Twisty Mystery with Shades of Classics

Title: The Prisoner of Heaven

Author:  Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Publisher: Harper Perennial

ISBN: 978-0062206299

Pages: 304

Many years ago I read Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind based on a recommendation from a friend, and knowing that a lot of book clubs were reading it.  At first I struggled to get into the book, with some very long descriptive passages. But, I was eventually drawn into the idea of a Cemetery of a Forgotten books.  Since then, I’ve wondered what book I would select to be mine.  I don’t know yet.

When I was in New York, I found The Prisoner of Heaven in a used bookstore.  I wasn’t even looking for it. I was a little worried about reading the books out of order, considering there is another book between them – The Angel’s Game.  However, The Prisoner of Heaven promised that each book could stand alone, and the reader did not need to read them in order.  Fortunately, I took that advise and read The Prisoner of Heaven.

Daniel is all grown up with a wife and son.  He works with his widowed father at the bookstore, along side Fermin, who is soon to be married.  However, a creepy stranger enters the store and purchases a very expensive book and signs a scary, cryptic message for Fermin. Daniel begins to investigate and hears the full tale of Fermin’s life before the first book.  With shades of The Count of Monte Cristo, Fermin’s background returns to potentially ruin his marriage.  However, Daniel steps in to try and help investigate and free Fermin from his fear.  

I was entranced by the book – it had delightful language and an intriguing plot. I couldn’t put it down and anticipated picking it up when I had to put it down. Now I need to find the second one to see if it was just as good.

Some Kernels of Truth in Historical Fiction

Title: Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker: A Novel

Author:  Jennifer Chiaverini
Publisher: Dutton Adult
ISBN: 0525953612
Pages: 352

Abraham Lincoln tends to get all the attention.  He is an iconic leader of America during one of the most difficult eras our nation faced and is admired by many including Barack Obama who has said, "Lincoln is a president I turn to often. From time to time, I’ll walk over to the Lincoln Bedroom and reread the handwritten Gettysburg Address encased in glass, or reflect on the Emancipation Proclamation, which hangs in the Oval Office, or pull a volume of his writings from the library in search of lessons to draw."

However, like many other First Ladies, Lincoln's wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, garnered her own attention during his presidency, and frequently in negative terms.  Mirroring modern times, Mary Todd was criticized for remodeling the White House, extravagant shopping trips, and her choice of attire (foreshadowing the criticisms of  Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush).  Yet, there was another actor in this drama that has had little attention of the the years - Mrs. Lincoln's modiste or dressmaker,  Elizabeth Keckley.  Drawing on historical documents (Elizabeth's own memoir and Mary Todd's letters), Chiaverini attempts to re-create the domestic scene of the White House during Lincoln's presidency and the aftermath of his death.

Elizabeth Keckley was born into slavery, but purchased freedom for herself and her son.  Moving to Washington DC to set up a business as a free, black woman was not easy, but her talent earned her praise from the DC elite and she eventually sewed for many Congressman and Senators' wives.  This led her to an introduction to Mrs. Lincoln and a long-term commitment to the First Lady.  Being available to Mrs. Lincoln as both dressmaker and dresser, Elizabeth was in the White House for daily events and important functions.  Therefore Elizabeth became confidante and adviser to Mrs. Lincoln, and it is theorized, to President Lincoln himself. Outside of the White House, Elizabeth was active civically and concerned for the newly emancipated slaves with limited resources. Therefore she founded the Contraband Relief Association and spent much of her time volunteering and fund raising for the organization.   After Lincoln's assassination, Elizabeth followed Mrs. Lincoln to Chicago for awhile, and attempted to help Mrs. Lincoln through financial difficulties.  However,  when Elizabeth published her memoir, hoping to defend Mrs. Lincoln from very negative publicity, their relationship was broken.  Elizabeth herself endured criticism for "betraying" the confidence of a house worker and lost many clients. She become poor and moved frequently until she was offered a position at Wilberforce University as head of the Department of Sewing and Domestic Science Arts where she taught, according to the novel, until she had a stroke and returned to Washington DC to live out her life at National Home for Destitute Colored Women and Children, a benefactor of her own work through the Contraband Relief Association.

