Tag: 5-stars

The Peach Keeper, Sarah Addison Allen

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0553807226″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Peach Keeper: A Novel[/amazon_image]Sarah Addison Allen’s novel [amazon_link id=”0553807226″ target=”_blank” ]The Peach Keeper[/amazon_link] is the story of the unlikely friendship of Willa Jackson and Paxton Osgood, who are linked through shared family history and not much else. Willa’s great-great-grandfather built a house called the Blue Ridge Madam in Walls of Water, North Carolina. In 1936, Willa’s family lost the house. Years later, she feels oddly drawn to the Blue Ridge Madam, now in the hands of the Osgood family. Paxton Osgood is the president of the Women’s Society Club and is planning the unveiling of the newly restored Blue Ridge Madam at the society’s gala. She asks her twin brother Colin, a landscape architect, to come home to Walls of Water to landscape the Blue Ridge Madam. A family secret binding the Osgoods and Jacksons is unearthed when Colin’s crew removes a peach tree and begins digging deeper to plant a live oak and finds a suitcase, a frying pan, and a skull belonging to a magic man named Tucker Devlin.

I could barely put this one down. It’s hard to describe it. It’s part chick lit, I suppose, but also part magical realism, ghost story, mystery, and romance. It’s a perfect summer read. Allen’s characters are well-drawn and likeable. The setting of small-town Walls of Water with its tourists and shops alongside ancient town families was pitch perfect. I think perhaps no one does gothic like Southern gothic, and though Allen’s writing style is completely dissimilar, this book is an oddly cogent mashup between William Faulkner and Joshilyn Jackson. Family secrets, grand old Southern mansions, friendship, and devilish charmers are good building blocks for stories. I liked both Willa and Paxton as protagonists, and I found Colin, Sebastian, and even Tucker Devlin charming. I would definitely read more of Allen’s books. I picked this one up after reading Stephanie’s review. Darlene at Peeking Between the Pages has another good review.

I’m not sure this book is for everyone. Some readers will be turned off by the chick lit aura or the magical realism, but I found it utterly charming and completely Southern. Parts of it reminded me of a book I have deep affection for called [amazon_link id=”0807114103″ target=”_blank” ]I Am One of You Forever[/amazon_link] by Fred Chappell. If you are a fan of Sarah Addison Allen’s, give Fred Chappell’s novel a try. It’s harder to find and was published by a smaller press, but it’s a gorgeous book.

Rating: ★★★★★

This book has enough of the macabre to qualify for the Gothic Reading Challenge.

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The Paris Wife, Paula McLain

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0345521307″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Paris Wife: A Novel[/amazon_image]Hadley Richardson Hemingway is perhaps best known as the first of Ernest Hemingway’s four wives. [amazon_link id=”0345521307″ target=”_blank” ]The Paris Wife[/amazon_link] is the story of how the Hemingways met, married, and lived in Paris as Hemingway’s writing career was beginning. During this time, Hemingway writes [amazon_link id=”0684822768″ target=”_blank” ]In Our Time[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”1907590250″ target=”_blank” ]The Sun Also Rises[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”0684839075″ target=”_blank” ]The Torrents of Spring[/amazon_link]. They meet and befriend such Lost Generation writers as Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ford Madox Ford, John Dos Passos, and other key figures of the Left Bank artistic renaissance of the 1920’s. The novel chronicles the infamous trip to Pamplona that inspired The Sun Also Rises as well as the couple’s trips to Austria and the disintegration of their marriage when Pauline Pfeiffer, who would become Hemingway’s second wife, enters the picture.

