How far would you be willing to go for a forbidden love? That is the question that Frances Wray must answer in Sarah Water's novel The Paying Guests. The time is post-WWI London, and the
streets are full of returned servicemen with no jobs and no prospects. Things haven't exactly been great for the genteel classes, either. The deprivation of the war years has left some well-to-do families with little money left to support their large houses and estates. Such is the case for Frances and her mother. When her father died, he left them in such financial distress that they were forced to take on lodgers to maintain their home.

Enter Lillian and Leonard Barber, a young newly-married couple just starting out. They rent the small sitting/bedroom area on the second floor across the hall from Frances' own room. Leonard is brash and charming, at first. Lillian is a modern young woman with eccentric tastes who soon becomes something of an obsession for Frances. As their orderly life is disrupted by the new arrivals, Frances' mother becomes more and more frail and depressed. Frances, on the other hand, finds herself falling in love with Lillian, a feeling which is soon reciprocated. This love affair sparks a series of events worthy of any melodrama, resulting in death. In the aftermath, Frances and Lillian will be tested. Will they find a way for their love to survive?

If you are familiar with Waters' work, you know that all of her novels are period pieces, usually set in England between the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Like her novels Fingersmith and Tipping the Velvet, The Paying Guests does an excellent job portraying post-WWI England. Waters explores themes of class as well as sexuality in this book, contrasting the stuffy, uptight Wray house with the lively home where Lillian's family resides. Waters plays with the prejudices of the time in both her description of Frances' sexual orientation and the way the aftermath of the death plays out. Frances' character experiences the loneliness and social isolation that come from being different, and from having lost social standing due to her reduced circumstances. She is desperate for someone to love her as she is, and this causes her to act in ways that are desperate and out of character. Waters' has created a tragic love story that is doomed, even before it's begun.

The Midwife, Jennifer Worth

Ah, the miracle of pregnancy and childbirth.  That beautiful time when glowing women contentedly rub their ever-swelling bellies, whiling away the hours crafting beautiful hand-made works of art for their well-appointed nurseries.  When the time comes for the special bundle to make its way into the world, they execute their meticulously planned labor plans, breathing away the pain without the use of drugs, pushing for all of two minutes before the baby appears, perfectly formed, into the hands of the doctor (or midwife or dula, if they are really going natural).

What?  This doesn't sound like your birthing experience?  Yeah, mine either, but as a culture we have mythologized pregnancy and childbirth to the point that women feel guilty if they haven't had the perfect Pinterest birthing experience (which, if you think about it, is good practice for once the child is actually born, and then they can feel guilty about the non-Pinterst perfect birthday parties and Elf on the Shelf ideas).  The reality?  Pregnancy and childbirth are wonderful, for most women.  But even women with a completely normal pregnancy have to deal with swollen ankles, strange bodily fluids, sore and swollen breasts, constipation, back aches, and morning sickness.  Child birth itself is miraculous, yes, but also messy, and, let's face it, pretty gross.  

If you'd prefer to hold on to the description at the beginning of this post as your mental image of pregnancy and childbirth, then I suggest that you do NOT read The Midwife by Jennier Worth (also called Call the Midwife, depending on which edition you have).  This memoir, upon which is based a PBS historical drama, is the first in a trilogy of books that examine the experiences of a group of midwives in post-war London.  And it is not for the faint of heart.  

London after World War II was battered.  Many buildings had been destroyed by the Germans during the Blitz, and rebuilding plans were stalled due to budget cuts and changes in government leadership. This left many poor families crammed together in tenements that had been slated for destruction, until id became clear that there was no where near enough housing left for everyone in London. Jennifer Worth left her comfortable middle class home to join a corp of midwives working in London's East End, treating women who lived in unsanitary conditions most of us can only imagine, many of whom already had many children.  That close to the docks, the men tended to be hard, and the women tended to be overwhelmed.  This first book tells about Jennifer's early days as a midwife, and is full of fascinating and graphic descriptions of cases she worked on.

If you are not comfortable reading graphic, rather vivid descriptions of other women's lady parts, and the smells and fluids that might come out of them, then you probably want to avoid this book.  Ditto if you can't handle stories about dead and dying babies, or mothers, or both.  The reality for most poor pregnant women in post-war London was that they dealt with their pregnancy living in a two room apartment with their husband and two or five or eight other children, an apartment that had no running water, no bathroom, and was either sweltering or freezing depending on the season.  

