malta's history. The first brings the Phoenicians' connection to Malta to life (Wikipedia was useful here to remember a bit about the Phoenicians). The second tells the story recounted by Luke in Acts, Chapter 27 when he and Paul were shipwrecked in 60, on an island believed to be Malta. The subjects of the remaining four are:  

• After 220 years of rule by the Saracens, Roger the Norman, Count of Sicily, expelled them in 1090.
• The Great Siege of 1565 was the siege and invasion by the Turkish against the Knights of the Order of Saint John. The Turks were repelled with the help of the Maltese and late-arriving help from the Viceroy of Sicily. 
• On his way to invading Egypt, Napoleon secured Malta in 1798, especially to keep it from Nelson. After a significant naval defeat in Egypt for Napoleon, Maltese citizens and troops rebelled against the French and with the aid of the British, expelled them. 
• A story from 1917 told of the arrival of a ship commanded by Andrew Browne Cunningham into the Grand Harbour near the end of the Great War. A year and a month after Father Salvatore told the story, the arrival of a ship in 1943 commanded by Admiral Cunningham signaled the end of the war for Malta.

Father Salvatore's experiences of the war include the stories of his grand dame mother and the fading of her perfect world. His sister married an unpleasant fellow who preferred an alliance with the Italians rather than the British, a preference that brings great tribulation to the family. A sweet love story develops between the daughter and a young British pilot. The priest's own struggles of faith come to light. These and other personal stories bring life to the gruesome facts of war with its relentless misery. 

I learned that this British author (1910-1979) is best known for his sea stories.  

Nicholas Monsarrat, The Kappillan of Malta, William Morrow & Company, 1974, 503 pages. Available at the public library and from Amazon.

Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear

Laura recommended this series to me and this first one made a great audiobook to listen to while cooking, walking, and gardening. First published in 2003, it is set around the time of the First World War in Britain and its aftermath and features an appealing heroine. Maisie is of humble birth, and a smarter, more hardworking, more loyal character you could not ask for.

When we first meet Maisie, she is opening her own detective agency, having worked for her mentor. She charms those around her -- and us -- right away. Her careful methods are described as she works with her first client and we understand she is both dedicated to finding the truth and using it to the advantage of those who need her kindness, regardless of who is paying her. 

We then learn about her background. Her mother died when she was young and her father concludes her best choice is to go into service as any money he had available were used to pay medical bills for her mother. Maisie had the good fortune to be in service in a household that recognized her intelligence and encouraged her. She reads and studies enough to be accepted at a women's college at Cambridge, but her work is interrupted by the war when she becomes a nurse and goes to France. 

The story returns to her detective work and that first case takes her back to her war experiences. Maisie shows herself to be intelligent and intrepid as she uncovers the secrets of a home for veterans who were terribly disfigured by their service.  In the end Maisie's own secret is revealed and she becomes more human to us, more appealing than the perfect figure she presents.

Jacqueline Winspear, Maisie Dobbs, Soho Press, 2003, 294 pages, (I listened to the audiobook). Available in the UVa and public libraries, and from Amazon.

First Person by Richard Flanagan

Early in his career the 2014 Booker Prize winner Richard Flanagan ghost-wrote a book about Australia's greatest con man John Friedrich and this book is a fictional retelling of that experience. The narrator Kif is a long-time drinking buddy/friend of Ziggy Heidl's body guard Ray and through this connection he gets the job. He is in dire need of money to support his family, and accepts the terms of the job that require a completed manuscript prior to payment. Ziggy has perpetrated a $700 million fraud. He is on his way to jail and believes the bankers he defrauded plan to kill him.

Kif spends hours with Ziggy unable to get any facts that could be useful for writing the memoir that must be completed in six weeks. They meet in an office in the publisher's building and Ziggy is often on the phone, making a new deal or arranging to meet his attorneys. One day after Ziggy leaves the room, Kif checks the phone to see who Ziggy called last. It was a pizza joint, not someone he was making a deal with. His methods are described here:

At lunch he impressed on me that Cape York was a big project financed by a venture capital firm out of Seattle, while an hour later he said it was all a ridiculous media beat-up. By mid-afternoon it was the pet project of a Singapore media mogul whose anonymity he needed to protect.