I haven’t read Hemingway’s memoir [amazon_link id=”143918271X” target=”_blank” ]A Moveable Feast[/amazon_link], so I can’t argue with reviewers who say that this novel is basically the same story from Hadley’s point of view, but somehow, I don’t think that’s all it is. I was swept into the story immediately, and whipped through the last 40% of it on my [amazon_link id=”B002Y27P3M” target=”_blank” ]Kindle[/amazon_link] last night. Hemingway and Hadley’s relationship intrigued me. McLain evokes the Hemingways’ Paris skillfully (and definitely made me want to go!). Fans of Hemingway’s work will meet all those who inspired his fiction in the pages of McLain’s novel, too. Hemingway said of Hadley in A Moveable Feast, “I wished I’d died before I ever loved any other woman but her.” Ultimately, the book is about their romance—and even years later, after Hemingway was on his fourth wife, and she was happily married to journalist Paul Mowrer, they still had something of their old feelings for each other. Some critics say Hemingway tended to idealize Hadley, particularly as he grew older. She had some spirit. She followed Hemingway and supported him as he fulfilled his dreams, but when it came time to put up with his infidelity, she drew the line.

I enjoyed meeting all of the characters, particularly Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Lady Duff Twysden (the inspiration for Lady Brett Ashley), and Hadley herself. I have been intrigued by Hadley ever since I was in college when I met a girl in my dorm who had been named after her—her parents were, I believe, English professors. What kind of woman, I wondered, would inspire Hemingway to marry her when she was eight years his senior and he was a young, good looking, up-and-coming writer? This book is a fantastic read with some gorgeous language in its own right and a fascinating glimpse into the Hemingways’ romance. I highly recommend it, especially to Hemingway or Modernist literature fans. A few favorite quotes:

No one seemed to have any hold on anyone, in fact. That was a sign of the times. We were all on the verge now, bursting with youth and promise and little trills of jazz. The year before, Olive Thomas had starred in The Flapper, and the word suddenly meant jazz and moved like it, too. Girls everywhere stepped out of their corsets and shortened their dresses and darkened their lips and eyes. We said “cat’s pajamas” and “I’ll say” and “that’s so jake.” Youth, in 1921, was everything, but that was just the thing that could worry me sick. I was twenty-nine, feeling almost obsolete, but Ernest was twenty-one and white hot with life. What was I thinking? (location 789)

And for the rest of the lunch our table was like an intricate game of emotional chess, with Duff looking at Ernest, who kept one eye on Pat, who was glaring at Harold, who was glancing furtively at Duff. Everyone was drinking too much and wrung out and working hard to pretend they were jollier and less affected than everyone else. (location 4092)

“Sometimes, I wish we could rub out all our mistakes and start fresh, from the beginning,” I said. “And sometimes I think there isn’t anything to us but our mistakes.” (location 4100)

“I’m always on your side,” I said, and wondered if I was the only one who felt the complicated truth of that hovering over us in the dark room. (location 4579)

McLain’s prose reminded just a bit of Hemingway’s—you can see the polysyndeton, for example, in the second passage, which is a scene that would be familiar to those who have read The Sun Also Rises. One thing the book made me want to do is run right out and read A Moveable Feast. The Paris Wife is a beautiful book.

Rating: ★★★★★

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The Tempest, William Shakespeare

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”0743482832″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Tempest (Folger Shakespeare Library)[/amazon_image]William Shakespeare’s play [amazon_link id=”0743482832″ target=”_blank” ]The Tempest[/amazon_link], widely believed by scholars to be the last play he wrote alone, is the story of the exiled Duke of Milan, Prospero, who calls forth a storm to shipwreck his brother Antonio, who has usurped his dukedom, and Alonso, King of Naples, who helped Antonio. Following the shipwreck, Alonso and company are separated from Alonso’s son Ferdinand and believe him to be dead. Ferdinand meets Prospero’s daughter Miranda, and the two fall in love at first sight. Prospero is served by two “native” inhabitants on his island—Ariel, a spirit Prospero freed from his imprisonment in a tree by the witch Sycorax, and Caliban, Sycorax’s son. Prospero promises he will free Ariel after he has accomplished his goal of uniting his daughter with Ferdinand and recovering his dukedom.

I first read The Tempest many years ago when I took a Shakespeare course in college. I am not sure I understood it at all, and of all the plays I’ve read by Shakespeare, I think this is definitely one that needs to be seen. I am in the unfortunate position of not being able to do that at the moment. It doesn’t seem as though any version is available on Netflix. The version directed by Julie Taymor won’t be available on DVD until September. I looked around on YouTube, but nothing is jumping out at me. The Julie Taymor film does look good:

Watching it even in clips in the trailer made me realize just how visual the play is, and probably not the best one to try to read rather than see.

