The Untold by Courtney Collins

Posted on May 29, 2014 by pagesofjulia

An astonishingly fresh and surprising novel of adventure, heartbreak, grit and love, set in the Australian bush.

untold
In the bush of 1920s New South Wales in Australia, readers observe a young woman digging by a river and then running for the hills. Her story unfolds slowly, in fractured time and brief views, in The Untold, a dreamy debut novel by Courtney Collins based on the life of legendary Australian wild woman Jessie Hickman.

Jessie’s past is varied and often tragic. She left home at 12 to join the circus, then moved on to an illustrious and mostly successful career rustling horses. At age 21, she was convicted for stealing two chickens. Upon her release from prison, she fell in with a rancher who put her back to work stealing horses and cattle, then forced her into a profoundly miserable and violent marriage. Her latest traumas have now sent her, and her beloved horse, Houdini, crashing uphill. They are headed for the top of the highest mountain she can see, through driving rain and flowing blood, in the scene that opens the novel.

Jessie will encounter gangs of men and boys, some friendly, some not: there is a bounty on her head and the residents of the town and the bush have turned out for the hunt. Among those pursuing her are a former lover–an Aboriginal tracker–and a police sergeant, purportedly working together but each unclear which side he’s really on; their quarry exerts a strange magnetic pull and counter-pull. As the reader is increasingly drawn into the story, The Untold rushes precipitously toward a heady convergence among Jessie, Houdini, the gangs and the two men with more personal business to conduct.

Collins has composed a truly startling and singular saga, set in a wild and brushy backdrop of mountains and elemental forces, peopled with hard-edged creatures of all sorts who each have a savage mood and a desperate will to live. Death is a consistent theme in Jessie’s life, beginning as early as we can know, but she has a surprising ally. In fact, while Collins keeps her reader guessing throughout, the biggest surprise of all is the narrator’s role in Jessie’s story.

The Untold is lyrical and untamed, with a firm emphasis on survival and redemption and a full array of improbably charming characters, none with an unstoried past but few as feral as Jessie herself. The reader will be as exhilarated as the protagonist by her struggles, and quite possibly come up gasping for air.

This review originally ran in the May 8, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 9 handfuls of mud.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 2 Comments »

The Reef: A Passionate History: The Great Barrier Reef from Captain Cook to Climate Change by Iain McCalman

Posted on May 28, 2014 by pagesofjulia

The Great Barrier Reef is both easily understood and awe-inspiring in this history of its discovery, exploitation and beauty.

reef

With The Reef, Iain McCalman (Darwin’s Armada) has composed “a passionate history” of the Great Barrier Reef, opening with his own long-awaited voyage (part of a reenactment of Captain Cook’s original trip). Following the prologue, he withdraws to the role of historian rather than participant, and chronicles the Great Barrier Reef as known to Western society over the last few centuries.

The Reef is divided into three parts. Beginning in 1770 with Captain Cook and proceeding through later explorers who helped chart the reefs in the 1800s, “Terror” emphasizes the threat the reef posed to ships and their navigators, and the fear of cannibals and others thought to inhabit the area. In Part II, “Nurture,” the reef begins to offer refuge for those seeking to escape civilization or make a fresh start. Europeans are taken in by native islanders, or discover island paradise; naturalists arrive, captivated by the biodiversity and beauty of the area while beginning to realize that coral is a resource that can be exploited. “Wonder” sees the scientific community take an interest, disagreeing about the origins and biology of the reef. Ecology emerges as a new field of study, its proponents seeking to place the reef in the larger context of other natural environments, to study relationships and cause and effect. Individual activists work to defend the unusual and changing ecosystem from mining, oil spills, overfishing and the rough use of tourism.

At the end, we are introduced to nature-loving scientist J.E.N. Veron, nicknamed “Charlie” after Charles Darwin, an engaging character who communicates the final dire message of the Great Barrier Reef’s looming extinction. Returning to the personal nature of his prologue, McCalman’s epilogue speaks to the grim consequences of climate change but holds forth hope as well.

