Nicholas Nickleby, by Charles Dickens

Each winter for the past several years I have gone back to the late 19th century to read one of the classic novels of that period–Dickens, Hardy, Trollope. Last year my book of choice was Bleak House (thanks, Charlotte, for the great suggestion). This year while browsing the Dickens shelves, Nicholas Nickleby caught my eye, and I am glad that it did!

Like all of Dickens, Nickleby is a sprawling story that shifts from London to Yorkshire to Portsmouth and back. Originally published in serial form, the story moves briskly for all its length, with short chapters alternating between the trials of the various characters. And what characters they are. How could you not be drawn in to a story populated by such folk as Wackford Squeers (a despicable schoolmaster), Lord Verisopht (a naive nobleman who redeems himself at the cost of his life), Charles and Ned Cheeryble (twin brothers involved in international trade who assist Nicholas), the miserable Smike, who finds a friend in Nicholas, and many others.

The story is common to Dickens in that it follows the ups and downs of a young man (in this case also those of his sister and mother) who is orphaned and left to fend for himself in an unforgiving society. Nicholas and his sister Kate can expect no help from their rich uncle Ralph, who seems to delight in making their lives as difficult as possible. Unexpected friends turn up and some apparent friends turn out to be less than they seem. What makes this story particularly appealing though is that Nicholas refuses to let himself be simply a victim of fate. Over the course of the story, Nicholas works as a teacher in a dreadful school for boys, as an actor in a traveling company, as a French tutor, and finally as a bookkeeper. At each step along the way he makes decisions that affect his life. He is no passive pawn.

There is a great deal of humor here. Nicholas’s time with the traveling players is delightful, and Dickens clearly had some experience with actors from his portrayal of the Crummles family, including “The Infant Phenomenon,” and their colleagues Miss Snevellicci, Mr. Folair, and Mr. Lenville. And as always, Dickens does not spare the tragic. The death of Smike from tuberculosis and that of Lord Verisopht in a duel defending the honor of Kate Nickleby both show Dickens at his most moving.

I think that what keeps me coming back to Dickens each year is the obvious affection he has for his characters and his great compassion. Oh, and the character’s names. I look forward to the next trip to Dickensian London.

Check the WRL catalog for Nicholas Nickleby

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Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, by T.S. Eliot

To continue last week’s leitmotif of books of cat poetry, I have gone back to what many people consider the original and the best. Rather than a series of poems from the cats’ own perspective, like I Could Pee on This, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats is a series of narratives and how-tos about cats. It was first published in 1939 and has been in print ever since. Our library owns several versions with black and white drawings. We also have a winsomely illustrated version with only three of the poems called Growltiger’s Last Stand.

Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical Cats is based on Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. I have never seen the musical and can’t quite picture how it would work as a musical, but I know it was hugely popular on the stage and is available at our library to borrow on DVD.

In some circles T.S. Eliot is most famous for his serious poetry like “The Waste Land” or “The Hollow Men.” Many students of English literature are familiar with these poems (willingly or not). And many of these same students of literature are surprised that the mind that produced the dark and cynical lines of his serious poems could also produce his light and lilting poems about cats.
Compare this gem from “The Waste Land”:

“I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.”

And from “The Hollow Men”:

Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats’ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

To the rollicking:

Macavity’s a mystery cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw –
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the flying sqad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime — Macavity’s not there!

And

Mungojerrie and Rumpelteazer were a very notorious couple of cats.
As knockabout clowns, quick-change comedians, tight-rope walkers and acrobats

T.S. Eliot’s skill and dexterity with language show through in both cases, lilting or dark. These are great read-aloud poems that roll off the tongue. Some of our copies of Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats are shelved in the children’s section, and the poems are certainly suitable for and loved by children, but I also recommend them for cat lovers and lovers of language.

Check the WRL catalog for Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

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The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

I was listening to Unbroken : a World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption in my car for my book club, and like many people I was shocked and horrified on many occasions.  I knew I needed to listen to The Secret Garden next to regain my equilibrium, even though it is a book that I have read at least six times.  I listened to the audiobook on CD.  The reader, Flo Gibson, wasn’t who I would have picked as she has an American accent and a kind of scratchy voice but I soon settled into the old story like sliding down into a warm bubble bath.  I had previously come to the conclusion that many of the children’s books that I enjoy reading over and over are “cozy,” so I was surprised to discover when I started working in this library that “cozy mystery” is an official designation.  It makes sense, as sometimes we all need a cozy and comforting read.

In The Secret Garden Mary Lennox is a neglected and spoiled child  who has spent her entire ten years being over-indulged by Indian servants.  After her parents die in an epidemic she is sent to another dysfunctional household, the home of her uncle at Misselthwaite Manor on the Yorkshire Moors.  There she meets the sturdy Martha and Dickon, representatives of a family of fourteen.  She makes friends with an elderly and crabby gardener, Ben Weatherstaff, through her interest in a friendly robin.  There are also also mysterious noises and howlings down the corridors of the huge house.  And of course, she discovers a hidden and secret garden.

