When Christ and His Saints Slept

Posted on December 13, 2010 by pagesofjulia

What an enjoyable book. This is only my second Sharon Kay Penman experience, which I need to work on; I got stuck on The Reckoning and read it over and over when I should be reading more of her work! I got through the first 100 pages of this 750-page book this weekend, and I’m engrossed. It is an awfully long book at 750, but I’m not intimidated; she’s so easy to read. It’s a real saga of historical fiction, dealing with the fight for the English crown after the death of King Henry I in 1135, between his daughter Maude and nephew Stephen.

I think a large part of what makes Penman’s work special is the characters. She writes a multitude of more (or less) sympathetic characters; we grow to like them (or not), and we get to know them fairly quickly. While there are many characters, I for one don’t have trouble keeping track of them because they emerge quickly as having recognizable personalities. (I’m always glad when they have different names, too; too often in historical fiction about English royalty we’re bombarded with Elizabeths, Marys, Georges, Henrys and Richards until it’s all a blur, but so far in this story everyone holds distinct names, thank goodness.) The characters provide multiple perspectives on a complex story, which helps illustrate the ambiguities – is Stephen right in seizing the crown? etc. It also calls into question the reliability of these perspectives; think of reliable or unreliable narrators. The third person perspective stays constant, but seems to interpret through different characters, so we get different perspectives. When we’re with Stephen, we see him as being sympathetic to Maude; when we visit Maude, we see Stephen as being more grasping and ruthless, so the perspectives change. Through Geoffrey’s eyes, Maude is an evil ice queen; through Maude’s, Geoffrey is violent and disrespectful.

The other thing I notice about Penman’s characters (in contrast, for example, to what I recall of Phillippa Gregory’s dealing with similar stories) is that we visit with decidedly lower-class, minor historical figures. To me, this makes the world much more real. The characters tend to have some nuance and complexity, making them more human, too. Varied perspective and multiple complex characters from diverse walks of life make for a fascinating story. Expect me to take a little while to finish this lengthy novel. But unlike some books of this size, I expect to enjoy every minute of it.

readalong: FYI, with a little lead time: My buddy Karma and I are going to be reading this book together, starting this Friday the 17th. Please join us for discussions here!

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book beginnings on Friday

Posted on December 10, 2010 by pagesofjulia

This meme is hosted by Katy at A Few More Pages.

From When Christ and His Saints Slept, by Sharon Kay Penman:

“Stephen was never to forget his fifth birthday, for that was the day he lost his father. In actual fact, that wasn’t precisely so.”

Hm. I call this a good, grabby opener: “this is so. actually it isn’t.” That makes me say, what? Tell me more. Plus, I recall Penman’s The Reckoning (the only other of hers I’ve read) as one of those books I can enjoy over and over again, and every time be sad when it ends. I’ll let you know how it goes.

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in praise of librarians

Posted on December 9, 2010 by pagesofjulia

I almost forgot (shame!) to share this snippet with you, from James Lee Burke’s The Tin Roof Blowdown (are you sick of hearing about this book yet?):

“Then I used the most valuable and unlauded investigative resource in the United States, the lowly reference librarian. Their salaries are wretched and they receive credit for nothing. Their desks are usually tucked away in the stacks or in a remote corner where they have to shush noisy high school students or put up with street people blowing wine in their faces or snoring in the stuffed chairs. But their ability to find obscure information is remarkable and they persevere like Spartans.”

…and then the librarian cracks the case wide open! Robicheaux eventually got a call back from the FBI providing some of the same information but the library beat them to it. Good for you Mr. Burke. 😉

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Brokeback Mountain

Posted on December 8, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Just read all 55 pages of Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx real quick. It’s been years since I saw the movie but from my memory, it stayed remarkably close to what I just read. Of course, it should be easy for a two-hour movie to include everything in a 55-page short story, but it’s Hollywood; you have to keep your eyes on them. At any rate, I hope I wasn’t too colored by having seen the movie first; I thought it was a remarkably evocative little book. In few words, Proulx gives us emotions without calling them that; she shows, doesn’t tell. It reminded me of Hemingway’s short stories that I love so much, like Up In Michigan in particular: coarsely sexual, quietly tragic, no-frills. I’m impressed.

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edits on an education from James Lee Burke

Posted on December 8, 2010 by pagesofjulia

I need to edit my claim that mysteries don’t make me do research.

