Tag: 20th century

Review: Rose Under Fire

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Rose Under FireElizabeth Wein, Rose Under Fire

Rose Justice is an American pilot who has just come to England to help with the war effort. Though women aren’t allowed to fly planes in combat, she is able to get a job with the Women’s Air Transport Auxiliary ferrying planes back and forth within Allied territory. At first Rose sees her work as a grand adventure, a fascinating change from her sheltered upbringing. But her life is instantly, horribly changed when she is captured by the Germans in the middle of a routine flight from France to England. She is immediately arrested and transported to the women’s concentration camp at Ravensbrück. There Rose confronts the hideous realities of this war for the first time, including the brutal scientific experiments performed on a group of young women known as “rabbits.” But depsite the horrific treatment Rose endures, she forges close bonds with a small group of fellow prisoners and somehow manages to hold onto hope.

This companion novel to Code Name Verity is equally powerful and moving, although it struck me in a very different way. I loved CNV for its suspense, its elements of espionage, and its intense portrayal of friendship. This book is not as suspenseful; we know from the start of Rose’s narrative about Ravensbrück that she is remembering her experiences after she has escaped. It’s also not as personal (if that’s the word I want) because while Rose forms incredibly close bonds with her fellow prisoners, the emphasis is less on individual relationships and more on the experience of Ravensbrück as a whole. Neverthless, this book did strike me on a very deep personal level. It’s easy to become a little desensitized to the atrocities committed by the Nazis, simply because we’ve heard about them so many times, but this book certainly made them vivid for me. The most horrifying thing is that similar atrocities are still occurring in parts of the world today. So this is not an easy read, but I think it’s a very important one.

Review: Death at the President’s Lodging

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Death at the President's LodgingMichael Innes, Death at the President’s Lodging

This first installment of the Inspector Appleby series is a classic locked-room mystery set in the fictional St. Anthony’s college, where its president, Dr. Umpleby, has just been murdered. Because of the prominence of the victim, Inspector Appleby is summoned from Scotland Yard to assist the local police. He soon learns that the layout of the college would have made it impossible for someone without a key to access the scene of the crime. Therefore, suspicion centers around the other fellows of the college, most of whom either had a key or could easily obtain one. As Appleby begins his investigation, he notices strong tensions among these men and uncovers various professional rivalries. He also begins to realize that the case is cluttered with many side issues and diversions. But as he sifts the relevant facts from the distractions, Appleby eventually reaches a conclusion as bizarre as it is shocking.

I’ve now read two mysteries by Michael Innes, and what I’ve learned is that I love his solutions, but I’m not terribly fond of how he gets there! In most mysteries that I read, there’s not a lot of irrelevant information; every fact the detective discovers is a clue. In this book, on the other hand, much of what Appleby discovers isn’t relevant to the solution of the murder. This is certainly more realistic than, say, a Poirot mystery, but it made the reading experience more difficult for me. I also didn’t like the relative lack of character delineation. It’s been less than a month since I read this book, and already I couldn’t tell you the main suspects’ names! Nobody (including Appleby) has much personality, so the murder is more like a logic puzzle than a dramatic event involving actual human beings. All that said, I really did love the solution to this one, which got downright farcical in places! So overall, I’m glad I read this book, but I doubt I’ll get sucked into the rest of the series — which is probably a good thing!

Review: Borrower of the Night

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Borrower of the NightElizabeth Peters, Borrower of the Night

This novel introduces Vicky Bliss, a confident, no-nonsense art historian and professor at a small Midwestern university. She and her colleague/boyfriend Tony stumble across a clue to a lost work by Tilman Riemenschneider, a 16th-century German woodcarver. They decide to embark on a friendly competition to see who can discover the artifact first — a competition Vicky is determined to win. She sets off immediately for the supposed location of the artifact, Castle Drachenstein in Rothenburg, Germany. Unfortunately, Tony is hot on her trail, along with several other parties interested in recovering the lost masterwork. As Vicky and her competitors begin their search, they soon realize that something is amiss at Castle Drachenstein, and the root of the trouble lies in the distant past. Is the castle being haunted by the ghost of a former countess, or is there a less supernatural explanation for the danger Vicky finds herself in?

