Tag: 5-stars

Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”014028009X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Bridget Jones’s Diary[/amazon_image]I finally picked up [amazon_link id=”014028009X” target=”_blank” ]Bridget Jones’s Diary[/amazon_link] by Helen Fielding this week. My NaNoWriMo novel is going to be chick lit, and I decided I really needed to read the mother of all chick lit novels before I started writing. I actually have not seen the first Bridget Jones movie, although I have seen the second. I don’t know what took me so long to read this book. It was v.g.

So, Bridget is a thirty-something singleton in London. She begins the year with a list of resolutions and chronicles the events of her life in her diary, beginning almost every post with an update on her current weight, number of drinks consumed, and number of cigarettes smoked (sometimes with number of calories consumed, number of lottery tickets purchased, and 1471 calls—something like caller ID). Over the course of the year, Bridget dates her skeevy boss, Daniel Cleaver, and keeps bumping into Mark Darcy, a barrister her mother tries to set her up with at the New Year’s Day party they both attend at the beginning of the year. Bridget’s mother flips out and leaves her father for Latin lover Julio. Bridget winds up leaving her job after she and Daniel break up for a more satisfying, if somewhat challenging job in TV. Should I say how it ends? Or isn’t the moratorium on spoiling the ending on this one over? At any rate, everything ends happily, if not for everyone (Bridget’s dad), at least for Bridget.

What a fun book. I laughed out loud in some parts. I found Bridget to be sympathetic and interesting heroine, and it’s not hard to see why so many authors have taken to this genre after the publication of this book in an attempt to duplicate its success. She’s a funny, neurotic mess, but so easy to like. I’m v. glad I read this book before writing my own. I loved the parallel to [amazon_link id=”1612930425″ target=”_blank” ]Pride and Prejudice[/amazon_link], particularly as the [amazon_link id=”B00364K6YW” target=”_blank” ]BBC miniseries[/amazon_link] was also mentioned. I also found it hilarious that both Hugh Grant and Colin Firth are name-checked in the book when they play, respectively, Daniel Cleaver and Mark Darcy in the film. Also fun was the mention of Hugh Grant’s legal trouble with Divine Brown. Wondered if he actually read Bridget Jones’s Diary before agreeing to become Daniel Cleaver, and if so, I have new respect for his ability to laugh at himself.

I loved Bridget, and I loved Bridget Jones’s Diary. Great fun.

Rating: ★★★★★

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Sharyn McCrumb with Tom Dula's fiddle

The Ballad of Tom Dooley, Sharyn McCrumb

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0312558171″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Ballad of Tom Dooley: A Ballad Novel[/amazon_image]Sharyn McCrumb’s latest ballad novel, [amazon_link id=”0312558171″ target=”_blank” ]The Ballad of Tom Dooley[/amazon_link], concerns perhaps the most famous of the Appalachian murder ballads, the story of how Tom Dooley, or Tom Dula as he was really known, came to be hanged for the murder of Laura Foster. Tom Dula was a ne’er-do-well Civil War veteran who was involved with Ann Foster Melton, a married woman and Laura Foster’s cousin. According to the legend, Tom led Laura to believe they were eloping, but murdered her and buried her in a shallow grave on a ridge instead. The motives for the murder have varied from Tom’s blaming Laura for giving him syphilis to avoiding marrying her because she was pregnant. However, many have doubted whether or not Tom Dula really did kill Laura Foster, particularly because he wrote a confession on the eve of his execution asserting that he alone was responsible for Laura’s death, presumably to exonerate Ann Melton, who had been arrested shortly after Tom himself and was charged in Laura’s death as well. McCrumb saw parallels between the story of Tom Dula, Ann Melton, and Laura Foster and Emily Brontë’s [amazon_link id=”0143105434″ target=”_blank” ]Wuthering Heights[/amazon_link]. When I read of this connection on McCrumb’s website, I was even more excited to read The Ballad of Tom Dooley—Wuthering Heights is my favorite book. And McCrumb did not disappoint me on this account.

McCrumb chooses as her two narrators Zebulon Baird Vance, who served North Carolina as governor and senator and came from the Appalachian mountains of western North Carolina himself. Following the Civil War, he was unable to hold a public office for a time and practiced law until this restriction was lifted for Confederate veterans. He was appointed to defend Tom Dula and Ann Melton pro bono. He serves as the stand-in for Mr. Lockwood, the outsider who more or less frames the beginning and end of the story, although unlike Brontë’s Lockwood, he narrates some sections in the middle of the novel. McCrumb’s Nelly Dean is Pauline Foster, a cousin of Ann Melton and Laura Foster’s, who comes to Wilkes County to be treated by a doctor for her syphilis and spreads discord. McCrumb paints her as a sociopath (Nelly isn’t that bad, though I always wonder how much she is telling the truth about Catherine and Heathcliff). Pauline narrates the bulk of the story. Her motive for causing so much destruction seems to stem from envy of Ann and a sense that she has somehow been mistreated by Ann.

