Historical Fiction: New York, by Edward Rutherfurd

Tags

17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, books, historical fiction, New York, reading

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

“I’m gonna make a brand new start of it, New York, New York”, sang Frank Sinatra and Liza Minelli in what has become the city’s anthem. As he did for England, Ireland, and Russia, Edward Rutherfurd has undertaken to relate the history of New York City in novel form. My favorite of all his works is Sarum, told the story of the evolution of Salisbury Cathedral, though his other titles are also well worth reading. From Manhattan’s earliest years to the decade following 9/11, Rutherfurd traces the experiences of the fictional Master family as New York grows in size, prominence, and status. Along the way, he deftly weaves in the stories and contributions of slaves, Dutch and English settlers, Native Americans, and members of the various immigration groups, all of whom have played such important roles in the making of one of the world’s greatest cities.

If the novel conveys a theme, it would be that of the ongoing effort to build a socially just community. The first third of the book, covering the period from the settling of New Amsterdam to the War for Independence, is perhaps the most compelling section, and the most detailed. From then on, the author is forced by the vast scope of his topic to skipping entire decades and eras in order to focus on what he views as the city’s most formative events, including the draft riots during the Civil War, the prejudices and struggles affecting each immigrant group as they attempt to assimilate, the Great Depression, and second half of the 20th century. His characters are well drawn, though in my view, the later Master descendants lack the depth and vitality of the earliest ones. Particularly vivid are the portrayals of Quash, one of the family’s slaves, and his family. And Rutherfurd successfully depicts that vibrant ambience of this crowded and multicultural place, only fourteen miles long and two wide, and surrounded by water and smaller islands.

Read the book and you’ll “want to be a part of” New York too.

Historical Fiction: The House of Velvet and Glass, by Katherine Howe

Tags

20th century, books, historical fiction, Massachusetts, paranormal, reading

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1915, Boston. Helen Allston and her daughter, Eulah, perished on the Titanic, and three years later, the patrician Allstons are still in mourning. Eldest daughter Sibyl (aptly named) continues to frequent seances, looking for a message from her mother that might give her some peace. Sibyl is a spinster at age 27, taking over her mother’s job of running the family home on Beacon Hill. When her younger brother, Harley, is thrown out of Harvard for unsavory behavior, Sibyl’s former beau, now a professor of psychology, re-enters her life. Harley’s bohemian girlfriend, Dovie, also enters the picture, and teaches Sibyl a thing or two about loosening up a bit. In the process, Sibyl learns that she has the gift of clairvoyance. Is it a curse or a gift? It certainly brings pain….

Sibyl’s story is an appealing one, sure to resonate with anyone who has suffered loss. Is it a believable one? The answer depends upon the reader’s point of view. Her journeys into the future are paralleled with flashbacks into the earlier lives of her father and mother, which provide clues into what’s going on in Sibyl’s head. For the open minded, the clairvoyance angle works; otherwise, it’s just so much claptrap. What makes it interesting, either way, is watching how Sibyl’s relationship with her father, brother’s paramour, and former suitor develop, and how her take on life in general undergoes a metamorphosis. Part melodrama, part psychological drama, The House of Velvet and Glass offers an intriguing tale which raises questions about social class, religious beliefs, free will, and the nature of grief.

Monday Morning Poem: Over the Land is April

Tags

19th century, literature, poetry, reading, seasons

by Robert Louis Stevenson

OVER the land is April,
Over my heart a rose;
Over the high, brown mountain
The sound of singing goes.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain,
Love, do you hear me sing?

By highway, love, and byway
The snows succeed the rose.
Over the high, brown mountain
The wind of winter blows.
Say, love, do you hear me,
Hear my sonnets ring?
Over the high, brown mountain
I sound the song of spring,
I throw the flowers of spring.
Do you hear the song of spring?
Hear you the songs of spring?

Historical Fiction: Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, by Jennifer Chiaverini

Tags

19th century, books, Civil War, reading, women

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In 1868, seamstress and former slave Elizabeth Keckley (she, herself, spelled it Keckly) did the unthinkable, when she had the audacity to write a memoir of her life in general and her years in the White House in particular. She would soon regret it, or at least regret her honesty and her misplaced trust her publisher. Drawing primarily from that memoir, author Jennifer Chiaverini has written a fictional account of her life from 1860 to her death in 1907, and although the perspective is primarily Elizabeth’s, appears to have provided a fair picture of the tumultuous life of Mary Lincoln as First Lady.