The few images in The Reef include portraits of the personalities involved but not the corals themselves (although McCalman refers his reader to books that offer the latter). This work’s strengths include a coherent structure, friendly narrative style and a reasoned culminating call to action that does not disrupt its primary role as a comprehensive history. Plentiful notes indicate strong research, but McCalman’s writing is accessible to any reader interested in the intersection of science, nature and history. From perceived threat to resource to paradise destination to climate-change indicator–Charlie Veron calls corals “the canaries of climate change”–the Great Barrier Reef is fully explored in this engaging study.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the May 6, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 dives.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment »

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe

Posted on May 26, 2014 by pagesofjulia

This is one of Poe’s better-known short stories, “The Purloined Letter”:

I cannot remember now why I printed this story out (from here, and thank you) to read on my lunch break. I read a line about it in another book – Mr. Mercedes, perhaps? Heck. Sorry. Suffice it to say, a Poe recommendation is always worthwhile.

Now I will try to answer the question: What makes Poe so great?

His tales rely not on the solutions offered to the problems presented – which, while no pushovers, are not the mindbending puzzles of the century. Rather, his characters are so very clever, come around to things in such intellectual twists and turns that we are dazzled; and perhaps the best bits are the dialogue. I love his flair!

“That is another of your odd notions,” said the Prefect, who had a fashion of calling every thing “odd” that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid an absolute legion of “oddities.”

When the story opens, our narrator has stopped in to smoke a pipe with a friend, when the Parisian Prefect (of police) drops by to ask for help with a case. He is stumped, and wants to pick the clearly superior brains, in particular of the narrator’s host, Dupin, who we have met before (see the Murders in the Rue Morgue). A lady has lost a letter that will get her in great trouble if her husband finds out about it; and she knows exactly who took it, because he took it from under her very eyes – and those of her husband, which is why she couldn’t cry out about it. She has engaged the Prefect to recover this document, which has become an object of blackmail. He has had his men very very thoroughly search the dwelling and person of the thief, repeatedly and using microscopes, needles, and probes. The letter is clearly not in the home; clearly not on the man; and yet he clearly would keep it near to hand to help in blackmailing the lady. What a puzzler!

Dupin sends him on his way, but he returns some time later, having given up; the considerable reward he’s been promised will clearly have to go unclaimed. It is an unsolvable mystery. This is when Dupin speaks up: for a portion of that reward, he will happily hand over the letter. The Prefect pays; the letter is produced from a drawer in Dupin’s desk. The Prefect goes away again, mystified but triumphant. And our narrator asks for the explanation, which of course is… I won’t spoil, but simplicity is always the answer.

This entire story is set in Dupin’s “little back library.” The action is all removed, told in narrative; if this were a play, it would be done with the single setting, that darkened book room filled with pipe smoke, and two or three men talking. That in itself is kind of an attractive feature to me. Poe’s mysteries are cerebral; it’s all in the dialogue and the internal machinations. The likes of Hercule Poirot or Claire DeWitt, those detectives who solve mysteries by thinking, clearly owe a debt to Poe. In fact, Poe’s detective stories are credited with (at least in part) birthing the genre; but some modern-day versions follow him more closely than others.

The plot is lovely because it offers room for plenty of debate, being intellectual in nature. It is clever. But my favorite part is definitely the dialogue and the intricacies of the very clever players.

Poe’s cleverness is on display as well; I had to look up several terms & lines.

First, pardon my ignorance, but I had to look up what was meant by “the twofold luxury of meditation and a meerschaum” – what the heck is that?? It’s a pipe, of course. The Sherlock Holmes type, one assumes.

Others:

Procrustean bed: “an arbitrary standard to which exact conformity is forced.”

recherche: “unusual and not understood by most people.”