Ann Melton and Tom Dula serve as McCrumb’s Catherine and Heathcliff, but no Cathy Linton, Linton Heathcliff, or Hareton Earnshaw redeem the families and set things to rights in the next generation. Ann Melton is just as narcissistic and unlikeable as Catherine Earnshaw, though Tom Dula does not come off nearly as badly as Heathcliff. McCrumb even rewrites some passages from Wuthering Heights into her novel, including the famous “I am Heathcliff” speech:

“We’re just the same, Tom and me. we come from the same place, and we’re made of the same clay. And maybe the devil spit in it before God made us, but at least we belong together, him and me.”

“It seems hard lines on your husband, you feeling like that.”

“I love them both, Pauline, but not in the same way. My love for James is like that field out there that he spends half his time plowing and sowing and weeding, and all. It will change. The crops die in the winter, or dry up in a summer drought, or the soil gives out, so that you must let it lie fallow for a time and let the weeds take it. It comes and goes, that field. But Tom … Tom is like that green mountain you can see rising there in the west, holding up the sky. It never changes. It will be the same forever.” (55-56)

This story appealed to me in the same way as Wuthering Heights appeals to me: I can’t understand it. I usually have to like the characters in a book, or I can’t really enjoy the book much. This book, however, offers no one to really root for, not even Laura Foster herself, no one to care for, and no one to sympathize with, just like Wuthering Heights. Even the setting in western North Carolina calls to mind the moors of Yorkshire in the way that both are wild places untamed by men. The cover is just gorgeous. It’s a composite of a design commissioned by the publishers and a real photograph of the area where Laura Foster died taken by McCrumb herself. McCrumb’s novel is a fine achievement built upon solid research and historical basis that still manages to read like literary fiction. The gothic elements of the murder and connection to Wuthering Heights made it a perfect read for the R.I.P. Challenge.

Sharyn McCrumb with Tom Dula's fiddle
Sharyn McCrumb with Tom Dula's fiddle

Read more about this novel at McCrumb’s website.

If you have Spotify, you can listen to the Kingston Trio’s famous rendition of “Tom Dooley.”

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1400031702″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Secret History[/amazon_image]Critic A. O. Scott has called Donna Tartt’s novel [amazon_link id=”1400031702″ target=”_blank” ]The Secret History[/amazon_link] “a murder mystery in reverse.” In the first few pages of the novel, narrated by Richard Papen, a student in a small group of classics majors taught by charismatic and myterious Julian Morrow and which includes cold, enigmatic Henry Winter, twins Charles and Camilla Macaulay, foppish (he wears a pince-nez, I kid you not) Francis Abernathy, and Edmund “Bunny” Corcoran, the reader learns that the group has evidently conspired to murder Bunny and make it look like an accident. What the reader does not know is why. Richard slowly reveals the motive for the murder, as well as the ways in which it reverberates among the members of the group.

After recounting the murder, Richard tells the story more or less chronologically. At the beginning, he transfers to Hampden College in Vermont seemingly to get as far away from his parents in Plano, California, as he can. He becomes intrigued by the classics students, and having studied Greek previously, seeks entry into their exclusive courses. Julian initially denies Richard, and Richard becomes somewhat obsessed with the classics students. One day, he helps some of them with a Greek grammar question, and he is offered a place in their exclusive course of study. Initially, he is somewhat of an outsider in the group, who go on cliquish excursions to Francis’s house in the country and are oddly close-lipped around Richard. Over time, Richard is allowed into the group’s circle of friendship and he discovers a horrible secret about a wild night in the woods near Francis’s country house.

The Secret History is an intriguing thriller. Knowing from the outset that the group will murder one of their friends did nothing to diminish the mystery: quite the reverse, in fact. Initially, the group seem like such logical intellects and scholars that one can hardly imagine what will lead to Bunny’s murder, but as the book progresses, even events that seem outlandish on the surface are rendered in such a plausible way, that the reader hardly questions. (Of course a bunch of highly intelligent classics majors, seeking to get closer to the ancient Greeks they study, would stage a bacchanal. That’s perfectly logical!) Tartt offers an interesting character study into what prompts a murder and how it affects each member of the group differently. The Secret History is as much a character study as anything else, and I think the reader will be surprised by the ending (which did not go where I thought it would, for sure).