I really found myself drawn to Ariel and Calaban, and the movie certainly seems to play up what I thought was interesting about each character. It’s strange how your memory plays tricks on you because I remembered Caliban saying “‘Ban-‘ban-Ca-caliban” over and over, but he only says it once, in a song—and he was drunk at the time. Ariel was interesting in seeing the way to freedom might be cooperation with Prospero; Caliban refused, and his situation is left ambiguous in the end—would he be freed, too? Or left alone on the island? Reading this again was like reading it for the first time, given the time between readings, and I was surprised to find that Prospero kept his word to Ariel. I didn’t expect him to. I know that The Tempest has been subject to colonial interpretation before, but it is an interesting lens through which to view the play.

I reread this play for many reasons. First, I want to read Dexter Palmer’s steampunk novel [amazon_link id=”B0048EL84Q” target=”_blank” ]The Dream of Perpetual Motion[/amazon_link], which is based on The Tempest, and I thought familiarity with the source material would make it more enjoyable. I’m also participating in the Shakespeare Challenge, and I wanted to read a play I didn’t know well. I have taught [amazon_link id=”0743477111″ target=”_blank” ]Romeo and Juliet[/amazon_link] so many times that I can recite large chunks of it. I have also taught [amazon_link id=”1439172250″ target=”_blank” ]Macbeth[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”074347712X” target=”_blank” ]Hamlet[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”0743482824″ target=”_blank” ]Othello[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”0743482840″ target=”_blank” ]Richard III[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”074348276X” target=”_blank” ]King Lear[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”0743477545″ target=”_blank” ]A Midsummer Night’s Dream[/amazon_link], [amazon_link id=”074347757X” target=”_blank” ]The Taming of the Shrew[/amazon_link], and [amazon_link id=”0743482751″ target=”_blank” ]Much Ado About Nothing[/amazon_link]. The Tempest is one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays that I was almost completely unfamiliar with.

If I had any problems with the play, I think they arose from the visual nature of everything from the magic to the jokes among Trinculo, Stephano, and Caliban. In a novel, an author describes these events for the reader, whereas in a play, the writer assumes the actors will bring it to life, and Shakespeare, more than any other dramatist I have taught, trusted actors and directors and left little behind in the way of stage directions. I’m not a scholar—lack of stage directions may be a convention of Renaissance drama—but it is something I have noted before and discussed with students. Eugene O’Neill, for instance, and Arthur Miller, too, have explicit directions.

As always with Shakespeare, there is a passage or two that take your breath away with their beauty. My favorite (and it’s certainly one of the most famous Shakespearean passages) was this one:

Our revels now are ended. These our actors
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air;
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.

I know that some scholars believe Shakespeare meant both the earth and the Globe theater in this passage—that it was his goodbye letter to theater. It’s a great metaphor for theater—it is the stuff dreams are made on, in so many senses of the word.

Rating: ★★★★★ (I can’t give a Shakespeare play any other rating. It’s antithetical to the English teacher code.)

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The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth, Alexandra Robbins

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1401302025″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School[/amazon_image]In her latest book, [amazon_link id=”1401302025″ target=”_blank” ]The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Popularity, Quirk Theory, and Why Outsiders Thrive After High School[/amazon_link], Alexandra Robbins, author of [amazon_link id=”B000FDFWP0″ target=”_blank” ]Pledged: The Secret Life of Sororities[/amazon_link] and [amazon_link id=”B0016IYQVO” target=”_blank” ]The Overachievers: The Secret Lives of Driven Kids[/amazon_link], examines what she calls the “cafeteria fringe”—the group of kids marginalized by so-called popular students. Robbins’s argument is that schools and parents should be doing more to encourage the unique traits often found in the cafeteria fringe because they are the very traits that will make these students successful after high school.

