Random fate, or part of a Godly plan? The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

October 3, 2018 by leavesandpages

The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder ~ 1927. This edition: Grosset & Dunlap, 1928 (later printing). Hardcover. 235 pages.

On Friday noon, July the twentieth, 1714, the finest bridge in all Peru broke and precipitated five travelers into the gulf below…

Thornton Wilder’s enduring classic (that clichéd phrase applies most pertinently) consists of a number of separate but increasingly entwined narratives. The accounts of the lives of the five travellers who perished are framed on each end by the ultimately tragic tale of Brother Juniper, who witnesses the disaster and in it finds a question: “Why did it happen to those five?”

If there were any plan in the universe at all, if there were any pattern in a human life, surely it could be discovered mysteriously latent in those lives so suddenly cut off. Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan. And on that instant Brother Juniper made the resolve to inquire into the secret lives of those five persons, that moment falling through the air, and to surprise the reason of their taking off.

The Marquesa de Montemayor, obsessed mother, secret alcoholic, astonishingly accomplished letter writer. Orphaned Pepita, bright hope of her convent home’s Mother Superior, lent to the Marquesa as a maid. Pio, jack-of-all trades and committed non-committer, except for his devotion to one person, the once-famous actress Camila Perichole. Jaime, Camila’s young son, frail and epileptic. Esteban, one of a set of twins, whose brother’s recent death has made his own life worthless in his eyes.

Wilder goes on to detail the lives – secret and otherwise – of the five travellers on the bridge, and delves into why they were there at that particular moment. And yes, everything (and everyone) turns out to be connected.

Brother Juniper, six years of research undertaken, yet not being privy to a few intimate details, concludes that the deaths are not as he had intended to prove, the fitting conclusion to lives attaining “a perfect whole”, but instead that they were random interruptions of lives not yet fully lived. The Inquisition disagrees with his thought processes, and Father Juniper perishes by flame, along with all of the copies of his thesis, except for one…

What a beautifully crafted little novel this is.

I read it for the first time in high school, after finding a dusty stack of discarded English lit books in the farthest corner of a classroom bookcase. In retrospect, I’m very glad that I did not have to “study” The Bridge of San Luis Rey, instead being able to read it from end to end without stopping for analysis, and not needing to dissect it in any way. It was a purely emotional experience, and so memorable that now, forty years later, every phrase is still familiar.

My rating: 9/10

 

Posted in 1920s, Century of Books - 2018, Read in 2018, Wilder, Thornton | Tagged , , , | 11 Comments »

Just another village murder: Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh

October 2, 2018 by leavesandpages

Hand in Glove by Ngaio Marsh ~ 1962. This edition: Collins (Crime Club), 1962. Hardcover. 256 pages.

Prissy Mr. Pyke Period, elderly confirmed bachelor, delights in his comfortable life and in his reputation as a skilled crafter of charming epistles, in particular the exquisitely tactful condolence letter.

Disturbing indeed to Mr. Period’s carefully nurtured savoir-faire is the discovery that his latest letter has gone somewhat astray, being delivered to the wrong party, whose loved one shortly thereafter turns up gruesomely dead, crushed to death under a sewer pipe in a drainage ditch right outside Mr. Period’s very window.

The usual disparate assortment of potentially suspicious characters for this sort of traditional whodunnit is on hand to spin out the tale and give Ngaio Marsh’s pet team of detectives – Alleyn and Fox – their usual round of interviews, before their inevitable and apparently effortless solving of the crime. (Even easier than usual, one presumes: the clues in this one were large and glaring.)

Suspects include the tittering Mr. Pike, the murderee’s objectionably hearty sister, a pair of vaguely “Beatnik” young degenerates (Moppett and Leonard), Mr. Pike’s sprig-of-the-minor-aristocracy secretary Nicola, aspiring young artist Andrew, Andrew’s mother (Desirée, Lady Bantling, who also happens to be the murderee’s ex-wife), Bimbo Dodds (Lady Bantling’s third and current husband), and a few etceteras.

There are minor red herrings and various complications, including a boisterous scavenger hunt to celebrate April Fool’s Day, during which the fatal event takes place, but it doesn’t take long for our detectives to zero in on the guilty party. Peace presumably now returns to the village.

All in all, not one of Ngaio Marsh’s A-list, though, as with Agatha Christie’s oeuvre, even the B-list is readable. As with most of Ngaio’s books, Hand in Glove is mildly humorous throughout, which makes up for a lot.