In this story, the Yorkshire Moors themselves, as well as the Secret Garden, are characters just as much as the people.  As the season changes from winter to spring and on into summer, Mary changes, the garden and the Moors change, and so too does everyone at Misselthwaite Manor.

This book was first published in 1911 and what I find intriguing 100 years later is the psychology of Mary and other characters.  Despite Dickon and Martha’s material poverty they are well loved and looked after and it shows in their steady, kind ways.  Mary, on the other hand, starts the book emotionally impoverished but gains a purpose and learns to love and live under the influence of attention.  The book is also full of gentle humor, especially in the character of Ben Weatherstaff.

One aspect of The Secret Garden that I missed as a child and can see as an adult is the Christian symbolism, for example, when they recite the Doxology while sitting in a circle with a fox and a lamb.  Other aspects are less overtly Christian as when  the children call the life force that helps them to heal “Magic.”  The Magic makes the Moors and garden change for spring, and when the children and other characters allow it, the Magic also changes them. Towards the end one previously stunted, but blossoming character announces,  ”Being alive is the Magic!”

When I was talking about cozy children’s books, a colleague at the library recommended an out-of-print book, The Golden Name Day by Jennie D. Lindquist.  It captures the joy of being a child, that many adults are yearning to regain.  “Oh, anything can happen in this world, just anything. That’s why life is so exciting,” says Nancy towards the end of that book.  Other out-of-print (and sometimes obscure) books in this category that I love include: World’s End series by Monica Dickens, Green Smoke by Rosemary Manning, The Blow and Grow Year by Margaret Potter and Longtime Passing by Hesba Brinsmead.

For those who have read The Secret Garden before, perhaps years ago as a child, I highly recommend a second look through the eyes of an adult.  For those who have never tried it, it is a deeply hopeful story about redemption through the natural world and redemption through love.

Check the WRL catalog for The Secret Garden in book form.

Check the WRL catalog for The Secret Garden on audiobook CD.

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The Lottery and Other Stories, by Shirley Jackson

The books featured so far in this week’s posts may make you feel a bit uneasy, but it is a sort of comfortable scariness that they offer. Today’s title is quite the opposite. Shirley Jackson is a master of the macabre, and her short story “The Lottery” is still disturbing many years after I read it (probably in 8th or 9th grade). Just thinking about the story sends shivers up my spine and leaves me feeling slightly queasy.

What makes Jackson’s work disturbing, but also compelling, is her ability to move swiftly and easily from a pleasant scene of domestic or community bliss to outright horror. Her work explores the dark heart that Jackson seems to feel lies at the center of our most cherished institutions—family, community, love. These are frightening stories, especially as they usually are peopled by folks not too different from you and me. The horror of the tales is sometimes leavened by a dark strand of humor, but not too much. These are fascinatingly grim explorations of the human psyche.

While “The Lottery” is the story that I find most chilling in this collection, and the one that created a stir when it was first published in the New Yorker in 1948, there are other stories equally unsettling. “The Demon Lover,” “The Witch,” and “Trial by Combat” all will leave you wondering what is really going on in the lives of the characters.

These are not stories I go back to often, but sometimes, when you are in the mood to be discomfited, Shirley Jackson is just the writer to do it.

Check the WRL catalog for The Lottery and Other Stories

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The Burning Court, by John Dickson Carr

I am, as my colleagues and friends know, an avid reader of mysteries, especially older books from the Golden Age of crime fiction. I also am fond of the eerie ghost stories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  I also am, of late, very involved with the library’s digital collections. All of these interests came together when I discovered in our ebook collection a crime novel by John Dickson Carr that has not only a fine mystery story, but also a pervading sense of the supernatural that creates a sense of unease throughout the tale.

Publishing executive Edward Stevens is on the train to his weekend cottage outside Philadelphia from the office in New York City when he begins looking over a new manuscript about infamous women criminals. He is disturbed to discover that one of them shares not only his wife’s name, but also apparently must be a distant relative, as he recognizes a piece of jewelry in the accompanying photo of the murderess. The sense that something is seriously wrong grows as Stevens is asked by a friend to look into the recent death of a relative that may or may not be murder. Suffice it to say that it is indeed murder, but there does not seem to be a body to be found in the coffin, and Stevens’s wife seems to hiding some dark secrets from her past. The ending and the epilogue only add to the unusual nature of the story.

Carr is a master of character, and all of his crime novels are worth looking into. But if you are seeking a story that will make you look around on a dark autumn night to make sure you are actually alone in the room, The Burning Court is a great one to try.

This one is only available as an ebook right now, so get out your iPad, NOOK, Kindle or other reader and settle in to enjoy an evening of mystery and chills.

Check the WRL catalog for The Burning Court

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100 One-Night Reads, by David C. Major and John S. Major

Really, it isn’t cheating to write about a book about books on a blog about books.  Especially about a book that helps readers find books about…just about anything.