I was a part of the cafeteria fringe when I was in high school. For starters, I went to three different high schools. I played the flute, so at least being in band was an activity that enabled me to make some friends. When we moved to California when I was a freshman, it took me a month to find friends to eat lunch with. I dreaded that hour of loneliness, watching all the other groups congregate in their favorite areas of the school year, wishing I could figure out some group to be with. When I moved to Georgia in the eleventh grade, I was already dreading the prospect of sitting alone for who knew how long. However, a girl in my homeroom asked me to eat lunch with her that day. It was a small kindness, but she has no idea how much it meant to me then and still means to me. In other words, I could identify with what Robbins says in this book about outsiders. She’s absolutely right that after high school, it gets better. Of of the most interesting things about Facebook to me is that it has allowed me to see what happens to the so-called popular kids after high school. Most of them stayed close to home in the case of the last high school I attended. But they are no better or worse off than anyone else. The special status they were accorded in high school did not seem to follow them. And that message is important for all students, whether they are cafeteria fringe or part of the in-crowd, to hear. As a teacher, the aspect of Robbins’s book that bothered me most was seeing teachers not only perpetuating the type of bullying that goes on between cliques, but actively engaging in it themselves.

This is an important book for parents, teachers, and students to read. In fact, it might be a good idea to ship copies to school libraries. I like the way Robbins exposed the workings of high schools by following seven individuals through a year in school: Danielle, the Loner; Whitney, the Popular Bitch; Eli, the Nerd; Joy, the New Girl; Blue, the Gamer; Regan, the Weird Girl; and Noah, the Band Geek. It was easy to identify with each individual for various reasons, but mostly because  the narratives offered insight into how these people saw themselves and their schools; it was easy to see how they were all struggling with similar issues—even Whitney. Interspersed throughout are essays about issues raised and tips for students, parents, teachers, and administrators about how to “set things right and reclaim their schools” (379). It’s a gripping, engaging nonfiction read, which I won’t go so far as to say reads like fiction, as the book jacket does. It’s perhaps more compelling because it reads like the truth.

Rating: ★★★★★

Full disclosure: The publisher supplied me with a copy of this book.

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The Kitchen Daughter, Jael McHenry

Posted on by Dana

[amazon_image id=”1439191697″ link=”true” target=”_blank” size=”medium” class=”alignleft”]The Kitchen Daughter[/amazon_image]Ginny Selvaggio is different. She doesn’t like to be touched. She doesn’t look in people’s eyes when they speak to her. She finds socializing excruciating. But she’s also a wonderful cook and finds solace in the kitchen. At twenty-six, she’s never been on her own, but her parents die in a car accident while on vacation, and Ginny has trouble coping. Her sister Amanda wants to sell their parents’ house and have Ginny “evaluated” for Asperger’s Syndrome. Ginny is afraid it’s a tactic to prove that she’s incompetent so that Amanda can sell the house. Meanwhile, Ginny befriends David, the son of her cleaning lady Gert. He’s a wounded soul, mourning the death of his wife a year earlier.

I really liked Ginny. I related to this book on a more personal level than some readers might because I have two children on the autism spectrum. No two people with autism are exactly alike, and it precisely the way that autism is often portrayed in the media—not wanting to be touched, for one thing—that made it hard for me to believe my son was autistic. He loves hugs, and he has never minded being touched. However, Ginny’s character comes across as genuine. The obsessions with odd things from Turkish rug patterns to letters written by nuns is familiar. When my children have an interest, it’s like an obsession, and they can stay fixated on it for months, especially my son (right now it’s Angry Birds, but it has been fruit and movie logos). I don’t know what my children will be like when they are grown up. I don’t think about it a lot. It’s too cloudy, for one thing. I just don’t know what they will be like or be able to do. I just can’t picture it. This book gave me a glimpse of what they might be like, however.

Another aspect of the [amazon_link id=”1439191697″ target=”_blank” ]The Kitchen Daughter[/amazon_link] I really loved was all the food, cooking, and recipes. Each chapter is focused around a different dish that Ginny cooks. She discovers that she is able to call forth the ghosts of the people who created the recipes when she cooks, and she is able to learn some important things about her family and herself. I even tried making the Midnight Cry Brownies recipe, and it was delicious. The brownies are a sort of cakey brownie, and they call for course salt, which settles to the bottom as the brownies bake. The resulting taste might not appeal to everyone, but I loved the mix of chocolate and salt. David’s ancho chili hot chocolate sounds pretty good, too. I can’t wait to try that.

