strange and random happenstance

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily by Lauren Willig
Published by: Dutton
Publication Date: January 12, 2010
Format: Hardcover, 401 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Lady Frederick Staines. Penelope will probably never get used to the name or the fact that her identity has been subsumed into that of her husband. What a joke, Freddy, her husband. She's nothing more to him than a bed warmer while her dowery has been his ante into innumerable card games. To make matters worse they have been exiled to India to take the taint off their rather precipitous union. They are five months journey away from the world they knew. What is Penelope going to do in India while Freddy is off playing at politics? What is to become of this person she has become? Who is going to shake their head at her worryingly and sigh "Oh Pen?" That's where Captain Alex Reid enters in. He is the couple's escort to Hyderabad. He is to get Lady Frederick Staines and spouse safely to the residency. A grueling journey by land and sea. Of course it would be easier if Penelope would just behave as a British woman recently arrived in India would. If she'd not show off her fine seat on a horse or her ability to jump into a river to save a drowning man. If she'd just sit in the palanquin and sleep through the heat of the day that would be great. But freed of the strictures of the ton, well, Penelope has to have an outlet for her sheer frustration of the situation she landed herself in. Because it was no one's fault but her own. She was the one who told Freddy to come hither. She got herself sent off to the subcontinent. But if there's one slight silver lining, it's Alex. While he worries about Penelope, he's never pitied her. He's amazed by this proud woman he's met. A woman that is giving him feelings that he shouldn't be having about someone who is married, even if it's clear it's not a happy union. But their personal struggles coming to grips with their romantic feelings will have to take a back seat when some spies with flowery sobriquets appear on the scene. If only Pen had listened to Henrietta and Charlotte rambling on about spies instead of luring Freddy into every available alcove maybe she'd have some idea as to what she is up against. Instead she's just trying to piece it all together on the fly with what she half remembers and what she and Alex are able to figure out. A cobra in her bedchamber isn't just a warning, it's a sign they are on the right track. But will they all make it out of India alive?

The Betrayal of the Blood Lily is a turning point in the Pink Carnation series. Before it was rather more contained, more of the drawing room spies and keeping up with the ton. Now we see the full scope of the ambitions of the French and the world stage it happened on and our flowery spies are right there on the subcontinent. This is Pink Carnation grownup, and we get a far more grownup heroine. I really enjoy Penelope as a heroine, she's a hot mess and doesn't have anything figured out, let alone the path she has flung herself onto. With her starting out the book already married to a man she doesn't love we are in a far different position than Lauren's previous novels. Instead of an innocent happy virginal character, we have someone a little flirty, a little more worldly, a little bitter, and very much taken. And I am here for that! As for her romantic partner, Alex, oh, do I love them together. Alex is a good upstanding man with many a family woe, but with morals and a fierce loyalty to India and eventually to Penelope. Their dialogue crackles and sparkles and just keeps the pages turning late into the night. But what I found interesting while discussing this book during Lauren's Pink Carnation Read Along is that many people took issue with the adultery angle of this book. Firstly, it's just a book, secondly, Freddy is scum in a pretty package, and thirdly, Alex and Pen are endgame! To whomever commented that in a few years Penelope's eye would wander again and leave Alex, NO! That's not how these books work, this is literally the only time adultery is acceptable; when it's fictional and you're cheating on a lout who cheated first. Many, many, MANY times. Also, let's not forget he was involved in raping a fourteen year old girl! I really was shocked that so many people took Pen's adultery to heart. Plus, it's not like Alex and Penelope go into their affair with their eyes closed. Their eyes are fully open. And again, this is FICTIONAL! But I get it, Lauren is so good at writing that you truly forget these characters are fictional. Her characters are fully rounded people, not just "spunky" heroines because that's in vogue, but because of everything that has happened to them, everything that has led to this moment. Nothing happens without a purpose. Even the villain is fully rounded! And if anyone is blind to consequences... well, look to the Marigold!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adultery, Captain Alex Reid, Endgame, Fictional, France, Frederick Staines, Hyderabad, India, Lady Frederick Staines, Lauren Willig, Mature, Penelope Deveraux, Regency Romp, Spies, The Betrayal of the Blood Lily