He contradicted his own lies with fresh lies, and then he contradicted his contradictions....The necessarily incomplete nature of Heidl's stories, rather than denying their supposed truth, instead confirmed it. I am not saying Heidl consciously made sure his slow-drip stories never quite matched, and were often entirely opposed. But as an instinctive ruse it was more than effective. For the challenge to reconcile such outrageous lies lay not with him, but with you, the listener.

The short time that Kif spent with Ziggy was feverish and intense and Flanagan's frenetic writing reflects that. 

But I ignored it because the words were beginning to come. He was entering me and there were more and more words, and with each word somehow less and less of me. I was a man unmoored, once more adrift in a wild sea. Only this time, I did not know it. I had let him in. I did not know it, and all that time Heidl did.

As was the case with the non-fictional John Friedrich, Ziggy killed himself and the book was completed and published. Kif never recovered and though he became a successful reality TV producer, could never become the writer or the person he wanted to be.

Several times Flanagan refers to Mr. Moon, the entrance to Luna Park in Melbourne, similar to the park in Sydney that I photographed. Here's what Kif says

...I saw shaping out of the darkness and sheets of rain a great gaping mouth, a smile perhaps five meters high, framed within a giant white face, replete with staring, satanic blue eyes, above which red and yellow rays radiated into a vaguely oriental proscenium....There was something hellish about his vast, blood-red lips, the deeply etched lines of his cheeks, his odd arched plucked eyebrows--a grubby, grinning Mephisto.

He's a bloody funhouse mirror, Ray said. Look at Heidl long enough and all you can see is yourself.

 

Perhaps Richard Flanagan had reason to write about this other than the 2016 US election, but Ziggy sure does have a familiar look. And then there's this:

If he had just jogged along until the new century he might have brought whole countries down rather than just his own business and a few investment banks.

This book rings distressingly true to to me as I have watched horror show of the Republicans and all those others who benefitted from the rise of a grotesque showman in our country.

The last chapter is Kif's coda and has a lovely memory of his youth in Tasmania. 

When Ray and I were young we had often walked and sometimes run up remote tracks to the mountain top. Run! It was inconceivable now. The joy, the wonder of it all. The beauty that was our gaze. Everything we saw sparkled in its glory. The loveliness of it, the sweetness of it. We could not believe that such beauty was ours. We had nothing and we had this. It was beyond explanation. We did not know the beauty was us.

I appreciated that high note. It is an intense and wonderful book and now I want to think about someone with more consciousness of their Buddha nature.

 Richard Flanagan, First Person, Alfred A. Knopf, 2017, 352 pages (I read the kindle version). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

News of the World by Paulette Jiles

An appealing audiobook on several counts, News of the World interestingly inhabits a different time. It is set in Texas shortly after the Civil War when a reader with a good suit could make his way by traveling to small towns and bringing the news from far off places for ten cents a person. International news was best in order to avoid the strong partisan views on local issues in some localities. The main character, who had the unlikely name of Capt. Thomas Jefferson Kidd, had been a printer, but the war had ended that. His children were grown and his wife had died, so the 71-year-old traveled to small towns around the state entertaining audiences with news.

He was approached by a black man he knew who was charged with returning a 10-year-old girl to her distant relatives for $50 in gold coin. The girl Johanna had been taken by Kiowa Indians in a raid that killed her family when she was six-years-old. Capt. Kidd was asked to take on the task because a black man would not be able to travel across the state with the child. It wasn't an easy task for Capt. Kidd as they encountered flooding, a three-some intent on kidnapping Johanna, and an audience at war with each other. Johanna had become a Kiowa and while she was a good partner in the gunfight they had, her table manners and her English had suffered. The story of their growing understanding and their partnership is an appealing one and manages not to be overly sentimental. Returning Johanna to her relatives is complicated by the unworthiness of that family. And like the gunfight, the outcome is predictable. 