I did truly enjoy this novel. I read it in three or four gulps. It has something to say to everyone about what normal truly is, what grief can do, and the importance of living for those left behind after loved ones die. It’s a really impressive debut. I can’t wait to read more from Jael McHenry.

Rating: ★★★★★

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Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

Posted on by Dana

Water for Elephants: A NovelTonight is a school night, and I should probably wait to write this review. After all, I am probably one of the last human beings in America to read Water for Elephants, so it isn’t as if my review couldn’t wait. Except I read this book in a day. A day. I just sat and read and read and couldn’t put it down. I think the last book I did that with was Ernest J. Gaines’s A Lesson Before Dying. It was an awesome way to spend my Sunday. Jacob Jankowski is my BFF.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, Jacob Jankowski is 90. Or 93. He is living in an “assisted living” home. One day, the residents notice a circus going up near the home, and it brings back a flood of memories for Jacob. He unfolds for the reader the story of his time with the Benzini Brothers Circus in 1931; of how he met Marlena, Walter, Camel, and a cast of other characters, especially Rosie, who is one amazing elephant (I fell in love with her, too). It was an incredible ride, and I’m not sure how to summarize it better than that.

Gruen’s descriptions are so apt one can smell the animals, the popcorn, the sawdust, and the sweat. It’s an incredible achievement. The entire spectacle is so vivid that you’ll swear all the people contained in its pages are real and breathe, or did once. It’s the kind of book that makes you forget you’re reading a book and transports you to another time and place, and it’s definitely earned a place on my favorites shelf. How on earth did I wait so long to read it? I think on the face of it, I didn’t think it would interest me because I didn’t consider myself interested in circuses. Then a colleague at work who has great taste in books (with the exception of saying The Great Gatsby is overrated) said it was a wonderful book, which was high praise indeed coming from him, so on my TBR pile it went. And it sat there for too long. I am glad I read the book before I saw the movie so I can have my own picture of the characters and my own enjoyment of the story untainted by a film version. I’m sure the film will be fine, but you know how it is with books and movies. I’ve only ever seen one movie that was better than the book it was based on, and that had as much to do with the charismatic actors as it did with the smart changes and cuts made (it was The Princess Bride, for the record).

If you, like me, have waited to read this one, do yourself a favor and read it now. I’m already pushing it into my husband’s hands (and hoping he doesn’t laugh at my annotations). I would give it infinity stars like I’d like to give Revolution if I could.

Rating: ★★★★★

This book was read as part of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge and the Take a Chance Challenge: LibraryThing Pick. I have nine more historical fiction books to read to complete the first challenge, and nine more Take a Chance books to read to complete the second.

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Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, John Crowley

Posted on by Dana

Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land (P.S.)John Crowley’s novel Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land has its origin in a famous storytelling contest. In the Year Without a Summer (1816), Byron rented the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland and met up with friends Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley. Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire Clairmont was traveling with the Shelleys, who had eloped together from England, and John Polidori, Byron’s doctor, was traveling with Byron, who was fleeing infamy. Unable to pursue outdoor recreations, the company grew bored and restless. Conversation turned to dark subjects such as ghosts and Erasmus Darwin’s experiments with galvanism. Byron suggested a supernatural story-writing contest. Mary Shelley began writing Frankenstein, while Dr. Polidori wrote The Vampyre, which would later inspire Bram Stoker’s own vampiric tale, Dracula, and through Dracula, just about every other vampire story written. Polidori is believed to have based his vampire, Count Ruthven, on Byron himself. (Have you met a literary vampire who is not Byronic? I haven’t.) The two major poets, Byron and Shelley, are not believed to have produced anything of note. Crowley’s premise is that Byron did indeed produce a completed novel, The Evening Land, that was suppressed by his estranged wife Lady Byron. Crowley imagined that the novel was preserved by Byron’s daughter, Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace, who is widely acknowledged to be the first computer programmer (P.S. March 24 is Ada Lovelace Day). Crowley’s Lovelace is forced to burn the manuscript of The Evening Land by her mother, but she enciphers it first. Enter Alexandra “Smith” Novak, a web programmer for the website strongwomanstory.org. She and one of the website’s benefactors are given a mysterious bequest by a mysterious man. It turns out to be the enciphered novel. Smith engages her own estranged (and notorious) father, a former Byron scholar turned filmmaker exiled from the United States because of a past nearly as sordid as Byron’s, and her partner, Dr. Thea Spann, a mathematician, to help her decode the cipher. In the process, Crowley discusses the complex relationships between both fathers—Byron and Lee Novak—and their daughters—Ada and Smith.