By midnight the winning pair had presented themselves with their prize, a magnum of champagne. They were inevitably, Moppett and Leonard, all smiles, but with a curious tendency to avoid looking at each other. Leonard was effulgent in the matter of cuff-links and lapels and his tie was large and plum-coloured. Bimbo looked upon him with loathing, gave them both drinks and put a jazz record on the machine. Leonard with ineffable grace extended his hands towards Desirée. “May we?” he said and in a moment was dancing with her. He was a superb dancer. “Much too good,” she said afterwards. “Like the really expensive gigolos used to be. He smells like them too: it quite took me back. I adored it.”

Bimbo, sulking, was then obliged to dance with Moppett who made business-like passes at him. These exercises were interrupted by the arrival in straggling pairs of the rest of the treasure-hunters, Nicola and Andrew being the last to come in: looking radiantly pleased with themselves…

My rating: 5/10

Posted in 1960s, Century of Books - 2018, Marsh, Ngaio, Read in 2018 | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

Evil lurks in the sulphurous night: Colour Scheme by Ngaio Marsh

October 1, 2018 by leavesandpages

Colour Scheme by Ngaoi Marsh ~ 1943. This edition: Collins, 1943. Hardcover. 314 pages.

I have found myself dipping into Ngaio Marsh’s mysteries a bit this year, with mixed results. 1962’s Hand in Glove, read for the first time this summer, left me cold. At least on this my first reading.

Colour Scheme, on the other hand, pleased me quite a lot.

Being a classic mystery novel by a deservedly popular author, and sure to be on numerous reading lists, I won’t give much away. Here’s the general gist, as set out in the first edition endpaper blurb.

(M)ore a novel of character and character and atmosphere than it is a detective story. The scene is New Zealand, during World War II, the characters an ill-assorted, bizarre group of New Zealanders, Britishers and Maoris assembled in and around Wai-ata-tapu Hot Springs, a second-class thermal bath establishment belonging to Colonel Edward Claire. The Claires are a hardworking couple who have lost most of their modest inheritance in unsound investments. They have two children, Barbara, aged twenty-five, and Simon, twenty-one.

The family has a genius for collecting impossible people, and at the opening of the novel are burdened with two: a seedy individual named Herbert Smith, who is seldom completely sober; and Mr. Maurice Questing, an unscrupulous business man to whom the Colonel is under heavy financial obligations. The final member of the household is Mrs. Claire’s brother, Dr. James Ackrington, an irascible physician living with the Claires as a paying guest and therefore completely free to criticize and complain. Before long there are two more additions to the establishment, Geoffrey Gaunt, the famous Shakespearean actor, and his secretary, Dikon Bell.

Almost immediately Barbara is fascinated by Gaunt but at the same time Dikon Bell finds himself falling in love with her and Mr. Questing continues forcing his unwelcome attentions on her. The household are united in their dislike of Questing but at odds in practically everything else.

With the first chapter one senses something queer and something very wrong, and the tension mounts as irritations and hatreds grow and as strange signals go out from the cliff above the sea.

Throw in possible German agents, definite Nazi submarines prowling New Zealand shores, seething pools of fatally boiling volcanic mud, priceless Maori artifacts, an Eliza Doolittle scenario, an idealistic young Marxist immersed in the study of Morse Code, and oodles of artistic temperament. Result: a pleasantly nasty sort of Golden Age murder mystery.

My rating: 8/10

Posted in 1940s, Century of Books - 2018, Marsh, Ngaio, Read in 2018 | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments »

To the limit and beyond: The Twelfth Mile by E.G. Perrault

October 1, 2018 by leavesandpages

The Twelfth Mile by E.G. Perrault ~ 1972. This edition: Doubleday, 1972. Hardcover. 256 pages.

Look what showed up in the just-past summer’s book pile.

Well, I have to admit I hadn’t exactly forgotten about it, as it was definitely a memorable read, albeit in the “so compellingly baddish you can’t look away” category.

Seems like Vancouver writer E.G. Perrault threw everything he had at this one. A number of great ideas for disaster scenarios are stacked up high, with the result that the sheer improbability of it all leads to a certain sort of morbid humour through sheer overexposure to multiple horrible things happening.

Here’s the premise.

