Archives - June 2008

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Michael Ruhlman, The Making of a Chef: Mastering Heat at the Culinary Institute of America: This was Ruhlman's first book on cooking, and I found it a disappointment compared to The Soul of a Chef or even The Reach of a Chef. Wanting to learn how to cook and to understand what goes on at America's most famous cooking school, Ruhlman arranged to spend time sitting in on classes at the CIA. There's some interest in the content of the classes themselves (I did really like the baking class), though Ruhlman's account of them are generally way too detailed. And honestly, given that Ruhlman wasn't truly going through the CIA's very tough program, I didn't really care that much about his personal vicissitudes (especially the pages-long description of travelling through snowstorms back and forth to classes). If you're interested in the CIA, read The Soul of a Chef instead, as its first section is a tense and exciting account of the difficult Certified Master Chef Exam at the CIA. If you want to read about a novice learning how to cook, Bill Buford's marvelous Heat is much better than The Making of a Chef.
Rosalind Laker, The Venetian Mask: When her mother dies, Marietta Fontana is taken into the Ospedale della Pieta, a Venetian music school for orphaned and abandoned girls. There she meets Elena Baccini, who becomes her best friend. Their destinies diverge, though, when they leave the Ospedale and are drawn into opposite sides of a deadly vendetta between two noble Venetian families. The plot certainly has dramatic potential, as does the vivid setting, but Laker's writing simply doesn't meet the test. Too much of the book is told and not shown; transitions from one point of view or scene to another are often awkward; and the style is overly formal and slightly stilted, particularly in the dialogue, which helps make the characters very two-dimensional. There was enough going on that I continued to read to find out what was going to happen, but I never felt intensely interested in the fates of the characters. Ultimately, the book felt to me too much like the mask of its title: a vivid, glittering surface, with very little beneath it. Honestly, if it hadn't been an Early Reviewer copy from LibraryThing, so that I felt compelled to read and review it, I probably wouldn't have finished it.
Joan Aiken, Castle Barebane: Journalist Val Montgomery abandons her engagement to worthy lawyer Benet Allerton when her half-brother Nils shows up in New York unexpectedly and asks her to come to England to help his wife and their two children. When Val reaches London, though, Nils and Kirstie have disappeared, abandoning the children to the mercies of an Islington landlady. Val rescues them and takes them to Scotland, to their mother's old nurse at Ardnacarrig, the family home, called "Castle Barebane" by the locals, where she and the children are caught up in a steadily more frightening web of intrigue and mystery surrounding their parents' whereabouts.

I quite liked this to start out with. It's set in the 1880s, which makes Val's quandary over whether to marry Benet, who apparently expects her to give up her beloved journalism once they're married, particularly interesting. The plot is fairly well worked out, with hints along the way (though I did figure nearly all of it out before the climax), and the Scottish setting is vivid. However, I loathed the ending, and that pretty much ruined the book for me.
Joan Aiken, The Crystal Crow, Foul Matter: Oh, lord, what a muddle The Crystal Crow is. Our heroine (unnamed for most of the book, so I won't spoil that) goes with her doctor friend Maggie to Cornwall to recuperate from an illness, at the behest of Maggie's friend Eleanor, who lives nearby with her brother Charles, who has only a year to live. Far from having anyone's best interests in mind, though, Eleanor is pretty much a psychopath (this really isn't a spoiler, since it says so on the back of my copy and is apparent early on anyway) who hates nearly everyone except Maggie and is plotting many evil things. The plot is all over the place, but the characters are all so bizarre and neurotic that it's oddly compelling anyway. Plus there is an escaped circus leopard! I couldn't have not finished it, but I feel absolutely no desire to read it again.