One Hundred One-Night Reads, by brothers John and David Major, is a collaboration between two widely read and dedicated readers.  They came by it naturally, raised by a mother who sent them to books when they were bored.  Both followed their passions outside literature into notable careers – John as an expert on Asia and David as an expert on climate science and environmental management.  John also worked with Clifton Fadiman to update Fadiman’s New Lifetime Reading Plan.

The Majors stress that this is not a Harold Bloom/Great Books self-education plan, but an introduction to short books for people who complain that they have no time to read.  That approach allows them to delve into their personal reading experiences to promote both classic literary authors and writers that snootier critics deliberately overlook.  (See the excerpt of Stephen King’s scathing takedown of such critics in his National Book Award acceptance speech at the end of this blogpost.)

So, from E.F. Benson (Queen Lucia) to P.G. Wodehouse (Something Fresh) and from Chandler’s The Big Sleep to Charlotte’s Web, the Majors stroll with readers through relevant biographical details of the author, a short introduction to the plot, some sense of why they’ve included it, even suggestions about further reading.  It’s like having your own personal readers’ advisor with an encyclopedic knowledge of good books.

If I had one quarrel with the book, it’s that most of the ones I’ve looked at aren’t really “one-night reads” – unless you don’t have to do the dishes, put the kids to bed, and walk the dog.  Nonetheless, the stories they’ve selected pack a lot of punch in a few pages, and if the dedicated reader started at lunch and read through past bedtime (and ignored the kids, dishes, and dog), they’ll remember these stories and authors.  What else are you going to do – watch TV?

Check the WRL catalog for One Hundred One-Night Reads

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On Conan Doyle, or, The Whole Art of Storytelling, by Michael Dirda

How many of you mystery readers out there were drawn into the delights of crime fiction by reading classic mysteries from the pen of Arthur Conan Doyle? I first encountered Holmes in “The Adventure of the Red-Headed League” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Haunted Houseful, a collection of thrillers that was at my grandparent’s house. It was a short jump from that story to the two volume Complete Sherlock Holmes published by Doubleday with a red spine with a black title patch and black cloth-bound boards. First published in the 1930s and reprinted in various editions, this was on my parent’s shelves and is now on my own along with the superb and more recent New Annotated Sherlock Holmes (ed. Leslie S. Klinger). It is a common story, and one that award-winning book critic and Holmesian Michael Dirda recounts in his wonderful tribute to all things Sherlockian, On Conan Doyle.

Dirda’s book is both a memoir of the evolution of a mystery reader and an attempt to fill in the picture of Conan Doyle as a writer. While some readers know that Conan Doyle tried unsuccessfully to kill off Holmes fairly early in order to focus more on other writing, I suspect that many people will be as surprised as I was by the breadth of Conan Doyle’s literary output. Essays, science fiction, historical novels, and much more flowed from the pen of Sir Arthur. Much of his work seems dated now, but some of the pieces have aged well. If you enjoy historical fiction set in the 1500s, you should try The White Company. Some of my favorite pieces are the Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, which we have in audiobook form. Fans of George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman series will find the gallant, though vain, French brigadier  an interesting counterpoint to the bluff, bullying Flashy.

Dirda is a superb writer, and whether he is describing his own first encounter with Holmes (“The Hound of the Baskervilles”) or relating tales of the Baker Street Irregulars, of whom Dirda is an invested member, his clear, elegant prose draws you in to the story. It is a trait that Dirda shares with Conan Doyle; both excel at story-telling. That is why, in the end, Conan Doyle remains so popular today. The Holmes tales are great stories that still enchant readers, and these readers continue to enjoy Holmes and Watson. This affection is seen in the myriad contemporary writers who use Holmes and Watson as a jumping off point for their own tales, as well as in the joy that Michael Dirda evinces in his appreciation of Conan Doyle. Any mystery reader will find much to enjoy here. The game’s afoot.

Check the WRL catalog for On Conan Doyle

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The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber

The New York Review of Books is a superb journal, and I have been a long time subscriber.  I enjoy their extended book reviews and essays that explore art, politics, government, ethics, and many, many other topics.  The library has a subscription at the Williamsburg Library building on Scotland St.  if you want to take a look.  In addition to publishing the journal though, the NYRB also has been republishing some classic works of literature for both adults and children.  It is great to see these books back in print, and last time I was at a library conference I purchased two of my favorites.

The first purchase was The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber, who has long been one of my favorite writers.  Thurber made his name with his witty, though sometimes dark, short fiction and essays as well as with his wonderfully idiosyncratic drawings, many of which found their way into the New Yorker in the magazine’s early days. However, Thurber also wrote some wonderful books for younger readers.  Thurber’s  joy in language and absurd humor keep these books as fresh and interesting today as when they were first published.

The Thirteen Clocks is a fairy tale, with the standard characters–a fair princess who is enchanted by an evil duke, a handsome young prince in disguise who must complete an onerous task to win the princess’s hand, comical rustics, and a dread monster.  What makes this book special is the playfulness that Thurber brings to the story.  Only a master of English could move as easily and seamlessly as Thurber does from alliteration to metaphor to rhyme to metonymy in short fashion.  It is a pleasure to read this book aloud and to let the words roll off the tongue and into the ear.