A Canadian tugboat captain, experiencing marital woes, decides to avoid fighting with his wife by taking on a contract to haul an American oil drilling rig working just inside the Canadian twelve mile limit into safer waters to avoid an impending hurricane. Little do we know that Mother Nature (and Mother Russia) are preparing some nasty surprises for Captain Westholme and his crew.

From the back dust jacket of my first edition copy:

Christy Westholme only took the assignment to get away from his wife to think things over. It was an absolutely routine job. Take Haida Noble out of Vancouver a few miles to the big off-shore drilling rig and tow it back into port. Nothing to it, compared with some of the other towing jobs he and Haida Noble had done all over the Pacific .

Then the hurricane struck, then the tidal wave. Somehow Haida Noble survived; battered but still afloat, butting its way through mountainous seas toward the oil rig. But the rig had disappeared – in its place was a liferaft containing three Americans, one of them dead. And nearby was a strange crippled ship in imminent danger of being swept onto the rocky shore,

In the nick of time Westholme got a line aboard the strange ship and began to tow it into the nearest port. A routine salvage tow. But then he discovered that this was a Russian ship whose captain had orders not to be captured at any cost – even if the cost involved defying the Canadian Navy and Air Force, and a U.S. battleship, and taking the world to the brink of war.

Did you catch all that? It understates things.

Let me sum up our disasters:

  • #1 – industrial sabotage of a British-American drill rig by the Russians (fifty workers dead!)
  • #2 – hurricane
  • #3 – massive tidal wave wiping out communities from California to Alaska (hundreds, maybe thousands of civilians dead!)
  • #4 – hostile takeover of our hero’s tugboat by Russian spy ship (more dead people!)
  • #5 – eventual destruction of spy ship including self-immolation of quite likeable Russian captain and his dedicated ship’s doctor, the luscious Dr. Larissa Lebedovitch
  • #6 – international crisis triggered by Russian presence in Canadian waters bringing World War III ever closer

I think those are the “high” points.

What a depressing story. Death and destruction galore. Luckily the characters are so flat that we really can’t believe in them in any meaningful way, so when they fall by the wayside it’s really not that emotionally involving.

At least Captain Westholme and his wife get back together at the end, swearing to be nicer to each other in future. With so many people dead all around them and dozens of coastal communities in ruins, isn’t it nice that our hero and his newly adoring wife are bound for domestic bliss? Ha.

Rating this wanna-be Hammond Innes-style action-disaster novel is tough. I did read it through to the end, albeit with frequent strong urges to chuck it across the room in its stupider moments. Oh, and it was sexist, too. Though I let that pass because of the era-expectedness of the he-man commentary regarding the few, mostly offstage female characters – those whiny wives back home and the buxom female Russian sailors.

My husband tried to read this book and bailed out partway through, saying that even the unintended humour of unlikely disaster after unlikely disaster wasn’t worth the energy needed to slog through the novel’s head-hurting blend of stodgy writing and dramatic hyperbole.

Obviously my family is not the target audience for this novel, though it appears that it appealed to enough readers to cause it to go into multiple editions and several international translations.

I’ll have to give The Twelfth Mile a point for its local flavour, as it were. British Columbia coastal landmarks were well referenced throughout, adding a certain degree of interest, though post-fictional-tsunami a bunch of them were basically wiped off the map. A couple of points also for the sheer bravado of E.G. Perrault for putting forward such an over-the-top collection of overlapping dramatic episodes.

My rating: 3/10

A bit more on the author, because I feel bad about slamming this ambitious work so hard, when the writer was so obviously well-meaning.

He sounds like he was a really nice guy, and it’s probably unfair to judge him so harshly on the strength of this one novel, which means I’ll likely be keeping an eye out for his other titles as I go about my travels.

E.G. (Ernest George) Perrault was born in Penticton, B.C. and attended the University of British Columbia, graduating in 1948. According to an old UBC Alumni magazine, Perrault was one of the first students to attend one of Earle Birney’s creative writing classes.

Perrault had some success as a newspaper reporter, short story and screenplay writer. He also wrote several non-fiction books about B.C. industry and personalities. Three action/disaster novels show up bearing his name: The Kingdom Carver (1968, lumber barons in turn of the century BC : “He set out to conquer a fierce frontier… She, to tame a strong man’s angry heart”), The Twelfth Mile (1972), and Spoil! (1976, what looks like an oil derrick disaster).