And then the French! I copied out “Il y a parier que toute idee publique, toute convention recue, est une sottise, car elle a convenu au plus grand nombre” and Google Translate gave me the (very rough) “there a bet that any public idea, any agreement received is nonsense, because it agreed to the largest number.” Okay, I think I can follow that: what the masses easily buy is not necessarily the best solution, hm? But then in closing:

Un dessein si funeste, S’il n’est digne d’Atree, est digne de Thyeste.

Again, my rough Google translation gives me “if a fatal design is worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.” I am totally charmed by anybody who invokes the Greek myths to close a mystery story. Although I could take a pass on the reference coming to me in French.

Rating: 9 ravens, how about.

Next up, I would like to read Shirley Jackson’s The Summer People, inspired by (what else?) my recent read of Shirley. Short stories referenced in novels, moving forward.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Maximum Shelf: That Night by Chevy Stevens

Posted on May 22, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on April 30, 2014.

that nightIn the small town of Campbell River on Vancouver Island in the late 1990s, Toni Murphy can’t wait to graduate from high school. Her parents are totally hassling her: they disapprove of her boyfriend, Ryan; her mom is controlling and angry; her father has become distant. A group of popular girls at school is determined to make her life miserable, and her too-perfect little sister, Nicole, has recently started hanging out with those very girls. Toni and Ryan intend to save a little money, get an apartment together and, eventually, leave town for good. Things are a bit rough at home, but they have a plan, and they are so close….

Then, one night, Nicole is killed. Toni and Ryan are convicted of her murder and sent to prison.

Nicole’s killer–or killers–not only took the life of their victim, but effectively Toni and Ryan’s as well, and the young love they shared: once out on parole they will never be allowed contact again. Toni and Nicole’s parents’ lives are ruined as well. Their mother holds onto her rage against her elder daughter, and their father’s indecision about whom to support ends up supporting no one.

Seventeen years later, Toni is being processed out of prison and into a halfway house when we meet her in the opening lines of That Night, the fourth novel by Chevy Stevens (Still Missing). She is frightened and unsure of how she’ll readjust to the outside world. It was so painful on the inside–being separated from Ryan and everything she knew–that the only way she could cope was to shut down. She stopped writing to Ryan in the men’s prison, asked her father to stop visiting and got into a lot of fights. Now that she’s out, her fellow parolees at the halfway house want to continue with violence, and Ryan wants to renew contact. He’s intent upon solving the crime they’ve been convicted of, but violating the parole conditions that forbid contact could land both of them back in prison; anyway, Toni feels the best way to move on is to put Nicole’s murder behind her. In returning to her hometown, however, she finds that no one else is ready to do that. Her mother is still furious, believing Toni killed her little sister; her father is still unsure whose side he’s on; it’s nearly impossible for an ex-con to get work, and even harder for her to keep it. And Toni’s high school nemeses, Shauna and her henchwomen, are still around, and still have a bone to pick. She makes just one friend: a rescue pit bull named Captain.

Slowly, Toni begins to settle in. Back in Campbell River, she goes to work at the Fish Shack, where she waited tables in high school–now they keep her (and her prison tattoos) hidden away in the kitchen. She lives with Captain on a small boat and checks in with her parole officer daily. Toni has now experienced severe bullying, incarceration and an egregious failure of the criminal justice system; at 34 years old, she’d like to just be left alone to put together whatever life she can. She doesn’t visit her parents, but she does see Ryan hanging around the marina where she lives. He’s pushing ahead in investigating Nicole’s death, against Toni’s advice, and he has his eyes on the girls who picked on her in high school–Shauna and her clique testified against Ryan and Toni at the trial, and Ryan wants to know why. What really happened that night? As Ryan’s investigations approach the truth, the events of 17 years ago feel very recent indeed; Toni may be in danger–and she may not be the only one.