Here is a sample, trying reading it out loud.

From the sky came the crying of flies, and the pilgrims leaped over a bleating sheep creeping knee-deep in a sleepy stream, in which swift and slippery snakes slid and slithered silkily, whispering sinful secrets.

So take a turn down the path that leads to the “gloomy castle on the lonely hill” where the cold Duke has frozen time and only true love can break the spell.

Check the WRL catalog for The Thirteen Clocks

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Rilla of Ingleside, by L.M. Montgomery

Yesterday I blogged on Anne of Green Gables, today I am looking at the eighth book in the series, Rilla of Ingleside. It was published in 1921, thirteen years after Anne of Green Gables in 1908. Some people say that L. M. Montgomery only wrote sequels to Anne of Green Gables because a contract with her publisher required it, and consequently the rest of the books aren’t as good. Perhaps none of the other books have the spark of  Anne of Green Gables, but I think they have a charm of their own as they cover Anne’s growing and grown years, her marriage, the birth and childhood of her children. In this library they are all shelved in the children’s section, but I have certainly enjoyed them and gained much from them as an adult.

Rilla of Ingleside has the distinction of being one of the saddest fiction books I have ever read. It is set during World War I as Anne has become middle-aged and discovers a few grey hairs. Her children are grown or nearly grown with her youngest, Rilla, just turning fifteen. Because the Anne of Green Gables series was first written over a hundred years ago it is also historical fiction with an authenticity that modern books set in the past can only hope to match. The characters travel by horse and buggy because that is the only possibility. Marilla and Anne wash and dry the dishes by hand and then “scald” the dish-towels because there are no automatic washing machines lurking behind the scenes. Most importantly for Rilla of Ingleside, L. M. Montgomery lived through the exact events she described and probably based much of the book on diaries she kept at the time. These details give the book an immediacy that some historical fiction lacks.  The women characters are busy with knitting socks, running Red Cross drives and rationing, while the men disappear off to war one by one, sometimes forever.

When we are looking back on the history of almost one hundred years ago, there seems an inevitability to it. Of course the Germans didn’t win WWI. Of course the war ran from 1914 to 1918 and of course the Americans entered the war in 1917. When L. M. Montgomery was a young mother in 1914 there was nothing inevitable about it. She was terrified that the Germans would win (what this would have meant for Canada is uncertain). The characters of Rilla of Ingleside wait with anticipation and often dread for the newspaper to arrive. One of the events recounted with horror is the Battle of Verdun in 1916. I had heard of this battle but was vague about the details. I looked  it up online – a luxury Montgomery couldn’t imagine when they had to wait three or four days for printed news. I tried to put myself in their place and tried to imagine the unimaginable–that a battle was raging that caused almost 700,000 battlefield deaths. Such a thing had never happened before. The young men fighting and dying at Verdun were born in 1900 or earlier. Today in 2012 they would almost certainly be dead, but their suffering and early deaths still matter. Rilla and her family were also convinced that the war had to mean something important.

A minor character Mr. Meredith says of the war, “I think it is the price humanity must pay for some blessing–some advance great enough to be worth the price–which we may not live to see but which our children’s children will inherit. ”  Now we are up to the children’s children’s children’s children, but I am not sure if we can claim that humanity has gained a great blessing from the slaughter of World War I. Rilla’s brother, Walter, challenges that ”We must make it impossible for such things to happen again while the world lasts.” This book was written before the slaughter of World War II, so sadly, I think that Walter would consider that we have not lived up to his challenge.

Check the WRL catalog for Rilla of Ingleside.

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Anne of Green Gables, by L.M. Montgomery

I am reviewing this book in honor of my grandmother who loved it. She died nineteen years ago, but had she lived she would have turned 100 this June. Anne of Green Gables is well-known, but I will try to convince you why it is worth another look for adults who may have been put off by the saccharine TV series and movies associated with the books.

My Grandmother gave me her Anne of Green Gables books shortly before she died and I have been dragging them around the world with me ever since (sadly, not to their great benefit). In these days of e-books I especially appreciate these books as objects.  When I hold one of her books in my hand, without even starting to read it, it tells me a lot. It is a well-worn hard cover, yellowed and spotted, with a cup ring on the front. The spine is starting to sag and the thick, soft pages are getting brittle. In the front is written, “Gwenyth, 31/10/38” and her address. This is the address that I loved to visit as a child and the book still faintly smells of her house. As an adult I know that in 1938 my grandmother had one small child and was mourning the loss of a stillborn son, the memory of whom brought tears to her eyes fifty years later. It was the tail end of the depression and the uncertainties and fears of World War II were looming. For my Grandmother money was not abundant so the book represented a precious and much-wanted prize possession.