Here is E.G. Perrault’s rather poignant obituary, lovingly written by his daughter Michelle at her father’s death in 2010.

I was interested to note that Perrault did indeed have firsthand knowledge of life at sea, serving on a submarine during World War II. And yes, the strongest sections of The Twelfth Mile were those involving the mechanics of operating a tugboat, and the storm sequences.

His story began Feb. 9, 1922, the oldest of four children. His father, Ernest Perrault, succumbed to tuberculosis in 1935, leaving his wife Flossie with nothing but a small pension and a strong determination to make her children the best they could be.

Ernie always advised and abided by the saying “follow your bliss.” For him, this meant writing. His first short story was published in the Vancouver Sun before he was 12, when he won a children’s writing contest.

This achievement sparked a career that spanned more than 70 years, leaving his family and fans a legacy of books, plays, documentaries, short stories, radio plays, musicals and poetry that will be treasured forever. His most recent book, Tong: The Story of Tong Louie, Vancouver’s Quiet Titan, was published in 2002 and won the BC Book Prizes Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize. Ernie continued to write, and recently had been working on a collection of short stories.

At 18, Ernie joined the Air Force and was stationed in Yarmouth, N.S., where, as a member of 160 Squadron, he was a navigator assigned to submarine patrol off the Atlantic coast.

Ernie used his veteran’s grant to go to the University of British Columbia, where he became president of the Radio Society and wrote for the campus newsletter. He earned a double degree in English and sociology, graduating in 1948. Together with his brother Ray, Ernie received the Great Trekker Award in 1987, bestowed upon UBC alumni who have distinguished themselves in their field.

Ernie found a way to connect with everyone he met. He could carry on equally fascinating conversations with academics, business leaders, toddlers or teenagers. While he was a man of the written word, above all, Ernie was a good listener. He drew people out, helping them to appreciate and share their own unique stories.

As a city boy, Ernie had little exposure to the outdoors until a local charity gave him the opportunity to go to camp when he was 13. This experience changed his life and instilled in him a deep appreciation for nature and the wonders of the outdoors. He camped, fished, hiked and hunted. He loved sharing these experiences, especially with his four children – Lisa, Larry, Michelle and Steve – and six grandchildren, who, along with countless others, attribute catching their first fish to Ernie’s patient guidance.

Like one of his awesome campfire stories, Ernie has left us wanting more.

Michelle Perrault is Ernie’s daughter.

 

 

Posted in 1970s, Century of Books - 2018, Perrault, E.G., Read in 2018 | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Moving to the country: Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols

September 30, 2018 by leavesandpages

Down the Garden Path by Beverley Nichols ~ 1932. This edition: Doubleday, 1932. Decorations by Rex Whistler. Hardcover. 303 pages.

It’s rather nasty outside today, with a too-early cold snap blowing in, nipping the last flowers with frost, and whisking snowflakes around our chilly ears, so I have used this hopefully temporary weather event as an excuse to step away from my outdoor occupations and spend a lazy Sunday puttering about in the house.

I’ve been tracking down all of the various books I read this summer during my non-posting spell, with the idea of zipping off some reviews and helping my Century of Books project along. I bailed out on it last year; I have the idea that successfully completing it this year will be grand for my sometimes troubled morale.

Of course it is taking much longer than I thought to get my book thoughts into writing – I find myself re-reading all the best bits and flipping through things to reacquaint myself with what it was exactly that I wanted to highlight.

Bear with me over the next few weeks, as I hope to throw a number of these catch-up posts up at random as I steal the time to work them out.

Starting right here, with this happy offering from early on in Beverley Nichols’ four decade stint as a documentarian of the joys and tribulations of domestic and garden life in the four decades of the 1930s through the 1960s.

The only thing better than Beverley Nichols’ more than slightly pithy, sometimes precious prose in this delicious account of moving to a neglected country cottage and re-establishing a seriously ambitious garden is the inclusion of a whole slew of delightful Rex Whistler illustrations.

Anyone who is already familiar with Beverley Nichol’s style will know that it doesn’t matter what he writes about; he is readable in any key. He definitely comes across as thinking quite highly of his own intelligence, wit and charm, but just when you think he’s tooting his own horn a bit too loudly he throws in some humbling episode and undertakes to poke fun at himself, and all is forgiven.