That Night shifts back and forth between the events of 1996, when Toni’s teenaged world fell apart, and the present, with Toni newly released from prison and struggling to rebuild her life. Both are told in first person by Toni herself, although in two subtly different voices: that of the rebellious teen with short-term concerns and long-term dreams, and that of the ex-con whose hard-won and carefully constructed defense system is still brittle. This nonlinear style highlights Toni’s sense of confused and harried apprehension, of disruption. Flashbacks allow the reader to visit Toni behind bars, and these scenes, too, are evocative and disturbing.

Stevens matches the success of her previous novels with character-driven drama and a clear commitment to the particular nuances of her Vancouver Island setting. A strong sense of foreboding and a thoroughly compelling plot keeps her reader guessing, while a hint of romance broadens the appeal. Toni’s gritty, emotional, traumatized persona is both gripping and sympathetic. Foreshadowing and terrifying suspense are riveting in Stevens’s sure hands; readers will want to keep all the lights on as That Night moves into its final acceleration.

Rating: 6 dog walks.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with Stevens!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | Leave a comment »

It by Stephen King: first third (or so)

Posted on May 21, 2014 by pagesofjulia

itI have inadvertently started a book club at the bar that I frequent. What can I say, it’s on the train line home from work, right at a station, and I love it.

I am trying to coordinate my reading of It with a certain bartender’s reading of It. We shall see how the pacing works out. But hey, it’s Stephen King! Who could resist? Happily, like my bartender/reading buddy Danielle, I have not seen the movie and had no cultural preconceptions about this book or story at all; I was vaguely aware that it was “the” scary story about the scary clown. And so we begin. I have paused at approximately 300 pages into approximately 1100 so that Danielle and I can talk about it.

My early impressions are that – naturally – this is a good, and scary, story. It opens with “Part 1: The Shadow Before.” In 1957, in the backwater town of Derry, Maine, a child is murdered during a flood, by a terrifying paranormal clown in a storm gutter. Then we flash forward to a hate crime in the same town at a festival in 1984, in which a gay man is killed. The clown finishes him off; but it was the local residents responsible in the first place. And in 1985, six individuals receive phone calls that frighten them badly and throw their established routines into upheaval: they are called back “home” to Derry.

Each of these vignettes is compelling. I was more disturbed by the hate crime than by the supernatural murder, probably because the hate crime is realistic, an example of something that really happens in our world. And I especially enjoyed meeting the six adults who take the six phone calls: each is a well developed, interesting character, living in a very real world, just briefly sketched. We see strong marriages – not without their troubles, but based upon real love; and we see damaged marriages and lives, whose problems also feel realistic. I think Stephen King has a gift for writing Real American Lives.

And then we begin “Part 2: June of 1958.” The child killed in the flood is still a recent memory; the town of Derry is concerned over the deaths of several more young people in that year, including one beaten to death by his step-father in a particularly gruesome scene involving a recoilless hammer (this tool was new to me, incidentally). We are working our way through the six adults who received the six phone calls, meeting them as Derry children, and friends. Also, we meet the man who makes the six phone calls, through a diary he keeps of the evils of Derry. He is, appropriately, a librarian and historian (King never fails to tip his hat to my fine profession. Thank you, sir). And it is here, almost through Part 2, that Danielle and I have stopped reading for now; so my synopsis will continue in a later post.

There have been memorable lines. I liked this one on the opening pages:

Water sprayed out from beneath his galoshes in muddy sheets. Their buckles made a jolly jingling as George Denbrough ran toward his strange death.

The juxtaposition of “jolly jingling” with the foreshadowing of a child’s “strange death” is very effective.

And Danielle pointed out the power of these lines, about a child making friends for the first time:

He liked the way his laughter sounded with theirs. It was a sound he had never heard before: not mingled laughter – he had heard that lots of times – but mingled laughter of which his own was a part.

Also very effective, a poignant way to indicate his profound loneliness.