This book is an amazing achievement. I’ve read enough Romantic-era novels and Byronic poetry to hear Byron’s authentic voice in the novel uncovered in the frame narrative of its discovery. Even Harold Bloom, that illustrious champion of Romantic poetry (and dead white males) enjoyed the novel and gave it a positive blurb:

Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land is an extraordinary confluence of High Romanticism and our Information Era: every note in it rings with authenticity. ‘The Evening Land’ is a novel Byron indeed might have written, and his daughter, Ada, as created by Crowley, is vividly memorable, worthy of her exuberant father.

If I can be allowed one quick digression, that last line smacks of all kinds of sexism to me, but that’s Harold Bloom for you. The fact is, Crowley’s Ada is “vividly memorable,” as is her “exuberant father.” The novel is a thinly veiled retelling of Byron’s own life in many respects, and through her preservation of the novel, Ada comes to make peace with her father. Crowley’s story certainly explains one of the great mysteries of Byron’s legacy—Why would his daughter, taught to hate her father by a mother poisoned by her own ill will for Byron, wish to be buried beside the father she had never met?

The emails between Lee and Smith, as well as between Smith and Thea, among other letters, form an epistolary frame in which Byron’s novel and Ada’s commentary are enclosed and share a similar story. Smith, like Ada, rediscovers her estranged father through his work, but the difference is that her father is still alive, and she has, if she chooses, the opportunity to end the estrangement.

I struggled with how to rate this novel because as an authentic Romantic novel, the parts containing Byron’s “writing” were dense, overblown, and worthy of Sir Walter Scott. Sometimes I had to plow through those sections even while admiring how much like Byron Crowley managed to write. The emails and letters were, on the other hand, quick reads. I like the format of the novel, the frame narrative and epistolary interchange. In the end, Byron’s novel was as good as any other Romantic novel I’ve read, and that’s saying something of Crowley’s achievement. I can’t think of too many writers who could pull off a feat like this, and whether I was able to put the book down at times or not, I have to tip my hat to his talent.

Rating: ★★★★★

I read this novel as part of the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, the Gothic Reading Challenge, and the GLBT Challenge (Byron was bisexual, and this part of his character was expressed in the novel, and the characters Smith and Thea are lesbians). I have ten more books to go to complete the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, and eighteen more for the Gothic Reading Challenge (I really bit off more than I can chew with that one). The GLBT Challenge has no set number of books, so if I were so inclined, I could call the challenge met, but I’m not so inclined.

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Passion, by Jude Morgan

Posted on by Dana

Passion: A Novel of the Romantic PoetsAfter having finished Jude Morgan’s novel Passion, I feel emotionally spent. What a rollercoaster ride this aptly named novel has taken me on.

The novel begins as Mary Wollstonecraft, mother of Mary Shelley, attempts to commit suicide by drowning herself. It’s a story that’s been well known to me since college when I first encountered Wollstonecraft and her Vindication of the Rights of Woman. I was entranced by the story because I latched on to a curious detail: Wollstonecraft, mistreated by man in a world that didn’t appreciate her intellect, was bouyed by her skirts—the symbol of her femininity saved her, and later, it would take her away as she died following her daughter Mary’s childbirth. The rest of the novel unfolds as the lives of the Romantic poets Byron, Shelley, and Keats are told through the voices of the women who loved them: Lady Caroline Lamb, Augusta Byron Leigh, Mary Shelley, and Fanny Brawne. At times the stories entwine as the women move in the same circles, and ultimately, each is left behind as the man she loved dies before her. How each woman resolves the issue of forging an identity separate from her lover is alluded to in the epilogue, but largely left unwritten.