First I realized that I’ve needed a reference source a few times while reading Lee Child, on all the guns he writes about and their functions and ability to, for example, withstand torrential rain. However, the Husband has filled this role sufficiently to date, so far, so I haven’t actually *looked up* anything.

I also did some research on the painter Hieronymous Bosch, while getting into Michael Connelly’s series starring a detective protagonist by the same name. This became particularly important when I read A Darkness More Than Night, which deals with painter-Bosch’s work fairly extensively. So here I am coming up with examples that refute my earlier statement; ah well, that’s life.

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finished The Tin Roof Blowdown

Posted on December 8, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Burke sure does know how to be poetic. Check the final paragraph of the epilogue, which I have decided to include here in its entirety (not really so much of a spoiler at all because it is Robicheaux’s *fantasy* ending):

“In my fantasy, I see Bertrand far out on the water, pulling on the oars, his arms pumped with his task, the ruined city of New Orleans becoming smaller and smaller in the distance, a great darkness spreading across the sky just after sunset. The blisters on his hands turn into wounds that stain the wood of the oars with his blood. As the wind rises and the water becomes even blacker, he sees hundreds if not thousands of lights swimming below the surface. Then he realizes the light are not lights at all. They have the shape of broken Communion wafers and the luminosity that radiates from them lies in the very fact they have been rejected and broken. But in a way he cannot understand, Bertrand knows that somehow all of them are safe now, including himself, inside a pewter vessel that is as big as the hand of God.”

I call that rhythmic, lyrical and hopeful, and even I, with my failure to grasp biblical allusions, can see the significance of blood staining the wooden oars.

I find it notable that Robicheaux deals somewhat sympathetically with a character who is a rapist. Some might be offended, I suppose (especially if you take my statement straightforwardly, which would be a mistake), but it’s not simple at all. Robicheaux is disgusted with this individual and the pain he’s caused. But in a very realistically, human, ambivalent way, he recognizes that we are all at least a little bit a product of our environments, and that perhaps everything is at least a little bit relative. The character in question makes some form of amends, at least within the structure of his own understanding. It’s complicated. I’m not particularly sympathetic with rapists myself (!!) but I appreciate that Burke portrays everything to do with human nature and sin and redemption as being complex and not black-and-white (no pun intended, in a book definitely charged with racial tension as all Burke’s books are – probably unavoidable considering the setting).

I confess that Cadillac Jukebox let me down just a bit, but The Tin Roof Blowdown has been so outstanding that I think I’m ready to make a James Lee Burke crusade like I did on Michael Connelly a few months back – and try and read everything he’s written.

But then again, there are so many good books in the world…

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an education from James Lee Burke

Posted on December 7, 2010 by pagesofjulia

While I am neither the most or the least well- and widely-read person in the world, I do have a graduate degree and do a fair amount of reading; I have a fairly strong vocabulary. I can generally hold my own amongst educated folks. I’m pretty weak on religion, though, which is where most of my questions have come up in The Tin Roof Blowdown. Credit to Burke for making me look up a number of references – something I’m not afraid to do and occasionally relish doing; but it doesn’t happen every day, and very rarely when reading genre fiction!

Today I looked up the Garden of Gethsemane, for example. From page 3, in the intro to the novel and the horrors it offers: “But as I watched Jude grow into manhood, I had to relearn the old lesson that often the best people in our midst are perhaps destined to become sojourners in the Garden of Gethsemane. Ordinary men and women keep track of time in sequential fashion, by use of clocks and calendars. The residents of Gethsemane do not.” What is this garden? Apparently it’s the place where Jesus prayed to his father the night before his arrest and crucifixion. When delving into the symbolism and significance of locating certain characters in Gethsemane I’m a little stumped; it’s like the class on biblical references starts at a higher level than I’m prepared for; I didn’t take the prerequisite. It is suggested that Gethsemane is a symbol for Christ’s controlled and willing submission to his father’s will. It’s also compared and contrasted to that other biblical garden that even I have heard of, Eden. But I find that my internet research (from Wikipedia to the Encyclopedia Britannica and quite a few religious sites) doesn’t yield me a satisfactory understanding of Burke’s mention above.