Tartt has a gift for description, choosing for her narrator a man who describes his own fatal flaw early in the novel:

Does such a thing as “the fatal flaw,” that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs. (7)

And Richard describes everything he sees with this rapt beauty, from the run-down room with the hole in the roof in a house owned by an aging hippie where he spends his winter (and nearly dies of pneumonia) to Bunny’s descent into the ravine, windmilling and grasping for something, anything, to prevent his fall. Richard struggles to see things as they really are and renders events as he seems to wish they had occurred. He even admits this flaw near the end, as he tells the reader how he would have liked to have described an event—his description would have rendered it more romantic.

Jenny has a great review of this book (in fact, it was her review that put the book on my radar). She says,

[A]s a classics geek, I love it that this book makes Latin students seem super dangerous and dark and edgy. This is not necessarily the typical portrayal of Latin students, but it appeals to me: Watch out for us classics people. We are loose cannons and might push you off a cliff if you cross us. Or we might not. YOU JUST DO NOT KNOW.

Point taken, Jenny. I’m not sure I’ll be able to turn my back on a classics major ever again. Awesome read, Jenny. Thanks for for recommending it.

Rating: ★★★★★

This Sunday review shared as part of the Sunday Salon.

The Sunday Salon

Full disclosure: I obtained this book from PaperBackSwap.

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Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, Ransom Riggs

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1594744769″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children[/amazon_image]Ransom Riggs’s novel [amazon_link id=”1594744769″ target=”_blank” ]Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children[/amazon_link] is part bildungsroman, part gothic fairy tale. Its hero, Jacob Portman, is a teenager living in Florida. He is close to his grandfather, Abe Portman, the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Abe tells crazy stories about an orphanage in Wales where he grew up, and he shows Jacob the most fantastic photos of the children who lived there—a girl who could fly, a boy who had bees living inside him, and an invisible boy. As Jacob grows up, he stops believing his grandfather’s fantastic stories until he witnesses a terrible attack on his grandfather that makes him question everything. Jacob’s family believes he is unable to cope with the stress of losing his grandfather, and Jacob begins therapy with Dr. Golan. Finally, Jacob decides he must travel to Wales and see the orphanage where his grandfather grew up in order to come to terms with his grandfather’s death. When he arrives, he discovers his grandfather’s wild stories just might be true.

This book was a delight from start to finish. It has moments of laugh-out-loud humor and hair-raising terror. I really liked the way Riggs managed to describe the reason for everything from sideshow “freaks” to cannibalistic serial killers to the Tunguska Event. After reading this book, you’ll look at mysteries in a new way. Most reviewers who read this book remark on the way Riggs manages to seamlessly weave bizarre photographs into his narrative, but it’s true. I would not read this one the Kindle. You will not enjoy the full effect of the photographs in that way. Jacob is a likeable hero; in fact, I liked all of the characters in this book. I also enjoyed the time-travel aspect. A word of warning: the book is ripe for a sequel, and if you pick it up, who knows how long you’ll have to wait until the next installment (and I hope there will be one!). This novel is one of the most unusual, fun, and absorbing novels I read this year. Perfect for the R.I.P. Challenge!

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Ballad of Frankie Silver, Sharyn McCrumb

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0451197399″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Ballad of Frankie Silver[/amazon_image]Sharyn McCrumb’s ballad novel, [amazon_link id=”0451197399″ target=”_blank” ]The Ballad of Frankie Silver[/amazon_link], entwines the stories of Frankie Silver, believed to be the first woman executed by the state of North Carolina, and Fate Harkryder, a poor white mountain man about to face death in Tennessee’s electric chair. The two cases become connected in Sheriff Spencer Arrowood’s mind right after Fate Harkryder is found guilty of the murders of Emily Stanton and Mike Wilson, UNC students hiking the Appalachian Trail. When the Stanton/Wilson murders took place, Arrowood was a deputy sheriff working under Nelse Miller, sheriff at the time, but Arrowood was the official who investigated the crime. The evidence seemed rock solid, but Nelse Miller took his deputy to the graves of Charlie Silver—no, graves is not a typo because Silver was buried as the parts of him were discovered—and tells Arrowood that he has only been unsure about two cases in their neck of the woods: the case of Fate Harkryder, and the case of Frankie Silver.