If you can handle the content, then you will find a book that is written with what strikes me as typical middle-class English reserve.  The stories are straightforward, with Worth sharing just enough of her own reactions to the situations to keep it from sounding too clinical.  It's an interesting look at the beginning of the National Health Service, founded to provide universal, no-cost health care to the people of the United Kingdom.  It is also an examination of how doctors, who were predominately male, either valued or dismissed the experience and knowledge of the midwives, causing a few tense and adversarial moments for the midwives themselves.  And despite the circumstances of many of their patients, I think that there are things that American health care could learn from the way they provided services to their patients.  The mythologized version of pregnancy might be prettier, but the reality is so much more interesting!

Afterwards, Rosamund Lupton

Last week, I was at a conference for reading teachers in Springfield, IL.  One of the vendors in the exhibit hall, Anderson's Books (a great independent bookstore in Naperville, IL, in case you happen to be local), had some reader-centric t-shirts in their booth.  I came home with these two...

But there was another one that I plan to get, that expresses a sentiment I have always felt.  Namely, that authors are my rock stars.  I never ceased to be amazed at the ability of good writers to create whole new worlds, or to shine a light so starkly on the world we already live in.  After thousands of years of the written word, the fact that there can still be anything literarily new or original is mind-blowing.  

In this spirit, I eagerly picked up Afterwards, by Rosamund Lupton, in preparation for my book club last month.  We had already read her book Sister, which engendered a great discussion about whether we agreed with the use of the literary device she employed.  In that book, the story is told in what we think is a letter to the main character's sister, only to discover that the while conversation is taking place in the main character's mind.  Lupton tried out a different narrative structure this time.  For Afterwards, which is essentially a mystery just like Sister, she placed the narrator and her daughter in a limbo state, stuck between life and death, able to observe what was happening to them and their loved ones without really being able to interact with them.

Afterwards begins with the narrator, a 40ish year old mother named Grace, realizing that her daughter is trapped in a burning school.  She rushes in to save her...and the next thing she is aware of is being in the hospital, looking down on her own comatose body lying in a hospital bed.  Her 17 year old daughter Jenny, who was horribly burned in the fire, is also in a coma, and together they start wandering the hospital, trying to find out what has happened to them.  It soon becomes apparent that each woman is in critical condition.  It also become apparent that their injuries are not the result of a tragic accident, but arson.  Grace and Jenny spend the rest of the novel alternately dealing with their own rather bumpy relationship, or tagging along with other characters who are actually living in the world as they try to solve the mystery.

And that is where Lupton lost me a bit.  Because was seemed like an interesting plot device at the beginning soon got rather tired.  Because the fact is that as much as Grace may follow her husband as he tries to keep them safe, or her sister-in-law the police officer as she investigates the fire, she can't actually DO anything.  Except have conversations with people that they can't hear, or discover clues that she can't tell anyone.  And as the book progresses, it becomes more and more sentimental, to the point that I was actually slightly annoyed by the resolution not of the mystery, which had be guessing until almost the end, but of the novel's other major plotline, that of whether Grace or Jenny can be saved.  I won't say that I didn't enjoy reading this book, because it kept me engaged throughout.  But I found myself reading faster and faster as the end approached, and not necessarily because I wanted to find out whodunnit-I was ready for it to be over.

Whispers of the Dead, In Which David Hunt Can't Catch a Break

Simon Beckett is one of the better mystery/thriller writer's I've discovered in a while.  His main character, David Hunt, is a forensic anthropologist from the UK, complete with tragic past and an obsessive nature focused on finding justice for the dead.  Beckett's books are formulaic thrillers on the surface, but with a sense of malevolence and creepiness that does not always come across in other works in this genre.

Whispers of the Dead finds David taking a sabbatical from his work in the UK.  He is studying in the US, at a body farm in Tennessee just known as "the facility".  There, bodies are exposed to the elements in various ways so that pathologists and forensic anthropologists can study the effects of varying environments in the decomposition process.  And that is not even the grossest thing in this book!  David is mostly recovered physically from being attacked by a serial killer, but the fact that she escaped and is possibly hunting him down to finish the job makes it harder to heal emotionally.  He is hoping that getting away from England and his failed relationship with his girlfriend will give him some perspective, and help him figure out how to move forward.  He has barely arrived when he is drawn into a series of bizarre murders at the request of his old friend and mentor.  There is a killer at work in the Smoky Mountains, leaving bodies or parts of bodies in elaborate tableaux designed to draw the forensic people deeper and deeper into his crimes.  Soon David and his friend become targets themselves.  Can this really be happening to him AGAIN? (that would be the "David Hunt can't catch a break" part)

