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Lisbon ~ First Impressions

On my first afternoon in Lisbon, I was suffering (not surprisingly) from jetlag. Not having slept a wink on my journey from Washington-Dulles to Paris, and then Paris to Lisbon, naturally, I felt like falling asleep at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Faced with the need of stalling sleep for at least another four hours, I elected to go on a walk.

The people at Guest Services at the Corinthia Hotel Lisbon, where I was staying, were more than happy to help. On learning that I wanted to walk in a natural park-like area, the young woman recommended that i visit the Montsanto Park. To get to it, I had to exit the hotel to the left, and then take the first left and continue to the park.

Naturally, there were problems. For starters, there were no road signs. So that meant I had no idea which road I was on, because there were no street signs. Somehow, I managed to walk in the right direction and find the park!

But as I walked, it struck me how very odd the location of the Corinthia Hotel is. If you have the pleasure of visiting it, you will see that it is a luxury 5-star hotel, complete with four restaurants, a bar, various sitting areas, and a piano. 

So what is a Five-Star Hotel doing in a location that is bisected by not one, but two major highways and railroad tracks?

Of course such areas are inhabited by people who do not have much money. These areas also have dead zones, where nature has taken over neglected spaces. As I continued my walk under a massive highway, and past the dead zones on either side, I encountered huge apartment buildings filled with washing lines, and copious amounts of washing. 

I paused, taking it all in. 

If this were the United States, these areas would be positively dangerous, inhabited by gangs who engage in turf warfare, with regular shootouts. 

If I were in the UK, these buildings would be Brutalist drab, grey and forbidding, exhuding hopelessness, and blight. 

But in Portugal the government (or whoever owns these buildings), had at least bothered to give the exteriors a more pleasant aspect by painting them in shades of yellow, pink, and red. The paint jobs looked relatively recent, and the outsides of the buidlings, while not luxurous, at least conveyed a spirit of livability. Of  course these building had a view of the local railroad, whose train cars appeared with grinding regularity. Next to the train tracks was a major artery, with cars and truck whizzing their way in and out of Lisbon. Unlike the US, the communtiy had made the area as pedestrian friendly as possible. I counted at least three walkways that took you over the highway and train tracks, making it easy for the inhabitants of these enormous apartment blocks to take the dog for a walk in Montsanto Park, on the opposite side of the tracks and highway.

Nothing was luxurious about this area. And yet the inhabitants were afforded a means of walking to and from a local natural resource. This is something that countries such as the US ~ subservient to the needs of the car ~ need to think about. For the fact that you can take your dog for a walk to the local wilderness area means that those people (dog-walkers, runners and people like me who enjoy walking) will take advantage of those pedestrian bridges. And the fact that we citizens are claiming such unpromising spaces means that we keep the crime rate down by our very presence. 

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THE LAST AGENT IN PARIS by Sharon Maas

THE LAST AGENT IN PARIS is a spellbiinding story about an unusual young woman, and the dangerous career she chooses for herself.

Noor-un-Nisa Inayat Khan (1914-1944) was the daughter of an Indian man and an American woman. 

Her father, Inayat Kahn, born in Baroda, India, came from a line of Indian Muslims whose forebears included classical musicians and nobles. One of his ancestors was Tipu Sultan (1751-1799), who ruled Myesore. He was a noted teacher of Sufism.

Her American mother, Ora Ray Baker, came from Albuquerque New Mexico, meeting Inayat Khan as a teenager when he was on his travels. The couple conducted a long-distance relationship and only married once she’d turned twenty-one in 1913. Their eldest child, Noor, arrived the very next year. On her marriage to Khan, Ora Ray cut her ties to her family an adopted the name Amina Begum. She is known for spreading Sufism into the Western World.

Noor’s parents led a peripatetic life, which meant that Noor herself was born in Moscow. Eventually, the family settled in Paris, where Inayat Khan created a communtiy of Indian Muslim expats who came to him for spiritual guidance and music lessons.