I’ve read and enjoyed the first few books in the Amelia Peabody series, so I was interested to try this series as well. Overall, I thought it was a fun read and a pretty decent mystery. The emphasis wasn’t so much on the “whodunit” aspect of things; rather, the novel focuses on the suspense and danger evoked by the gothic setting. In that respect, I was reminded a lot of Mary Stewart’s novels (which I also really enjoy), and the archaelogical aspect of the plot called to mind “Indiana Jones.” I also liked reading about Vicky, whose sassy comments and progressive (in the 1970s) views always seemed to stir up trouble. I didn’t always like or agree with her, but she was consistently amusing! Overall, I found this book a fun read and will definitely be picking up the sequels at some point.

Review: Letters from Skye

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Letters from SkyeJessica Brockmole, Letters from Skye

This epistolary novel tells two parallel love stories, each set against the backdrop of a world war. In 1912, Scottish poet Elspeth Dunn receives a fan letter from David Graham, an exuberant young American. Elspeth replies to the letter, and she and Davey soon strike up a regular correspondence. At first they discuss literature and their favorite books, but soon they’re exchanging ideas about everything under the sun, including their most secret dreams. Unsurprisingly, Elspeth and Davey fall in love, but their romance is fraught with complications. When America enters World War I, Davey enlists immediately as an ambulance driver on the battlefields of France. Additionally, Elspeth is already married, so her stolen moments with Davey are as fleeting as they are precious. Meanwhile, in 1940, Elspeth’s daughter Margaret — also involved in a wartime romance — stumbles upon one of Davey’s letters and decides to search for the secrets in her mother’s past.

In theory, I should love this book, since it combines a lot of my favorite things: epistolary novel, WWI and WWII setting, love stories, family secrets. But while I found it an entertaining read, my overall experience was somewhat disappointing. First of all, the story is really about Elspeth and Davey, so the parts about Margaret felt very cursory and not fleshed out at all. I would have liked to know a lot more about her reactions to her mother’s secret, as well as the details of her own romance. Also, the story itself seems very superficial, given the gravity of the WWI backdrop. Even though I enjoy light romances with happy endings, I felt like this book lacked emotional stakes. Elspeth and Davey are likeable characters, and their letters are often very charming, but I was never in any real doubt about the end result of their story. Maybe part of my problem is that this book seems like a copycat of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, only not nearly as good! Overall, this book is a nice, quick read, but it won’t stay with me the way Guernsey has.

Review: Broken April

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Broken AprilIsmail Kadare, Broken April (trans. from the Albanian)

In the remote mountains of Albania, communities live by the ancient rule of the Kanun, a code of conduct that governs every aspect of their lives. The most important part of the Kanun is the rules for blood feuding, which is an integral part of mountain life. Such feuds can endure for centuries and affect every aspect of the community. At the beginning of this novel, Gyorg is lying in wait to kill the man who killed his brother, in accordance with the dictates of the blood feud. But once he kills the man, his own life will be forfeit after a 30-day truce. Now living under a sentence of death, Gyorg travels throughout the countryside musing on the Kanun, fate, and his own impending death. Meanwhile, newlyweds Bessian and Diana have (unconventionally) decided to honeymoon in the wild Albanian mountains, to learn more about this harsh, rule-governed way of life. But while they start out as tourists, their exposure to the rules of the Kanun eventually changes them both in unexpected ways.

This is a very slow-paced, meditative novel that focuses entirely on the Kanun and the different characters’ responses to it. The visitors, especially Bessian, simultaneously romanticize the practice of blood feuding and regard it as a quaint, outdated custom. Gyorg, whose life is more directly affected, wishes he could somehow survive but views the Kanun as inevitable and unchangeable. I liked how Kadare shows the custom from these varying perspectives, so that the reader gets a fuller picture of what it actually means for the people involved. Something else I found particularly fascinating is that the novel is set between the two World Wars, when Albania was a monarchy, but Kadare wrote it in the 1970s, when the country was under Soviet control. So perhaps his exploration of the Kanun is indirectly a critical examination of a different set of harsh, all-encompassing laws. All in all, I found this book a very interesting window into a foreign (to me) culture, and I’d recommend it to people who find the premise interesting.