If ever a book were written just for me, this book would be it. I have been devoted to the Romantic poets since high school. Jude Morgan not only manages to bring the poets and their lovers alive, but he also manages to do so with painstaking research and attention to historical detail. I was transported to another time where I knew and loved all of these people. Much of Morgan’s research has come from primary sources—letters, memoirs, diaries, and the like, for much of it reads exactly like the accounts from which they were drawn, but somehow sketched out in sharper relief. My favorite characters were probably Byron, Caroline Lamb, and Fanny Brawne, but truthfully, I enjoyed meeting everyone (although I kind of hated Claire Clairmont, which may have been Morgan’s intention). I felt wrung out with sadness as each of the poets died—the inevitable conclusion I knew would happen, but that I was still inexplicably unprepared for.

If I have one criticism of the book, it’s that it felt a little too unwieldy at times. Morgan never manages to lose control of the story, however, and even switching narrators and voices is no trouble. The reader can follow Morgan down each path. Keats’s story suffers the most in this large tale, while Byron and Shelley loom large on the page. Perhaps that is also a deeper message one can glean from the story—it was also thus, no? Towards the end of the book, Fanny Brawne reflects on Keats’s pronouncement that she is like a fire:

Oh, I would much rather be the fire. Think of the other elements: earth is rather too plain and sluggish, and I hope I have too much sense to be forever floating about in the air, and water has something too cool about it for my temper, which is, I know, a little too much on the lively side. (459)

It seemed as if all the women were described in that paragraph. I saw Augusta Leigh as like the earth, not “plain and sluggish,” necessarily, but the bedrock, the only solid thing in Byron’s life. Earthy would be a great adjective to describe her. And if Brawne sees someone “floating about in the air” as having little sense, then air is Caro Lamb, who threw her dignity, happiness, and family away for a mad obsession for Byron. Mary Shelley, then, is water, cool, collected, sometimes too passionless for Shelley, who often compared her to the moon in his poetry—not to mention that life-claiming water seemed to be a recurring theme of Mary Shelley’s life.

What a wonderful book. I would give it infinity stars if I could. I never mark my books (no trouble highlighting a Kindle and taking notes, but somehow I feel I’m defacing my books if I write in them), but I found I had to mark passages and talk back to this story, at least a little. I certainly can’t think of too many other books I’ve read that have had me doing as much research and reading about its subjects as this one. A new favorite. The title is perfect in all senses of the word, but don’t let the cover scare you off—it’s pretty, but makes the book seem too frivolous and light. Mary Shelley seems to capture the essence of this book in one sentence: “How can you love someone so much, and not understand them at all?” (383).

Rating: ★★★★★

I read this book for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I’ve read four now. Eleven more to go.

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The story of the writing of Frankenstein and some of the literal Byronic hero qualify this book as my first read for the Gothic Reading Challenge. Nineteen to go on that challenge. I must have been crazy.

I’m going to have to puzzle over where to put this on the Where Are You Reading Challenge because these guys went all over Europe. I guess England.

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Conceit, Mary Novik

Posted on by Dana

ConceitMary Novik’s novel Conceit is the story of John Donne’s daughter Pegge and her quest to discover what love is. She is entranced by her parents’ relationship—in an unusual move for their time, they married for love, but by the end of his life, Novik’s Donne seems to regret this decision in some ways as he searches for husbands for his own daughters and tries to suppress his past and his feelings for Ann, who died years before the novel’s events. He is concerned about the legacy he leaves behind and works hard to construct an expurgated life story for himself, focused on his work as Dean of St. Paul’s. The novel begins as Pegge braves the Great Fire of London in 1666 to save the effigy of her father in St. Paul’s and travels back through Pegge’s memories of her father’s death, the memories of her own parents, and forward again to Pegge’s life as a wife, mother, and grandmother.

