Cynthia Sally Haggard's Blog: Cynthia Sally's Blog, page 25

Curtis Sittenfeld’s AMERICAN WIFE

Laura Bush in October 2005. White House photo by Krisanne Johnson. Soource: Wikipedia.

Curtis Sittenfeld’s AMERICAN WIFE is the fictionalized story of Laura Bush. It is entertaining, funny and tragic, and shows off Ms. Sittenfeld’s pitch perfect voice for both Charlie Blackwell (the George Bush character) and Alice Lindgren (the Laura Bush character).

The novel is in four parts.

Part 1: 1272 Amity Lane, takes us from 1954, when Alice is eight years old to 1963, when she is seventeen and has a tragic accident that changes her forever. This part of the novel is a gripping read, because Ms. Sittenfeld does such a wonderful job of setting up Alice and her family in their ordinary everyday lives, making the tragedy that follows more shocking.

Part 2: 3859 Sproule Street is the story of how Alice and Charlie fell in love in the summer of 1977, and married in the Fall of that year. Here, Ms. Sttenfeld’s ear for speech deploys brilliantly in conveying the Charlie Blackwell character. There is a lot of graphic sex, and even a description of a male body part here.

Part 3: 402 Maronee Drive is about the problems that occur in Alice and Charlie’s marriage, especially over the issue of Charlie’s alcoholism. Set in 1988, it tells how Charlie finally comes to grips with his demons when he discovers religion, after Alice threatens to leave him.

Part 4: 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue deals with the threat to expose a secret from Alice’s past if she will not intervene in a Supreme Court Justice nomination. It is set in 2007, during President Blackwell’s second term, and conveys very well the issues and turbulence of that time when the US was fighting a war on two fronts.

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Highly recommended: Four Stars.

#laurabush #curtissittenfeld #americanwife #dubya

WHITE OLEANDER by Janet Fitch

White Oleander tree from Mercari.com

WHITE OLEANDER is the kind of novel that agents still talk about, over twenty years after it was published in 1999. As I was curious to see what they were talking about, I recently read it.

The agents were right. This is an amazing novel, not just for the outrageous but believable character of Ingrid Magnusson and her daughter Astrid, not just for the surprising plot twists and turns, but for the amazing prose style:

“What was the best day of your life?” she asked me one afternoon as we lay on the free-form couch, her head on one armrest, mine on the other. Judy Garland sang on the stereo, “My Funny Valentine.”

“Today,” I said.

“No.” She laughed, throwing her napkin at me. “From before.”

I tried to remember, but it was like looking for buried coins in the sand. I kept turning things over, cutting myself on rusty cans, broken beer bottles hidden there, but eventually I found an old coin, brushed it off. I could read the date, the country of origin.

It was when we were living in Amsterdam.”

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What’s not to like about this book?

The ending.

I really didn’t like it. I didn’t like being left with two choices, two ways that this heartbreaking story might go. I thought that the author should have done that hard work for me.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

SHE SAID by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey

Harvey Weinstein in 2014. Image taken from Wikipedia.

SHE SAID is the highly disturbing account of the activities of Harvey Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh. It tells how Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey investigated the rumors about Harvey Weinstein to produce their sensational piece which published in the New York Times on 5 October 2017. This stirred up such a hornet’s nest that EIGHTY women came forward to say they had been molested or assaulted by Harvey Weinstein. Nothing like this has every happened before.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, official portrait 2018. Image taken from Wikipedia.

Later, the journalists investigated similar rumors about Brett Kavanaugh, interviewing Christine Blasey Ford, who recounted a traumatic experience she had when Kavanaugh tried to rape her when they were both teenagers. Subsequently, Gwyneth Paltrow hosted a meeting at her Los Angeles home for all the sources who came forward to report abuse they’d received at the hands of powerful men. These women included actress Ashely Judd, and Christine Blasey Ford.

