Interesting
Books I've Recently Read or Re-read
Banville, John. The Untouchable. This is a spy novel with the quality of a literary masterpiece. Banville, an Irish writer, takes us into the life of a Cambridge scholar, Victor Maskell, who becomes a spy for the Russians prior to and during World War II. As an elderly man, Maskell is exposed--and humiliated--as a spy against the British, and he then tells his story in retrospect about his days among the cynics and hell-raisers of his university days. The dialogue is crisp, the scenes of London and Ireland vivid, and the reading easy, though it is leisurely paced.
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans. This series consists of several volumes, and it provides the reader with an engaging--often fascinating--social history of American culture from the seventeenth century through the twentieth century. For anyone interested in understanding the details about the daily lives, with all of their quirks, of early Americans and how such simple things as ice first became available to us as eaters of ice cream and such, Boorstin is a delight. His chapters are short. They are filled with anecdotes about unique personalities, and his writing is simple and direct. This series is a must for those of us interested in American culture.
Clark, Robert. In the Deep MidWinter. This old-fashioned story about a romantic relationship between a man and a woman is set in the 1950's. Through descriptive detail, Clark convinces of the setting, and he is particularly good with character development. A scene occurs with a doctor (one that I won't be too specific about) that still has my skin crawling. This is a fine story about a relationship that wanes after an important turn of plot.
Ellis, Joseph. American Sphinx. This is a Pulitzer-Prize winning study of the many and profound contradictions found in the character of Thomas Jefferson. Rather than being an adulatory biography, this book reveals the all-too-human side of Jefferson, a man we have too often thought of as a god, not a human being with the flaws that all of us possess.
Faulks, Sebastian. Charlotte Gray. The setting for this novel is World War II, in England and France. Faulks vividly evokes the war-torn 1940's. The central character--Charlotte Gray--is a Scot who has command of the French language because of having spent part of her childhood in France. Taking advantage of her fluency, the British intelligence service trains her and then drops her into Vichy France. As she works for the British, she also searches for her downed-pilot-lover Peter Gregory. In the process, she comes across memorable characters and tragic events in a world turned upside down by war. This is the second novel I've read of Sebastian Faulks, the first being Birdsong, a novel of graphic sexual passion and squalid tunnel warfare during World War I. This man has something to say about war, love, loyalty, and friendship.
Furst, Alan. The Kingdom of Shadows. This is a dark novel, set in the pre-World War II Europe. It has the plot of a spy story, but it is much richer in character and style. Much of the story takes place in Paris, then in eastern Europe, between which the main character travels back and forth, in those tense years of 1938 and 1939 when Hitler was manipulating world politicians to prepare for his takeover of the Sudetenland and for his Anschluss with Austria. If you enjoy the world of intrigue dramatized by Graham Greene or John Le Carre, then you may well like this novel. I do--very much.
Guterson, David. Snow Falling on Cedars. This novel is set in the Pacific Northwest prior to and following World War II. The story deals with the tensions that result when a Japanese immigrant is accused of murdering a white man. A subplot deals with the love affair between a young white man and young Japanese woman. In this beautifully written novel, Guterson makes us feel the presence of the land, of the sea, and of the weather as he explores the racial prejudices rampant during this volatile time.
Hardy, Thomas. The Return of the Native. Thomas Hardy's story of Clym Yeobright, who returns from Paris to his home in the rugged, yet bucolic Wessex, a fictional county in southwest England. There Clym meets and falls in love with the restless and rebellious Eustacia Vye, a woman who feels imprisoned by the English countryside and who longs for the cosmopolitan life of Paris. Over the staunch objections of his mother, Clym marries Eustacia; she wants him to return to Paris. The tensions rise as Clym is forced to choose between his mother and his wife--and Eustacia is forced to choose between the Wessex she hates and the Paris she dreams of.
--- Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Thomas Hardy's enthralling love story set in Wessex. Hardy follows the life Tess Durbeyfield, who as a beautiful but naive teenager becomes pregnant by Alec D'Urberville, a man she does not love. After the death of her child, Tess feels such shame about how she has soiled her life that she leaves home and vows never to marry. Hardy puts her to the test when, working as a dairy maid, she meets Angel Clare, a man above her class but who pledges his love to her, a love that is challenged when he discovers that she has borne a child out of wedlock. This is Thomas Hardy exploring the values of Victorian England--and writing at his best.