The Smithsonian wrote an article based on the play mounted about Elizabeth Keckley in spring 2013 entitled Mary T. and Lizzy K. which highlights a few dresses thought to be created by Elizabeth.

Although I have learned about the Civil War, this book sheds new light on aspects of the era that I had never thought about. Chiaverini highlights the daily life of living in a city caught between the North and the South, not only politically, but socially and physically.   DC was frequently under siege or the staging point for wounded soldiers throughout the war. Keckley herself is portrayed as nearly emotionless but heroically hardworking and determined.  As for the other main characters, Mrs. Lincoln is dramatic and moody whereas President Lincoln is thoughtful, stoic yet tormented by his daily decisions to send people into harm's way. 

Learning Something New

Title: Bobbed Hair and Bootleg Gin
Author:  Marion Meade
Paperback: 368 pages
Publisher: Mariner Books
ISBN-10: 0156030594

Much of the 21st century classic literature list in many high schools draw from the American writers of the 1920s - Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thurber.  But more neglected are the women writers of the time - Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber.  I stumbled on this audiobook through my library and am very glad that I did.  It has given me a new perspective of these writers and my image of the Roaring Twenties.

Each of these woman resisted the traditional image of what women could do and be during the early part of the 20th century. Each of them earned their own money as a writer and made a lot of their own choices in where they lived, who they lived with and what assignments to take.  Parker was married, but was most often without her husband.  Zelda, often known as the wife of Scott, was a writer in her own right (at times, earning more than Scott) and pursued professional dancing later in life to prove that she could do it.  St. Vincent, as a young woman, was dynamic and irresistible to many men.   She flitted from man to man until she settled, a bit with one who became not just her husband, but her manager, secretary and nurse.  Ferber, author of Showboat and Cimarron, wrote fiction, non-fiction, articles and was both a serious journalist and a playwright. 

Like the famous men of the era, these women spent the Roaring Twenties roaring.  alcohol was the foundation of most social engagements and binge drinking was more the norm than unusual.   The literary circle in New York was fairly small - meeting at the Algonquin Hotel and using the same publishers and editors - and the circle greatly influenced each other. Many writers of the time also lived for extended time in Europe, and especially Paris, where Hemingway's influence became more pronounced.

However, what most surprised me was the portrayal of the 1920s.  It was difficult to imagine the setting with model T Fords, grainy sepia pictures and short flapper dresses rather than the modern New York of crowded streets, high fashion and business, and constant travel.    At times the story reads like a Kardashian reality show - with affairs, drugs, abortions, attempted suicides, nervous breakdowns, and rivalries.   Although I know the 1920s was an era of massive change - socially, politically and economically - my image has often been more like ancient history, rather than modern.  This books made me re-adjust how I think about the time period and has led me to re-discover these writers. 

The style of the book is chronological - each chapter is a year and the narrative switches between each of the authors and highlights important events or incidents during the year.  Therefore the book
is written a bit more like sound bites, rather than an authoritative biography.  Marion Meade has also written a more detailed biography of Dorothy Parker and there are many other biographies of the other women. But, when a book spawns further investigation into its subjects, I think that is a sign of a good book. 

Family Secret, National Embarrassment

Title: Sarah's Key

Author:Tatiana de Rosnay

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (September 30, 2008)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312370849

 

I'm a sucker for historical fiction, and I'll blame/commend my dad for that. He was always interested in history and taught me to love it too. Like many other adolescents, I had my phase of reading through all the Holocaust books available for young adults - the ubiquitous Anne Frank, plus some fiction titles. I moved on to non-fiction adult titles, all in a quest to understand, like many others have asked, "How could it happen?"

