Where I got the book: won on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.
Cecilia has returned to the cottage on the Devon moors where she grew u...moreWhere I got the book: won on the LibraryThing Early Reviewer program.
Cecilia has returned to the cottage on the Devon moors where she grew up, to care for her sick mother, Dora. This is the ostensible reason, but she is also drawn to the last place where she saw her lost baby. Amid the strange wildness of Dartmoor, she comes face to face with her past while Dora struggles to free herself from the ties that bind her.
I began this novel with the uncomfortable feeling that I was not going to be able to adapt to Briscoe's rather self-consciously literary style after reading a slew of genre novels. And ended it with an appreciation of her clarity and command of language; this is definitely a writer who grew on me once I summoned the patience to settle into her world.
I think I detected a fairly strong D.H. Lawrence influence, and one passage that just had to have been a tribute to Dorothy L. Sayers, thus:
Sayers: Accepting rebuke, he relapsed into silence, while she studied his half-averted face. Considered generally, as a façade, it was by this time tolerably familiar to her, but now she saw details, magnified as it were by some glass in her own mind. The flat setting and fine scroll-work of the ear, and the height of the skull above it. The glitter of close-cropped hair where the neck-muscles lifted to meet the head. A minute sickle-shaped scar on the left temple. The faint laughter-lines at the corner of the eye and the droop of the lid at its outer end. The gleam of golden down on the cheek-bone. The wide spring of the nostril. An almost imperceptible beading of sweat on the upper lip and a tiny muscle that twitched the sensitive corner of the mouth. The slight sun-reddening of the fair skin and its sudden whiteness below the base of the throat. The little hollow above the points of the collar-bone. He looked up; and she was instantly scarlet, as though she had been dipped in boiling water.
Briscoe: He looked up at the inn and she glanced at him on the seat beside her and examined him as though strongly magnified, followed the exact shape of the bone of his nose, his irises' confusion of pigmentation, rendered lighter in sunlight; wayward eyebrow hairs, a faint sheen of moisture on his forehead; the outer line of paleness that traced his lips, the strong cleft above the mouth, the sun-shot curve of his ear and a tiny scar on its outer edge. She could see the twitch of his pulse in his neck. He turned and she blushed, and the notion disappeared.
Both male characters are very English in appearance. I love echoes like that--they make all literature seem like an endless conversation.
Briscoe uses a rich imagery which shifts around in some interesting ways. Early in the novel, women--particularly the mother-daughter relationship--seem to represent safety and are connected to earth, while men represent danger and water. Later, the danger--and the water metaphors--seem to lie with the women, while men are safe and earthy. This may represent Cecilia's gradual willingness to come to some sort of peace with her past, while Dora struggles to break free. All very Lawrencian.
Of course, if you mix water and earth you get mud, and a lot of this story seems to be about people who are stuck in the mesh of relationships that they have created. The moldering, damp cottage that harbors both warmth and family and a litter of decay and death--crumbling structure and dead insects--holds the protagonists in stasis. Briscoe carefully engineers the ending so that the stasis is still there but a glimpse of a way forward is afforded. (I found it amusing that, after railing against the non-tying-up of loose ends in a crime story, I was happy to accept the unresolved ending of You as author's privilege. What a difference a genre makes.)
I guessed at the crisis and revelation in the novel by about halfway through, but that didn't stop me from turning the pages to see if I was right. Briscoe convinced me of her power to maintain a story, and I'll be looking for more of her novels.
I also feel I should remark on the excellence of the editing; I didn't spot a single mistake, a rare treat. And I loved the cover design and the feel of the cover's matte, slightly textured coating. The whole package added up to a reading experience that kept me slightly on edge in a good way. If I were going to knock off half a star it would be because the book didn't grab me straightaway, but that would be splitting hairs. Good stuff. (less)
Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen has been on my bookshelf for what seems like 20 years, alth...moreWhere I got the book: my local library.
