Review 2683: Hex

~ whatmeread ~ 6 Comments

I actually read Hex for Novellas in November but somehow forgot to schedule it for November. Oh well.

It seems I have been reading the Darkland Tales series in order without even knowing it existed. I read the first, Rizzio by Denise Mina, because I usually read everything by her. Hex is the second.

Darkland Tales is a series of retellings of incidents in Scottish history, written by well-known Scottish writers. In this case, Hex is about the hanging of Geillis Duncan (not the Outlander Geillis Duncan) as a witch in 1591 Edinburgh.

The story begins with a witch from 2021 using a seance to visit Geillis in her cell the night before her execution. Iris, the real witch, is determined that Geillis will not spend her last night alone. Geillis is a young housemaid, a healer who has fallen afoul of her master’s plot to steal the inheritance of his wealthy sister-in-law.

This story interprets the witchcraft trials as misogyny, which they were, and so its two main characters express a great deal of the opposite. This work is symbolic and poetic, sometimes a little too abstract for me, but also angry. It’s powerful.

Related Posts

Luckenbooth

The Panopticon

Rizzio

Review 2682: The Woman in the Hall

~ whatmeread ~ 3 Comments

Molly and Jay Blake have led a straitened but normal childhood until Jay is hospitalized and needs care that Lorna Blake cannot afford. So, she has Molly dress in her shabby gym dress and takes her to beg at a rich person’s house. Molly is mortified. Lorna has an unusual relationship with her servant, Susan, and we understand from a conversation that this is not the first time Lorna has done this.

Jay recovers and life returns to normal. However, periodically Lorna gets restless and begins approaching rich people, telling them outrageous stories and usually coming away with money. She is a professional con woman who uses the excuse of needing money for her daughters, when she is clearly excited by this life. In fact, in some way she makes herself believe her lies. For example, years after she lies about Jay wanting to play the violin, she says that Jay used to beg her for luxuries, including the violin. In fact, both girls are horrified by their mother’s behavior and seldom ask for anything.

Lorna has done things in the past that have made her enemies. Captain Alexander Muir-Leslie’s engagement to Sylvia, whom he adores, is broken when he tries to convince her that Lorna cheated her. So, he begins trying to track Lorna down. He travels to America because Lorna has told people that her husband, Neil Inglefield, deserted her and her daughters. But Neil Inglefield is her stepbrother, not her husband. In company with his friend, Shirley Dennison, whose romance with Neil’s brother Lorna broke up years ago, Neil sets out to find Lorna. Instead, he finds Molly.

The first part of the novel, dealing with the girl’s earlier lives, seemed to me to become a bit repetitive after a while, as Lorna pulls her cons and then turns her stories back on her children to justify herself. Later, with the introduction of Muir-Leslie, the novel begins to be more about the effects on other people’s lives of her lies. This change immediately made the novel more interesting, culminating in a grotesque betrayal of one of her daughters.

I’ve always been interested in novels about sociopaths, and Lorna is an early portrayal. Also, the words “child abuse” are never spoken, and perhaps in 1939 Lorna’s behavior wouldn’t be understood that way, but it is now. This novel is a compelling character study. There are characters to like in this novel, but Lorna isn’t one of them.

Related Posts

The Pink House

The Scapegoat

A Well Full of Leaves

Review 2681: A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth is a collection of short stories that I read for my Pulitzer Prize project. I sometimes have problems reading short stories, but I found most of these engrossing. Most of them were about scientific curiosity and the characters’ actual or potential legacy.

“Death of the Pugilist, or the Famous Battle of Jacob Burke & Blindman McGraw” is set during the early 19th century. It is about how a burly lad becomes a prize fighter. These were the days of no-holds-barred bare-knuckle fights.

Another historical story, “The Ecstasy of Alfred Russel Wallace,” is about an early collector of bug specimens who begins to draw conclusions similar to Darwin’s about the survival of the fittest. He writes to Darwin hoping for a scholarly exchange, but perhaps Darwin is worried about which of them thought of the theory first. This one has really beautiful prose.

“For the Union Dead” is a contemporary story about the narrator’s uncle, who became involved in Civil War re-enactments.

“The Second Doctor Service” is a letter to a medical journal from a 19th century man who begins having periods of blackouts and thinks another self is trying to take him over.