The story is set around the turn of the last century and centers on Anne Shirley, an orphan who is mistakenly sent from her orphanage to work on a farm. Aging brother and sister Marilla and Matthew wanted a boy to help with the farm work, but they keep Anne anyway. After this inauspicious start they grow to become a family. Anne is a unique and independent soul, who accidentally dyes her hair green, gets her best friend drunk on raspberry cordial, but saves a neighbor’s baby who gets croup. When she is dared to walk the ridge pole of a roof, she feels she must because “My honor is at stake.” After the inevitable fall the girls have the following conversation:

” Anne are you killed?” shrieked Diana, throwing herself on her knees beside her friend. “Oh, Anne, dear Anne, speak just one word to me and tell me if you’re killed.”

To the immense relief of all the girls…Anne sat dizzily up and answered uncertainly:

“No, Diana, I am not killed, but I think I am rendered unconscious.”

“Where?” sobbed Carrie Sloane. “Oh, where, Anne?”

Anne is a literary character who feels real. She has felt like a friend to thousands, perhaps even millions of people, like my grandmother, who have loved her over the last hundred years. Anne of Green Gables is undoubtedly old-fashioned, but there are good reasons that it has stayed in print since it was first published in 1908. Also with good reason,  it has been made into over a dozen screen adaptations, starting with a silent movie in 1919 and including a Japanese Anime in 1979. Canada’s Prince Edward Island now has an Anne of Green Gables festival every July. To many of us Avonlea and the surrounding imaginary towns on Canada’s Prince Edward Island feel like our real home,  where we really belong.

So, if you read Anne of Green Gables a long time ago, try it again. Or if you have never tried it or have only met Anne Shirley through a TV series or movie, I urge you to check out one of our many copies and enjoy some soul-nourishing summer reading. You never know, you might make a new friend.

Tomorrow I will be blogging about the eighth book in the Anne of Green Gables series, Rilla of Ingleside.

Check the WRL catalog for Anne of Green Gables.

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Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

The poet delves, prying open the past.
Long-forgotten lines live again.
Beowulf breathes, beckoning new readers.
That Heaney is one good maker.

All right, writing the entire post in a pastiche of Anglo-Saxon might be a bit more than I can take on, but the exercise was a good one. Anglo-Saxon poetry is more about the stresses and alliteration than about metrical feet and rhyme. So for a reader used to the patterns of more contemporary verse, taking on “Beowulf” can be a bit daunting, even if you can read Anglo-Saxon. For those of us less gifted, Seamus Heaney’s translation provides a superb entry into this masterpiece.

In many ways, “Beowulf” is the root of fantasy fiction, especially of the sword-swinging, dragon-slaying variety. As J.R.R. Tolkien noted in his 1936 lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” too often scholars studying the poem set aside the more fantastic elements of the story focusing rather on those of a more historical nature. To do so, though, deprives the reader of the power of the story; as Tolkien said, “Beowulf is in fact so interesting as poetry, in places poetry so powerful, that any historical value it may possess must always be of secondary importance.” For readers of any fantasy fiction of the past 100 or so years the Beowulf story, with its blend of politics, magic, and fighting will have a familiar resonance.

So take some time this Spring to sit down with Seamus Heaney’s translation of “Beowulf.” Read it slowly, and let the roll and plunge of the language sweep over you and carry you across the sea to Hrothgar’s hall, where Grendel terrorizes the kingdom of the Danes, until there comes a mighty warrior to free the country from this nightmare.

Check the WRL catalog for Beowulf

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Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope

I hate books I can’t understand,” said Bell. “I like a book to be clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once.”  —The Small House at Allington

Anthony Trollope’s fictional heroine, Bell, likes just the sort of book that Trollope himself wrote, clear as running water. After his death, Trollope’s reputation was that of a writer of light fiction lacking in plot and literary style. Now the literary tide has turned, and he is praised as a master of realism. Whereas his great contemporary, Dickens, gives us a three-ring circus of grotesque and absurd characters in every chapter, Trollope writes of ordinary people who are neither all good nor all bad. They talk and gossip as ordinary people do—about their gardens, politics, who is engaged to whom—and their characters and feelings are subtly revealed in these everyday conversations.

Which brings me to Timothy West. I love reading Trollope in print, but I can understand why some people fault his prose as boring or flat. Not until I listened to his novels performed on audiobook by Timothy West did I fully appreciate the glory of Trollopean prose. The man was born to read Trollope, and Trollope was born to write novels to be read by Timothy West.

If you have not read Trollope before, I recommend starting with Barchester Towers, the second of Trollope’s six Barsetshire Novels, even though it alludes to events in the first book, The Warden. It is Trollope’s best-loved novel, and for good reason. The great question that touches all others in the story is, who will rule the diocese of Barchester: the vain but cowardly new bishop, Dr. Proudie, his terrifying wife, Mrs. Proudie, or his sanctimonious chaplain, Obadiah Slope? Entertaining events ensue. All of the many characters are guilty of human weakness or bad judgment—yet their failings and moral dilemmas are treated with humor and (for the most part) forgiveness.  West voices the characters perfectly. He is especially superb as the narrator, who is continually making witty asides to the reader.