In a nutshell, Beverley Nichols is inspired by memories of an idyllic visit to an acquaintance’s country cottage and garden. Seeing notice of this person’s obituary, our writer impulsively sends of an offer-to-purchase the cottage from the owner’s heirs; it is immediately accepted, and Nichols finds himself possessed not of the rose-smothered cottage of that summer day, but a neglected and dreary weed-infested mess. How he brings it back to beauty with the help of a number of paid and voluntary helpers and advisors makes up the framework of the tale, with numerous departures into character portraits of neighbours and visitors, and vivid descriptions of his own moods throughout.

It’s not all la-di-da and nice-nice-nice; there’s a fair bit of snark in Beverley Nichols’ nature, and it comes through loud and clear here, but it’s a funny sort of bitchiness, balanced by abundant sweet-natured enthusiasms.

Is this essentially a book for gardeners? No! Not at all, though if one is of that particular persuasion, one will find much to relate to in the descriptions of just how Mr Nichols and his various garden helpers went about the cultivation of their plot.

For more detail, I refer you to a post by Heavenali from earlier in 2018.

My rating: 8.5/10 for the prose, 10/10 for the pictures. Good stuff.

A modest country estate – Beverley Nichols’ cottage and grounds, circa 1932.

 

 

 

Posted in 1930s, Century of Books - 2018, Nichols, Beverley, Read in 2018, Whistler, Rex | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments »

Young lives in the in-between: The Lady and the Unicorn by Rumer Godden

September 30, 2018 by leavesandpages

The Lady and the Unicorn by Rumer Godden ~ 1938. This edition: Penguin, 1982. Paperback. ISBN: 0-14-00-5523-1. 189 pages.

This was Rumer Godden’s second published book, appearing only a year or so after her first novel, the perhaps deservedly obscure Chinese Puzzle, which concerns reincarnation and Pekingese dogs. (More on that one at some future date. I own a copy, acquired long ago in the interests of indulging my completist tendencies in regards to favorite writers. An unusual first novel, to be sure.)

The Lady and the Unicorn follows a more traditional path, being generally a linear narrative tale, but it contains numerous elements which Godden was to use time and time again in her later, better known works.

There are flashback sequences, ghostly visitations, an emotionally complex child character, brilliantly observed descriptive passages utilizing all five senses, great swaths of irony, and a sharp-eyed examination of the social mores of its time and setting, all wrapped up in a fatalistic what-happens-happens sort of shroud. To my secret delight, there is also a short reference to J.W. Dunne’s Theory of Time, which fascinated Godden all of her life and played a major role in two later novels, Take Three Tenses and China Court.

Everything which comes later in Godden’s work is already here, serving to justify my opinion that Rumer Godden essentially wrote the same thing over and over throughout her long writing career, though her creative genius fleshed out the familiar skeleton of her One Big Idea to a varying but always lifelike form in each succesive novel.

So. This story.

The feckless Lemarchant family, consisting of a widowed father, twin teenage sisters Belle and Rosa, little sister Blanche, and a maternal aunt, live in a decayed European-built mansion in an Eurasian district of 1930s’ Calcutta. Father is “Anglo”, Mother was Indian, and their offspring exist in a sort of societal limbo, being betwixt and between their two ancestral cultures while belonging to neither.

When seventeen-year-old Belle, in the full throes of her burgeoning sexuality, makes eyes at the Catholic priest who has known her since babyhood, the twins are asked to leave their school. Father Ghezzi, trying to explain why he feels he must send them away for fear of their corrupting their peers, makes a passionate statement as to the difficulties facing those youth of mixed-race in India.

“I don’t know which is it that is worse to have in this country, Mr Lemarchant, boys or girls., sons or daughters. With the sons it is one thing; they cannot get work, the Indians squeeze them out from below, the English from above, so -” He brought his clenched hands together as if he were crushing a poor little man to death. “They cannot get work; before they begin they are failures. And with the girls it is another thing, they are too successful. Yes. There is always success for these girls, so smart, so nimble, so empty-headed. They take even the jobs that the boys might have; they go into offices, shops, and what happens? They get money, they get ideas, they are taken up by men – men in Calcutta society, faugh! – and then when they are in trouble they are flung back on their people; on those boys whose place they have taken, boys for whom they have now no use, and who could not marry them if they have.”