“The Miraculous Discovery of Psammetichus I” is based on a story by Herodotus. It’s a series of descriptions of experiments supposedly performed by a curious Pharoah, most of which involve having children raised by animals.

“On Growing Ferns and Other Plants in Glass Cases, in the Midst of the Smoke of London” is set in the 19th century during the height of the industrial revolution and major air pollution. A widow’s young son begins suffering from severe asthma, and the doctors fail to treat it successfully. She eventually gets a better idea.

“The Line Agent Pascal” is set in the 19th century South American jungle. Pascal is a telegraph operator who likes the isolation of his position but forms a sort of family with the other operators. There is one in particular whom he has never met but for whom he feels an affinity.

“On the Cause of Winds and Waves, &c” is a letter to her sister by a 19th century balloonist in France. Observing a strange phenomenon in the heavens, she is asked to report about it to the scientific Académie, but she doesn’t realize she has only been asked to be ridiculed.

“A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth” is a record by a man who has been incarcerated in an insane asylum but is probably OCD or on the spectrum instead of insane.

Most of these stories have some kind of uplifting ending. Maybe I enjoyed them so much because many of them felt like short historical novels. I liked them a lot.

Related Posts

North Woods

Not the End of the World

The Sidmouth Letters

Review 2680: Fenwomen

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

Fenwomen is the very first book printed by Virago, an ethnographic study of women living in a remote village in the English fens in the 1970s. By interviewing women of all ages and situations, Mary Chamberlain, now Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University, recorded memories of conditions for women as far back as the late 19th century.

The timing of this book isn’t a coincidence, because it came about along with a new movement toward women’s liberation when some colleges and universities were beginning to set up departments in women’s studies. In fact, I found the updated Introduction, written in 2010, just as interesting as the book itself. It tells the story of the original reception of the book and how some journalists and critics so misrepresented its contents that it broke the trust Chamberlain had gained with the inhabitants of the village. I assume the men did this because they felt threatened by the idea of a feminist study.

The work explores women’s lives—their work, religion, entertainments, family life, and so on—in this isolated village, very primitive living conditions in the past, limited work opportunities, isolation from transportation, etc. It’s not a very long book, and my Full Circle Editions edition ends with about 20 beautiful photographs of the area and people by Justin Partyka.

Related Posts

Notes from a Small Island

Coming into the Country

Romney Marsh

Review 2679: Heaven, My Home

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

I’m really liking the Highway 59 series by Attica Locke. I think the mysteries are fully imagined, and black Texas Ranger Darren Mathews is interesting and appealing. I have a few problems with some ongoing issues, but I’ll talk about them later.

Nine-year-old Levi King has gone missing, and his father Bill King, a racist and murderer, has written from prison asking for help finding him. Darren’s boss needs him to help out, as there is hope that King can offer insight on other cases.

Levi lives with his mother Marnie, sister, and Aryan Brotherhood wannabe Gil Thomason, Marnie’s boyfriend, in Hopetown on the edge of Caddo Lake, a huge lake that used to be a major transportation route down to Louisiana. Hopetown is barely a crossroads, a trailer park full of racist trailer trash, and closer to the lake, the much nicer homes of the original black and indigenous settlers.

The reactions of some of the people involved to the disappearance are strange. Levi’s mother and sister are clearly upset, but no one else, including Levi’s wealthy grandmother, Rosemary King, seems to be worried. Darren hears that Levi had been harassing the black and Caddo indigenous population, and when he visits Leroy Page, he learns the old black man owns all of the property and hasn’t tossed out the trailer park residents because the lease with Marnie’s recently deceased father, Leroy’s friend, is not up for a year. Leroy isn’t very cooperative, but Darren is disturbed to learn from his best friend Greg, a federal agent, that Leroy Page’s harassment by Levi is being turned around as a motive for murder, especially because Leroy was the last to see Levi. In fact, the Feds want to show the new Trump administration that they are as ready to prosecute black people as white, so they are pushing hard even though there is no proof that Levi is dead.

Darren thinks there is something else going on here, but he has several personal problems in addition to hostility from the local authorities and the federal goals.

The only things I don’t like about this series are the ongoing plot that has Darren suppressing evidence to protect an old family friend and his drinking, which is such a cliché. He is on the wagon and repairing his marriage at the beginning of the novel, but things go south pretty fast (although his wife’s professional goals for him do not match his own, so I don’t prophecy success at that).