Frankie Silver is the subject of an Appalachian murder ballad. She was accused and convicted of murdering her husband, Charlie Silver, with an ax and dismembering him. At the time, both were teenagers: Frankie was 18 and Charlie was 19. They had been married less than a couple of years, but they had an infant daughter, Nancy. Frankie Silver was born Frances Stewart to Isaiah and Barbara Howell Stewart. She had two brothers, Jackson, who was older than her, and Blackston, who was about 14. At the time of the murder, Isaiah and Jackson were hunting in Kentucky. Barbara and Blackston were arrested with Frankie, but they were ultimately released when no evidence of their involvement in the crime could be found.

The novel has a dual narrative. The modern storyline of Spencer Arrowood and Fate Harkryder is told in the third person limited, with a focus on Arrowood’s point of view, while the storyline of Frankie Silver is told by Burgess Gaither, a clerk of the court when she was tried and convicted, in the first person point of view. McCrumb employed this same technique in [amazon_link id=”0451202503″ target=”_blank” ]The Songcatcher[/amazon_link] (review). In her afterword, McCrumb notes that she feels Frankie Silver’s “case was really about poor people as defendants and rich people as officers of the court, about Celt versus English in developing America, about mountain people versus ‘flatlanders’ in any culture” (393). Given all the research I’ve done on the case is limited to reading this novel (so what do I know), it is a premise that seems to make sense. McCrumb carefully weaves in a story about the kind of justice men of means and reputation in society could expect as compared with that of poor mountain men. Everyone who faces a trial for a crime like Frankie Silver or Fate Harkryder have committed is entitled to representation by an attorney. The courts are supposed to be a great leveling field. Justice is supposed to be blind. But everyone knows that’s not so because ultimately, it is carried out by flawed human beings who bring their own prejudices and beliefs to bear on decisions they make. I think I might be a horrible juror because I think I would just question so much and not be able to make a decision, and I know for a fact I could never decide to send someone to death for a crime. My conscience wouldn’t allow it.

I finished this novel this morning, and I decided to walk up to our local Saturday farmer’s market and mull it over before I wrote this. I think it reminded me a bit of some sad stories in my own family. One is the story of my great-great-great-grandfather, John Jennings. He was a blacksmith in Russellville, Alabama. Russellville is a small town in Franklin County in northern Alabama. He apparently said something at a political rally or in a newspaper article (sources differ on which) that raised the ire of one George C. Almon, a candidate for office. I wonder what John Jennings said because it apparently made Almon angry enough to seek Jennings out to “give him a whipping,” according to a cousin of mine, Arthur Jennings. Arthur reports that Almon had to “take one instead,” as Jennings was a strong blacksmith, after all.

Some time later, Almon went into a hotel across the street from Jennings’s blacksmith shop and told the clerk that he needed a gun to shoot a mad dog down the street. The clerk gave it to him, and he walked across the street with it and shot John Jennings. He died a half hour later. Almon surrendered to the sheriff. His trial took place on June 28 and 29, 1875. He was acquitted of murder—it was determined he acted in self-defense.

If Arthur’s version of this story is true (it was likely passed down through the family to him), then I can’t see how what Almon did is self-defense, but he was certainly more influential politically than John Jennings. Almon prospered in Alabama government and politics. Five years after the murder, Almon was a practicing lawyer in Russellville. He was appointed a probate judge, and in 1886, he was elected to the Alabama State Senate in the 12th district.

I joked in a previous post that the Southern defense that “he needed killing” has been used successfully, but it appears to be true in this case. Newspapers covering the trial at the time seemed to think Jennings was at least partly responsible for his own murder because of whatever it was he had said. His honor besmirched, Almon demanded Jennings answer for it. Jennings’s widow Fannie apparently feared her young sons would grow up and seek revenge for their father’s murder, so she moved the family to Texas. The removal may have accomplished Fannie’s immediate goal of making sure her sons did not meet their father’s fate, but the feeling of ill will about the murder and the fact that the man responsible never answered for it still rankles, and you can hear it any time one of the family talks about it. You can read an excerpt from Memorial Record of Alabama by Hannis Taylor (1893) about Almon’s career. No mention of the murder at all, of course. He lived until 1911 and was buried in the Knights of Pythias cemetery in Russellville. Now, I have no evidence that my ancestor was necessarily poor, but it did take my cousin Jan about 30 years of genealogy research to find out this much about John Jennings’s death, whereas a quick Google search for George C. Almon reveals his prominence (but not his crime, unless you count my own blog posts about it on my genealogy blog).