Despite the fact that it seems completely unlikely in real life that the same forensic anthropologist could be targeted by not one but two serial killers in succession, the fact is that the story is so good that I didn't even care that it wasn't that feasible.  The story is mostly told in the first-person from David's point of view, but at the end of each chapter is a vignette written in a slightly awkward second-person that reveals the mind of the killer.  There are plenty of hints dropped along the way, but even so I was still surprised by the twist at the end.  And Beckett is not afraid to kill off important major or minor characters, which adds a sense of unpredictability to the whole things that is refreshing in a formula genre book.  Whispers of the Dead is an excellent popcorn book-as long as you aren't too squeamish when you eat...er...read!

A Duty to the Dead-Popcorn from World War I

Take a soldier's dying wish, an independent battlefield nurse, a decades old secret, and a madman in an asylum, put them together into a deliciously engaging story, and you have A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd.

Here's what Goodreads has to say about the plot:

           England, 1916. Independent-minded Bess Crawford's upbringing is far different from that of the usual upper-middle-class British gentlewoman. Growing up in India, she learned the importance of responsibility, honor, and duty from her offi­cer father. At the outbreak of World War I, she followed in his footsteps and volunteered for the nursing corps, serving from the battlefields of France to the doomed hospital ship Britannic.
         On one voyage, Bess grows fond of the young, gravely wounded Lieutenant Arthur Graham. Something rests heavily on his conscience, and to give him a little peace as he dies, she promises to deliver a message to his brother. It is some months before she can carry out this duty, and when she's next in England, she herself is recovering from a wound.
        When Bess arrives at the Graham house in Kent, Jonathan Graham listens to his brother's last wishes with surprising indifference. Neither his mother nor his brother Timothy seems to think it has any significance. Unsettled by this, Bess is about to take her leave when sudden tragedy envelops her. She quickly discovers that fulfilling this duty to the dead has thrust her into a maelstrom of intrigue and murder that will endanger her own life and test her courage as not even war has.

I loved the character of Bess.  She was independent and strong-willed, traits I especially like in my heroines.  But what really made the book for me was the very British-ness of is all.  You've got the references to serving in India that always remind me of The Secret Garden, family estates, the whole upstairs/downstairs vibe, the country rectory, and the whole asylum thing.  Plus lots and lots of tea.  Todd brought a Victorian sensibility to the Edwardian era-change the war they are fighting and the reference to motor-cars and this book could have taken place 50 years earlier.

One of the things that drew me into the novel was the examination of the family dynamics that led to the tragic events that unfold.  So much of British upper class life was kept under wraps out of propriety's sake that figuring out exactly what is going on in any given family is a bit like opening one of those gifts within a gift-you know, where someone wraps a small box inside a larger box and so on-except usually what is discovered when you get to the final layer of these family dramas is not nearly as nice as a present.

This is the first of a new series by Todd with Bess as the main character, and I look forward to following her on many more mysteries.

Literary Blog Hop-Wish You Were Here

It's that time again!  The Literary Blog Hop is a hop designed for book bloggers who read and review primarily literary fiction hosted by the lovely bloggers at The Blue Bookcase.
This week's prompt was a real challenge for me...

Robyn asks: What setting (time or place) from a book or story would you most like to visit? Eudora Welty said that, "Being shown how to locate, to place, any account is what does most toward making us believe it...," so in what location would you most like to hang out?

Ok, so this presents a couple of conundrums for me.  First of all, I've read A LOT of books in my time, as I'm sure most of you have as well.  I'm pretty sure that I've read a novel that takes place on just about every continent and in most climate regions of the world, making it hard to narrow down.  Really, I could pick just about anywhere and I could probably find a book I've read that takes place there.

Second, unlike some of you I do read some genre fiction, fantasy and science fiction specifically.  So, does my place have to be real?  I mean, would choosing Narnia be totally cheating because it doesn't really exist? (Because if I was going to choose a fictional place, it would definitely be Narnia.  Come on, talking animals?  Fugedaboudit!) 


Finally, there is the time factor.  I mean, sometimes a place would only be interesting if you were there for the historical events that surrounded it.  I mean, most Civil War battlefields are only flat spaces covered with grass now.  I could visit them, but what would I see?  


So, how to answer the question?  Funnily enough, the place I have chosen is from a fantasy novel that has a historical context, and there is some question of how much of that historical context was reality rather than fiction.  And that place is....drumroll...Cornwall in England.