Her engagement to serve as Mary’s “modiste” was quite a feather in Elizabeth’s   cap, contributing greatly to the success of her dressmaking business. Mary quickly came to rely upon her for much more than her sewing skills. Mary was never well accepted into the society of the capitol, and Elizabeth became her truest friend and confidante. She also gained great insight into the character of Abraham Lincoln. Each woman was remarkable in her own right, for very different reasons, and each suffered substantially in the years following the President’s assassination.

Ms. Chiaverini writes a series of historical novels involving quilting during the Civil War, and Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker is produced in the same simple, cozy style. Apparently, she couldn’t resist including a few slow chapters on the making of a quilt said to have been designed especially for Mary by Elizabeth, although she never managed to give it to her. What this book does well is paint a picture of race relations during the Civil War era; particularly evocative are the passages on the derogatory and overtly racist public reaction to the memoir, and on the difficulties Mary and Elizabeth encountered when traveling together. Mary is sympathetically portrayed as a well-meaning woman who did many fine things, but who undermined her popularity through her own behavior, likely due to bipolar disorder. Less uniformly successful is the portrayal of the personality of Elizabeth. Her extraordinary accomplishments are justly explicated, but the character herself comes across as a candidate for sainthood.

No book, of course, is perfect, and this is a story well worth reading. Elizabeth Keckley deserves a prominent place in the history of her era, and Mary Lincoln a more compassionate image, as Jennifer Chiaverini has demonstrated.

Modern Fiction: The Gilder, by Kathryn Kay

Tags

art, books, Italy, modern fiction, reading

Young Marina Nesmith, fresh out of college, moves from NY to Florence, determined to acquire the best possible training as a gilding and restoration specialist. Sarah and her husband Thomas, a noted photographer, take her under their wing, and although Marina views herself as heterosexual, some of her feelings for Sarah make her wonder. As she’s establishing herself in her new career, Sarah becomes pregnant, and abruptly returns to the states. Now, fifteen years later, her daughter demands to know who her father is, and Marina has some difficult choices to make.

What I liked about The Gilder: Marina is an independent woman who makes her own way in the world. As she traverses Florence and its environs, her impressions capture some of the essence of the city and its art. This author’s prose style is competent.

What I didn’t like about The Gilder: Coming of age novels tend to be very similar, and this one seems more suitable for young adult audience than for mature readers. Too many questions about motivations remain unanswered, and, except for Marina, characters are shallow. For the most part, I breezed through the pages, never fully, or even partially, captivated by any of the situations.

It’s a Mystery: Watching the Dark, by Peter Robinson

Tags

crime, England, fiction, mystery, reading

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Yorkshire DCI Alan Banks (a favorite of mine) is assigned to the case of a fellow detective, Bill Quinn, who was bizarrely shot to death with an arrow from a crossbow. Among his effects are a series of compromising photos, which prompt the higher-ups to call in a professional standards officer, the “icy blonde” Joanna Passero. Banks resents having to work with one of the “rats”. When a second body turns up, that of a freelance reporter from Talinn, the case leads this undynamic duo to Estonia. Along the way, Joanna learns something about the detective business, while Banks unearths a myriad of shady characters involved in human trafficking, and resolves a six year old cold case. Corruption and greed are rampant, and as is true in many other recent suspense novels, the spotlight shines on post-Soviet Eastern Europe and organized crime. More police procedural than thriller, Watching the Dark also follows the efforts of Banks’s usual partner, DI Annie Cabot, who ties up several important loose ends that are crucial to cinching the net around the perpetrators. What the book lacks in excitement it more than makes up for in timely, contemporary detail.

Buttolph Williams House and The Witch of Blackbird Pond

Tags

17th century, 18th century, Connecticut, History, reading, witch

One look at the Buttolph-Williams house is enough to transport the imaginative viewer straight back to America’s earliest century. Built in 1711, this first period building is typically medieval-English in style, with its massive posts and beams, its overhangs and finials, and its small leaded paned windows. It represents the most authentic restoration of a 17th century style dwelling in the CT River Valley, and contains a lovely collection of early furniture, kitchenware, and ceramics.