So what does all that have to do with Frankie Silver or even this novel? The two stories bother me in the same way. The sense that only certain people receive justice, or even mercy (a point McCrumb makes) is something we’d like to believe is long past. Unfortunately, as McCrumb shows us in this novel, it still happens, and perhaps more often than I want to think about. William Faulkner astutely said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

Rating: ★★★★★

Full disclosure: I received this book via PaperBackSwap.

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The Songcatcher, Sharyn McCrumb

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0451202503″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Songcatcher[/amazon_image]Sharyn McCrumb’s novel [amazon_link id=”0451202503″ target=”_blank” ]The Songcatcher[/amazon_link] is part of her series of ballad novels, based on Appalachian ballads (which I still maintain is one of the cleverest ideas I’ve ever heard of). The novel is the story of a family who settles in the mountain border of North Carolina and Tennessee and passes down an old Scottish ballad through the family from the eighteenth century to the modern day. The story begins as Lark McCourry, a country music singer born Linda Walker, tries to recall an old song she heard relatives sing at a gathering when she was young. John Walker, her elderly father, with whom she has a contentious relationship, becomes sick and is expected to die soon, so his housekeeper and surrogate daughter Becky Tilden calls Lark home. The story flashes back through some of Lark and John’s ancestors, starting with Malcolm McCourry, who was kidnapped and conscripted by a sailing ship at the age of nine, never to see his home on the Isle of Islay in Scotland again. Once he nears the age of twenty, he apprentices to a lawyer in Morristown, NJ. Many years later, he abandons his family and heads south with his daughter Jane and her husband to settle in the North Carolina mountains, where he establishes a second family. Before the end of the novel, Malcolm’s great-grandson Pinckney McCourry, a prisoner of war during the Civil War; Pinckney’s nephew Zebulon, an orphaned boy; Ellender McCourry, Zebulon’s daughter; and John Walker, Lark’s father and Ellender’s son, all have the opportunity to tell a part of their story and to explain how they received their family’s ballad, “The Rowan Stave.”

I absolutely adored this book from start to finish. It was so good that I didn’t want it to end. I loved Sharyn Crumb’s characters, most of whom are based on her own ancestors and retain their own names. Zebulon McCourry was her real great-grandfather, and Malcolm McCourry was her real four-times great grandfather. One of the things I loved best about this novel is the way it tackled the issue of northerners and other outsiders coming into Appalachia and making all sorts of erroneous assumptions about the intellect, culture, and beliefs of the people who settled there. McCrumb manages to touch on everything from why the Civil War led to feuds, such as the Hatfield and McCoy feud, all the way to how songcatchers came through Appalachia and took advantage of the people by collecting their folk songs, then copyrighting them for profit. Some of the writing is quite lyrical, and it is clear that McCrumb hails from a long line of born storytellers. I particularly liked Malcolm McCourry, though his decision to abandon his family in New Jersey caused friction and hurt his older children, particularly when he married a second time and supplanted his new family for his first one. I absolutely loved Zebulon’s story of tangling with a couple of condescending women from Boston. Pinckney was an intriguing figure, too. I also liked Baird Christopher, owner of a hostel in the mountains, especially as he explains how to pronounce Appalachia to a New Yorker.

The ballad itself is catchy, and it would be interesting to hear the tune, which McCrumb says in her Afterword was set to music by Shelley Stevens. It looks like you can purchase it from her website. It is the story of the mother of the Brahan seer, and explains how she found a stone that gave her son the Sight—a worthy old Scottish story.

The respect that McCrumb shows for Appalachia is, unfortunately, rare and is perfectly rendered through various encounters her characters have with outsiders. The book could, in many ways, be considered a love letter to that region and to the stories that are passed down through the generations. I am very interested in my own family history (some of which does have roots in Appalachia), so I found that element of the book particularly fascinating. Our ancestors anchor us in the world, I believe. They show us how we fit into this great chain of being and give us a sense of belonging and, in some ways, importance, which is another element McCrumb touches on when one of her characters describes the slim chance that brings any one of us into existence. If you really think about how close you have come to not ever being, your head will spin. I know I can’t help but feel grateful to my ancestors for all the choices they made that ensured I could be born one day.

If you are interested in family history, you will surely find this book as captivating as I did. Even if you aren’t interested in that sort of thing, The Songcatcher is an intriguing read and manages to maintain the feel of a mystery even without being a mystery proper. It’s a truly wonderful read. It may be hard to find, but you can order new or used copies from Amazon through associated sellers. I obtained my copy via PaperBackSwap.