 

Not long ago, I read and posted on "The Book Thief" which was clearly a fictional creation as the narrator was Death himself. In Sarah's Key, the narrator is a modern woman, Julia, trying to investigate a family secret and a French national embarrassment. Wrapped around the mystery is her disintegrating marriage to a French man and her re-emergence as an independent woman.  Spoiler alert - do not read if you don't want to know the plot.  There are some interesting surprises!

 

Julia, an American-born woman, inherits from her French husband's grandmother, an apartment in Paris. At the same time, as a journalist, Julia is assigned to report on a commemoration of the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup.  As the Nazis occupied France, they coerced the local population and police into rounding up and deporting the Jewish adult population to the concentration camps.  However, the children were left behind in horrible conditions.  It is a part of French history that many wish to forget, as Julia is reminded by several people.

 

Flashing back in time, Sarah locks her brother into a hiding place in their apartment to keep him from the round up.  Not knowing the true intention, Sarah assumes that she will be back for him.  However, she and her parents are confined to an arena, and then separated. Her parents are shipped off and she is confined with the other children.  She convinces another child to escape and they are taken in by a sympathetic older farming couple.   However, her friend, being ill is both seen by and betrayed by a doctor, leaving Sarah with the older couple, desperate to return to Paris and free her brother.  Disguising her as a relative, the couple takes Sarah to the apartment, to find the decomposed body of her brother in the locked cupboard.  A new family occupies the apartment - Julia's husband's family.

 

Through Julia's investigation, she follows the trail of Sarah from Paris, to the US, and then to Italy.  Her husband's family both dread and are relieved to have the family secret in the open.  As Julia gets deeper into the story of Sarah, her marriage begins to dissolve.  But, Julia re-discovers her own personality and passions.

 

The constant shift of time and narrator at times was distracting.  Just as I began to visualize the story, it shifted to a new place and time.  At first I found Julia a bit whiny, but over time I began to understand how she had become who she was.  However,  my greatest sympathies, of course, were with Sarah, who had survived the Holocaust, but could never get past the guilt of that survival. 

A Book about Stealing Tea!

Title: For All the Tea in China: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History

Author:  Sarah Rose

Date: 2011

Publisher: Penguin Books

ISBN:  0143118749

Tea and books - there is no better combination. Not even chocolate and peanut butter!  And this is a book about how tea got to be a British monopoly and the drink of choice for the British Empire.

Up until the first Opium War, the secrets of growing and processing tea was closely guarded by the Chinese Dynasties. But with the conquering of China in the war, many new trade cities were opened to the East India Company and paved the way for Scotsman Robert Fortune to engage in some industrial espionage and smuggle the tea plants and seeds of China into the fully conquered country of India and try to reproduce the conditions for tea growing and processing.  Not only did Fortune sneak into the interior of China twice to abscond with tea, he also had to figure a method of transporting thousands of plants and seeds across water and time without detriment.  Once in India, other gardeners took over the planting and tending the precious cargo and within a few decades, India became the main source of British tea.  This brief summary highlights none of the details included by the author that shows her in-depth research of Fortune’s journey and subterfuge.  

Much of the quotes from Fortune's time make me cringe with overt racism and discrimination against the conquered Chinese people.  Like most of the other conveniences of cheap modern life (such as sugar, cotton etc), the tea trade has been built on the subjugation of people and corporate greed.  However, the author highlights the enormity of the impact of Fortune’s theft and made me re-consider the origin of the drink I truly love.  Through out the book, I constantly remarked, like I do when watching How Its Made, “Hmmm… I never thought about how people came up with that idea.”  Modern tea plantations look idyllic and inviting, but the history is very complicated.

I wanted to ask her how the same thing could be so ugly and so glorious . . .