James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. I admit to being a fan of Henry James, and of the early novels, this one is his most aesthetic and delightful. Isabel Archer is a charming, vivacious young American who finds herself in Europe, not quite sure of how to handle the men in this old world, a setting that has more than its share of subtle complexity. Isabel is a fully developed Daisy Miller, the innocent American girl thrown into a world of Old World experience. To read this novel, however, you will have to have patience, a love of language, and an interest in character rather than plot.
---. Washington Square. This is an early Henry James novel that deals with the theme of the triangular relationship, involving a father, his eligible, but rather plain daughter, who is surprised and infatuated by a handsome man she believes she wants to marry. However, her father is convinced that the suitor is more interested in the daughter's money than he is in her heart. Tensions rise within the family, tensions exacerbated by an intrusive aunt's preference for the young man. As is typical with James, the characters come alive, the dialogue is witty, but the plot is leisurely paced. It is a good place to further your reading of Henry James (or even to begin it). The novel is accessible, charming, and entertaining.
McCullough,
David. John Adams.
Metalious,
Grace. Peyton Place. When this
novel first appeared in the 1950's, it created an outrage because of its
sexually explicit material. (I can remember finding a copy hidden
on top of my parents' china cupboard and leafing through the pages, ignorant
about, yet amazed by, what I was reading.) By today's standards, the language
and story are mild; however, this still remains an effective expose of
small-town life in a proper New England town, whose people are replete
with hypocrisy. The story and the novel's status as an icon of popular
culture in the mid 1950's are alone noteworthy and make this well worth
reading.
Perez-Reverte, Arturo. The Flanders Panel. This is a fascinating mystery that takes the form of an intellectual chess game. The premise focuses on a famous Renaissance painting of two men challenging each other at chess, while a deceptively demure woman, dressed in black, looks on. As the modern female character in the novel (a restorer of old paintings) discovers the history and intrigue behind these three characters--a murder of one of the players--she finds that her own life begins to parallel the lives of the subjects within the painting. This is a refreshing, enjoyable read, a mystery unlike the dozens of standard-fare books being written.
Schlink, Bernhard. The Reader. This novel begins as an erotic tale of a young boy's sexual relationship with a woman in her thirties. Michael, the protagonist, becomes obsessed with his mysterious lover, who asks him to read to her after their afternoon trysts. Following her surprising disappearance, Michael then sees her, years later, in the most unlikely of places, a meeting that forces him to reconcile the differences between the woman he once knew in his innocence with the person who now stands accused of heinous crimes. This is a brief novel, a quick read, but provocative in its thematic content.
Trollope, Joanna. The Choir. This novel formed the basis of the PBS dramatization of the same name. The story deals with the threat to the British tradition of having boys' choirs in residence at leading cathedrals throughout England. Of course, money is the issue, and art is the victim because the choirs are simply too expensive to maintain, and some in the community believe that they are elitist. The characters are well-drawn, the plot is engaging, and it's a good, easy read.
Wharton, Edith. The Age of Innocence. This is a fascinating novel, on which the recent film was based, of New York in the 1870's. The novel deals with the social pressures exerted on a young man engaged to marry the right woman for his background and class but who then falls obsessively in love with the wrong woman--his fiancee's cousin--a notorious countess in flight from an abusive European husband. Wharton is at her best in depicting not only the psychology of individuals but also the psychology of a "tribal" culture, quickly dying, that tries to hold onto its power over the individuals within it. I highly recommend this novel, for which Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize.
---. The Buccaneers. This is Edith Wharton's last novel about several young American women of wealth who are spurned by New York society because their money is new and therefore suspect. To "come out," they travel to England, where each of them becomes involved with young, titled men, who have very little money. Each in a way finds something in the other, the women finding respect and acceptance in the titles of the British artistocracy and the men finding financial backing for their crumbling palaces, which they cannot maintain. It's a good story of the new wealth of America meeting the waning royalty of England. Of course, it has all the wit, satire, and elegance of a Edith Wharton novel. Unfortunately, Wharton never lived to see it fnished, and it was finished for her. It's still worth your time, if you like the delicate world of Wharton.
More to come.