After the fall of Paris in 1940, Noor and her family left for England. It was there, in 1941, that she was offered the dangerous position of British resistance agent. Her job was to be a wirelss operator in a team of three, the person who sent messages to London. These operatives were tasked with spying and sabotage in countries occupied by the Axis powers, especially those occupied by Nazi Germany. Noor was sent to France because she was fluent in French.

Apparently, the typical life-span of one of these agents was six weeks. But Noor must have been very good at her job because she managed to survive for several months. Dropped on the night of 16 to 17 June 1943, she was not captured by the Nazis until 13 October of that year, a period of four months. And even then, she was found because someone betrayed her. The person in question, Renée Garry was the sister of Émile Henri Garry, the head agent in the Cinema/Phono network, and the person who was Noor’s organiser.  So his sister was not an obvious person to commit that kind of treachery, even for a large sum of money. But the Germans were rounding up the British and French spies one by one and sending them East. 

Noor was eventually executed along with three other women at dawn on the morning of 13 September 1944 in Dachau Concentration Camp. Émile Henri Garry was executed at Buchenwald at roughly the same time.

I have never read any of Ms. Maas’ work before, and I was pleased to discover her. The idea of telling the reader about Noor’s arrest in the Prologue is a smart move, as it gives the reader a clear idea of where this novel is going, the beginning of the arc of tension that keeps them turning those pages. Maas’ descriptions of Noor’s early life, including the way her father used her to calm a dangerous crowd in Moscow, were superlative.

If you enjoy Second World War literature, you should definitely read this novel.

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Adventures in Norway 2013

In July, 2013, my husband and I spent a month in Norway before flying to St. Petersburg in Russia to attend a conference held under the auspices of the Norwegian government. (Stay tuned for the next post.)

July is a wonderful time to be in Norway for the days are long and warm. During the summer soltice, the sun sets at around midnight and reappears at 3 am. And so, while my husband was arguing his philosophy and philosophy of linguistics with various colleagues at the University of Oslo, I put on my hiking boots and walked.

One of my favorite trips was to take the train from cental Oslo, way up to the top of Holmenkollen, which rises 1,600 feet above sea level. There is a charming restaurant there (Frognerseteren Vinstua Restaurant) which provides Norwegian fare. Unless you are very brave, you should avoid the brown cheese (known variously as brunost, gjetost or geitost.) But Lingonberries served on top of a creamy substance that resembles porrige (or oatmeal) is delightful. As are the varous open-faced sandwiches.

Once you’ve enjoyed yourself there, instead of taking the train back, you can (if you don’t have bad knees) do my favorite walk and walk down Holmenkollen, while takiing in the fabulous views of the Oslo fjord. Of course I did not walk all the way down Holmenkollen. I used to take Holmenkollenveien (Holmen Kollen Way) down to Holmen Kollen T (the subway station), which is on the right just after passing Holmen Kollen Restaurant on the left. The distance is about 2.4 km or 1.5 miles. Then I would let the train take me all the way back to downtown Oslo.

If you choose to visit Oslo, you will find it a very walkable place with excellent public transportation. I look back on my various visits there between 2011 and 2014 with great fondness. 

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Adventures in Germany 2013

I was inspired to go on this tour of Germany by an article in the New York Times, which described traveliing along the Märchen or FairyTale route. Something about that piece sparked my interest, and so began my fascination with Fairy Tales which continues to this very day into my latest novel MAIDEN TOMB.

Arriving in Frankfurt Airport in early May 2013, I made my way to Kassel, continuing my tour to Göttingen, Hannoversch Munden, Würzburg, and Mannheim. If this sounds a bit off the beaten track, it is. The very pleasant woman at the hotel in Kassel, told me that they didn’t get many foreign visitors who were just tourists. Instead, they were set up for people to have business meetings. Of course I should have rented a car. I made things so much more difficult for myself by sticking to public transportation, even though in Germany it is reliable and runs on time. However, I do remember a lovely bus-ride through the German countryside to the Dornröschenschloss (Little Thorny Rose Castle) in Sababurg in the province of Hesse-Kassel.