Prophetic words, as Belle goes on to become the mistress of a wealthy dilettante, and Rosa in her turn falls in love with a newly arrived Englishman, a relationship which dooms her to disaster when his family catches scent of a potential complication in their son’s life and sends his childhood sweetheart out to India to entice him away from the apparently wicked half-caste girl of his latest infatuation.

Ironically named Blanche, the dark-skinned “throwback” of the family, watches all of this from the shadows, while going through her own agonies of love and loss.

An intriguing small novel, beautifully written and deeply poignant. I am not sure why it isn’t more widely known; it is as good as anything which comes after it, and so deserves a full place in this iconic writer’s canon.

Here is the link to another review from Kat at Mirabile Dictu, which provides more details of the plot.

My rating: 8/10

Posted in 1930s, Century of Books - 2018, Godden, Rumer, Read in 2018 | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments »

Patriotism and Pedigrees: Appointment With Venus by Jerrard Tickell

September 29, 2018 by leavesandpages

Appointment with Venus by Jerrard Tickell ~ 1951. This edition: The Reprint Society, 1953. Hardcover. 256 pages.

This spur-of-the-moment purchase from the ever-rewarding second-hand book emporium Baker’s Books in Hope, B.C. turned out to be a little bit different from what I had anticipated on the strength of my quickie browse. From the few paragraphs I read before adding it to the book pile, I expected it to be an engagingly written “war novel”, and so it was, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the importance of the cow!

Appointment with Venus turned out to be a mixed-emotion sort of story, its farcical premise shot through with brutal realism, being set in 1940 as German troops occupy a small Channel Island.

The island in question, Armorel, is fictional, though based on the real island of Sark, where the German occupation did happen, as apparently did the removal of pedigree cattle from under German noses.

The rest of the tale is pure conjecture, presented by an inventive novelist with a strong dependence on the literary device of coincidence, and occasional lapses into bathos. Despite moments of “Really, dear writer?” it mostly worked, and I am more than willing to follow up on the other works of this Irish author, assuming from my experience here that they will be readable if not quite plausible.

Here’s the gist of this particular story.

In 1940, immediately post-Dunkirk, German troops arrive on the fictional Channel Island of Armorel, to be greeted by a delegation of island officials led by the Provost, nominal head of state of the island since the departure of its youthful hereditary leader, the Suzerain, to fight for Great Britain at the outbreak of the war.

Under orders from Germany, the occupation is to a great degree a “soft” one, the velvet glove over the iron fist of the occupiers being well padded, and life goes on for the islanders relatively normally, though an underground communication network immediately springs up to counter the German seizure of all radios and such.

Meanwhile, back in England, the occupation is greeted with quiet consternation, in particular in the offices of the Ministry of Agriculture, where it is suddenly found that a prize cow rejoicing in the name of Venus, bred to a majestically pedigreed but  ill-fated bull named Mars, is pregnant and due to give birth under the Nazi flag.

The offspring of this bovine union is anticipated to be something ultra-special in the way of British cattle breeding, and there is no way in which the combination of maternal and paternal lines can be repeated, Mars having fatally stepped on a land mine shortly after his dalliance with Venus.

What else to do than mount a clandestine rescue mission, to snatch the pregnant Venus from under the very noses of her Teutonic captors, striking a dual blow for England in mortifying the enemy and furthering the development of British super cows.

Unfortunately for this plan, the head of the German forces on Armorel was, in his past civilian life, an accomplished cattle breeder, and he has already seen and fallen in love with Venus, and has made arrangements for her immediate departure to the Fatherland, in order that her offspring be born on German soil, to the furtherance of German bovine superiority.

The clock’s a-ticking…

First edition dust jacket, Hodder and Stoughton, 1951.

A rescue mission is mounted, consisting of a fearless young English major rejoicing in the name of Valentine Morland, and the beautiful sister of the absent Suzerain of Armorel, one Nicola Falaise of the A.T.S.  There are some side players, to be sure, but we won’t go into that here, except to say that one of them is the stock winsomely clever small boy, and another a gruffly sea captainish type.

On the island resides key figure number three, Nicola’s cousin Lionel, dedicated pacifist and tormented artist, who is drawn into the plot once Valentine and Nicola land to undertake their mission of disguise and bovine abduction. (We add a love triangle to the busy plot.)

Complications and drama ensue. There is abundant farce, and, to balance this, episodes of poignancy and tragedy. Of course the Brits eventually come out ahead, though one of them undertakes the ultimate sacrifice in order for the undertaking to succeed.