It was thrilling to watch the unraveling of the privileged life Harvey Weinstein had in the wake of these allegations. The Weinstein Company went bankrupt, and Harvey Weinstein was forced to surrender his passport and wear an ankle bracelet. He was sentenced to 23 years for rape on 11 March 2020.

It was heartbreaking to hear the testimony of the women, summoned to Harvey Weinstein’s hotel for what they imagined to be a business meeting, only to have Weinstein meeting them half-naked, (or actually naked) demanding massages, back rubs, blow jobs. When they refused, he responded with bullying tactics, in some cases raping them, in all cases humiliating them with his outrageous requests.

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If you want to know how the “Me Too” movement ignited, read this book. Five stars.

Isabel Wolff’s A VINTAGE AFFAIR

A VINTAGE AFFAIR is the story of a friendship that ended in tragedy. Or rather, two friendships that ended in tragedy, both causing a tremendous amount of survivor guilt to both women involved.

One story takes place in France during the second world war. The other is a contemporary story set in present-day London. But author Isabel Wolff is a talented story-teller who manages to weave these plot threads together in a way that does not seem clichéd or predictable. And although I am generally not fond of contemporary fiction (I tend to find it too depressing), I did enjoy getting to know the protagonist Phoebe Swift, who not only opens a vintage clothing store in London, but also goes on a emotional roller-coaster of a ride during this novel.

If you love reading about the recent past, especially about beautiful clothes, and if you enjoy reading something that will stir your emotions and cause you to think, this is the book for you. Perfect for a curl up by the fire during one of those cold days we are having now. Five stars.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

WAKENHYRST by Michelle Paver, read by Juanita McMahon

Audio Version showing Maud’s pet starling Chatterpie.

I don’t read Horror, so I have no basis of comparison for WAKENHYRST. Perusing other reader’s comments, I see that they are disappointed that this piece doesn’t really fall into the Horror genre, but is more a coming-of-age story about repressed 16-year-old Maud growing up in the Fen Country of Suffolk.

Perhaps that is why I liked it.

The story covers the years 1906 to 1913, just before the Great War exploded, and it has that flavor of eerie peace. Poor Maud is left too much to herself. Her slightly younger brother Richard, who is rude and obnoxious in a way that is typical of entitled males is thankfully absent at boarding school. Her youngest brother Felix is too young, at four years old, to be a companion to her. Her mother is dead. And her father doesn’t trouble himself to introduce her into society, find suitable friends for her, or even a governess to further her education and train that excellent mind.

Paperback version showing the Old House where Maud lives with her father.

Maud, far too astute for her own good, sees too clearly that her mother’s tragic death is the direct cause of her father’s insistence on marital relations every night. The poor woman spends most of her time pregnant, and (of course) eventually dies.

And so Maud hates her father for his selfishness and his male entitlement. Yes, he enjoys sex, believing that it is essential for his health. But he doesn’t much care for the products of his nightly “connection.” Maud, despite her obvious intelligence, he dismisses casually, because she is female and therefore suspect on a number of accounts. In his typically myopic way he tells himself that his daughter lacks imagination and has no capacity for understanding, or even deep feelings.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

As her father’s reign becomes harsher, as he kills her pet bird (which annoys him), as he destroys the vines which embrace the old house, as he threatens to destroy the fen – the only place where Maud can be herself – Maud begins a campaign of retaliation. She puts eels in his washbasin. She opens the window in his bedchamber so that the dank fen air he so detests can wander in. She even puts water fronds on his pillow.

Flatford Mills in the Suffolk Fen Country. Photo 102233347 / Suffolk Fens © Callum Redgrave Close | Dreamstime.com

To any balanced man, these would just be harmless pranks. Unfortunately, Maud’s father is a man with a considerable imagination who lives every day with a few guilty secrets of his own, connected to the fen. And so the eels, the air and the water fronds trigger a bout of paranoia, hallucination and monomania.