However, I ran into a big problem on my way to Stockholm to meet up with my husband. I was visiting my mother, and had decided to do a lot of cooking for her. So I brought along my favorite recipe book and a book-opener, which consists of a leather horizontal thingy, which is weighted at each end with lead to keep a book open. Somehow, they hadn’t discovered this on my way into Germany, probably because I put it in my checked baggage. But here it was, in my carryon. Oh dear, what a lot of trouble I got myself into! 

I tried to explain what it was, but the person checking my bag at Frankfurt called the police. Of course, this being Germany, they arrived pronto within ten minutes. Again, I explained what it was for, that it was a book opener, because I had a hardback recipe book that I wanted to use to cook for my mother. 

I should mention at this point that I was dealing with a language barrier. I really don’t speak German, and these police officers didn’t speak English. All I knew was that they were giving me skeptical looks. I realized I was in deep trouble when one of the police officers picked it up by one end and twirled it around his head. Of course, he thought it was a weapon. I was so shocked as it had never occurred to me that my book-opener could be used to hurt someone. 

And so I was charged with possessing an illegal weapon, and my book-opener was promptly confiscated. I didn’t mind about that so much, because I figured they were going to do that anyway. But I was upset about the charge, and the fact that they had my passport, which meant that if I didn’t sign on the dotted line at the bottom of some document they had (which was in German, so I didn’t understand it) I wouldn’t be able to get on my plane.

Of course I signed, but I have never forgotten how hard I had to work to quell my panic, smile sweetly, and be polite to a bunch of strangers who seemed determined to think the worst of me. But I got my passport back and was able to make the flight. Nowadays, I am much more careful about what I put in my carryon.

Another lesson I learned from this trip was that I really shouldn’t travel around by myself because I miss too many things. And so, the very next year, I joined my first tour group and had a wonderful time. Stay tuned for that story!

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THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD by Diana R Chambers

Writing a novel about a famous person like Julia Child is a gift, especially if you are writing about the person’s life before they became famous. This is because the audience’s knowledge of what happened in the future can drive the momentum of the story forward, without the author having to do such a heavy lift.

And so author Diana R. Chambers made a smart choice when she decided to write about beloved television host Julia Child before she became famous for The French Chef.

In THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD, we learn about thirty-something Julia McWilliams career at the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which she joined in 1942. Typical of the time, Julia was hired to do a little light dusting in the form of typing and filing. (Later in life, she always claimed to be “just a file clerk.”) She was extremely fortunate that her boss, William J. Donovan, saw her driving ambition as well as her keen intelligence, so that her filing job morphed into a top-secret security clearance job for someone entrusted with spying and uncovering traitors. 

What a life it was for a smart, self-driven young woman! For Donovan earned the nickname “Wild Bill Donavan” for the number of rather startling stories about him. Nevertheless, President Roosevelt valued his insights and in 1941, tasked him with founding the OSS, which was the first iteration of the CIA.

In a way, this volume almost wrote itself. But I still thought it could have been vastly improved by having a narrative arc. In my opinion, a proper spine of tension would have prevented the ending from being so abrupt. 

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Adventures in England and Wales 2013

By 2013, my mother was in failing health and so I spent a month with her from March to April that year.

As I may have mentioned before my mother spent the years before her last illness living with my sister and brother-in-law on the Wirral, that peninsula of land that lies between the Mersey and Dee rivers. If you look in one direction (across the Mersey) you see Liverpool. If you look the other way (across the Dee) you see the Welsh hills. And so, while my sister and brother-in-law took a much-needed vacation in Scotland, I hired a car so that I could drive my mother around. And that is how we found the charming “castle” of Stokesay in Shropshire in the Welsh Marches.

