Archives - August 2007

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Robertson Davies, Fifth Business, The Manticore, World of Wonders: The Deptford trilogy revolves around the mysterious death (was it murder or suicide?) of businessman Boy Staunton; along the way it tells the life stories of Staunton's boyhood friend, Dunstan Ramsay; of Staunton's son, David; and of enigmatic magician Magnus Eisengrim. Though the books are full of Davies' trademark wit and erudition, I found that they didn't work for me as well as the Cornish trilogy or the Salterton trilogy, and the second and third books didn't live up to Fifth Business. I thought too many of the characters downright unpleasant (and the lack of important female characters irritating), and though the magic and sleight-of-hand theme was interesting, I find I prefer the academic milieu of the other books to the small town and circus settings of these.
Lois McMaster Bujold, The Sharing Knife: Beguilement, The Sharing Knife: Legacy: I saved the first book to read until the second came out, having heard that they were originally one book split into two, and boy, am I glad I did: they really are two halves of a whole, and having to wait a year between them would have been annoying. Fawn is a farmgirl, running away from her home and family; Dag is a Lakewalker patroller, out on the roads with his squad to search out "malices", malign magical entities who enslave humans and animals. Their cultures are at odds with one another; the Lakewalkers look down on the farm families they protect, while the farm people fear the magic of the Lakewalkers. Yet Fawn and Dag are inexorably attracted to one other after Fawn is taken captive by a malice, Dag goes to help her, and their lives are bound together by the cost of her escape.

I've seen these billed as "fantasy romance", which seems a fairly accurate description; Fawn and Dag's relationship is just as important, if not more so, than any other aspect of the plot. I especially loved Fawn, who's clever and practical and sees right to the heart of things. As always with Bujold, the worldbuilding is fascinating; she develops the cultures and history of the region even more in the second book. I hadn't known before I started them that there are to be two more (I think) books; I'll be very interested to see how Bujold carries on the larger story and how she continues to explore Fawn and Dag's relationship and the problems between their opposing communities.
Sherwood Smith, Inda, The Fox: I read Inda when it came out last year and loved it for its wonderful characters and complex worldbuilding. In The Fox, both of these only get deeper and more absorbing. I don't want to discuss plot details for fear of spoiling Inda in case anyone hasn't read it yet and wants to, but Smith takes her characters further afield in The Fox, exploring new cultures and lands, and takes them to new heights of action as well. The book is divided into two parts, and the ending of the first part is nothing less than explosive; I couldn't take my eyes off the pages. I can tell it's going to be a long year until the final book in the trilogy comes out.
Sarah Monette, The Virtu, The Mirador: I read The Virtu last year and thought it an excellent follow-up to the wonderful Mélusine; happily, so is The Mirador, the third book in the series. Sorcerer Felix and cat burglar Mildmay are still two of the POV characters, and Monette has added a third, actress Mehitabel Parr, whose sections I enjoyed very much, particularly as she brings to bear an outside view of Felix and Mildmay's complex, troubled relationship; as always, Monette handles the three different voices beautifully, always making it clear who is speaking. Again, I don't want to go into plot details for fear of spoilers, but I will say that this book has a little less action and far more court intrigue than the previous two, and it works just as well.
P.G. Wodehouse, Psmith Journalist, Ring for Jeeves: Not a great pair this month, both far from the best of their respective series. In Psmith Journalist, Psmith is in New York, working for a newspaper and taking on the forces of evil in the person of slum landlords; though I liked Psmith as idealist, I wasn't convinced by the milieu and was not pleased with the numerous racial stereotypes. It's an interesting try for something different from the usual country house setting, but not very successful. As for Ring for Jeeves, it features Jeeves without Wooster; Bertie is away and has temporarily loaned Jeeves to Bill Belfry, earl of Rowcester. Bill and Jeeves get into trouble while working as bookies to raise cash for Bill, who's engaged and needs money; hijinks ensue at Bill's country house. I really, really missed Bertie's first-person narration, and Jeeves seemed at a loss far more often than he ought; the plot was entertaining, but not enough to keep me from longing for the usual Jeeves and Wooster team.
Margaret Kennedy, The Ladies of Lyndon: I read Kennedy's Troy Chimneys a couple of months ago, liked it a lot, and looked for more; she's mostly out of print, but I found The Ladies of Lyndon at the Strand last month. The Ladies of Lyndon was Kennedy's first novel, just preceding her most famous, The Constant Nymph (which I really must read). When Agatha Cocks marries Sir John Clewer, she becomes one of the ladies of Lyndon, the Clewers' country house. She finds her marriage unsatisfying and looks elsewhere for love, with a former lover, and friendship, with her brother-in-law James, an artist regarded by his family as mentally deficient and eccentric, particularly when he forms an unorthodox relationship with a housemaid. Though the writing is elegant and engaging, I thought the infidelity subplot rather predictable; the bits involving James, though, are excellent and make the whole book more than the usual high-society-marriage-goes-bad plot.
Diane Smith, Letters from Yellowstone, Pictures from an Expedition: These are unrelated in plot, but of a similar type, so I'm logging them together. Each tells the story of an East Coast woman who joins a scientific expedition to the West: in the first book, A.E. (Alexandria) Bartram is a botanist who is invited to join a study in Yellowstone with a professor who thinks from her name that she's a man, while in the latter book, Eleanor Peterson, a scientific illustrator, goes out to Montana to work on a fossil dig, again with a group of mostly men. Smith's settings are rich, vivid, and full of fascinating historical and scientific details, and her characters are equally complex. I particularly liked her use of the epistolary format in the first book to provide multiple viewpoints on the same events. Pictures from an Expedition was published in 2002, and I can find nothing by Smith since; I hope she hasn't stopped writing fiction.
Georgette Heyer, Arabella, Faro's Daughter: Arabella held up well to a reread, and Faro's Daughter was also very good. When Max Ravenscar discovers that his young cousin Adrian intends to marry Deborah Grantham, who presides over her aunt's gaming house, Ravenscar will go to any lengths to stop the marriage -- but he gets much more than he bargained for when he tangles with Miss Grantham. I loved the intrepid, independent Deborah and the way she and Ravenscar fight it out, neither wanting to give in, until at last the inevitable happens.
Alan Richman, Fork It Over: The Intrepid Adventures of a Professional Eater: I bought this at the Strand, having heard Richman's name before and hoping it would be amusing; he's a well-known food critic, and this turns out to be a collection of his articles (many of them for GQ). Well, it is amusing, in spots; he does have an often devastating wit, and good food descriptions (though I thought there were too many reviews of bad food). I liked a couple of essays about his family, which are insightful and touching.