Sadly, there is no real Barsetshire. Trollope is said to have taken his inspiration for the cathedral city of Barchester from the real Salisbury in Wiltshire, and his country locales from various places in England’s West Country. But though Barset exists only in the imagination, there is no more pleasant place in the world to spend a few quiet hours.

Check the WRL catalog for Barchester Towers on audiobook

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The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.”

Pity the Ancient Mariner for he must tell his story over and over to different people or he suffers a “woful agony”. In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous ballad poem the ancient Mariner is an old man who grabs a reluctant wedding guest and tells him the compelling narrative of being the only survivor of an ill-fated sailing ship journey when the rest of the crew died of thirst.

For lovers of horror and gothic themes this poem is truly creepy. It even has zombies.
“They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose,
Nor spake, nor moved their eyes;
It had been strange, even in a dream,
To have seen those dead men rise.”

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is like Shakespeare and The Bible in that bits of them keep popping up in everyday language, whether you realise where they come from or not. Do you have slimy things with legs in your kitchen? Then they crawled straight out of the Ancient Mariner. Have you ever had an albatross around your neck? That’s what happened to the poem’s narrator as a punishment for shooting the albatross and bringing a curse down on the entire ship. Was there ever water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink? That was the fate of the Ancient Mariner’s shipmates.

It is a grand adventure that some people feel was the start of the Romantic Movement in literature when it was first published in 1789. It talks about life, death, faith, friendship, and the supernatural. Its story, themes, and images have been used time and time again in other works of literature, art, and movies, in everything from Douglas Adam’s comic novel The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul to the heavy metal band Iron Maiden’s Powerslave.

If you have never read The Rime of the Ancient Mariner all the way through, try it and you may be surprised at how many phrases you recognise. If you had read it as a long-ago school assignment, revisit it and wait for the shivers down your spine.

The library owns several copies. In addition to several anthologies, we have annotated versions with copious background notes. My personal favorite is the stand-alone edition illustrated by Ed Young with haunting monochromatic charcoal and color pastel spreads. It is housed in the children’s section and older children can enjoy its creepiness but adults will also find that the illustrations add depth to the story.

Check the WRL catalog for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

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War Music, by Christopher Logue

“Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet.”

English poet Christopher Logue died last month, putting an end to the extremely gradual process by which he was retelling the Iliad in free verse. His obituary notes that, since he first started fiddling with Homer in 1959, this was “a literary endeavor noteworthy for lasting four times as long as the Trojan War itself.”

The bad news is that I’ll never get to read Logue’s take on Homer from beginning to end. The good news is that his existing work stands quite well as an Iliad in miniature. War Music hits all the highlights, from the opening confrontation of Achilles and Agamemnon, the original rock and hard place, to Trojan Hector’s off-screen but inevitable death. You get a little bit of single combat, cuckolded Menelaos versus Paris “with the curly-girly hair,” and you get a full-scale Greek-and-Trojan melee, with officers and grunts alike inflicting “high-reliability fast-forward pain.”

Aeneas’ axe
Enhanced the natural crackage of his skull,
And he quit being.

Logue, who famously knew no Greek, keeps to plain language and a rolling more-or-less iambic pentameter with a lot of forward momentum. Freely anachronistic, he incorporates WWII references and screenplay terms into something like a director’s cut of Homer’s epic poem. It hardly matters that his words are modern, when the tone and the themes are age-old: what are we fighting for, is it worth it, and will this nine, no, ten-year war ever end?

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Tehanu, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Here’s a poignant fantasy novel that has appeal for readers outside the fantasy genre. Tehanu is the fourth of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea books, following The Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, and The Farthest Shore. While the series is excellent, you don’t really need to have read it to appreciate Tehanu, which reads like a kind of extended epilogue. If J.R.R. Tolkien had taken an entire book to describe the minor-key adventures of Frodo and Sam after they returned from their big adventure to destroy the ring, that would have been an equivalent book.

That’s the question at the heart of Tehanu: what do you do after the big adventures are over, after the magic is gone? How do you spend the rest of your life? The book is told from the point of view of Tenar. Those who know the series will remember her as the priestess girl in The Tombs of Atuan. After her adventures with the Wizard Sparrowhawk (also known as Ged), she retired to a quiet life married to a country farmer. As Tehanu begins, that farmer has died, and after setting his affairs in order, Tenar travels to visit Ogion. He was Ged and Tenar’s mentor, but now the great magician is old and ailing and won’t live much longer. Tenar travels to see him partly to pay final respects and partly to get his advice.

Tenar has taken over care of Therru, a girl badly scarred after her parents and others abused her and then tried to hide the evidence by burning her in a fire. Therru is permanently disfigured and only finds the courage to speak again under Tenar’s gentle care. Tenar hopes Ogeon can help her find a way to give this damaged little creature a decent life in a world that views her with horror and superstition.