Rating: ★★★★★

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A Room with a View, E. M. Forster

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0451531388″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]A Room With a View[/amazon_image]E. M. Forster’s classic novel [amazon_link id=”0451531388″ target=”_blank” ]A Room With a View[/amazon_link] has a whisper-thin plot: Lucy Honeychurch travels to to Florence, Italy, with her cousin Miss Bartlett. While she is staying in the Pensione Bertolini, she meets a father and his son, the Emersons, whom everyone else at the pension thinks are coarse and crude. Desiring some independence and frustrated with her companions, Lucy goes out on her own and witnesses a murder in the street. George Emerson, the son, is there to assist her. Emerson falls in love with Lucy and kisses her. The next morning, her cousin, feeling she has failed Lucy and her mother as a guardian, whisks Lucy away to Rome. When they return to England, Lucy becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, a man whose previous two proposals she has rejected. Cecil does not much like Lucy’s family, but he sees her as something of a project, a sort of Galatea to his Pygmalion. Meanwhile, the Emersons become the Honeychurches’ neighbors when they let a cottage nearby, and Lucy must determine how she feels about George Emerson and Cecil Vyse.

A Room with a View is actually interesting as a character study. In a short book without a tremendous amount of action, Forster manages to capture human nature very well. I found myself surprised at how easily I could picture everything Forster described, and it was not as though he labored over the descriptions. Instead, he captured characters so deftly in their dialogue and in their bodily movements that not much description was needed in order to convey the scenes perfectly. I especially liked Miss Bartlett’s character—I didn’t like her personality, but as a character, she was well-drawn and so believable. Some of the things she said and did made me think of Dame Maggie Smith, so I began picturing Smith in the role. Finally, I checked IMDb, and I discovered Maggie Smith had indeed played the role of Miss Bartlett in the 1985 production (which has an outstanding cast—I plan to see it as soon as I can). Certainly doesn’t surprise me that the book was made into a film—it read almost like a film. The book also contains some humorous instances of fourth-wall breaking and gorgeous observations about humanity. For this fan of [amazon_link id=”B0047H7QD6″ target=”_blank” ]Downton Abbey[/amazon_link], it was a treat to read, and I will definitely read more of Forster’s books.

Update, 8/7/11: I never do this, but I decided to change my star-rating after thinking about it some more. I watched the film today on Netflix, and the casting was perfect. Once again, I was amazed at how well characterized the novel was and how easily, therefore, it translated to the screen. Perhaps the film was an influence, but now I can’t see why it shouldn’t have a full five stars rather than 4½. I cannot imagine a better cast for the film. The clothing and sets were gorgeous. I highly recommend watching the film to anyone who has read the book.

 

Rating: ★★★★★

I used the What Should I Read Next tool to decide on this book (I had already had it on my [amazon_link id=”B002FQJT3Q” target=”_blank” ]Kindle[/amazon_link] for ages), mainly so I could complete Challenge 7: What Should I Read Next Pick for the Take a Chance Challenge. I picked A Room with a View from the list of books that appeared when I searched for the last book I read (and reviewed), [amazon_link id=”B0058M62OS” target=”_blank” ]The Winter Sea[/amazon_link] by Susanna Kearsley.

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Always

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Posted on by Dana

Depending on how long you’ve been reading this blog (or perhaps my other main blog, huffenglish.com), you may not be aware I am a serious Harry Potter geek. I mean really. For instance, I know I’d be in Ravenclaw, and I have it all worked out in my head. I even think Ancient Runes would be my favorite class. I have actually written seriously on the subject of Harry Potter a number of times, but not often here. I used to regularly update a Harry Potter blog. No lie! It lies dormant at the moment, and I can’t think what to do with it aside from perhaps post some of my favorite entries over here and then let it sit. I just don’t know. I can’t foresee updating it again, and it’s a bit of a hassle to keep up with the WordPress upgrades (if you don’t do that, hackers can more easily break in to your site, which is NOT something I’d like to happen). But I’m not sure if I can delete it. Honestly, it would be a good topic for a Tumblr, but I don’t need more stuff to keep up with in my life. I’ll think about it.

Anyway, what I really came here to do is squee about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, and the following squee has spoilers, but honestly, spoiler alerts should really be expired for [amazon_link id=”0545139708″ target=”_blank” ]Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows[/amazon_link], and if you have been watching the movies instead of reading the books, what on earth are you doing on a book blog? Just wonderin’.