I won’t say what happens next, so as not to spoil it for those of you who have not yet read this volume. But for me, it was plenty horrific.

I give this novel 5 stars, for its wonderful depiction of the fens, its vivid characters and its sensitive portrayal of a young woman trapped by the male-dominated society of early twentieth-century England.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

William Boyd’s RESTLESS

US Cover advertising the movie version

RESTLESS by William Boyd is one of those novels with a parallel plot.

There is the present-day told from the point-of-view of Ruth Gilmartin a 20-something PhD student at Oxford and a single Mum.

Then there is the story of Eva Delectorskaya, a woman of Russian-English heritage, working as a spy for Britain in New York in 1940 and 1941. Her job was to pose as a journalist spreading disinformation about the progress of the war in an effort to encourage the United States to join the fight against the Nazis.

UK cover featuring the Costa Award which RESTLESS won in 2006

This may sound only moderately interesting, but in William Boyd’s hands it becomes completely gripping. Both POV characters, Ruth and Eva, are so real.

Movie version (2012) with Hayley Atwelll playing the young Eva and Rufus Sewell playing her handler Lucas Romer

While it is true that inevitably Ruth’s story is less interesting than Eva’s, nevertheless, it kept me glued to the page, partly because I’m old enough to remember the Baader-Meinhof gang, and I kept wondering if she were harboring some of the members in her apartment.

As for Eva, well she is completely compelling. Strikingly beautiful and breathtakingly smart she is astonishingly good at her job, and manages to wriggle out of a couple of very difficult situations. Most of the pleasure of this novel is in watching such a smart woman outsmart some pretty smart men.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

SECRET GERMANY: Stefan George and his Circle by Robert Edward Norton

Who was Stefan George? If you look him up, you will find out that he was born in 1868 and died in 1933, and that he was a poet. In fact, he was one of the most important and influential poets to have written in German, making him as great as Goethe, Hölderlin or Rilke.

However, that was not why I was interested in him. I was interested because he was the mentor and friend to Claus von Stauffenberg, when he was a young man.

Claus von Stauffenberg (1907-1944), Colonel in the German Army and Swabian aristocrat.

Stauffenberg will always be remembered as the person who put the bomb near Hitler, in one (of many) assassinations attempts. Unfortunately, after he left the room, someone nudged the briefcase in which the bomb was planted so that it went behind a barrier. When it exploded, its destructive power killed some of the people in that war room.

But not Hitler. The only person who ever killed Hitler was himself.

In trying to figure out what sort of person could have been an aristocrat, an army officer and the eventual would-be assassin of Adolf Hitler, I found that my steps led me to Stefan George.

Describing George as a poet doesn’t even begin to explain his influence, especially to those of us who are not that plugged-in to poetry. But if I described him as a charismatic leader, a person who had almost shamanistic powers over the young men whom he attracted, then you begin to see what I mean.

Claus with his father Alfred Count von Stauffenberg and brothers Berthold and Alexander. All three brothers were close yet followed different careers: Berthold went into law, Alexander became a history professor and Claus became a soldier.

The Countess von Stauffenberg was, at first, slightly concerned that her three teenaged sons had been smitten with George, and were lobbying her hard to join his circle. So she went to visit him. He must have been extremely charming because she left feeling reassured that no harm would come to her boys.

But as you page through this fascinating account by Robert E. Norton, titled SECRET GERMANY: STEFAN GEORGE AND HIS CIRCLE,  you cannot help but wonder what she had to be reassured about. Look at his face! Doesn’t he seem malevolent? Or as a young person would say today, “The creep factor is awesome”.

The front cover shows a portrait of Stefan George (1868-1933)

Rating: 5 out of 5.

THE BEAST’S GARDEN BY Kate Forsyth. Narrated by Jennifer Vuletic.

I am a fan of Kate Forsyth. I love the way in which she takes folk tales and put a new twist on them. I loved Bitter Greens (her take on Rapunzel), and The Wild Girl, her story behind the story of how the Grimm brother’s acquired their tales, from their next-door neighbor Dortchen Wild.