What I most definitely didn't like is his condescending, patriarchal, chauvinistic attitude toward women, which is unavoidably present throughout the book. A couple of examples I marked (and I could certainly come up with more if I were willing even to skim it again): an encounter with an Asian girl in Shanghai: "an Asian Alicia Silverstone, which meant she was very pretty and going to fat"; on truffles: "If the white truffle is a slattern with immoderate lipstick, the black truffle is a Ph.D. in a naughty dress" -- I mean, what? Objectification much?

It comes to a head in the last article, about a dinner he had with Sharon Stone, which I knew was going to irritate me when he ended the second paragraph with this: "In other words, [Stone] was a woman who knew how to eat like a man."

And then I got to the third paragraph, which I will quote in full:

"When it comes to dining with women, I have become skeptical. I simply don't bounce back from those experiences the way I used to. Once I was wonderfully resilient, but these days I question the fundamental concept of men and women going to a restaurant together. I even wonder where it all began, when the dinner table became the preferred venue for men and women to get better acquainted. It is now one of the burdens that men bear."

And it gets worse from there -- I haven't even gotten to the bit about how all older women (the younger ones being "callow and indulgent") are "dinner-table dominatrices". I suppose one could take this as tongue-in-cheek and not serious, but coupled with a lot of other remarks, Richman's whole attitude left a very bad taste in my mouth. And I'm not remotely vegan, but the article entitled "My Beef with Vegans" was also incredibly condescending and offensive.
Barbara Euphan Todd, Miss Ranskill Comes Home: Barbara Euphan Todd is well-known for her series of children's books about Worzel Gummidge, a talking scarecrow (I've never read any, but I'd heard of them), but much less known for Miss Ranskill Comes Home, her only adult novel, which I read in a lovely Persephone edition. The book opens with a shock: Miss Ranskill, marooned on a desert island for years with only the Carpenter for company (the man, also marooned, already on the island when she washed ashore), now must bury her only friend, who died suddenly. Fortuitously, she is rescued from the island soon after and returns to England -- but it isn't the England she knew, for she was marooned before World War II broke out, and England is in the midst of the Blitz. Her process of readjustment is funny and bitter at once, as she strives to figure out how to deal with blackouts, rationing, air raids, and the myriad of other wartime things she's never known before, and with an unexpected legacy from the Carpenter (not what you might think). It's an odd but wonderful book, one of the best Persephones I've read.
Julia Strachey, Cheerful Weather for the Wedding: a small and elegant novel about a society wedding, sharply observed, often quite funny, and full of interesting characters but rather slight, I felt -- worth reading, but not one of my favorite Persephones.


Last updated 29 October 2007. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.