I also had to look up the Great Whore of Babylon, which Burke writes is the city of New Orleans. This is another enigma to me and I didn’t do much better. Apparently the bible states that the whore offers us false gods and other alternatives to Jesus and what he represents; it’s a Christian allegory for evil and decadence and pleasurable sin. Yep, that sounds like New Orleans, which could be an alternative object of worship, too. But again I think I’m missing some nuances that would require much deeper bible study than I’m interested in right now. I don’t remember this much biblical allusion in Burke.

The next one was secular: John Ehrlichman, used as an example of why military honors do not an honorable man make. Ehrlichman is an easy icon to dissect: he was a Nixon aid and was involved in Watergate. These are symbols I’m familiar with.

Any bible scholars out there who care to explain the first two references to me, please do…

I always find it a refreshing challenge when a book makes me take notes and look things up later. Of course there’s a comfortable limit; running to an encyclopedia or dictionary for every page of text disrupts the flow. But in general I appreciate learning new things when they’re presented to me. It’s not a common experience in mystery novels though! Well played, Mr. Burke.

What have you had to look up lately in conjunction with your reading? Don’t be shy. None of us knows everything.

 

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finished Running the Books and more Burke

Posted on December 6, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Well it turns out that Running the Books gets a resounding endorsement. Author Avi Steinberg started a touch slow, but he grabbed me hard in the end. As our protagonist, Steinberg develops as a character and as a human being as the book unfolds, making some real personal discoveries. It’s a very human story, poignant and forgiving and realistically ambivalent in its eventual conclusions (or lack thereof) about the nature of prisons and criminals. I really enjoyed it.

(If you can’t tell in the image at left, his face is made up of lots of date stamps. Like due date stamps. It’s rather an interesting and clever piece of librarian-art if you care.)

I’m now well into another James Lee Burke, The Tin Roof Blowdown, that my mother gave me quite a while ago. That’s the Dave Robicheaux novel set in New Orleans and New Iberia in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and boy, you want to talk about something stark and visceral… putting aside for a moment the beauty that is a Dave Robicheaux novel, the realistic descriptions of Katrina’s destruction are gut-wrenching. The death and suffering, the necessary decisions about who lives, who dies, who a person chooses to save, the morals and ethics involved, the widespread racism, the political neglect, and the gritty reality of the blood and guts and sewage… it’s very real, and those moral dilemmas are evoked expertly. (I expect nothing less of Burke.) This one is grabbing me a lot harder than Cadillac Jukebox did recently. I really like the character of Alafair, Dave’s adopted daughter, too. (Burke has an adopted daughter named Alafair, who like her fictional namesake is also a writer; one wonders where fact meets fiction.) The chasing of the bad guys by Dave and and perennially self-destructive Clete Purcel is as finely wrought as ever, but for me, what’s special about this book is the rawness and realism of Katrina’s destruction. Whew.

I am, as usual, swamped in fine reading material, and don’t think Burke will take me too long, so stay tuned for one of the three books I recently named as coming next! 😉

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a few mysteries and more prison libraries

Posted on December 2, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Well vacation was outstanding and too short as usual. Hope everyone enjoyed. With a total of 22 or so hours on planes and 8 or so hours on trains… I did some reading!

I started with Unhinged, by Sarah Graves, which is “A Home Repair is Homicide Mystery” – one of those specialist mysteries like the quilting or recipe-filled ones, or one of the book-related ones I binged on recently. Pretty interesting as such, but my fear with books of this sort is always that they’ll be sort of simplistic, or rely on their novelty status. This one didn’t do half bad; I was amused and interested and the characters were cute. It wasn’t terribly serious or literary and was definitely a cozy. I might pick up another with the same casual interest for an airplane ride, but it was unremarkable. I’m no home-repair buff, but the related details were light and unobtrusive. Of course if you were a home-repair buff, I’m not sure you’d be satisfied with those aspects.

Next came another Lee Child, One Shot. I am decidedly a fan. I love the Jack Reacher character; those who told me he’d be a good character for me based on my love for Connelly’s Bosch were so right! The fast pace and strong sense of place are great; I stayed up late into the night to finish this one, and have recommended it to the Husband, who likes Connelly, couldn’t get into the more thoughtful pace of Raymond Chandler, and reads just a few pages at a time with long gaps in between, so fast pace is pretty important to him. He likes it so far. One Shot is set in small-town Indiana, which is not an environment I’m familiar with, but Child makes it seem plenty real. I just love the suspense and the loner aspects of Reacher; he has the Bosch characteristics of seeming intolerant of people trying to form relationships, while really being something of a softie inside, though he has trouble giving in to this impulse. Reacher is a little bit of a caricature Rambo-type, but I’m so into it that I don’t mind. I’ll definitely be pursuing this series – and good thing, since I’m all out of Connelly for now.