Review: Roseanna

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RoseannaMaj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Roseanna (trans. Lois Roth)

This book begins in the summer of 1965, when a dead body is dredged up from the bottom of a Swedish lake. The corpse is female and naked, with no clothing, jewelry, or personal effects of any kind. The police determine that she was raped and strangled to death, but they have absolutely no clue as to her identity, much less the murderer’s. Police inspector Martin Beck launches an investigation with the help of his colleagues; after weeks of diligent searching, they are able to identify the woman as Roseanna McGraw, an American woman who was touring Sweden by cruise. Slowly, Beck and the other policemen begin to piece together Roseanna’s final days, and with help from the American police, they are able to learn something about her character as well. Beck gradually begins to form an opinion about the personality of the murderer, and sifting through the scanty data gives him a specific suspect. But due to the lack of hard evidence in the case, Beck and his colleagues must set a daring, and dangerous, trap.

I’m a big fan of the mystery genre in general, but I tend to gravitate toward mysteries in which the reader is able to solve the crime right alongside the detective. This book is definitely not like that, but it offers a fascinating alternative perspective on what a mystery novel can be. The focus isn’t on the victim’s character or on a list of potential suspects who can be eliminated one by one; rather, it’s a very realistic portrayal of how police investigations actually work, with all the tedium and frustration and dead ends they entail. One detail I loved is how the case actually took the policemen months to solve, and how they were also working on other cases in the meantime. Interestingly, Beck’s personality is basically irrelevant, and we don’t learn much about him even though this is the first book in “his” series. Crime-solving is much more of a communal endeavor in this novel than it is in the (predominantly) British and American mysteries I’ve read — indicating a broader cultural difference, I suspect! Be that as it may, I enjoyed this book and would recommend it to mystery lovers, even though it was a departure from my normal reading experience.

Review: Transformations

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TransformationsAnne Sexton, Transformations

This book is a collection of poetry, and I don’t really know how to review it, or even whether “reviewing” is appropriate for something that is supposed to strike you in a fundamental, visceral way. The poems are all re-imaginings of fairy tales as told by the Brothers Grimm, and Sexton uses the old stories to shed light on modern themes and concerns. For example, here’s the end of “Cinderella”:

Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum case
never bothered by diapers or dust,
never arguing over the timing of an egg,
never telling the same story twice,
never getting a middle-aged spread,
their darling smiles pasted on for eternity.
Regular Bobbsey Twins.
That story.

The stories are all set in that quasi-medieval fairytale past, which is interestingly juxtaposed with some very modern language. When the witch in “Hansel and Gretel” is cooked in the oven, “Her blood began to boil up / like Coca-Cola.” When the prince in “Cinderella” tries the glass slipper on every maiden in the kingdom, the narrator observes, “The prince was getting tired. / He began to feel like a shoe salesman.”

All in all, this collection didn’t make a huge impact on me, but I would recommend it to people who like poetry and fairy tales. I’d definitely like to read more of Anne Sexton’s work!

Review: Miss Hargreaves

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Miss HargreavesFrank Baker, Miss Hargreaves

When Norman Huntley and his friend Henry are on holiday in Ireland, they decide on a whim to visit the exceedingly ugly church of the village of Lusk. As their tour guide rhapsodizes about the church’s history, he mentions one of its former clerics. Intending to make a joke at the tour guide’s expense, Norman pretends to have heard of this cleric from a (fictional) common acquaintance, Miss Constance Hargreaves. He immediately — with assistance from Henry, who plays along — invents an entire personality and history for Miss Hargreaves, and after a while, the two young men almost believe she is real. But nothing can prepare Norman for the shock of discovering that a woman calling herself Miss Hargreaves is coming to visit him, and she is completely identical to the made-up description he and Henry had concocted! Miss Hargreaves soon embarrasses Norman with her eccentricities, and he begins to wish he could get rid of her — but how can he do so? And if he is really responsible for her existence, should he?