Title: The Book Thief

Author: Markus Zusak

Date: 2007

Pages: 576

Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf

ISBN: 978-0375842207

A book narrated by death – not a typical narrator. And death has a sense of humor and compassion for the book thief, Liesel who stole her first book at the grave-site of her brother. A handbook for grave diggers. When her mother sends her to a foster family, she meets a compatriot in her foster father, a painter and violinist. Her foster mother is rough and sharp tongued, but strong and smart. Liesel becomes frenemies with Rudy and is teased at school for being uneducated. With various traumas surfacing each night in her dreams, her foster father begins midnight reading lessons. Liesel learns the power of words and wielding word in WWII Germany as Hilter begins his campaign against Jewish people. Because of an old promise to her foster father, the family hides a Jewish man, Max, who also befriends Liesel and builds new stories with her. As Germany rises and falls, Liesel's childhood is filled with unique characters, the illicit pleasure of stealing forbidden books, and treading a fine line of secrecy and discovery. Being a book narrated by death, the body count is not unexpected but it is still difficult to comprehend. The author uses a very interesting tone and style throughout the book that at first was distracting but became comfortable over the first few chapters. It was originally intended as a young adult book, yet because of the movie released in 2013, the book has been taken up by adult reading groups.

Here is some background and discussion questions from One Book, One Chicago 2012

Other discussion questions from LitLovers

Historical Fiction - not Biography

Title: The Paris Wife

Author: Paula McLain

Pages: 320

Publisher: Ballantine Books

ISBN: 0345521315

This is clearly a book club type book – written to generate discussion between women about the value of marriage, the importance of trust and respect in a relationship, and when to call it quits. 

I struggled at first to connect with the main character, Hadley Richardson, who became Ernest Hemingway's first wife, known as the Paris wife because that is where they lived for most of their marriage. This is not a biography of Hadley, but rather it is classified as a historical fiction. The author researched Hadley's life, read the letters between Hadley and Hemingway, and then imagined what their lives together might have been like. Hadley is portrayed as mousy, insecure and struggling to fine her own purpose in life. She is totally dedicated to Hemingway's career, but doesn't feel like she fits into his circle of friends. After losing Hemingway's packet of written stories, the bond between them is broken, as Hemingway no longer trusts Hadley, and the rest of the book is the slow moving train wreck of their marriage, as Hemingway has an affair with a mutual friend, who eventually becomes his second wife. 

 I guess people speculate about Hemingway's true feelings and regret about Hadley, because his last story before he died was in tribute to her. The story also explores the difficulties Hemingway had as revolutionary writer.There is a brief explanation from the author about why and how she wrote the book along with a list of book club questions.  In many ways, I found Hadley much like Bella (in the Twilight series - yes I read it, I'm a middle school teacher).  Both were in love with volatile men, didn't understand their effect on people, and didn't feel worthy of being with the men or included in their circles. (And both are whiny.)  However, from reading this book, I am more interested in learning about the real Hadley and hope to pick up some of the real biographies to see how close the historically documented one is to the fictional one.

We All Need a Little Inspiration

Title: Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper

Author: Harriet Scott Chessman

Pages: 164

Publisher: A Plume Book

ISBN: 1583222723

I love Susan Vreeland's books about the fictionalization of artists' worlds. I stumbled on this title while browsing for any new work from her and I'm glad I did. It is a quick read, but gives an interesting perspective of Mary Cassatt's work. The Impressionists have been growing on me lately, mostly because of Vreeland's Luncheon of the Boating Party which illustrated the process of Renoir's collecting and posing the various characters in his painting.

In this story, the perspective is Mary Cassatt's older sister Lydia, who for most of her life, has lived in the shadow of her vibrant sister. In addition, Lydia has a chronic disease that confines her to her bed frequently. But, what Lydia doesn't realize that her calm mindfulness and observation of the world inspires Mary's work. Throughout the book, Lydia struggles with her perception of herself and the splintering of her life. The book also has some nice prints of the paintings that Lydia actually modeled for. I would like to re-read this book just to savor it again.