Related Posts

Bluebird, Bluebird

The Trees

Raylan

Review 2678: The Novel Life of Jane Austen: A Graphic Biography

~ whatmeread ~ 2 Comments

Although I’ve read more than one biography of Jane Austen, this graphic biography contained insights I hadn’t read before. That’s probably not surprising, since Janine Barchas is an internationally renowned Austen scholar.

Using information from letters and quotations from Austen’s novels, this graphic biography follows Austen from 1796 until her death. In brighter colors, it contains a few scenes from her novels as in Austen’s imagination and some “Easter eggs’ of scenes from movies. I caught a couple of obvious ones, but I’m sure there were more.

The illustrations are in a naïve, slightly ugly style, but the characters are clearly identifiable, which isn’t always the case in graphic books.

I found this work entertaining and informative. It contains a “glossary” that provides more information for the interested.

Related Posts

Jane Austen at Home

Jane Austen: A Life

Agatha: The Real Life of Agatha Christie

Review 2677: The Frozen People

~ whatmeread ~ 5 Comments

I really enjoyed Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series and have liked her Brighton and Harbinder Kauer books well enough, so I was interested in her new series. However, my interest dropped precipitously when on about page 3, I found it involved time travel.

Ali Dawson is a member of a cold case team dealing with top-secret experimental technology—time travel. She is preparing to travel back to 1850 London as part of an investigation requested by Isaac Templeton, a member of Parliament. He wants the team to try to clear the name of his ancestor, Cain Templeton, who was rumored to have murdered three women and belonged to a club the admission to which supposedly involved a dead body.

By coincidence, perhaps, Isaac is the boss of Ali’s son Finn.

Ali travels to 1850 in time to find Cain Templeton standing over the body of a dead woman in the rooming house he owns. He says he did not kill the girl but thinks an artist named Thomas Creek did. Ali is only supposed to be gone an hour, but when she returns to her pickup point, she isn’t picked up. She’s stuck in 1850.

Already I was having problems with this story. What kind of investigation is Ali supposed to conduct with a one-hour time limit? It’s a ridiculous idea.

With Finn having no word from Ali, he begins trying to find her. He discovers that Ali is on a mission originated by his boss and has an argument with him about it. The next day, Isaac is dead and Finn, who spent the evening drinking with Ali’s boss Geoff and the night passed out, is suspected of his murder. Ali returns from several days in 1850 to find him in trouble.

Besides the issue I mentioned, I had several more issues with this book by this time:

  • That the garbled explanation of time travel makes no sense
  • That Cain Templeton would invite Ali, a supposed respectable widow in 1850, to dine at his house alone
  • That Ali, supposedly tutored in Victorian habits and manners, would think it was okay to accept and assume his servants were her chaperones
  • That a winter day in 1850 London would have light skies instead of smoke-filled ones
  • That the British government would fund this project
  • That it would be thought acceptable to take a personal investigation on

The series is clearly set up to continue a plot line involving Thomas Creek and Cain Templeton. My disbelief having refused to suspend, I won’t be following it.

Related Posts

Bleeding Heart Yard

The Zig Zag Girl

The Crossing Places

WWW Wednesday!

~ whatmeread ~ 8 Comments

It’s the first Wednesday of the month, so it’s time for WWW Wednesday, an idea I borrowed from David Chazan, The Chocolate Lady, who borrowed it from someone else. For this feature, I report

  • What I am reading now
  • What I just finished reading
  • What I intend to read next

This is something you can participate in, too, if you want, by leaving comments about what you’ve been reading or plan to read.

What I am reading now

I am reading The Town House by Norah Lofts. It’s the first book in Lofts’ Suffolk Trilogy. It begins in the 14th century with a serf escaping serfdom, much like Cathedral of the Sea. I looked for a book by Lofts after finishing her book Lady Living Alone, which I really enjoyed.

What I just finished reading

I just finished reading Beggar’s Choice by Patricia Wentworth. Although I had difficulty getting started because it was so obvious that someone was trying to frame the oblivious main character, it turned out to be a pretty good read.

What I will read next

I guess I’m on a roll with classic novels, because the book I will probably read next is Death in Ambush by Susan Gilruth. I think I bought this book to read for the Christmas season and apparently forgot to do that!