For those of you who do not know, the word March in this context is very similar to the German Mark and it means Borderland. In the British Isles there are two sets of marches. There are the borderlands between Wales and England called the Welsh Marches. And there are the borderlands between Scotland and England called the Scottish Marches. Both areas experienced a great deal of turbulence during the Middle Ages when at least one King of England was attempting to do a little ethnic cleansing on his Celtic neighbors. 

Stokesay itself is an interesting name, because it combines the word Stoke, meaning cattle ranch, and Say (or de Say), the name of the family that occupied it from the beginning of the 1100s. What makes Stokesay so glorious is that not only do you have the Medieval castle, you also have the wonderful 17th-century gatehouse. 

Today, the castle is a tranquil oasis of calm. But in its heyday, the serene courtyard was a hubbub of activity, with artisans such as blacksmiths plying their trade, while the washerwomen did the laundry, carts arrived and departed with goods, and visitors appeared at every and any hour on horseback and in carriages. 

If you don’t know this part of England, I suggest you visit it. Shropshire had a turbulent past, but nowadays is known for its gorgeous countryside, as well as its various myths and legends.

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COSTANZA by Rachel Blackmore

COSTANZA by British author Rachel Blackmore is based upon the true story of a woman who became the muse and mistress of Gianlorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), the acclaimed sculptor. So besotted was he with this young woman who was about 16 years his junior, that he created a sculpture of her. 

It sounds so romantic to have a famous and powerful man devote so many hours to creating this extraordinarily alive portrait of this young woman (Costanza would have been in her late teens and early twenties in the 1630s when the sculpture was created.) But as is so often true, there was a dark side to this tale.

Naturally, Gianlorenzo Bernini considered Costanza to be his property, even though she was actually married to one of his workmen. And so when poisonous little brother Luigi Bernini begins to stalk Costanza, Gianlorenzo bristles. But Gianlorenzo is so powerful, no-one actually thinks that Luigi will actually seduce his brother’s mistress.

But that is exactly what Luigi does and the fallout of that decision reverberates across 17th-century Rome.

Needless to say, the person who suffers the most from all of this is Costanza, whose beauty is ruined in horrifying retaliation by the great sculptor himself, who (of course) employs someone else to slash her face with a razor. Of course, Costanza is arrested and sent to a nunnery to do penance, even though the Bernini brothers, whose crimes are far greater, go free with just a slap on the wrist. (Gianlorenzo has to pay a fine and a promise to get married.)

Finally, Costanza is set free and sent back to her kind-hearted husband Matteo Bonarelli, where she spends the rest of her life (she died in 1662) helping him run an antiquities business.

Given the operatic nature of this story (onlhy lightly fictionalized by the author) we would expect there to be no difficulty in milking every aspect for tension. 

And yet I found the novel curiously flat, in contrast to many readers. 

Was it because I experienced it as an audiobook and the narrator did not convey the emotional dynamics clearly enough? Or was it because of how the novel was written, a texture of unceasing chatter, a wall of words, with no space in which to react to the events as they unfolded?

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Adventures in Paris 2012

In 2012, I was lucky enough to spend the month of June in Paris. Every day, I rose from my bed in a rental apartment in the Fifth Arondissement (the neighborhood that contains the Sorbonne) and set out to explore Paris, leaving my husband happily ensconsed in a Parisien café arguing philosophy with one (or two) of his many friends. 

Of course, I visited the Jardin des Plantes. Of course, I wended my way through the Jardin du Luxembourg past the Medici fountain. If you have been to Paris, you know how civilized French parks are. They don’t have just park benches in them, the way they do in London. Non! Parisien parcs have round metal tables and elegant chairs all painted a light green, which is somehow the perfect color. 

Because I was able to spend a whole month in Paris, I was able to visit some non-touristy areas. For example, I discovered the 73 bus (the soixante-treize in French) that started at the Musee d’Orsay and took you across the Place de la Concorde ~ that frightening mélange of traffic that pours in from every which way, which no pedestrian should attempt to cross ~ to Neuilly. 