Finally I picked up the James Lee Burke I found to bring along, Cadillac Jukebox. Classic Burke with Robicheaux going it alone (despite being a member of law enforcement) in renegade cowboy fashion against massive injustice, including the racial and sexual kinds. Clete Purcel makes a few minor appearances, and New Iberia, New Orleans, and the surrounding environs are strongly evoked. Burke writes beautiful, poetic, prose with an appreciation for nature. These are great books. But, I’m noticing that the more time I spend with Connelly and Child, the slower Burke feels to me. His books aren’t slowly paced by any means, but they’re decidedly more leisurely than the other two. Robicheaux is also a bad-boy loner, also with soft spots (the wife in this book is Bootsie and daughter Alafair is present as well), but his self-destructive tendencies almost feel more pronounced to me. Where Reacher is fairly well outside society, completely outside law enforcement, has no ties, and is completely unstoppable in physical combat, Burke is more human and seems to have more to lose. Where Bosch has loyal compatriots in the force and a teflon-like mastery of department politics, Burke feels isolated and more vulnerable. Here in Cadillac Jukebox he gets wrongly accused of sexual assault and is threatened with the loss of his health insurance, both of which somehow feel unlikely with Bosch, who (in the course of the series) leaves and returns to the LAPD without significantly changing his relationship with crime investigation. At any rate, full marks for Burke as usual, but I’m starting to notice that he’s not the perfect counterpart to Connelly I once thought he was – that might be Child – while on the other hand, I just had a patron request Connelly and Burke in the same sentence, so clearly I’m not alone in my tastes!

I was without reading material for the flight home 😦 but I made it anyway, and am now back to Avi Steinberg’s Running the Books and ready to render a verdict on the questions I asked earlier. Not tiresome, but fascinating and engaging! It took long enough, but by halfway through, I’m hooked and anxious to get back into it. The separate story lines have converged, if minimally, but more so, they’re no longer anecdotes but continuing tales involving characters that I really care about. These are real people (literally, but they also feel real) and I mourn them when they die. (This is about prison; not everyone gets a happy ending; just past halfway, I’ve yet to find one happy ending, in fact.) Avi, the narrator, is emerging as a real person with some soulful stuff on the line, too; he gets involved with his inmate patrons and some of the larger issues as well. I enjoyed the tour he takes of past prison and jail buildings and his historical/social/philosophical/literary discussion of them (look for Sylvia Plath). What I called a clever and potentially pretentious writing style I have come to find engaging, contemplative, self-reflective, maybe even slightly poetic. I enjoy the part I’m reading now, about the difference between archivists and librarians, and which of them Avi will turn out to be – bearing in mind he didn’t have a library degree or any background when he took the job, so he’s learning as he goes. I’m giving this book an endorsement, in case you can’t tell.

Stay tuned… next I’m trying to decide between Still Missing by Chevy Stevens, finally starting Larsson’s series with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, or getting into the fat Sharon Kay Penman I’ve got looking at me on my desk, When Christs and His Saints Slept. What are YOU reading?

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briefly, paperbacks for the plane

Posted on November 24, 2010 by pagesofjulia

Hello folks. Happy Thanksgiving! I hope you spend it in a way you enjoy.

I’m still working on Running the Books during my lunches, and I’m still enjoying it and staying involved, but only marginally. I guess because of the anecdotal structure, I’m going to leave it here at the library when I take off for my 5-day weekend. This is unusual and generally a sign that a book failed me on some level; I should want to finish once I’ve started. So I’m still failing to be swayed one way or the other about the worth of it; but at this rate I will eventually finish it. Not all bad.

I’ve been working on reading for the plane, and have chosen two paperbacks by authors I know I like: One Shot by Lee Child, and Cadillac Jukebox by James Lee Burke. I might need to supplement these with some paperbacks I have at the house as well.

Enjoy your holiday! I’ll let you know how the reading came out at the other end!

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