Cornwall is the supposed site of King Arthur's reign, and there is a group in North Cornwall that believes they have identified Arthur's castle and Merlin's Cave near Tintagel.  This area is the setting for Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon, which is my favorite re-telling of the Arthurian legend.  With it's strong feminist focus and themes of the Christianization of the old world and fate vs. free will, it made quite an impression on me as a high schooler.  I've read it several times since then, and every time I want to jump on a plane to England and visit all of the places mentioned.  Tintagel, the Tor, the rugged coast, the woods where the Horned God and the Goddess met and renewed the world...all magical.  The fact that I am a bit of an Anglophile doesn't hurt.  If I ever make it to England, Cornwall will be but one of many places I want to visit.  But there are actually tours designed to take you to the sacred sites of the ancient world in the UK, and as nerdy as I feel being excited about that, if I ever get over there I'm signin' up!

 

Tintagel Castle, possible site of Camelot

Glastonbury Tor, also prominent in the legend

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

I've always been a fan of historical fiction.  Honestly, I think that if history class was taught with high quality historical fiction people would remember more of it that "In fourteen hundred ninety two Columbus sailed the ocean blue" and "I can not tell a lie." At any rate, I'm glad to have discovered a new-to-me author of historical fiction, Tracey Chevalier.  In Burning Bright she paints a lively picture of life in England at the turn of the nineteenth century.  The story centers on Jem, a country boy brought to the city by the death of his brother and the lure of the circus, and Maggie, a poor city girl from a rather shady family hustling to make ends meet.  Two more different people are hard to imagine, but they strike up a friendship that feels completely believable.

After Jem's brother falls from a tree, breaking his neck, his family is left devastated.  His father, a chair-maker, come to London from the small town of Piddletrenthide (which is an actual place-I looked it up) after being offered a job by the owner of a traveling circus that came through on their way back to London for the season.  They move into the area of London known as Lambeth, and discover that their neighbor is none other than William Blake, poet and artist.  The year is 1792, and France is in the throes of a revolution.  This makes the monarchy in England very nervous, and there are soon bands of men roaming the city forcing people to sign loyalty oaths to king and country.  This provides a backdrop as Jem, his sister Maisie, Maggie, and the rest of their families struggle to maintain their moral footing.

While Blake is an important character in the arc of the novel, the most vivid characters are the ordinary people living in Lambeth.  Chevalier takes on issues of class, poverty, prostitution, the treatment of girls and women, and the political climate of the period in a way that I felt I was living in that place in that time myself.  Isn't that what we ask of historical fiction?  The parallels between the uber-patriotism of the Londoners during Blake's time and the unthinking, unquestioning patriotism that was a hallmark of the Bush era were not lost on me.  It seems that anytime the government feels threatened, dissent and free-speech are quashed, and a certain amount of unreasonableness ensues.  Like I said, maybe if history was taught using historical fiction we as a people would be less likely to repeat it.

The Way Things Look to Me, Roopa Farooki

Based on the number of made-for-tv movies and specials on the topic, Americans are in love (or at least in fascination) with all things autistic.  There is something engrossing in watching people with autism and trying to figure out how their minds work, because clearly their neurons are producing in ways that a typical person's brain is not.  As a special educator, I've had more than my fair share of experience with children with autism.  Ranging from non-verbal, stereotypical autism to high-functioning Aspergers Syndrome, I've pretty much seen it all.

It should therefore be taken as a great compliment when I say that Yasmin, the main character in Roopa Farooki's The Way Things Look to Me felt so authentic that I started comparing her to students I've worked with as though she was a real person.  The novel revolves around three siblings-Yasmin, who has been diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome, and her older brother and sister, Asif and Kalila (Lila for short)-all in their late teens, early 20s. Asif drops out of university to take care of Yasmin when their mother dies unexpectedly when he is 18.  Lila, younger by a year, flees home as soon as she can-and goes down a path of self-destruction that she lays squarely at the feet of Yasmin.  Yasmin herself is just finishing her A levels, prior to going off to university.  High functioning, verbal, extremely intelligent, Yasmin is poised to make the difficult transition from the sheltered world of her elite private school to real life.

The book examines the many ways that being a typical sibling of an exceptional child can be challenging, frustrating, and difficult.  Both Asif and Lila felt that they had to fight for their mother's attention-Asif by always being the "good boy", and Lila by being loud and argumentative and difficult.  The novel revolves around Asif and Lila's attempts to find happiness despite the baggage they carry about their childhood, and despite knowing that now that their mother is gone, they will not be able to escape Yasmin.