This oddly enticing concoction of a tale comes very close to the ridiculous, but it is well written enough to remain engaging throughout.

My rating: 6.5/10.

Appointment with Venus caught the attention of British screenwriters immediately upon its publication, with a 1951 film version starring David Niven and Glynis Johns as Valentine and Nicola being a respectable box office success. The 1962 Danish “war comedy” film, Venus fra Vestø, was also based on Tickell’s tale. A four-part radio play version of Appointment with Venus was produced and broadcast by the BBC in 1992.

The novel seems to be the best-known of Jerrard Tickell’s books, but he also wrote several non-fiction war books, and a respectable number of light fictions, which I fully intend to dip into if and when opportunity allows. Check out this tantalizing list, full of imagination-catching titles, courtesy Wikipedia.

Non-fiction:

  • Odette: The Story of a British Agent (1949)
  • Moon Squadron (1956)
  • Ascalon: The Story of Sir Winston Churchill’s Wartime Flights from 1943 to 1945 (1964)

Novels:

  • Yolan of the Plains (1928)
  • See How They Run (1936)
  • Fly Away Blackbird (1936)
  • Silk Purse (1937)
  • Jill Fell Down (1938)
  • Gentlewomen Aim to Please (1938)
  • At Dusk All Cats Are Grey (1940)
  • Soldier from the Wars Returning (1942)
  • Appointment with Venus (1951)
  • The Hand and Flower (1952)
  • Dark Adventure (1952)
  • The Dart Players (1953)
  • The Hero of Saint Roger (1954)
  • Miss May: The Story of an Englishwoman (1958)
  • Whither Do You Wander? (1959)
  • The Hunt for Richard Thorpe (1960)
  • Villa Mimosa (1960)
  • Hussar Honeymoon (1963)
  • High Water at Four (1965)

Posted in 1950s, Century of Books - 2018, Read in 2018, Tickell, Jerrard | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

My World: Fall colour, Chilcotin River at Alexis Creek, B.C.

September 27, 2018 by leavesandpages

We were out visiting yesterday, and we stopped on the one-lane country bridge at Alexis Creek, B.C. to look down at the turquoise blue water of the rushing Chilcotin River. We do live in a lovely part of the world!

September 26, 2018 ~ Chilcotin River at Alexis Creek, B.C.

Posted in My World | Tagged | 1 Comment »

A Killer Approaches: The Whistling Shadow by Mabel Seeley

September 25, 2018 by leavesandpages

The Whistling Shadow by Mabel Seeley ~ 1954. This edition: Doubleday, 1954. Hardcover. 219 pages.

First, a personal note, to answer those who have so kindly inquired as to my extended absence from the blogosphere these past months. I could give a detailed account of this so-strange summer we’ve been having, but I won’t, because honestly it’s been decidedly frenetic in so many ways and really not worthy of revisiting.

Suffice it to say that we are keeping our heads above water (figuratively speaking) and that all is quite reasonably well. Ridiculously busy, but in the non-concrete sort of way where we have not much to show for it.

Reading time is confined to just-before-bedtime, and much of what I’ve read recently is rather blurry round the edges. So much stuff going on!

Still hoping to make a decent showing on the Century of Books project, so maybe the fast and basic book post is the key?

Like this one.

The Whistling Shadow is a compulsively readable noir novel, and I have to admit that I didn’t twig to the villain of the piece at all, though I did have qualms about the co-villain right from the get-go. As I was probably supposed to; Mabel Seeley seemed to be in full control of her narrative from start to finish.

Middle-aged Gail Kiskadden, widowed fifteen years earlier, mourns the drunk driving death of her twenty-year-old son Johnny by sitting in her darkened house playing solitaire all day and most of every night. Her grief has taken over her life; she can’t find a way forward.

Then one of her son’s friends comes with a piece of unexpected news: Johnny was secretly married while away serving on his Army detail. His widow was last heard of in Columbus, Georgia.

Gail sets out to find the mysterious Sherry Lee, and succeeds without much difficulty, and of course what she has both hoped and feared is evident: a grandchild is on the way.

Sherry Lee is delicately beautiful but intellectually not quite up to what Gail had expected of a partner of clever Johnny’s, and she also displays a sullen disinterest in meeting Gail halfway in regards to commiseration of their shared loss, but her apparently troubled financial position leads her to agreeing to accompany Gail back to Minneapolis to await the birth of her child.