As the book progresses, Ged returns to Tenar, but is without powers. Tenar’s livelihood and self are threatened, and in particular, Therru’s father returns with more threats for the girl and her caretaker. Tenar must find a way to keep all three of them safe while carving out a way of life appropriate to their changed circumstances. How do the powerless get by in a world full of greater powers? In particular, what do women and children do in a world dominated by men? Those questions at the center of Tehanu should appeal to readers who wouldn’t normally choose fantasy. A more mature Le Guin regretted that she had focused magical power on only the men in Earthsea, but she found a way to make that omission work to her advantage in this later visit to the series. Le Guin has always used fantastic settings to explore how we should behave in our real world, and nowhere more than in this book, which came fairly late in her long (and still active) career. It’s a suspenseful story, full of bittersweet beauty and the succor of truth, well worth your time over twenty years after its original publication.

You’ll find the book in the Young Adult section, following the example of the rest of the series, but its themes may appeal most to those with a little more maturity.

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The Murder of My Aunt, by Richard Hull

Since this is a mystery story, I must be somewhat circumspect in my description, lest this review provide too much information.  I apologize in advance.

The Murder of My Aunt, though not widely known in this degraded age, is considered a classic murder mystery. When published in 1935, it overturned every convention of the genre, not least starting with the audience knowing who the murderer is and being forced to read on to find out if he will be captured and if justice will be restored to the world.

Richard Hull’s character Edward Powell is an aristocratic young man stuck in the wilds of Wales where he lives with an aunt, whom he not-so-secretly loathes. She, despite her substantial fortune (which includes a bequest from Edward’s grandmother), will not bankroll Edward’s relocation to Europe, where he can seriously continue his study of French literature. Isolated from any form of intellectual stimulation, his only outlets are his diary (which we are reading), his French novels, and his pampered Pekingese.

Denied his birthright, Edward resolves to take matters into his own hands. He will kill his aunt, sell the farm on which they live, take his legacy, and begin his world travels. Murder is hard for a first-timer, though. How does one arrange an accident that will prove fatal for a tough old bird? Can it be plausible enough to satisfy the nearby villagers? Once embarked on, how does one maintain one’s nerves and see the feat through? Edward meticulously records his various attempts and the frustrating ways in which they fail, until the question becomes, “How will he succeed?”

He explores a number of methods by studying their advantages and disadvantages, until he decides to use his aunt’s car as the vehicle of her demise. Unfortunately, he is an intellectual, and his efforts require a more mechanical bent, which he attempts to acquire through subtle questioning of the village mechanic. With the information he assembles, Edward sets his plot in motion.

As the story progresses, the reader begins to find Edward’s accounts increasingly unreliable, even at odds with the events he’s part of. We even begin to wonder whether he’s capable of carrying off the murder of his aunt. Hull successfully misdirects us by playing up comic elements, but at its heart the story is filled with a deadly intent which carries us right up to the last surprising page. And that surprise makes the whole story well worth reading. Looking for a light mystery that offers both a quick read and a clever premise?  This is well worth your time.

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The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara

As the anniversary of the date South Carolina fired on Fort Sumter, April 12 marked the sesquicentennial of the start of the Civil War. In Virginia, where many of the best-known generals served, and where many of the highest profile battles were fought, it’s a pretty big deal. And around here, where so many firsts took place, we are gearing up for a sequence of programs to revisit our role in the War. Whether ordinary people will sustain interest across the next four years to continue learning about the bloodiest affair in US history remains to be seen, but certainly several battles will be highlighted. One of them is Gettysburg, and one of the best accounts of that pivotal battle is found in Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels.

General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, is tired, misses Stonewall Jackson (killed only two months before), and is stuck in a battle he doesn’t want with wayward generals he cannot control. Unable to manage events to his satisfaction, he finally gambles on a disastrous attack that breaks on the Union defenses and achieves nothing.

General James Longstreet, known as “Old Pete,” is Lee’s most trusted officer. Longstreet and Lee disagree on a major point—Lee favors bringing the fight to the enemy through the maneuvering that Jackson performed so well. Longstreet has learned from the battles of the past two years that armies dug into strong defenses can inflict horrible damage on attackers. But Lee orders him to attack, and Longstreet reluctantly does his duty.

The final principal character is a professor of rhetoric from Bowdoin College in Maine—Joshua Chamberlain. Self-taught in the “art” of war, he has risen to command the 20th Maine Regiment, and on the second day of battle finds himself defending two small hills at the very end of the Union line. If he fails, the Federal army will not be able to hold position and will almost certainly suffer defeat. Chamberlain is determined not to fail and must hold his command together in the face of superior numbers and intense attacks.

Shaara’s prose is simple and clear, making us privy to both the conversations and the musings of each character—including memories and regrets that are not found in official histories. Simple maps accompany the text and illustrate the movements of each army without overwhelming or interrupting the story’s flow. That also makes it a good read for young adults who need or want to read historical fiction set during the Civil War.

As fiction, The Killer Angels does not pretend to cover every aspect of the battle, nor does it present itself as history.  But Shaara does penetrate right to the heart of the loneliness of command at every rank, from the general who orders tens of thousands down to the colonel who commands hundreds in fierce fighting, and does it in an unforgettable setting.