When I first picked up this book, I expected it to be a light, fluffy comedic tale, similar to most of the other early-20th-century British fiction I’ve read. I mean, the synopsis almost sounds like something out of P.G. Wodehouse! But while this book does have its comic moments — like everything that comes out of Norman’s father’s mouth! — it’s actually much more serious than it sounds. Norman’s reaction to learning that he has (presumably) created another human being runs the gamut from shock to amusement to horror. He’s often quite cruel to Miss Hargreaves when she doesn’t show him the love and respect he feels are his due. In this sense, I think Baker was making a point about the dangers of playing God: Norman created Miss Hargreaves and is therefore in some sense responsible for her, but he is too proud and impatient and flawed to fulfill his responsbilities. Overall, this is an odd little book that raises some fairly serious philosophical questions. Recommended if the premise sounds interesting to you!

Review: The Girl Is Murder

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Girl Is Murder, TheKathryn Miller Haines, The Girl Is Murder

Fifteen-year-old Iris Anderson is having a hard time. About a year ago, her Pop returned from Pearl Harbor with a missing leg, which meant he was no longer able to do the active work required by his business as a private investigator. As a result, Pop and Iris have moved from their old affluent neighborhood to a poor area on the Lower East Side, and Iris has to go to public school instead of the elite private school she formerly attended. Hoping to get closer to her only surviving parent (her mother committed suicide shortly after Pop returned from the war), Iris tries to help Pop with his cases, but he forbids her from having anything to do with the PI business. When one of the boys at Iris’ new school goes missing, however, she can’t help but do a little sleuthing. Along the way, she makes a few friends at her new school, including the unpopular Pearl and the glamorous, fast-talking Suze; but as Iris navigates her way through various cliques and social minefields, how will she know whom she can really trust?

If you enjoy Haines’ Rosie Winter mysteries, you’ll feel right at home in the world of this novel, set in the fall of 1942. The book isn’t about World War II, yet the war permeates almost every aspect of Iris’ life, from the slang used by Suze and the other cool girls at school to the disturbing racisim and anti-Semitism espoused by some of the characters. (These attitudes are definitely not condoned by the book, however; they simply mirror the atttitudes of many Americans at that time.) I liked Iris as a protagonist; her problems are specific to her era yet also universal, as she struggles with her own identity, fitting in, and building a relationship with a distant parent. Her voice is occasionally too precocious for a 15-year-old, but I found that flaw forgivable since she’s so entertaining. As a mystery, the book is very weak; Iris doesn’t spend much time investigating anything, and she’s not even the one who solves the case! So I’d recommend this to someone looking for an interesting YA book about World War II, but it’s not a great read for a mystery fan.

Review: The World of Jeeves

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World of Jeeves, TheP.G. Wodehouse, The World of Jeeves

This book is an omnibus of short stories describing the adventures of Bertie Wooster, an amiable but dim aristocrat in early 20th-century England, and Jeeves, the consummate gentleman’s gentleman. Bertie is a friendly soul who just wants to be left alone to enjoy himself. Unfortunately, he has plenty of friends and relatives who are continually making demands on him, both financially and emotionally. His terrifying Aunt Agatha holds him in contempt, yet she is constantly trying to “improve” him and set him up with equally terrifying young females. His friend Bingo Little is always falling desperately in love with some girl or other, and for some reason he always approaches Bertie for help. Though Bertie is not overburdened with brains, he has a generous heart and usually wants to help. Good thing he has Jeeves, whose gravity and intelligence always manage to get Bertie and his friends out of whatever scrapes they’re in.

What can I say about Jeeves and Wooster that the entire world hasn’t said already? Wodehouse has a very specific style and brand of humor, and literally nobody does it better than he does. Bertie’s narrative voice is an utter joy to read, showcasing his own lack of intelligence but also satirizing the pretentious language of some popular fiction at the time. Strangely enough, his friends and family all think of him as the village idiot, but he’s probably smarter than most of his friends — definitely wiser than poor Bingo, for example! And the interplay between Bertie and Jeeves is wonderful; Jeeves always appears completely respectful and subservient, yet he dominates Bertie mercilessly (for his own good, of course!). I definitely recommend the story “Bertie Changes His Mind,” which is narrated by Jeeves and demonstrates how skillfully he is able to manipulate his employer. My one caveat is that you should pace yourself while reading this book, because the stories are all very similar and could become tedious after a while. But I loved it and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys British humor and wants a good belly laugh!