Neuilly, once a charming village, is now on the outskirts of Paris, on the other side of the Péripherique, another nightmare of traffic if you are driving a car. Neuilly is still charmiing (many rich people live there), but just as Georgetown in Washington DC is spoiled by the tall towers of Rosslyn, so Neuilly is marred by the tall towers of La Défense, a major business district that houses the usual sorts of things, including many insurance companies.

If you are not afraid of speaking French, I can highly recommend spending some time in Paris, just wandering around. You will find many interesting things! 

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A LESSON IN SECRETS ~ MAISIE DOBBS #8 ~ Jacqueline Winspear

A LESSON IN SECRETS finds Maisie Dobb’s career as PI taking an exciting new turn when she is recruited by the British Secret Service to pose as a Philosophy Professor at Cambridge University. Her remit is to discover if there is anything going on that is “not in the interests of His Majesty’s Government.”

And so author Jacqueline Winspear invents the fictional St. Francis college, named after St. Francis of Assisi and dedicated to peace. Maisie Dobbs arrives in the Autumn of 1932 to carry out her duties, and rather to her surprise finds that she is a popular teacher, who enjoys spending time with her students. The founder of the college – Greville Liddicote – is regarded as a hero in Pacifist circles for writing a children’s book during the Great War that questions the whole idea of fighting. Needless to say, the publication of this book caused ructions, and lead to at least one mutiny.

While the above-mentioned is completely fictional – there is no St Francis College at Cambridge University, and a children’s book did not cause a mutiny – nevetheless it does capture the Zeitgeist of the time.  As war progressed and as losses mounted higher and higher with the British army experiencing nearly 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916), it is scarcely surprising that the men were increasingly reluctant to fight. I have been to the Somme myself and understand that British and French generals were ordering their men up out of the trenches and into a hail of gunfire from the German army which had captured all of the high ground. Ordering young men to an almost certain death seems entriely crazy. And yet, that was what the First World War was like. No wonder that so many people – including war poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfried Owen – were so furious.

And so it is true, that by 1917, the French generals were finding it increasingly impossible to get their troops to fight as mutinies within the French Army were legion. Somehow the powers-that-be managed to conceal this fact from the British Army, which was not that far away, and was more biddable. 

It is also true that there were many conscientious objectors during the First World War, including philosopher Bertrand Russell. True also that these people were treated with the greatest disdain as the majority saw their refusal to fight as the disgraceful behavior of cowards. (At least 250 British soldiers were shot for desertion.) Of course some of these people were suffering from what was then termed “Shell Shock” or “Neurasthenia.” Today we call the condition PTSD.

But what really shocked me was the notion that so many young people in Britain in 1932 were already admirers of Hitler. Young people formed organizations dedicated to his ideaology. Young people defended his views in debates. What is so shocking that all of this took place before Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933.

And what did the parents and grandparents of these young people think? Unfortunately, too many of them told themselves the Nazis posed no threat, because they didn’t do anything violent. And wasn’t it just a passing fad anyway? The real danger, the powers-that-be told anyone who would listen, was the Red Menace.  

And so, Britain drifted into the disaster of World War II.

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Adventures in Norway 2012

In September 2012, my husband became Visiting Professor at the University of Oslo, and so we spent the Fall in Oslo.

The university found us lodgings in the Bjorvika Apartments, next to the main railway station and not far from the Opera House. Over the ensuing years, in which we visited Oslo many times, these apartments remained my favorite place. Not only were they centrally located, but they were so beautifully designed. 

While my husband took up his duties at the university, I put on my hiking boots and walked and walked. 

It is always amazing when a large city has a place of natural beauty, in which the inhabitants can go to breathe. There are two such places in Oslo. One is the Aker River, which flows through the old town, and possesses many hiking paths and trails. The other is Maridalsvannet, a large lake to the north of the city. It is a gem. In winter, there are paths for snow-shoeing and slopes for skiing. In the summer, you can take in the golden sunlight spilling through the leaves of the forest that surrounds it and glinting off the clear waters.

If you have never visited Oslo before, you should really try it.

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