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The Odyssey, A Graphic Novel by Gareth Hinds

John Livecchi of Circulation Services shares this review:

Reading Homer’s Odyssey is something I do once or twice a year. I’m lucky enough to teach Homer’s classic tale for the Christopher Wren Association every fall, and I confess that re-reading it so frequently is a pleasure. Few stories engage my imagination at such depth and fewer still hold up under such close scrutiny.

Actually, the “Homer bug” bit me early. This will date me, but when I was 10 and 11, I got fifty cents as a weekly allowance. Ten cents of that almost always went for the latest “Superman,” but one week a cover from a new series called “Classics Illustrated” caught my eye. It pictured a monster with a single eye standing on a mountain hurling huge boulders at a ship in the harbor. A man on that ship faced the monster fearlessly, shaking his fist in righteous rage. Even though the new series had a steeper fifteen cents cost (5 cents was a whole Hershey bar!), I just had to have it. It didn’t disappoint. More than fifty years later, I must confess that Homer’s Odyssey is still better than chocolate itself.

Over the years I re-visited Homer in several college classes, but an early teaching assignment brought me a Homeric question I never expected. How could I communicate my enthusiasm to students convinced that if Homer is that old, he must be dull?  I wish I had had this Gareth Hinds version as part of my arsenal. It’s pure magic.

Hinds’s work has a pronounced cinematic quality. Not only does he give you a faithful retelling of Homer’s story by adhering to its structure, the illustrations often give the exact image we find in Homer’s text as a wordless illustration of the plot. There are many examples, but my favorite occurs at the end of Book 2 (don’t let the word scare you off, it’s the term “chapter” has in epic poetry), when Telemachos is about to set sail for news of his father. His parting from Mentor, the secret disclosed to the nurse Eurykleia, Athena disguised as Mentor assembling the crew, and launching the great boat are all told perfectly without one word!

This isn’t to say Hinds doesn’t value language. It is clear in following his work that he has a keen familiarity with the best translations available in English, because so many of the lines we hear the characters speak echo Lattimore, Fitzgerald, and Fagles. When he does so, we know we are at a critical point in the plot, and only Homer’s own cadence (albeit in translation) will do. In other sections, he gives the language wider latitude, though always he remains faithful to the stately tone the epic form demands.

One great pleasure in reading this graphic form is seeing firsthand the interaction between gods and men. In Homer, there are often subtle ways to interpret the actions of gods on mortals. Sometimes we know with certainty that the gods really acted; at other times the resulting action could have had another cause. For example, does Odysseus come up with a great strategy and then attribute his action to the goddess of wisdom, or is Athena telling him what to do? The graphic novel leaves no ambiguity for interpretation. We see Athena fly down from heaven to assume the shape of Mentes, holding a torch aloft to light the armory for Odysseus and his son and standing with them in battle against the suitors. We see and hear the counsel of gods deciding if Odysseus should return and how. We see Poseidon stalking through the sea intent on delaying Odysseus one more time. These visual elements underscore the important balance Homer himself uses in showing the interaction of the “deathless ones” with mere mortals.

Many of the Odyssey’s literary puzzles are present too. One of my favorites is Penelope’s questioning of the “stranger” in Book 19. We know the stranger is Odysseus in disguise, but Penelope is in the dark. He claims to have met Odysseus, but Penelope wants details—what was he wearing? While the “stranger” describes the hero’s outfit, we see in the first frame a close-up of the very brooch Penelope fastened on her husband as he left for the hard years at Troy. This detail gives Penelope the opening she needs for showing this stranger both her complete loyalty and her cunning. She lays out in detail how she will test her suitors to see which one she shall choose, but, in doing so, she also reveals to the stranger an artful strategy—she will be able to bring a weapon into the room without arousing suspicion. This begs the question—does she suspect the stranger is Odysseus? What other reason would she have to reveal such a detail to a stranger in rags? Happily, neither Homer nor Hinds provides a definitive answer. Keeping the mystery in literary puzzles is what keeps the work alive.

Of all the books in the Odyssey, the most moving, for me, has always been Book 11, Odysseus’s visit to the underworld. Here he meets the ghosts of many of his warrior companions from Troy and learns that his long absence caused his mother to die of a broken heart. Before he can speak to these shades, he must first find the seer Tiresias, because he alone knows what Odysseus must do to appease Poseidon. In short, after saving his own house, he will face another, even longer journey. He must travel to a place so far away from the sea that the folks there won’t be able to recognize what an oar is. Here, he must sacrifice to Poseidon and finally peace, and death, will overtake him. Ironically, before the encounter with Tiresias and the other spirits, the shade of one of his shipmates who died and was left unburied begs him to give him burial and to place the oar he pulled in life as a fitting memorial on his mound. It’s this touching image that Hinds chooses as a proper ending for Odysseus’ adventures.

Hinds’s Odyssey is a brilliant reworking of a classic story.  It opens the book for first-time readers and gives veterans ample cause for reading pleasure too.  I recommend the book wholeheartedly.

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