Paulette Jiles, News of the World, William Morrow, 2016, 224 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

Our Man Elsewhere: In Search of Alan Moorehead by Thornton McCamish

This unconventional ramble through the life of the author of two popular history books that I dearly loved (The White Nile and The Blue Nile) was a pleasant walk indeed. It was a few months before our trip to Australia that I read another of his books, Cooper's Creek, about the ill-fated exploration of the interior of Australia.

He was an ambitious journalist who left Australia as soon as he could for the more exciting Europe. In 1937 he was posted to Gibraltar and began sending dispatches about the Spanish Civil War. He got his wish for more excitement and fame when the war began. He became famous for his stories of the war in North Africa, one of the most famous journalists of the period. He was known for bringing the war to life and having read his popular histories, I can imagine that. After the war, he turned his hand to novel-writing and by all accounts was pretty bad at it. 

His fortunes rose again in 1956 with the publication of his book Gallipoli, about that dreadful massacre of Australian soldiers in Turkey during World War I. My admittedly uninformed understanding of this battle is that Churchill was willing to put Australian but not British soldiers on the line in this dubious undertaking. But McCamish quotes Moorehead's book:

'No matter how often the story is retold there is still an actuality about it, a feeling of suspense and incompleteness,' Moorehead wrote. ' Although nearly half a century has gone by, nothing yet seems fated about the day's events, a hundred questions remain unanswered, and in a curious way one feels that the battle might still lie before us in the future; that there is still time to make other plans and bring it to a different ending.' 

Critics loved the book, but there was a dissent by Norman Podhoretz in The New Yorker, who accused Moorehead of pandering to a wrong-headed British sentimentality about the glory of sacrifice. (Even a neocon is right twice a day.) The Duff Cooper Memorial Prize was presented to Moorehead by Winston Churchill. I hardly know what to say.

McCamish puts himself into the story; he was a dedicated fan and made pilgrimages to the places important in Moorehead's life, hoping to feel his presence. Moorehead was an amazing figure:  he came to know countless famous figures, he worked very hard at researching and writing, and he was an inveterate traveler. One question that comes up is why he disappeared from consciousness. His great talent was tapping into the issues of the moment and the moment does pass. 

Thornton McCamish, Our Man Elsewhere:  In Search of Alan Moorehead, Schwartz Publish Pty Ltd, 2016, 336 pages (I read the Kindle version). Available from Amazon.

Another Country by James Baldwin

This 1961 novel tells the story of Rufus Scott, a talented drummer in Harlem, overcome by the societal forces he faces, and the stories of his friends in the aftermath of his death. He is introduced to us on the last night of a gig when he meets the sweet Leona, a Southern white woman with a complicated past. Their intense love for each other does not overcome those societal forces, and Rufus begins to believe she is seeing other men and his anger boils over so that they are both destroyed.

The others in Rufus' orbit include his best friend the Italian Vivaldo, working year after year on his novel; Ida, Rufus' beautiful sister; Richard, just published author of an inferior book; Cass, the kindly wife of Richard; Eric, another Southern former lover of Rufus who returned from three years in Paris after Rufus died; Yves, Eric's French beloved. Their couplings, both long-term and brief, are recounted with loving humanity and bringing enlightening truths to the fore.

Ida and Vivaldo live together after Rufus' death. For Vivaldo the attraction involves his love for Rufus; for her, it's Vivaldo's kindness in the wake of Rufus' death and a way to avoid Rufus' fate. Richard and Cass become estranged as he focuses on being a successful writer and she sees him as a weak writer. She has an affair with Eric, knowing that Yves will be coming to New York. Ida is unfaithful to Vivaldo with Ellis, a rich and powerful man in the world of the arts, who pays for her singing lessons. On a night as everything is coming unraveled, Vivaldo falls into the arms of Eric. That night Cass tells Richard about her affair and the next day Vivaldo learns of Ida's affair. Though these were shocking and taboo connections when Baldwin wrote, the characters come alive and their humanity is in evidence.