There have been clever in-jokes for the Stephen King fan; he likes to reference his own work, and in one case, that of his son, novelist Joe Hill. I found references to the turtle (or the Turtle), which seems to be a King leitmotif, and the use of the phrase, being “on the beam” – both of which concepts figure in the Dark Tower series. And one kid is described as wearing a Judas Coyne t-shirt (see Heart-Shaped Box). I get a kick out of these self-referential grins.

There have been vocabulary lessons. I want to point out that although King has a reputation for being pulpy, a genre author, or less “serious,” he is well-written, even literary, and regularly sends me to the dictionary. For example, I had to look up “il mot juste,” “planchette,” “batrachian,” and “chitinous.”

And where are we headed with It? I remain in the dark about where the remaining 802 pages will take us; but it is clear that Derry, Maine is home to a great evil. Our librarian/historian friend has recorded that Bad Things were happening here from the beginning – about every 25-28 years all the way back in the town’s history, in fact, which suggests something generational going on, although I don’t have the answers yet. The clown is rather the embodiment of evil; Danielle points out that he is a shapeshifting clown, although I’m not sure yet that the Creature (big mean bird encountered by young Mike) is the same as the clown. I’m still very much in the dark so far, and that’s fine, because again, 802 pages to go!

This is a scary story, with evil lurking in unknown places and with unknown aims; but I’m not terrified of clowns just yet. Danielle and I also asked ourselves if this is the story that made clowns scary? But she thinks not: she thinks that King is tapping into a preexisting societal fear, although he can definitely be credited with confirming it! And I bet the movie was horrifying.

Stay tuned!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | 4 Comments »

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (audio): finished

Posted on May 19, 2014 by pagesofjulia

haroldDon’t forget to also see my earlier reviews of the first third and second third of this book.

Naturally, Harold Fry continued to be excellent. I love this book. The sad bit where we left him off in my last review, where he was dogged by misguided followers (yes, I believe I mean that literally, too), was sad; but it came to an end. Harold of course ends up on his own again, which is mostly his natural state in this story. But he won’t finish that way. I don’t want to report any more plot points. This book ends on a hopeful note, and everyone – not only the few characters you might think early on, but everyone – ends up growing and learning.

Rachel Joyce’s strengths definitely include her wry writing voice, which is really very funny. Harold is often self-conscious, but Joyce never is. Her characters are very real and well put together; even the most minor of walk-ons is defined precisely in just a few words. There are larger truths as well. For example, I was struck by the statement of relativity here:

How could he say all this? It amounted to a lifetime. He could try to find the words, but they would never hold the same meaning for her that they did for him. My house, he would say, and the image that would spring to her head would be of her own! There was no saying it.

None of us shall ever know exactly what the others have been through! Oh the humanity!

Incidentally, I was right in my big guess about the big secret. Work that one out for yourselves.

I fell in love with Harold, and with Maureen, and with Rex (Rachel Joyce, is there another book with Rex in it? please please??), and with all the smaller players. I felt so close to these people, these real people living quiet lives – or even lives of quiet desperation, you might say. I am very impressed with this story of ordinary people doing small, private things, that also managed to be a very large story about The Human Situation (that’s an Honors College course I took as a freshman, FYI). The wisdom that is communicated in humble packages is extraordinary. Harold is a star, and Rachel Joyce is my new hero. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Highly recommended; and the audio read by Jim Broadbent is absolutely grand as well. One of the best of the year to date, without a doubt.

Rating: 10 yards of blue duct tape.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , | 7 Comments »

Have You Seen Marie? by Sandra Cisneros (audio)

Posted on May 15, 2014 by pagesofjulia

marieWhat a lovely, lovely book. Fans of Sandra Cisneros, don’t be put off by the sometimes-classification of this short fable as a children’s book. Cisneros says in an afterword that she certainly never thought of it that way; she intended it for adults, and I can confirm that it works that way, very well.