At the beginning, the most sympathetic character is Yasmin herself, which is saying something for Farooki's ability to write characters.  Given that many people with Aspergers Syndrome do not feel or show emotion in typical ways, they can sometimes be seen as cold or unfeeling.   When Farooki writes from Yasmin's point of view, it is clear that despite her limitations she is much more self-aware than her siblings.  As the story develops, and flashbacks of their childhood are given, a clearer picture emerges of what made Asif and Lila the way they are.  Farooki does not attempt to make us feel sorry for Yasmin, nor does she demonize Asif and Lila.  What you get in this novel is an honest, warts-and-all account of living with autism.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Happy Monday Morning, faithful followers and fellow bloggers!  I hope that you all had a successful reading week...

...as I did not.  The start of summer break coincided with a language development class that is kicking my patootie, to put it politely.  I did manage to get two books completed this week.  The first, The Bodies Left Behind by Jeffery Deaver, is reviewed here.  The other, The Way Things Look to Me, by Roopa Farooki, I just finished last night-review to come soon.

There are so many things in my TBR pile that I am excited to get to, but I've started to feel a little guilty about the books that have been on my shelves for (literally) years that I still haven't read, so I went with one of those, a Karin Slaughter book I got from my mom about a year or so ago, called Undone.  What I really should do is rearrange my bookshelves-the oldest books are in the back behind all of the new ones I get.  That sounds like an excellent project for a rainy day like today...oh.wait...I have two more papers and a chapter to read before next week...stupid too-much-work-for-a-four-week-class class!  Ah well, my next class is Children's Literature-surely I'll get to read lots of great YA stuff for that class that can actually count towards my 100+ goal!  Have a great reading week everyone!

Bleak Much?

I determined a few weeks ago to try and read as many of the books on the long list for the Orange Prize for Fiction as I could before the prize is announced in June.  This is a British prize for the best fiction by women.  I tracked down as many of the titles as I could-not all of them have been released in the US yet.  I've got about six on my shelf, eagerly awaiting my perusal.

I decided to start with This Is How, by MJ Hyland.  It is one of the shorter ones on the list, and since I was not yet on this glorious ride called spring break I figured it would be a quicker read.  It was at that, but I am still not sure how I feel about it.  The story revolves around Patrick, a 23 year-old ex-university student.  He was living at home with his family, engaged to the girl of his dreams-until he came home one day to find a note saying she was leaving him.  Feeling depressed, his prospects for future happiness in doubt, he decides to pick up and move to a small seaside town.  He found a room at a boarding house run by a young widow, and a job as a mechanic at a small garage n town.  Once there, he finds that his mood does not improve, despite the presence of two attractive women-his landlady and the waitress at the cafe in town.  His fellow borders are young men of privilege, and he quickly feels out of his depth despite their shows of friendship.  He spirals deeper into depression, finally falling into an act that changes everything.

This novel is bleak.  The language is spare to the point of feeling almost emotionless at times.  The setting, which should be lovely, only adds to the mood of despair.  Patrick is clearly a man with very few social skills, and a real trouble controlling his thoughts and actions.  He has a strained relationship with his family, and seems inclined to believe that everyone is out to get him.  There are very few truly sympathetic characters, except maybe the two women that Patrick finds himself attracted to in his new hometown.  The second half of the book takes place in a prison, so you can imagine how uplifting that is.  When Patrick finally finds some genuine human connection, it happens in such a bizarre way that even that doesn't seem to lighten the mood.  In the end, I'm left wondering what on earth could have caused Patrick to act the way he did-there is just not enough in the book to give me a clear sense of how he got to be the way that he is.  Despite that I did end up pulling for something to go his way.  I was destined to be disappointed.

Orange Prize for Fiction announces 2010 longlist

 The Orange Prize is an annual award given to literature written by women.  Every year they announce a long list, which becomes a short list...you get the idea...I read the synopsis of each of the books on this year's long list, and I've decided to read them in my effort to read 100+ books this year.  I've been feeling a need to get out of my mystery rut.  Surprisingly, I've only read one of the books on the list.  It is a British prize, though, so maybe that's not quite as surprising.  There are also a ton of new authors on there that I've never read before.  You might want to join me-we'll have lots of literary love to talk about!

Orange Prize for Fiction announces 2010 longlist

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