AlwaysImage source: I Go to Seek a Great Perhaps

So, my favorite character in the series is Snape, and you can imagine that after [amazon_link id=”0439785960″ target=”_blank” ]Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince[/amazon_link] came out, things looked very bad for Snape. He had killed Dumbledore, the man who had trusted him and protected him. I actually had a bit of an argument with someone about Snape because she said I was blind for believing Snape would come out all right in the end, and I was positive she just wasn’t reading closely enough. Look again at the language Rowling uses to describe what Harry feels as he is forcing Dumbledore to drink the potion in the cave (which he did on Dumbledore’s orders)—he is filled with loathing for what he is doing, but a casual observer might think the look on his face told another tale: that he felt contempt for Dumbledore. The same kind of language is used to describe the look on Snape’s face as he kills Dumbledore. It clicked. I knew somehow that they had done a deal. I had no idea Snape loved Lily. That surprised me because he had called her “mudblood” when she tried to defend him when James and Sirius were bullying him. I have to hand it to people who figured that one out. I did figure out that Snape had somehow known Petunia, but I couldn’t flesh out my hunch further than that.

So, Snape. Alan Rickman was wonderful in this film. The death scene and Pensieve scene were my favorite part of this film, probably because Snape is my favorite character. Oh, I boo-hooed through that part.

Trust SnapeImage credit: You the doormat, then?

I had, of course, read that Alan Rickman was brilliant in this film (really, isn’t he always? I mean, he almost made [amazon_link id=”B002VWNID6″ target=”_blank” ]Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves[/amazon_link] watchable, and who could forget “Give me an occupation, Miss Dashwood, or I shall run mad” from [amazon_link id=”0800141660″ target=”_blank” ]Sense & Sensibility[/amazon_link]?):

Colonel Brandon rescues MarianneImage credit: Fanpop

So, yes, I have probably been a fan of Snape’s because of Alan Rickman’s portrayal. Sue me. Anyway, it was perfect and fairly faithful to the book.

Other favorite moments in no particular order:

  • Neville in practically every scene. He is amazing during the battle, particularly when he kills Nagini, but my favorite quote might be when he says he has to find Luna to tell her he’s “hot for her” since they’re going to die by the morning. That was awesome, and frankly, I always thought they belonged together (but he winds up marrying Hannah Abbott, and she marries Rolf Scamander, Newt Scamander’s grandson—ah, well).
  • “NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!” Yeah, that was awesome, and I’m so glad they didn’t try to duck around the word. Bellatrix Lestrange is a bitch. Even if I did name my cat after her. My Bella is much nicer: Bella Huff
  • The way they magnified Voldemort’s voice during the Battle of Hogwarts. It was freaking scary—much scarier than I imagined.
  • The dragon-back escape from Gringotts was pretty epic, and actually seeing the carnage—well, let’s say they improved on my imagination, there. Ditto with the scene in Bellatrix’s vault.
  • Helen Bonham-Carter pretending to be Hermione pretending to be Bellatrix. That was awesome and quite well done.
  • Hermione destroying the horcrux made from Hufflepuff’s cup and Ron and Hermione’s kiss. I cheered a little.
  • The whole scene at King’s Cross was just awesome, and just as I imagined it. Plus, it contains one of my favorite lines from the series: “Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” I actually have had that quote on my classroom wall at school. Guess it will go in my office now.
  • Dan, Emma, Rupert, and Tom Felton’s acting in this one is just brilliant. Really. They have come a long way, particularly Daniel Radcliffe. He can just sit back and enjoy his money if he wants to, but I think he has a fine future ahead of him. And they all seem so nice and even-keeled in interviews.
  • Albus Severus Potter. So cute! So was Hugo Weasley (little Ron clone). By the way, did you know Tom Felton’s girlfriend plays his wife, Astoria Greengrass, in the film? I think that’s cool. Although I wanted a better look at Scorpius’s face. Also, I wanted Harry to say the words “It did for me,” which he came close to saying, but did not actually say.
  • The scene when Harry bravely marches into the woods to let Voldemort kill him.
  • Voldemort pushing Bellatrix over when she tries to help him up after he AK’s Harry in the woods.
  • Ralph Fiennes. He’s absolutely terrifying and brilliant in this. Really. And his death, while not quite as it was described in the book, was awesome and terrible to witness.
  • Goyle (it was Crabbe in the book, but the actor who plays him was busted for marijuana, and I assume that’s why his part was cut) setting the Room of Requirement on fire with fiendfyre and Ron and Harry rescuing Draco and Blaise Zabini. Oh, Goyle. You shouldn’t play with fire.
  • Draco’s hesitation to go over to the Death Eaters, and Voldemort pulling Draco into that gross, awkward hug. Ew.
  • McGonagall dueling Snape. That was awesome.
  • McGonagall saying, “I always wanted to try that spell.” Maggie Smith delivers a punchline, let me tell you.