One highlight (of the many) in the book for me was the experience of Vivaldo and Cass going to Harlem for Rufus' funeral. As she gets out of their cab, Cass realizes she does not have a hat, a necessity for this funeral and she goes off to buy one. Her thoughts as she navigates this business are poignant. The preacher's address about Rufus was especially moving.

Ida's confession to Vivaldo was another important moment. Amidst the anger and the accusations, they go quiet and come to face the demons that bedevil them with the kindness and dispassion needed. 

It is noteworthy that though there is some dated vocabulary, the issues remain relevant. 

James Baldwin, Another Country, Dell, 1962, 366 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

4 3 2 1 by Paul Auster

I bought this book on the occasion of hearing Paul Auster speak about it at the 92 Street Y, an event we attended because our wonderful kids gave us tickets to it for Christmas. It was over a year before I found the dedication required to read an 866-page book. The weight alone is daunting.

At his talk he said that his father had died unexpectedly at the age of 66 and when he began thinking about having outlived him, he undertook this life review. He wrote it in record time, fearful that he would die before he finished it. This, of course, is no ordinary life review:  he tells four stories about a child born in 1947 to Stanley and Rose Ferguson and how the different circumstances made for the differences in the four young Fergusons' lives. This was the idea explored in Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. In the case of Auster's book, the life review is the emphasis and "life" is actually "life up to adulthood." He chews over as many aspects of life from 1947 to the early 1970s in New York City and suburban New Jersey as you can imagine.

Along with dramatic differences, there were many constants in each Archie Ferguson's life. They all had one or more people introducing great literature and music into their young lives. All had an interest and ability in baseball or basketball. Dedication to reading and learning was a constant. Learning to be a writer by writing daily was a feature. All the Archies were very hard working and descriptions of their hours of study abound. Some of the same people enter each of their lives, but not always in the same role. Some of those appearances are of vital importance, like Amy Schneiderman, his soul mate in each case, sometimes a long-time love, sometimes a step-sister or a step-cousin. There's the Columbia professor Andrew Fleming who hires one Archie to help him write a history of Columbia and the same Columbia professor Andrew Fleming who propositions another Archie for sex in Paris.  One wonders what prompted those appearances. 

These similarities made keeping the Archies' stories in my head difficult. After lamenting my diminished memory, I wrote down the key differences in each Archie's life. In fact the problem was they did not come alive as individuals for me; the dramatically different events of each young life did not make four fully-formed characters. The strength of the book for me is the life review and the close examination of that time period.

Two (possibly) extraneous parts that I loved in the book were the detailed description of the 1968 events at Columbia and the long story one of the Archies wrote about a pair of shoes named Hank and Frank. These seemed like bonuses to me. I must record a detail included in the description of 1968 at Columbia. Grayson Kirk delivered a speech at the University of Virginia calling for the end of the war in Vietnam. Mark Rudd wrote a letter in response to his remarks that ended with LeRoi Jones words, "Up against the wall, motherfucker, this is a stick-up." It was an interesting time.

One passage made me think of a book Auster wrote called Oracle Night. A book that Archie #4 wrote called The Scarlet Notebook describes the magical red notebook he bought because it called out to him and enables him to remember things he thought he had forgotten. In Oracle Night a writer buys a magical notebook in a stationary store that disappears. When the writer who is recovering from a serious illness opens the notebook, he finds his stories write themselves. Notebooks have an outsize importance to writers, no doubt.

Paul Auster, 4 3 2 1, Henry Holt and Company, 2017, 866 pages. Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

Loitering with Intent by Muriel Spark

Published in 1981, Muriel Spark's book was set in 1950; the narrator is a successful author looking back on writing her first book, Warrender Chase. I have thoroughly enjoyed Muriel Spark's books in the past, A Far Cry from Kensington and Memento Mori and in the distant past, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.  This one seemed to be a bit more odd than the others and to have a little less of a plot that I could relate to. The oddness is exemplified by the countless times the narrator Fleur Talbot refers to the name of her book. By that I mean she refers to her book by name, so that "Warrender Chase" becomes a mantra. There's some slapstick in the stealing of manuscripts back and forth. Accusations of plagiarizing on the part of the narrator and by the narrator of her employer leave you wondering not what happened, but what you might think about these narratives.