Novik brings seventeenth century England to life in this novel. In many cases, I think writers of historical fiction create characters who act too much like modern people. This novel reminded me of Anthony Burgess’s Nothing Like the Sun (review here) in its attention to period detail. Novik has managed to capture a place that seems much more real than most historical fiction novels do. Even though Pegge is somewhat eccentric for her time, I found her completely plausible as a character because of Novik’s skill as a writer. What else would the daughter of John Donne be? I found myself shaking my head at her and sympathizing with her husband William a great deal, but she was oddly endearing. I really enjoyed reading about all of her experiments (from fish recipes to horticulture). A favorite quote by Novik’s Donne from the novel:

“That is my last poem, Pegge. See that it gets to Marriot for printing with the others.  I am glad it was you who came into the room just now. Of all my children, you have the most poetry in you, thought God knows how you will use it.”(214)

Conceit is a rare historical novel that allows the reader to feel immersed in a time period, learn some history, and enjoy the story all at once.

Rating: ★★★★★

I read this book for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge. I’ve read three now. Twelve more to go!

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Revolution, Jennifer Donnelly

Posted on by Dana

RevolutionAndi Alpers, one of the protagonists of Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution, is a guitar prodigy attending a tony private school in Brooklyn, but she’s haunted by the loss of her brother Truman, her mother’s subsequent breakdown, and her father’s absence. When she has decided not to write her senior thesis, which will prevent her from graduating, her father, a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, takes her with him to Paris, where he is helping his historian friend G with a project—they are testing the DNA of a heart G discovered to determine if it belonged to the lost king Louis XVII, the Dauphin of France, who died in the last days of the French Revolution, imprisoned, mad, alone, and orphaned. Andi’s father hopes that access to primary sources and his strict guidance can help Andi make some progress on her thesis, which concerns the musical influence of eighteenth century composer Amadé Malherbeau on modern music. G gives her a guitar discovered in the catacombs, and Andi finds a diary hidden in a secret compartment. The diary belongs to Alexandrine Paradis, a performer hired by the French royal family to entertain the young Dauphin. As Andi reads the diary, she becomes entranced by Alex’s story. While in Paris, she also meets Virgil, a Tunisian musician, and forges a strong connection with him. One night when he takes her to the catacombs, the world of Alex’s diary suddenly becomes real when Andi discovers herself transported to the last days of the French Revolution.

I cannot describe how much I loved this book. I said in my last post that a gauge of how much I like a book is whether or not I can put it down. I didn’t want this book to end. I put it down only to prolong the pleasure of reading it. I could easily have finished it off in a couple of days if I hadn’t done so. The strongest gauge of how much I love a book is when I wish I had written it myself. I don’t know why I feel that way—I suspect I want the book to belong to me even more than it does if I’ve read it. Jennifer Donnelly is an excellent writer. She brings the life of a 21st Brooklyn teenager to life in ways I’ve seen few young adult authors do with as much honesty and realism. She also brings Revolutionary-era France to life in sharp-relief. The invented parts of her book fit so seamlessly with the historical aspects, that you will find yourself Googling references, unable to tell what is real and what is invented. Andi and Alex are likable, real protagonists, and I found myself falling in love with the characters. Donnelly managed also to kindle an interest in an era of history I have previously not been as interested in—the French Revolution. I know you’re thinking “How could I not have been interested it that?” I don’t know! I sure can’t figure it out after reading this book, but I know I want to read more now. This novel isn’t just one of the best historical fiction YA books I’ve read, or one of the best YA books I’ve read. It’s one of the best historical fiction books I’ve read of any stripe. Whether you think of yourself as interested in France, the French Revolution, or even music or not, you will enjoy this book. What’s not to love in a book that mentions both Jeff Buckley and “Ten Years Gone,” my favorite Led Zeppelin song, in nearly the same breath as Bach and Beethoven? My recommendation: READ IT!

Here’s the book trailer, if you’re interested in learning a bit more about the book:

Rating: ★★★★★ (I wish I could give it six stars. Out of five.)

I read this book for the Historical Fiction Challenge and for the YA Historical Fictional Challenge. I now have 13 books left for the Historical Fiction Challenge and 14 left for the YA Historical Fiction Challenge.

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