It soon becomes apparent that Sherry Lee is a woman with a deeply complicated past, which follows her to Minneapolis. Death threats by hand-delivered letter, furtive midnight whistlings, ventriloquist’s dummies left in unexpected places: the plot thickens.

The threats increase as the months go by, culminating in the kidnapping of Gail’s baby grandson and further developments with the secret threatener, who proves to be a very real person with a distinct fondness for knives…

Seeley winds up the tension until the breaking point and a bit beyond, before bringing her strong female lead into a place of peace, albeit a fragile sort of respite as new complications have arisen in the revelation of a killer’s identity.

Good (dark) stuff.

This was Mabel Seeley’s last suspense novel of only ten published between 1938 and 1954. The Whistling Shadow is my first experience with Seeley; I hope it will not be my last.

My rating: 8.5/10

 

 

Posted in 1950s, Century of Books - 2018, Read in 2018, Seeley, Mabel | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Young Girl Finds Herself: Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt

September 25, 2018 by leavesandpages

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt ~ 1966. Follett Publishing, circa 1970s. Hardcover. ISBN: 0-695-49009-5. 192 pages.

Here we have that familiar creature, the vintage bildungsroman. A fine example, to be sure, but a member of a vast common flock.

There are numerous other titles of this ilk still to be found on high school library shelves everywhere; this is not a condemnation, merely an observation.

Somewhere in the United States – midwest? New England? – seven-year-old Julie has just lost her mother to an unspecified illness which they both have shared. Youngest of a sibling group of three – older sister Laura is seventeen, brother Chris the middle child – Julie is sent off to the nearby country home of her mother’s unmarried sister, Aunt Cordelia, a stern and highly regarded teacher at a rural school.

The novel follows Julie along as she navigates her way through the usual childhood and adolescent experiences of someone growing up in the American small-town world of the mid-20th Century. (We never get a firm date as to when this all happens, though clues point to it taking place in the 1940s or 50s. Possibly earlier?)

Young Julie has been an indulged small child with all of the expected attitudes and mannerisms thereof; her aunt strives to mold her young charge into responsible and thoughtful personhood. She succeeds, though it takes ten years. We leave teenage Julie as a younger version of Aunt Cordelia, albeit with a happier love affair in hand than Cordelia experienced in her previous turn.

In the course of this well-presented, gently paced micro-saga (there is a major clue in the title, that “Slowly” is most apt), our heroine comes to terms with her inner flaws and weaknesses, and grows into a likeable young woman of some accomplishment.

Bumps in young Julie’s personal road have included that early traumatic loss of her beloved mother, her older sister’s departure into happy married life with diminished focus on a younger sister, a mildly ne’er-do-well alcoholic uncle living in close proximity to her aunt’s house, an episode of dealing with a mentally challenged and uncared for classmate, and a deeply regrettable boyfriend in high school, who eventually gets one of Julie’s peers pregnant.

Luckily true love is waiting for our heroine, in the person of childhood friend Danny, who sticks around and comes through when most needed. Happy married life beckons, once the two of them finish college, etcetera. One wonders if Julie’s writing ambitions (for of course this book is chockfull of what may well be autobiographical verisimilitude) will be eclipsed by her embrace of her upcoming traditionally housewifely role?

Who knows. Perhaps she’ll have it all…

Well-written in general, with a few far reaches as plot threads are neatly gathered together. An engaging read, but nothing to cross the road for, as it were. Enough complexity for an “adult” read; the “young adult” intended audience likely accounts for the occasional stutters in the plotline as things are tweaked to provide moral teachings.

The biggest drawback to me was that there was absolutely no real sense of time or place; the setting is blandly generic. It’s a moderately engaging character study from first to last, but it doesn’t go deep enough for true memorability.

My rating: 6.5/10

Up a Road Slowly did win the Newbery Medal in 1967, and Irene Hunt was a well-respected writer of teen-targetted novels, her most well-known being the Civil War coming of age story of a young man, Across Five Aprils, 1964, which was a Newbery Honor Book (runner-up) in 1965. Six other YA novels published between 1968 and 1985 are well-regarded but not as well-known as the two Newbery recipients.

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in 1960s, Century of Books - 2018, Hunt, Irene, Read in 2018 | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

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