Fleur takes a job working for Sir Quentin Oliver, creator of the Autobiographical Association, in the business of recording the biographies of people that will not be public for 70 years. Fleur feels free to spice up the biographies she types to make them more interesting. After Sir Quentin takes over production of the biographies, Fleur begins to notice that the biographies have elements of her novel in them. Her publication contract is cancelled, she is accused of plagiarizing her novel, and the manuscript is stolen from her room. She then contrives to steal the biographies from Sir Quentin.

The characters include Lesley, Fleur's lover who is married to her friend Dottie, Lesley's boyfriend, Sir Quentin's mother, the twits in the Autobiographical Association, Fleur's friend Solly who helped her find another publisher. Sir Quentin's mother, thought to be a troublesome incontinent bother, turns out to be a good friend and able to help take down her "rotter" of a son. Part of the background (or perhaps foreground), include the rationing and poverty in postwar Britain, a exuberant cry for new freedom for women, and evidence of a new sexual liberation. 

Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent, Coward, McCann, Geoghagen, 1981, 217 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.

The Dark Flood Rises by Margaret Drabble

The advice to new writers is, I understand, "Write what you know." Though the 78-year old Dame Margaret Drabble is hardly a new writer, she seems to have done that with this book. The characters are old and illustrate the various situations in which the upper middle class elderly find themselves. Often older characters in a book are looking back over the events that are the pivotal aspect of a novel; in this case, the focus is on their lives at this stage. We are introduced to a series of characters who have ties, some close, some not.

Fran gets the most air time. She is unusual in that she is still working and it is through her work that we hear technical details about how the elderly are cared for. She goes to conferences and makes reports to funding organizations for care homes and concerns herself with such things as the importance of lever door handles versus screw doorknobs (can be a life and death matter for those with weak hands). Her approach to being in her 70s is to drive around the countryside, even ignoring weather warnings, and take on such activities as taking home-cooked food for her invalid ex-husband. She enjoys planning and preparing food for Claude; after their divorce, she had years of a happy marriage to Hamish. She sees that time as a happy interlude, but now that Hamish has died, she's back to the struggle with Claude.

There's Fran's friend Jo, her friend from the years when they both had young children. Jo taught at the University and now is settled into a pleasant and comfortable place to live. She teaches an adult education course each semester that enlivens her life and she does it very well.  She has an interesting cocktail each Thursday with an old friend.

That old friend knows Bennett and Ivor, who live in the Canary Islands. Bennett was a well-known academic and Ivor was the beautiful younger man who has been caring for him for decades. They've had a rich and diverse life with travels all over the world and now they are settled in a comfortable place to live. Ivor works hard to keep Bennett from launching into an ill-thought out project or straying too far from the conversation at hand. 

The recounting of this phase of these lives is a bit dreary, though never depressing or hopelessly dull, but perhaps that's because of my own age. The author gives enough respect to her characters, but only barely enough. Her view of our modern take on the end of life comes early in the book. She says that Fran's years of work

have made her aware of the infinitely clever and complex and inhuman delays and devices we create to avoid and deny death, to avoid fulfilling our destiny and arriving at our destination. And the result, in so many cases, has been that we arrive there not in good spirits as we say our last farewells and greet the afterlife but senseless, incontinent, demented, medicated into amnesia, aphasia, indignity. 

For me the book was enlivened by mentions of Pauline Boty, a pop artist who came up in Ali Smith's book Autumn. I hadn't heard of her before that encountering her there; how interesting that she appeared in another recent novel. Another name that came up was Hubert Lyautey. Bennett has been interested in him, perhaps because of his sexual orientation, and is considering writing a biography about him. I recalled him from Edith Wharton's In Morocco as she was quite taken with the French influence on Morocco in the person of Governor General Lyautey.

 Margaret Drabble, The Dark Tide Rises, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2017, 327 pages (I listened to the audiobook). Available at the UVa and public libraries and from Amazon.