This is a short, dreamy, poetic tale of a woman, the narrator, who has just lost her mother; a visiting friend (“I was the only person Rosalind knew in all of Texas”) has lost her cat, Marie. Together, the two women go walking the streets of San Antonio, distributing fliers and asking folks the title question: Have you seen Marie?

The voice and rhythms and lyrical style that I remember from The House on Mango Street are vibrantly present here. The women ask dogs, cats and squirrels as well as people about the missing Marie, and their reactions are noted, and charmingly represented as being every bit as important as the people’s. On the surface, this is the story of searching for Marie; but it is also the story of Cisneros losing her beloved mother, feeling like an orphan in her own middle age, and gradually coming to understand that “love does not die.”

As I mentioned, Cisneros is careful to point out that this was not meant to be a story for children, but rather one for adults, with the idea of helping others like herself deal with experiences like hers: losing a parent, or a loved one. I am very (very) glad & relieved that I don’t seem to facing this experience now, or soon; but I imagine that this book would indeed help. I appreciate its soothing musical tone and gently loving, inspired advice and creative understanding of death, what it means, the grieving process. It is a tender tale. Cisneros is inventive and calming and this is a beautiful, moving story about family and friendship. I highly recommend it, for anyone.

This audio version is read by the author, and so beautifully; I love her lilt; it’s perfect. I want to very much recommend this version (in both English and Spanish in one edition – one cd of each). But then, the print copy is illustrated by Ester Hernandez, and Cisneros is clearly very pleased with that aspect. Hearing her speak about their collaborative efforts on the illustrations (Hernandez came to visit & tour Cisneros’s San Antonio; she calls it documentary-style) made me regret missing the print. So there you are. Both, perhaps?? I think I will go out and get myself a copy of the book, too.

Rating: 10 trees along the San Antonio River.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

Maximum Shelf: Euphoria by Lily King

Posted on May 13, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Maximum Shelf is the weekly Shelf Awareness feature focusing on an upcoming title we love and believe will be a great handselling opportunity for booksellers everywhere. The features are written by our editors and reviewers and the publisher has helped support the issue.

This review was published by Shelf Awareness on April 23, 2014.

euphoriaLily King (Father of the Rain) renders three young anthropologists in 1930s’ New Guinea with nuance, tenderness and charming ambiguity in Euphoria. King draws on the life of Margaret Mead and her relationships with her second and third husbands (Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson, respectively), but the novel is only loosely based on their lives and work.

Nell Stone is an American, and has recently written a book that is receiving much attention for its controversial subject matter: the sex lives of children in the Solomon Islands. She is an up-and-coming young anthropologist being talked about around the world; when we meet her, she is just emerging from a year and a half in the field in New Guinea, alongside her husband, Fen. Fen is Australian, overbearing and decidedly threatened by Nell’s success, as fame and glory as an anthropologist have so far eluded him.

When Nell and Fen come out of the field, at a party they meet fellow anthropologist Andrew Bankson. He is fresh off a failed suicide attempt, haunted by the deaths of his two brothers and unable to find himself in either his native England or the tribal communities he studies. Bankson is lonely and attracted to the couple, and suggests that he establish them with unstudied “natives” nearby his own fieldwork; he wants to keep them as his friends and neighbors.

The three form an unlikely triangle of mixed alliances. Nell and Fen, for all their disharmony, share a history and an intimacy the loner Bankson can’t pierce. But Nell and Bankson achieve a singular connection of the minds: they inspire each other, each stimulating the other’s best work. With Fen’s sensitivity over and resentment of Nell’s talents, this is a dangerous but intoxicating symbiosis, a cerebral union that is sensual and nearly sexual. Bankson is, in fact, rather in love with both Nell and Fen. The two men establish their own bonds as well, when Fen nurses Bankson through a malarial fever. It is a love triangle, but also an intellectual one, and shadows the perceptions of each anthropologist about the tribes they live amongst. They already have very different approaches: Nell has loved, ever since she was a small child, exploring other worlds so that she can come back and tell her family, friends and now colleagues about her adventures; for her, the joy is in the description and the homecoming, but she also has a knack for integrating herself into a new culture. Fen, it seems, would rather become a tribesman than study or write about the tribes. Bankson struggles to participate, but is more inclined to observation–his background is in the natural sciences. As he writes, “I was raised on Science as other people are raised on God, or gods, or the crocodile.”