Few people are aware, however, that the Buttolph-Williams House was a source of inspiration, and the partial setting, for the Newbery Medal-winning book The Witch of Blackbird Pond, by Elizabeth George Speare. This fictional classic is based upon the story of Kit Tyler, an orphaned adolescent girl forced by necessity to live with her uncle’s family in Connecticut, who becomes involved in a case of suspected witchcraft when she befriends Hannah Tupper, a local woman who does not conform to Puritan standards of the day. Author Speare witnessed the restoration of the Buttolph Williams house in the 1950′s, and learned at the same time about the witchcraft trials and executions that took place in Wethersfield in the 1660′s, a full three decades before Salem.

Today the house is operated as a museum, and the rooms have been arranged to reflect various scenes in The Witch of Blackbird Pond. To see enlargements of photos, click on each image.

Kitchen hearth with settle and flax wheel. In this location, Mercy did her spinning, Kit spoiled the hasty pudding, and the Dame School was taught. Mercy, who had difficulty walking, slept by the fireside.

The hall, or best room, where the John and William called upon Kit and Judith. The young people knitted, ate popcorn, and

did some reading while “courting.”

 

The second floor chamber shared by Kit and Judith.

 

The Buttolph Williams House is owned by Connecticut Landmarks. To learn more or plan a visit: http://www.ctlandmarks.org/index.php

Links to info about real Connecticut witchcraft trials:

http://yourehistory.wordpress.com/2007/05/15/before-salem-first-to-die/

http://yourehistory.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/before-salem-first-to-confess/

Monday Morning Poem: The Rose Family

Tags

20th century, literature, plants, poetry, reading

by Robert Frost

The rose is a rose,                                                      
And was always a rose.
But the theory now goes
That the apple’s a rose,
And the pear is, and so’s
The plum, I suppose.
The dear only know
What will next prove a rose.
You, of course, are a rose–
But were always a rose.

Books about Books

Tags

books, reading

I love to read, and books about books are particularly fun. Here are a few of my favorites:

People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

The Book of Lies, by Brad Meltzer

The Physic Book of Deliverance Dane, by Katherine Howe

The Book of Unholy Mischief, by Elle Newmark

Inkheart and Inkspell, by Cornelia Funke

Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones

The Witches’ Hammer, by Jane Stanton Hitchcock

The Thursday Next series, by Jasper Fforde

Daphne, by Justine Picardie

Bad Things Happen, by Harry Dolan

The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Angel’s Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Sherlockian, by Graham Moore

Endymion Spring, by Matthew Skelton

Paranormal Fiction: A Discovery of Witches, by Deborah Harkness

Tags

England, fiction, medieval, paranormal, reading, witch

My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A vampire book for adults that isn’t written by Anne Rice? With witches and daemons as well? And it opens in Oxford. “What could be more fun?”, I asked myself. A Discovery of Witches has a very promising start. American Academic Diana Bishop is visiting the university to study the Bodleian’s collection of ancient alchemical manuscripts. One ordinary afternoon, she calls up Ashmole 782, and some very peculiar things occur – shimmering pages, weird illustrations, and, she can’t help but notice, spells and secret messages visible only to those who are in the know. Being a witch herself, descended from the infamous Bridget Bishop of Salem, MA, Diana’s in the know, though she’d rather not be and tries hard not to use her formidable powers. The instant she and 782 meet, the entire local community of others (i.e., nonhuman creatures) swarm around her, and not because they’re so excited for her. Diana is wary, but finds herself attracted to one of the others, a very ancient, very rich, and very handsome vampire, Matthew Clairmont. Long story short, they fall in love against all prohibitions, and go on all sorts of adventures to unearth the meaning of 782.

This vampire book is not suitable for adults, it’s way too inane. Diana has her doctorate and a very independent life, yet behaves like an adolescent with a crush on a rock star. Matthew wants to “feed” on Diana, but because he’s so in love, contains his bestial instincts. Other characters are equally as insipid and stereotypical. Surprisingly, since the author is a serious scholar herself, the history is mushy and given short shrift in favor of the mushy romance. Too lengthy, too wordy, too slow, and ultimately mindless and boring.