Foul Matter is somewhat of a sequel to The Crystal Crow, as it deals with the life of one of CC's major characters years afterward, but it could easily be read on its own and I liked it much more. Clytie Churchill is a woman with a past, and when she starts receiving anonymous letters, it's clear that someone from her past hates her and is out to get her. Through a series of odd circumstances, she is imprisoned for a time in a French chateau with a sympathetic doctor, to whom she tells her life story, which is mainly the romantic history of her many love affairs and their often tragic endings. The anonymous letter plot does get resolved at the end, but really, it's much more a psychological novel than a thriller, just exploring Clytie's life and relationships, which are tangled and fascinating.
Joan Aiken, Blackground: Actress Cat Conwil has landed a leading role in a new miniseries ("Dodo and Rosy", based on a book whose title is "a place name that was imaginary, and not interesting anyway" -- sound familiar?). Through this job, she meets James Tybold, Lord Fortuneswell, who pursues her relentlessly until she agrees to marry him. But during their romantic Venetian honeymoon, Cat suddenly realizes that she's met Ty before...and this revelation changes their relationship utterly. Like Foul Matter, much of Blackground is an exploration of the heroine's past, though here the present drama is more important (and past and present are not very well balanced). The plot is on crack, as usual, but I found neurotic, hypochondriac Cat much more compelling than anyone in The Crystal Crow, and so I enjoyed Blackground more.

(I don't think I should read so much Aiken together in future; it makes it hard to separate them in my mind and figure out what I liked and disliked individually.)
Anthony Trollope, The Small House at Allington: This is the fifth in Trollope's Barsetshire series, which I've been very slowly rereading over the past year or two. It deals with the love affairs of two sisters, Lily and Bell Dale, and of them, mostly with Lily, who becomes engaged to society man Adolphus Crosbie while being the object of affection of clerk Johnny Eames, a longtime friend of the family. What I particularly like about this book is that Trollope doesn't go for the easy, sentimental, happy ending; Lily is certainly in some ways an annoying character (or at least some of her histrionics annoy me), but he allows her to be steadfast in a realistic way.
E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: Frankie Landau-Banks is starting her sophomore year at an exclusive private school. She's never made much impression before, but since she got prettier and bustier over the summer, she attracts the attention of popular senior Matthew Livingston and his in-crowd. Slowly, though, she realizes that Matthew and the crowd belong to a super-secret boys-only society and that rather than appreciating her for her cleverness and wit, they see her as a negligible cute girl. To prove herself, she finds out everything she can about the society...and quietly starts to run it, thinking of pranks and having the boys carry them out, without their ever knowing she's behind it.

It's really a fascinating study in gender roles and power imbalances, and Lockhart doesn't provide an easy ending: Frankie is smart and driven, but she's not exactly likable, and one wonders where she's going to go afterwards. I do find Lockhart's books interestingly chewy, and this is easily her chewiest.
Jessica Day George, Sun and Moon, Ice and Snow: As you can probably guess from the title, this is a retelling of the fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon", which I've always liked for its spirited heroine and echoes of my all-time favorite fairy tale, "Beauty and the Beast". George does a nice job of setting the tale in an authentic-feeling Scandinavian setting, and her heroine is indeed appealingly determined (although occasionally a little less than clever). It's not as ambitious as Edith Pattou's East, but I enjoyed it as much (having not been enthralled by the narrative structure of East).
Diana Wynne Jones, House of Many Ways: This follows Castle in the Air as a sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. Charmain Baker is pleased when her family sends her to look after Great-Uncle William's little cottage while he's ill; after all, she longs to have some time to herself and the freedom to read and do whatever she wants. But Great-Uncle William is the Royal Wizard of High Norland, and his house is...a little unusual. Soon Charmain is drawn into intrigue at the royal palace, where the king has called in magical help from another kingdom in the person of the sorceress Sophie and her family: her small son Morgan, a mysterious little boy called Twinkle, and a fire demon.