Some criticisms:

  • Fred’s death was sadder in the books. I felt the movie gave it a bit of a short shrift.
  • Harry not repairing his wand before breaking the Elder Wand and chucking the pieces. In the book, he repairs it and doesn’t destroy the Elder Wand, but keeps it safe (presumably until he dies so that no one can win it from him).
  • Teddy Tonks is mentioned only once. Ooops.

So, my overall verdict is that I LOVED IT!

Mischief managed.

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Garden Spells, Sarah Addison Allen

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”055338483X” link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]Garden Spells (Bantam Discovery)[/amazon_image]Sarah Addison Allen’s first novel [amazon_link id=”055338483X” target=”_blank” ]Garden Spells[/amazon_link] is the story of Claire and Sydney Waverley, two sisters from Bascom, North Carolina. The Waverleys are odd. Claire seems to be able to influence the moods and attitudes of people who eat the food she caters, and she’s become a wildly popular caterer as a result. Sydney is restless and wild. She left Bascom right after high school to run away from her Waverley heritage, but returns ten years later with her daughter Bay after escaping an abusive relationship. The two sisters must reconcile their pasts and open their hearts to the possibilities of their present and future.

Allen’s books won’t appeal to everyone. Like [amazon_link id=”0553807226″ target=”_blank” ]The Peach Keeper[/amazon_link], Garden Spells strains at credulity with magical realism and a hint of witchcraft—perhaps even more so than The Peach Keeper, but in the context of the story, it seems to make sense. I liked all of the characters, particularly Evanelle, a Waverley relation who has strange urges to give objects to people, and the objects always prove useful later. I really liked the apple tree in the backyard, too—if you eat an apple from the tree, it will show you the most significant moment of your life, and for that reason, the Waverleys tend to avoid the fruit and bury the apples it drops before wayward townspeople can sneak into the garden and eat because after all, who wants to find out what the most significant moment of your life will be? That’s dangerous.

This is a fun summer read. It’s light and funny and captures the setting and characters. I do love a book with great characters. I’m a Sarah Addison Allen fan for sure after two great books in a row. You will not find writing that takes your breath away, but you will find a solid story with great characters to love.

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Tea Rose, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0312378025″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Tea Rose: A Novel[/amazon_image]Jennifer Donnelly’s novel [amazon_link id=”0312378025″ target=”_blank” ]The Tea Rose[/amazon_link] is the story of Fiona Finnegan, poor but relatively happy with her fiancé Joe and her boisterous Irish family in Whitechapel. But a murderer is stalking their midst. A man known as Jack the Ripper is murdering prostitutes. Fiona’s world is shattered when her father is killed for attempting to organize a union in the tea company he and Fiona work for. In the wake of his death, Fiona loses almost everyone and everything that matters to her and makes her way to New York where she engineers an incredible rags-to-riches story and climbs to the top of the world tea trade.

OK, this book is really, really, really improbable, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it a great deal. Sure I rolled my eyes at the over-the-top coincidences and unbelievable turns of events, but it was a great ride. The plotting is fast-paced; it was difficult to put down. Set against the backdrop of Jack the Ripper’s Whitechapel and Edith Wharton’s Old New York, the book brings together many areas of personal interest for me: tea, the Whitechapel murderer, and the Gilded Age. Fiona has spunk, as we are constantly being told by the characters, all of whom adore her on sight for her shrewd business acumen and forthright manner. Donnelly brings the era and settings to vivid life. In the bargain, the reader, through Donnelly’s characters, rubs shoulders with everyone from Gilded Age robber barons and Mark Twain to up-and-coming artists Monet and Van Gogh. It’s an epic sweeping story, but doesn’t try to be anything other than good escapist reading. I can’t wait to read the next two books in Donnelly’s generational saga: [amazon_link id=”1401307469″ target=”_blank” ]The Winter Rose[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”1401301045″ target=”_blank” ]The Wild Rose[/amazon_link] (I was able to obtain a galley from NetGalley, even though the book won’t be released until August). I won’t say I loved it as much as I loved [amazon_link id=”B003F3PN0Q” target=”_blank” ]Revolution[/amazon_link], but it was a gripping summer read. I would recommend it to fans of Diana Gabaldon’s [amazon_link id=”0440423201″ target=”_blank” ]Outlander[/amazon_link] series.

Rating: ★★★★★

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