Lily King makes an interesting decision in choosing Bankson as her narrator, as he is the most isolated of the three, spending much of his energy in observing not only the tribal peoples he is meant to study, but also Nell and Fen. That the story of these three characters is told from the perspective of his outsider status means that the reader, too, is forever peeking in and around corners, hoping for more information. Nell’s voice is heard through journal entries eventually sent to Bankson by another old friend and possible love interest of Nell’s, but she remains tantalizingly difficult to access. The tension of this desire to know Nell better is central to Euphoria, for Bankson and for the reader.

King raises broader questions as well, as each anthropologist’s individual approach to his or her work is troubling in its own way. The tribal communities of the fictional Kiona, Mumbanyo, and Tam peoples invite consideration about the fields and methods of anthropology and ethnology. The Tam women, who do the trading and the artistry in their community, inspire Nell’s growing ideas about traditional gender roles, a stance that (predictably) does not sit well with the irritable Fen. Margaret Mead is known not only for her writings and work in anthropology, but also as a feminist thinker; in King’s hands, the Tam culture inspires the beginning of Nell’s own feminist development. As Bankson gravitates toward Nell’s empathetic and involved relationship with the Tam, Fen is planning a serious cultural crime, which will precipitate the final denouement. (The life stories of Nell, Fen and Bankson are quite different from their historical counterparts Mead, Fortune and Bateson, so there are no spoilers for readers familiar with that history.)

Euphoria is a masterpiece of dreamy, lyrical, sensuous writing and evocation of a sometimes frighteningly exotic New Guinea. Readers can expect to be enchanted by the setting, inspired by the free-spirited Nell, challenged by the question of respectful participant observation, angered by certain of the characters’ actions and teased by the sexual tension. As a bonus, the beautiful cover of Euphoria features the striking rainbow gum tree that figures in the plot of this remarkable novel.

Rating: 8 books.

Come back tomorrow for my interview with King!

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce (audio): second bit

Posted on May 12, 2014 by pagesofjulia

haroldYou’ll recall that I did already review the first third or so of this audiobook, because I just couldn’t hold in my enthusiasm. Well, my good impression continues through the next third of the book, along with my need to share as I go.

I will give away less from here on out. Harold’s journey continues, and while his physical, geographical journey is the obvious plot line, there is a parallel arc of personal growth. At the beginning, he is almost unable to be in the same room with strangers; by the end he easily greets them everywhere he goes, and has learned to share his story and take on what is often the burden of other people’s stories. This is essentially a very human tale, incorporating all the strange, wonderful, and wonderfully, strangely normal lives of the people Harold meets along the way.

He met a tax inspector who was a druid and had not worn a pair of shoes in ten years.

There is also a sense of growing tension regarding one of the secrets I referred to in my earlier post; the un-referred-to past looms larger as we go on, and I have a guess I’m fairly confident about, but I will wait and see.

Harold gains followers as he continues walking, until there is a large group of “pilgrims” accompanying him on his journey. I was reminded a little bit of Forrest Gump, when he’s running, and finds a crowd running behind him. Unlike Forrest, Harold has a purpose, and his followers know it; and also unlike Forrest, these followers become a real burden. By this time, he has learned to take care of himself quite well; now he has newcomers to take care of too, and this takes up a lot of time and effort. Also, they’re not as fast as he is at the actual walking; but he tries to be patient, remembering how long it took him to build up stamina and get into a rhythm. I was, of course, infuriated at their selfishness in holding Harold back from something so important to him; but I can see how Harold could have done nothing less than help them along.