Claire Tomalin's biography of Jane Austen has been on my bookshelf for what seems like 20 years, although the Goodreads editions roundup has 1997 as the earliest date. Whatever. I'm quite surprised, seeing how much I enjoyed that biography, that Charles Dickens: A Life is only the second Tomalin biography I've read.
From this very limited sample I would say that you go to Tomalin for the close-up, human portrait of your subject. In 417 pages of narrative, Tomalin displays Dickens in all his contradictions: generous yet selfish, open-handed but capable of great secretiveness, a man of enormous warmth yet able to turn ice-cold on a friend or family member once he decided he was done with them.
My strongest impression was of Dickens' vast reserves of energy; he strides about the pages as he would walk the London streets, always immersed in action, always moving. Tomalin's narrative moves forward at a fast clip, eating up the years chronologically, although there are occasional irritating bursts of foretelling (to keep us reading? As if I wouldn't.)
I would say that Tomalin comes down on the side of Catherine Dickens in the story of the couple's doomed marriage, and on behalf of plump wives everywhere, I thank her. On the whole Dickens gets a poor rating as a husband, father, friend and even occasionally as a writer (it's certainly true that he wasn't always on top form in his books, but considering he wrote for serialization these were pretty much first drafts, an astounding thing when you think about it.)
Good bibliography and index, and lots of interesting photos including a very arresting one of the mature Dickens, clean-shaven. It is the clearest glimpse I've ever had of Dickens the businessman, and Dickens the man of susceptibility to the ladies. It's a shame they were inevitably such young ladies, but he clearly had a very Victorian ideal of womanhood and it wasn't his wife. Hmm, do you think Tomalin's sympathies were persuasive?
I found this little gem because it was referenced in a wiki on a historical character I wanted...moreWhere I got the book: purchased from Amazon.
I found this little gem because it was referenced in a wiki on a historical character I wanted to research. It is an account of the lives of, as the subtitle says, extraordinary women in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It consists of topical chapters with a short introduction, followed by accounts of the lives of women whose biographies illustrate the writer's theme.
This is an excellent primer for anyone who is unfamiliar with the pre-Victorian era and would like a place to start. The book is a nicely put together, quality printing, illustrated by fascinating images of the women and their work where appropriate. I noticed one duplicate paragraph, but otherwise the presentation was flawless.
I learned a great deal about the individual women from Denlinger's beautifully clear summaries. I also got an impression of life growing harder and more restrictive for women as the nineteenth century drew on with its notions of propriety and submissive womanhood.
And what a cast of characters: mistresses, courtesans, writers, poets, artists, scientists, lesbians, princesses and travelers. If you're a writer looking for an interesting historical main character, grab a copy of this book.
(less)
Where I got the book: Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
This is one of those instances where I would not have bought a book, but ended up enj...moreWhere I got the book: Kindle Owners' Lending Library.
This is one of those instances where I would not have bought a book, but ended up enjoying it after borrowing it. Which shows why the ability to borrow books will always be important - I will now be more likely to buy Gruen's next book.
The story of Jacob's initiation into circus life and what happens when he becomes involved with two performers, August and Marlena, was quite a page turner. Sometimes brutal, the book is fluently and tightly written, one of those books where you feel that not a single superfluous word was allowed to remain.
My only gripe is that I never really warmed to any of the characters, except perhaps Old Jacob. A story's so much better if you find yourself cheering on the protagonists, and I just couldn't see them as well-rounded individuals. I don't know why. Not complex enough? Was it the brutality of the circus life that prevented me from becoming one with the characters? I can't really put my finger on it.
The star of the show, so to speak, is the description of circus life in the harsh reality of the Great Depression. I learned a great deal from this novel, and I understand (from the interview at the end) that Gruen included many real-life incidents in her narrative.
All in all, a worthy and exciting read. Just lacking in something for me; I'm not eager to rush off and see the movie.
A note on the Kindle edition: well formatted, and the photos (a nice touch) showed clearly on my screen.
Loading...