The Postmistress

Title: The Postmistress
Author: Sarah Blake
Publisher: Berkley Trade
ISBN: 0425238695
Pages: 384

Over a year ago, NPR's All Things Considered had an interesting feature on Sarah Blake's novel, The Postmistress.  It sounded like an interesting historical fiction book - an intertwining of three women's lives through the mail and radio - the intrusion of modern communication on every day lives.   From the NPR story, I was interested in learning more about Frankie, a female American reporter living on the bombings of London and learning how to be a war correspondent from Edward R. Murrow, one of the few "real" people in this novel.  After recommending it to my mother-in-law, who bought it at a flea market and gave it to me after she finished it, I settled in for what I expected to be a gripping read.  The intertwining of stories was interesting, but the only character I really cared about was Frankie.  However, the chapters alternated between telling the story of Frankie; Iris an uptight, single, emancipated postmaster (mistress in England); and Emma a timid, un-emancipated new wife of a small town doctor. 

The story begins with a modern time Frankie titillating a cocktail party with the story of an undelivered letter. What would be the fate? Not knowing what the letter entailed.  Then the story dissolves back to WWII.  Both Emma and Iris hear Frankie's broadcasts from London.  With Murrow's tutelage, Frankie finds the voices of the streets to help the world hear and feel the war - especially a hesitant America that doesn't want to involve itself in the war "over there".  Frankie brings the names and lives of Londoners trying to survive the constant shelling, waiting, hiding and dying.  Iris, the postmistress of the small coastal town of Franklin, MA, is determined to keep order in the town through her meticulous handling of the mail.  However, the feeling that "something is coming" fills everyone.  Doctor Fitch gets his new wife Emma, an early orphan of the flu pandemic of WWI, and begins to settle into a blissful family life.  However, Frankie's constant stories of the war unsettle Dr. Fitch and his wife, and when a patient dies under his supervision, Dr. Fitch looks for redemption by volunteering as a doctor in London, leaving a pregnant Emma behind.  Like Penelope waiting for Odysseus, Emma writes and waits for him to come home.  Iris becomes involved with a local man who is convinced that the Germans will arrive in U-Boats to invade America.  She does not want her orderly life upset, so she tends to ignore both him and the reports from Europe about the severity of the war.

Frankie is in the thick of it, as she takes shelter with the rest of London underground during the bombs, but find the reality of war is told in the daily things - the suddenly missing traffic cop, the apartment building that is half blown ahead while the other half is in perfect order.  She meets Dr. Fitch one night in the shelter, where they each poke at the other's emotional soft spots.  When Dr. Fitch leaves the shelter, he is hit and killed by a taxi cab.  Frankie takes his last letter to Emma, intending to mail it, but without ID, his body is not identified and no notice is given to Emma about his death.  Her reporter flatmate is concerned with the plight of the Jewish refuges across Europe, and when she is killed, Frankie takes up the cause.  Murrow sends her into the heart of Europe to ride the trains and record the voices of the travelers(which the author admits is historically inaccurate).  What Frankie finds is chaos, death and displacement with very little hope.  She returns with several recordings of people's hopes and fears, but doesn't know what to do with them.  Murrow sends her back to the States to recuperate.

Still having the last letter in her possession, Frankie decides to give it, in person, to Emma.  However, the small town-ness envelopes her and when she realizes the Emma doesn't know her husband is dead, she refuses to hand it over.  At the same time, Iris had been hiding the initial letter from Dr. Fitch's colleagues in London saying he was missing.   When the final notice is given, Emma is surrounded by people who will take care of her, including Iris, Frankie and Otto (an Austrian Jewish man hoping for word from his wife in Europe).  That same night, Iris's lover's nightmare/prediction comes true, as a U-Boat shows up and kills him, yet with early warming, the coast is safe.

I was anticipating a really engrossing read, but I can't see this met my expectations.  The NPR pre-view sounded really good, but it felt more like getting stuck with flat soda at a movie that was so boring I noticed how much my butt went numb.  Since the character of Frankie was supposedly based on Martha Gellhorn, I think I will do some more reading about her!