As I enter the final third (give or take) of this book, I am only sorry that it has to end.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , | Leave a comment »

The Inheritor’s Powder: A Tale of Arsenic, Murder, and the New Forensic Science by Sandra Hempel

Posted on May 8, 2014 by pagesofjulia

(Happy birthday today to my handsome Husband!)

inheritorsWhat a juicy title and cover; right up my alley. True crime, history, some light (accessible) science, and a little murder mystery. Yes, please.

Sandra Hempel’s book about the arsenic poisoning epidemic of the early 1800’s, and the advances in forensic medicine and pursued it, is very much in the tradition of The Invention of Murder and The Remedy, obviously. To a lesser extent it also relates to The Peculiar Case of the Electric Constable and The Devil in the White City. I don’t mean to say that Hempel’s work is unoriginal, you understand, but these are the books I’ve read that feed my interest in the subject, and can continue to satisfy yours.

Much of this story was familiar to me, mostly from The Invention of Murder. Britain in the 1800’s saw an increase in crime, particularly murder – or at least an increase in its recognition and efforts to curb it – and the birth of the police force and investigations. The early 1800’s also saw a wild increase in the use of arsenic both as a household solution to just about any ailment, and as a quick and easy way to dispatch one’s fellow human. It was called “the inheritor’s powder” because so many people apparently used it to gain an inheritance ahead of the natural schedule. The growing prevalence of cheap life insurance or “burial clubs” played a role here as well.

This background is conveyed easily and accessibly and, again, is also covered in The Invention of Murder; where The Inheritor’s Powder breaks new ground is in delving into arsenic more deeply, and specifically into one sensational case that illustrates the larger issues. In November of 1833 a well-to-do farm family fell ill after their morning coffee; the elderly patriarch would suffer several painful days before dying, while the others would recover. The local doctor suspected arsenic poisoning almost from the first, and conducted some investigations of his own, including saving samples of the coffee grounds in question and the old man’s vomit. (It was later noted that there was so much vomit around that there may be some question of whose vomit it really was…) “Investigations” and “evidence” were new concepts, and our modern understandings would be incredulous at the attempts, but for his time, this local doc was proactive and scientific in his methods. There was a police inquiry, an inquest, and eventually a trial in which a lazy grandson was acquitted (on questionable grounds); but various members of the family came under suspicion and we still don’t know exactly who or what killed George Bodle.

Hempel details the court case and the public interest that followed it. Charles Dickens gets some play here (again, as in The Invention of Murder), which adds to the macro-view of this issue in society and in history: the literary minds of the day were at least as interested in the arsenic epidemic as anybody else. Hempel also looks into the science of testing for poisoning, or specifically for arsenic. Medical science was at such a stage that it was very difficult to distinguish one malady (say, poisoning by arsenic) from another (say, food poisoning by rotten fish) – and of course this question is separate from the question of whether poisoning by arsenic was intentional and therefore criminal, or accidental. Again, I must stress as Hempel does, arsenic was pretty ubiquitous at the time; people mixed it up and applied or swallowed it in various forms for a wide range of complaints. Chemists (or as we see here, chymists) were hard at work on the issue of testing for the presence of arsenic and various substances; cases like the Bodle murder were influential in moving the science forward.

I found this topic rather fascinating, and it was a good way to get a look at what 1830’s English life looked like. For example, I was interested to read about the conflict over who would pay for the investigations and trial – the local parish? Bodle’s estate? his survivors, or the executors of his will? Nobody wanted to pay; but society couldn’t just let this murder go unpunished, either. This was an issue that wouldn’t have occurred to me.

Hempel’s writing and research are fine, but lack the quirky style, entertaining writing, or personality that make a work of popular history really stand out. For readers interested in the topic, by all means go forth. But this is not enough of a page-turner to convert the dubious.

Rating: 6 grains.

Filed under: book reviews | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »