The Big, Bad Book of Botany: The World’s Most Fascinating Flora by Michael Largo

Posted on August 19, 2014 by pagesofjulia

A quirky illustrated reference guide to the oddities of the plant world and botanical history.

largo

Broccoli as we know it today comes to us as a product of early bioengineering (by the Etruscans around 800 B.C.). Eve’s forbidden fruit may have been not an apple, but a fig. In Aztec culture, virgins were not permitted to look upon the lusty avocado fruit on the tree. The blister bush contains chemicals that interact with human skin and then combust upon exposure to sunlight. In Greek mythology, the artichoke was created when Zeus became angry with his mistress and transformed her into the thistle as punishment. Bamboo blooms only every 65 or 120 years, and when it does, rat populations explode. Nutmeg has mild hallucinogenic properties.

From Absinthe to Żubrówka (“widely known as the plant that makes the best Polish vodka”), The Big, Bad Book of Botany is not your standard reference book. It is far from comprehensive; Michael Largo (The Big, Bad Book of Beasts) instead hopes to entertain and educate by focusing on plants with odd characteristics and their history and roles in different cultures, including medicinal uses both current and bygone. Entries are alphabetically ordered (although some take a little hunting: oleander is filed under B for “Be-Still Tree”), and accompanied by some 150 illustrations by the artists of the Tropical Botanic Artists collective. Some entries include tips on gardening or on avoiding poisoning.

Simply written with an eye for humor and cocktail-party-friendly trivia, this botanical exploration can serve as a coffee-table piece or conversation starter. Just don’t mix up your yew with your yerba.

This review originally ran in the August 5, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 5 petioles.

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The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit by Graham Joyce

Posted on August 18, 2014 by pagesofjulia

An entrancing fantasy of a young man’s search for past and future in a single summer of change.

ghost in the electric blue suit

Graham Joyce (Some Kind of Fairy Tale) explores family legacies and the struggle for new beginnings in The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit.

In the sultry English summer of 1976, David Barwise does not return home from college to work for his stepfather as the family expects, but instead takes a job at a run-down holiday resort. The economy is headed downhill, and the resort industry is especially depressed, but David is attracted to the seaside town where his biological father disappeared mysteriously when his boy was a toddler.

His coworkers are a rowdy bunch in which “everyone has an angle.” Among them, David is particularly drawn to Colin, a dangerously angry brooder, and his wife, Terri, beautiful and silent. Over the course of the summer he will find himself pulled against his will into a political association he finds hard to break. He’ll find lust and, later, love. And eventually he’ll solve the mystery of his father’s fate and build a new relationship with his mother and stepfather.

The cast of colorful characters includes some neo-Nazis, a woman with a mysterious past, a solitary Italian tenor, an unlikely pair of fortune-telling sisters and a friendly young dancer. But Joyce’s most remarkable achievement is the tense atmosphere of this slim and haunting novel, simultaneously dreamy and chilling, setting David’s preference for Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix against the backdrop of Sinatra, Como and Nat King Cole performed in a dying theater.

This review originally ran as a *starred review* in the August 5, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 sand castles.

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Lisette’s List by Susan Vreeland

Posted on August 15, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Like Vreeland’s previous novels about women in history and art, Lisette’s List is heartfelt, loving and lovely, and asks difficult questions beautifully.

lisette

In Lisette’s List, Susan Vreeland (Clara and Mr. Tiffany; Girl in Hyacinth Blue) lovingly portrays Impressionist, Post-Impressionist and Modernist French art by way of a modest fictional character in Provence.

In 1937, newlyweds Andre and Lisette Roux move from France’s vibrant capital to the pastoral southeastern town of Roussillon to care for his grandfather, Pascal, who has written that he is dying. A passionate Parisian, Lisette is at first miserable in the backwater town, and infuriated when Pascal turns out to be healthier than he let on: he simply wanted their company, and to share what he remembers about the famous French artists he has known.

But Lisette is as fervent about art as she is about Paris, and Andre has trained in his grandfather’s trade of carving fine frames for fine paintings. She is captivated by Pascal’s collection of seven paintings: by Cézanne and Pissarro, and one possibly by Picasso. As a miner in the nearby ochre mines and later a pigment salesman, Pascal made the most of his access to these men, and now shares his recollections with the rapt Lisette–as well as his wisdom about life and love.

By the time Pascal eventually dies, Lisette has made a home of sorts in Roussillon; her love for the paintings further compels her to stay in Provence when Andre hides them (for fear of their destruction or seizure by German troops), not telling even Lisette where they’re stowed. Andre then enlists to fight for France, and Lisette is left alone, waiting for both the safe return of her husband and a reunion with the artwork.

Over the next decade and more, Lisette keeps a list of “Lisette’s Hungers and Vows.” Inspired by Pascal and his paintings, Andre’s love and the quiet strength and beauty of the Provençal surroundings, she pledges to “learn what makes a painting great,” “learn how to be self-sufficient” and “love without reservation.” She meets Marc Chagall and his wife, Bella, who are hiding in a nearby town. Upon receiving a gift painted specially for her by Chagall, she begins her own art collection and narrative. But war necessarily brings tragedy as well as new beginnings. Lisette will experience love and loss, joy and deep pain; learn animal husbandry as well as art history; and parse the moral questions raised under Vichy French rule, as the years go by. She finds new friends, undertakes small favors and large sacrifices, all in times of war and recovery, amid the paintings she loves so. Readers will likely rush through the lovely Lisette’s List, only to be bereaved when the final stroke is painted and the portrait is complete.

This review originally ran in the August 4, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 8 pieces of marzipan.

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Never Mind Miss Fox by Olivia Glazebrook

Posted on August 14, 2014 by pagesofjulia

An ominous tale of betrayal and past mistakes.

miss fox

Olivia Glazebrook (The Trouble with Alice) opens her second novel, Never Mind Miss Fox, by introducing her readers to Clive and Martha in their university days, at Oxford. Clive has fallen for Martha, and “realizing her worth–afraid to leave her unattended,” he’s brought her along on a family holiday to France. It is there, in a small seaside town where Clive’s family has been vacationing for decades, that the full cast of characters comes together: the new couple is joined by Clive’s younger brother, Tom, and his guest, a girl named Eliot Fox. Tom and Eliot are “just friends,” although everyone acknowledges that Tom worships her. The boys’ parents, Val and Peter, are secondary to this vivid foursome of young people, but their personalities are evoked in brief sketches.

The narrative then jumps forward in time. Clive and Martha are happily (or at least stably) married, and they adore their lonesome daughter, Eliza, who has just come home from school to announce that she has a new piano teacher, someone from her parents’ past. Eliza is happy to have found a friend in Miss Fox; but to Clive she represents something entirely different. Eliot brings with her a secret Clive has mostly forgotten after all these years, a dark secret unknown to Martha or Eliza or Tom, one that has the potential to tear apart his carefully constructed life. “Are you going to tell?” he asks her; Eliot replies, “I won’t have to.”

The chronology of Glazebrook’s haunting tale continues to alternate between the schooldays of the original four characters and their adult lives with the heartbreaking Eliza, whose world was just starting to make sense when it began to break apart. Readers will wonder at the nature of Clive’s transgression for much of the book, as the enigma is slowly revealed; then they’ll watch in horror as his family’s present hangs in the balance.

Never Mind Miss Fox is relatively brief–easily read in a single sitting–but powerful. Glazebrook draws strong characters: Martha, ambitious, and a reluctant mother; Clive, insecure and barely competent; Eliza, an affectingly awkward, intelligent child; and of course Miss Fox, mysterious, damaged, whose motives remain obscure. As the entangled players rush toward a conclusion that will change each of their lives in profound ways, the distressed marriage and mood of sinister suspense are apt to delight fans of Patricia Highsmith and all that is darkly engrossing.

This review originally ran in the July 31, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade. To subscribe, click here.

Rating: 7 cigarettes.

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Shirley by Susan Scarf Merrell

Posted on August 13, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Shirley Jackson is brought back to life in a quietly disturbing tale worthy of its subject.

shirley

Author Shirley Jackson (“The Lottery”; The Haunting of Hill House; We Have Always Lived in the Castle) casts a long and chilling shadow. The psychological thriller Shirley, from Susan Scarf Merrell (A Member of the Family), follows in its namesake’s tradition.

Jackson and her husband, literary critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, lived in small-town Vermont while she wrote and he taught at Bennington College in the 1960s. In this book, Fred and Rose Nemser, Merrell’s inventions, are newlyweds and move into the Hyman-Jackson home when Fred becomes a graduate student and teaching assistant. Rose, our 19-year-old narrator, is pregnant, recently rescued from a childhood of poverty and family dysfunction by her new husband; she is staggered by Shirley’s big house, big family and art. Stan takes Fred under his wing, tutoring him in both their profession and in marriage. Shirley’s mentorship of the malleable Rose is more complex.

Rose wants to write about Shirley; she wants to replace Shirley’s children in their mother’s heart; she wants to be Shirley. In her devotion, she can’t help wondering about the phone calls that go unanswered every night, and the female student who went missing so many years ago (whom Shirley and Stan so emphatically did not know). Naturally, not all of Rose’s overtures are welcome.

An apt tribute to Shirley Jackson herself, Merrell’s novel recalls Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and Edgar Allan Poe. Jackson’s fans are the clear winners here; Shirley, Stan, Fred and Rose may not be so lucky.

This review originally ran in the July 29, 2014 issue of Shelf Awareness for Readers. To subscribe, click here, and you’ll receive two issues per week of book reviews and other bookish fun!

Rating: 6 letters.

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Teaser Tuesdays: We Make Beer: Inside the Spirit and Artistry of America’s Craft Brewers by Sean Lewis

Posted on August 12, 2014 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.

beer

I was all over this title, as you can imagine. (Husband would like to point out that “we” don’t make beer. He does. I am quality control.) Sure enough, it only took a few pages to find a few memorable and evocative lines to tease you with:

As the glass is set gently back on the table, the beer drinker’s tongue pokes out to get one more taste off the lips before they open to reveal a quick smile. The stresses of the day’s work are slowly washed away, with layers of lacing on the glass standing as tombstones memorializing each of the annoyances from the previous eight hours.

Anybody else ready to knock off for the day already?

This quotation comes from an uncorrected advance proof and is subject to change.

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did not finish: Wall, Watchtower and Pencil Stub: Writing During World War II by John R. Carpenter

Posted on August 11, 2014 by pagesofjulia

When is it fair to criticize a galley for its mistakes?

Full disclosure: I was sent a pre-publication galley copy of this book. The errors I am about to complain about may be corrected in the final published product. However, I am doubtful. This is a well-finished, glossy-covered galley, and my observation is that such copies rarely undergo massive revamps, which is what this one would need to satisfy my complaints. [Even when I have received unfinished copies, including typed manuscripts on loose pages, I’ve found far fewer errors than this.] I have found the odd typo in ARCs and galleys I’ve been sent, or the odd note clearly intended for someone in the editorial process (“need caption here” or “photo credit?”). What I see here looks to me like more of a consistent stylistic choice. Still, it’s only fair to point out that the final publication will be different from this one in some ways. I definitely like the concept, so I hope corrections are made… many of them.

pencil stubI read through the preamble, the preface, and chapter 1, which concludes on page 15, and I couldn’t take any more. I found distracting multiple uses of a comma to connect two independent clauses, as in:

The outcome is no longer in doubt, the names of the victors and defeated are well-known.

Correct grammar would demand either a semicolon or a conjunction to connect these two clauses, or alternatively, they could be two sentences entirely.

The outcome is no longer in doubt; the names of the victors and defeated are well-known.

The outcome is no longer in doubt, because the names of the victors and defeated are well-known.

The outcome is no longer in doubt. The names of the victors and defeated are well-known.

A few more:

Hillary was a pilot, in the first chapters of the book he presents himself as arrogant and immature.

Hillary did not survive the war – he died in January 1943 – but he was unequivocal, his whole act of writing and his book were an act of communication with his readers: a call to end delusions.

Again, I read 15 pages, and these are just a few examples I chose out of many.

Other usage oddities:

It could have ended entirely different.

(Differently, I’m sure he means…)

The realization by a civilian he could be treated as an insentient thing often came suddenly.

This is the only one that strikes me as possibly a simple mistake, the omission of a word that would have made the sentence flow easily and understandably, so the reader could pay attention to content and put away her red pen.

I feel like I read this concept somewhere, or maybe I made it up, but it seems a good rule of thumb to me that a galley should not be judged negatively on the basis of a few errors throughout, that one assumes will be corrected in final publication. However, at the point where those errors are prolific enough to be distracting, they must be addressed. After all, publishers send out galleys to promote the upcoming book, don’t they? It would seem to be very counter to that cause to send out a copy so full of errors that I can no longer pay attention to the purpose of the book. That was the case here, and I couldn’t continue.

For those interested in the quite attractive topic of “writing during WWII,” you might still want to check out the final version of this book. But maybe browse its pages first to see if this consistent misuse of commas is corrected. Or maybe you’re less sensitive than I am…

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from Orion: “Raptorous” by Brian Doyle

Posted on August 8, 2014 by pagesofjulia

The other day, Pops emailed me:

You MUST read this. It is a work of literary richness in a mere page, informative & inspiring, on a subject you will appreciate. I read it twice – I love his word-use here; would you blog about a single-page essay?

I would, Pops!

He added, “notice who & where he is.” From Orion,

Brian Doyle is the editor of the University of Portland’s Portland Magazine in Oregon. His most recent book is The Plover, from St. Martin’s Press.

And the article in question is here.

I certainly agree with the lovely words. How many times could you happily read “hawk-addled and owl-absorbed and falcon-haunted and eagle-maniacal”? (Many times.) Muscles on their muscles! I thought first about my Husband, who loves birds (and has rescued several in and around our backyard). I think Doyle is right that many of us are addled, absorbed, haunted and maniacal about, particularly, birds of prey; but beyond them, as well, I certainly hope.

I also think it’s interesting to consider the etymology of the words “rapture” and “raptor.” I had never given conscious thought to their link, although it’s obvious at a glance, isn’t it? I think of rapture as having a religious connotation; but there’s much more to it than that. Just a few links here. I had not considered the more sinister connection to rape.

Birds and rapture have a place in my own little bird-world, too. Our backyard has been very active with the birds this summer. Because we’re growing delicious fruits back there, we’ve seen more, and more diverse birds than every before. (The bird bath doesn’t hurt either in dry Houston summers.) We have had lots of grapes growing along the back fence: 10301452_10203853874376171_9205261055523974740_n
and lots of figs:
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and a mama with her babies in our young oak tree:
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(Of course none of these are birds of prey. I’m being generous in my interpretation of Doyle’s writing, which is clearly about birds of prey specifically. But I think we can appreciate them all… and our little bird farm is encircled by hawks…)

All of this was joined a few years ago by a lovely piece by my aunt Janet, the sculptor. Its title is Rapture, and it was displayed in her home in Austin:
rapture austin
before joining us here in Houston:
rapture houston
to become a part of our backyard landscape (full of birds, although none are pictured here):
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(There is a little dog hidden in there, Where’s-Waldo-style, if you look closely.)

Brian Doyle’s ‘raptorous’ writing is well appreciated this season. Thanks, Pops.

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The Swimmers by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Posted on August 7, 2014 by pagesofjulia

My enjoyment of So We Read On (teaser here; review to come) convinced me that I needed to read Fitzgerald’s short story The Swimmers, which Corrigan regularly refers to. So I did. I found it easily enough online.

When we meet him at the opening of this story, Henry Marston is working in a bank and living in France with his two children and his French wife. He could make more money back home in the States, but that’s not what’s important – until it is. A nasty event prompts him to move his family to the U.S., where he is wealthier; but a recurrence of the same unpleasantness spurs him to make changes a second time.

Between the two events he meets a young woman who teaches him to swim. This takes place on a French beach, and the young woman is American; this juxtaposition (symbolism, even, as swimming stands in for Americanism) persists, and it will be his newfound ability and love for swimming that will free him at the end of the story.

The most noticeable element of this story is national differences, epitomized in the final paragraph, which closes out a remarkable last page. Sweeping statements and symbolism are very much at work here, and the language is lovely. Perhaps I’m suggestible after just reading Corrigan’s book which compares The Swimmers so strongly to The Great Gatsby, but I definitely recognized Fitzgerald’s voice as I remember it from his most famous work. There are also some strong statements about class, money, and values, similarly familiar to the Fitzgerald fan. And reference to the lost generation (no capitals here). Finally, I swear I heard shades of Cheever, but surely that’s just the confoundingly similar title to Cheever’s well known story…

What can I say? It’s Fitzgerald. I recommend it. I’ll leave you with that final paragraph:

But when, in a moment, he left her he knew that she could never tell him – she or another. France was a land, England was a people, but America, having about it still that quality of the idea, was harder to utter – it was the graves at Shiloh and the tired, drawn, nervous faces of its great men, and the country boys dying in the Argonne for a phrase that was empty before their bodies withered. It was a willingness of the heart.

I’m willing.

Rating: 8 Southerners.

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hemingWay of the Day: on the menu

Posted on August 6, 2014 by pagesofjulia

My favorite bar has an every-Tuesday-night event called Imperial Andy’s Historical Cocktail Tuesday. Andy is my friendly British bartender. He finds a historical event coinciding with each Tuesday’s date, makes up four themed cocktails to go with it, and produces a one-off menu telling the story. I have long wanted to be a part of one. Many months ago I used the book my mother gave me (for Christmas?), A Reader’s Book of Days, to find a Hemingway event: July 8, which fell on a Tuesday in 2014, was the day (night) he was injured in WWI, which led to his meeting the nurse he fell in love with, who would jilt him, who would be the model for the novel A Farewell to Arms for which he is so well known. This event would also be a big part of his self-myth. I’ve had my short write-up of this historical event and its significance waiting since maybe January for July to come along so I could cue Andy to do a cocktail list for it. Obviously the possibilities are endless! Well, I ended up having an un-reschedule-able appointment on that Tuesday evening; I was pretty disappointed. But the week before, I dropped my piece of writing off with Andy anyway. He’s become a great friend. I said hey, if you use this, would you just save me a copy of the menu please? He said he would push the historical event back a week if I could make the following Tuesday! Which I could.

On Tuesday, July 15, I walked into the bar and he had his menu ready for me – but it stated the date of Hemingway’s injury as July 15! I said, you didn’t even acknowledge your rewriting of history! Won’t somebody call you on this?? He said, Julia, there’s only one customer I know who would call me on this, and I think I’m safe from that person tonight. Why? It’s YOU, Julia. Oh. Okay. (I’ve made a note to check every Tuesday’s historical event for accuracy from now on.)

I enjoyed the drinks. And while we talked over drinks, we somehow came around to the concept of the green man. I told him Kingsnorth’s story as I remembered it offhand from an article my father sent me some months back (Andy being logically at least a little interested as a historical cocktail man as well as a Brit), and I sent him the link to the article too. And then, just on a whim, I looked up the date of the Battle of Hastings: October 14, 1066. Guess what day of the week October 14 falls on this year. You got it. That will be another Imperial Andy’s Historical Cocktail Tuesday. Too bad that’s not the week my father was planning to be in town… maybe he can reschedule.

photo

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