The German city of Dresden photographed in 1952, as workers remove bomb debris in front of the ruins of the Frauenkirche. From theguardian.com. You can see this in the background of the cover to BEAST’S GARDEN.

I happened to come across THE BEAST’S GARDEN when I was writing my own novel, FAREWELL MY LIFE, which is set partly in Germany in 1938. I was enthralled by her tale of the young woman who marries a Nazi officer whom she detests. (You will have to read this volume to find out why she married him.). Too late, she realizes he is working against the Nazis. By then, she has betrayed him.

The details in THE BEAST’S GARDEN show how much research Ms. Forsyth did on her novel. But what I remember most is the love that the Nazi officer felt for his young wife Ava.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

KUSHNER INC.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary story of Jared Kushner & Ivanka Trump by Vicky Ward. Narrated by Vicky Ward & Fiona Hardingham.

Whenever I complained about Ivanka Trump, my husband would tell me: “Don’t knock Ivanka. She’s the only adult in the room who can do anything about Trump.”

666 Fifth Avenue (now called 660 Fifth Avenue) bought by Charles Kushner in 2007 turned out to be a money quagmire that led son Jared Kushner to seek funding from abroad. Photo Creative Commons, taken by David Shankbone. Jivanka with MBS at the Murabba Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, May 2017. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

I was never so sure. This book proves that I was right to doubt Ivanka. It was a depressing read. Of course I was not surprised to learn that Jared Kushner used his position as “senior adviser” to his father-in-law Trump to cut deals with the Saudis and make a fine commission for himself. After all, his family has been involved in corrupt deals for decades, so it was not a gasp of surprise to learn that he solved the 666 Fifth Avenue problem for his family with Saudi money. But, as I suspected, Ivanka was deep into this money laundering herself. She turns out to be a charming, highly intelligent, blond beauty of a surface covering up all sorts of murk and dirt.

If you want to know why we should NEVER have family members become “senior advisers,” why elected officials despite all their flaws are so much preferable to oligarchies, read this book. It is excellent. Five stars.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

John Irving’s THE CIDER HOUSE RULES

First Edition 1985.

Ostensibly, THE CIDER HOUSE RULES is the story of Dr. Wilbur Larch, who founds an orphanage at St. Cloud Maine, and of his favorite orphan Homer Wells, who follows in his footsteps and eventually becomes a doctor.

The theatrical film poster 1999.

But the novel is so much more than that. During the time period of this novel, set between the 1920s and the 1950s, abortion was illegal. Dr. Larch’s formative years as a medical student were marked by various experiences with desperate, pregnant women, and the horrors they had to undergo at the hands of back-street abortionists who didn’t know what they were doing. And so, unofficially, Dr. Larch is an abortionist, providing safe abortions for those women desperate enough to trek all the way to back-of-beyonds Maine because they have heard about the good doctor. Homer Wells, having seen the “products of conception” as they are being thrown away, and horrified at the thought of killing babies, refuses to go along with this part of his training. And this disagreement is one reason why Homer Wells, aged nineteen, finally leaves St. Cloud to go off into the wide wide world with his new chums Candy and Wally.

So there you have it. By the magic of his story-telling skills, John Irving gives us a balanced portrayal of abortion, in all of its agonies and difficulties.

So what are THE CIDER HOUSE RULES? During Homer’s sojourn away from the orphanage he becomes a part of a cider making business, owned by Candy and Wally. It is his responsibility to type up these rules for the apple-pickers who come all the way from South Carolina for the seasonal job. The Cider House Rules becomes a metaphor for rules, your rules, my rules and society’s rules, and how this plays out in the abortion debate.

I won’t say any more so as not to spoil this story for you. But if you haven’t read John Irving’s THE CIDER HOUSE RULES, you are in for a treat. Five stars.

Rating: 5 out of 5.