House of Many Ways isn't as good as Howl's Moving Castle, partly because although I really liked Charmain, I wanted more Sophie and Howl and Calcifer and Morgan, and partly because the plot is not quite as well put together; the villains in particular aren't terribly threatening (compared to the Witch of the Waste or even the demons in Castle in the Air. Still, it's as entertainingly written as Jones always is and was quite satisfying. Really, how could I resist a heroine who reads constantly and whose life ambition is to be a librarian?
P.G. Wodehouse, Quick Service: At her sister's house party, Mrs. Chavender unwisely chooses ham for breakfast, thus setting off a chain of events affecting everyone at the house party as well as ham king J.B. Duff and his artist employee Joss Weatherby, who painted a portrait of Mrs. Chavender once which Duff would like to have. This non-series Wodehouse uses one of his most common plot devices (house party, item in house which multiple guests and other people would like to steal, midnight encounters), to very good effect. Joss is rather like Psmith in his resilience and quick thinking (though without Psmith's most individual way of turning a phrase), and the plot is quick moving and fun.
George MacDonald Fraser, Flashman in the Great Game, Flashman's Lady: Now that I've read half of the Flashman books, I must admit they're starting to meld in my mind into one long, broken-up book, and so it's harder to think of them individually. However, in this batch, Flashman in the Great Game stands out as probably being the best Flashman book I've read yet. It's funnier (I laughed out loud more than usual), yet grimmer: it deals with the Indian Mutiny, and Fraser doesn't pull any punches about the horrific things perpetrated by both sides. Flashman's Lady was less memorable, but good; I enjoyed the extra perspective given by Fraser's inclusions of excerpts from the diary of Flashman's wife Elspeth.
Marie Brennan, Midnight Never Come: Beneath Elizabethan London, there is a hidden city, where the faerie queen Invidiana holds court. The deal she made with Elizabeth long ago draws mortal Michael Deven and fae Lady Lune, each seeking to gain knowledge and power, into a deadly web of political intrigue which tangles their fates and the fates of their courts together. I liked Brennan's previous two books (Doppelganger and Warrior and Witch, recently reissued as Warrior and Witch) a lot and have been looking forward to this one for a while -- it doesn't disappoint. Instead of using the Seelie vs. Unseelie Courts situation which is perhaps overly common in faerie-related fiction, Brennan has created a beautifully English-feeling fae court (with allusions to counterparts in other countries) which she weaves seamlessly into her excellent depiction of Elizabethan London. Similarly, she mixes her fictional characters nicely with historical people; I thought her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth especially convincing. In terms of complexity of setting and plot, particularly, I think this is a step up from Warrior and Witch, and I really look forward to seeing Brennan's next book about the Onyx Court (which is apparently to be set around the time of the Great Fire).
Georgette Heyer, April Lady: Lady Nell Cardross has a problem -- she's overspent her purse and lent money to her brother, and now she doesn't dare confess to her new husband, the Earl, who might believe she only married him for his money. Oh, dear, I do hate annoying misunderstanding plots which could be worked out really easily with just a short chat. Also, the heroine is pretty much a wimp and I often wanted to slap her. However, the scrapes she and her brother get into are quite amusing, and I also liked the Earl's vivacious, careless sister. It's not even close to a top-rank Heyer, but I imagine I'll keep it and reread it once in a while anyway.
Dorothy L. Sayers, The Documents in the Case: I have somehow missed reading this until now, probably because it isn't a Lord Peter book. I find that I wasn't missing much, though. The "documents" are a series of letters and statements about a mysterious death by poison. It was easy to see who had done it and why, and frankly, I didn't much care how; since how is pretty much the whole point of the book, I didn't much care for the book as a whole, either.
Lauren Henderson, Black Rubber Dress: Sam Jones is chuffed to have sold her giant sculpture "Floating Planet" (aka "Thing III") to big London investment banker Mowbray Steiner, but she's not so excited when a dead body turns up at the unveiling party and she's drawn into the tangle of drugs, affairs, and corruption behind the bank's staid walls. I loved Sam, who's smart and assertive and tough, and Jones provides a tense and intriguing mystery with well-drawn, complex supporting characters. It looks like the other books in the series may not be too easy to find, but I'm definitely going to try.
James P. Blaylock, The Last Coin: Jules Pennyman is searching for the last of a set of thirty magical coins: the thirty pieces of silver Judas received to betray Jesus. Unbeknownst to himself, eccentric innkeeper and would-be restaurateur Andrew Vanbergen owns the last coin, which must be kept out of Pennyman's hands. I've loved Blaylock's first couple of books, The Elfin Ship and The Disappearing Dwarf, for years; they're set in a fantasy world but show Blaylock's remarkable ability to intertwine the mundane and the fantastic. The Last Coin is even better at this: the book is set squarely on the California coast, peopled with seemingly ordinary people and animals, yet even the ordinary becomes the extraordinary. I'm also fond of Blaylock's oddball characters; Andrew especially is endearing in spite of (or maybe because of) his maddening vagaries and laziness.


Last updated 29 September 2008. All text and photographs © George Mitchell and Margaret Johnston, unless otherwise noted Comments, questions, suggestions to margaret@lonelymountain.net.