Years ago I went to the Paine Art Center and Gardens up in Oshkosh to see "Fashion in Film: Period Costumes for the Screen." I freely admit I went for one reason and one reason only, and that was to see the costumes from the Colin Firth adaptation of Pride and Prejudice. There were lovely surprises too, an amazing costume Cate Blanchett wore in Elizabeth that had a panel that was actually from the time of Queen Elizabeth I, the ballgown from Ever After, and on and on, I spent hours looking and looking again. They even had all the costumes for the 2000 Kate Beckinsale/Uma Thurman production of The Golden Bowl, AKA one of those movies I keep meaning to get to, especially as it was directed by James Ivory of Merchant and Ivory. But then I heard about the old Masterpiece Theatre adaptation, well, I figured six episodes had to delve deeper than a two hour movie! Plus it starred Gayle Hunnicutt, loved by me for being James Beaumont's mother on Dallas and the final girl in The Legend of Hell House. Another delightful surprise was Daniel Massey, brother of the amazing Anna, as Prince Amerigo, who also had a complicated love life just like the Prince, leaving his wife Penelope Wilton for Penelope's sister Lindy! So what of this Henry James story about a father and a daughter who end up caught up in the affairs of ex-lovers... I really don't know what to say. I watched six episodes and nothing happened. I'm not even sure if there was an affair. Was the dutiful daughter Maggie's husband having an affair with her father's wife Charlotte? Meh, can't be certain, and I couldn't even really bring myself to care. There is just so much verbiage and talking around the issue that nothing ever really gets said. And as for the narrator? Well, if he were still alive he would make a killing doing those little audios that help put people to sleep. I literally zoned out for whole chunks of time. I would have said I fell asleep without knowing it, but I was on a treadmill and seeing as I didn't end up in a pile on the floor I must have remained upright. I will say that the sets and costumes kept me entertained. And looking back on that long ago trip to Oshkosh, the large living room that they placed the costumes for the movie in looked very much like it could have been a room in Mr. Verver's house.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adultery, Colin Firth, Daniel Massey, Elizabeth, Fifty Years a Masterpiece, Gayle Hunnicutt, Henry James, Masterpiece Theatre, Pride and Prejudice, The Golden Bowl, The Legend of Hell House, The Paine

Lovers' Lane: The Hall-Mills Mystery by Rick Geary
Published by: NBM Publishing
Publication Date: July 17th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 80 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

On September 14th, 1922, shots rang out near an old abandoned farm used by the New Brunswick locals as lovers' lane. No one went to investigate and it wasn't until two days later that the bodies of Edward Hall, an Episcopal priest, and Eleanor Mills, a member of the church choir, were found. They were staged side-by-side with their feet facing a crab apple tree. A hat obscured Edward Hall's face so only his calling card propped against his shoe gave a hint as to who the male victim was at first. While both victims were shot, the female multiple times, besides having her hand placed on Edward Hall's thigh her throat was also slit from ear to ear, it was later discovered that her tongue and surrounding organs had been removed as well. Around them their love letters were scattered, an apparent judgment from the killer on this adulterous couple. Edward Hall was a pillar of the community and a favorite with his lady parishioners, though he ended up marrying spinster Frances Noel Stevens, an older woman who happened to be an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune and lived with a mentally handicapped brother. Yet most of the community knew of his affair with the talented chorister, who herself was trapped in a loveless marriage. The case soon became a media circus, yet almost everything was badly handled, like Edward Hall's calling card which was handed through the gathering crowd for scrutiny. The crab apple tree was even denuded of branches by souvenir hunters. But the crime baffled the police, who didn't even know who should investigate, the bodies being found in the next county from where the victims lived. But again and again the investigation lead back to Mrs. Hall. Could she, with the help of her wealthy family, have killed her husband just as he was ready to elope with his mistress? For now, the case remains unsolved.

It's a wonderful thing to discover a new author and realize you have their entire back catalog to work through. I was lucky enough to stumble onto Rick Geary one dreary day at the library. I wasn't feeling the best and I wasn't at my local branch, but they had such a lovely display in their graphic novel section featuring several books I'd been wanting to read, from Alison Bechdel to the history of the Carter Family. And there, in between Fun Home and The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song was Adventures of Blanche by Rick Geary. Needless to say I actually took the whole display home with me. Geary's style seemed vaguely familiar but I was soon lost to the narrative, Geary had taken his grandmother's old letters as a starting off point and then lovingly embellished them to be more dramatic and more of their time, with murderers running rampant and famous painters walking in and out of frame. I quickly finished this slender volume and went to look up Geary online. Having worked for both National Lampoon and MAD during my childhood back when I devoured those tomes it's no wonder his style was familiar to me with his people that all look like they have cat whiskers for jawbone definition. He was a part of my past and very soon he was to become a part of my present when I realized that he had written oodles of true crime graphic novels! Nine of which I devoured last year and I can't wait to finish the remaining few.

Here's the thing about me. I LOVE true crime. I went through a period where all I watched was police procedural shows from Homicide: Life on the Street to all the iterations of Law and Order and I especially worshiped Unsolved Mysteries. Because I realized I don't really like true crime that happens now, I like true crime that happened then. I am not joking when I say that if I had a time machine I'd just go back and see who all the famous killers and kidnappers were. Who was Jack the Ripper? What really happened to James Ellroy's mother that turned him into the writer he is today? I don't just want, I NEED to know! When I was in undergrad I saw a very interesting one man play about the kidnapping of the Lindbergh Baby. With all the new speculation about what really happened and Lindbergh's Nazi leanings I decided that the first book I'd check out in Geary's Treasury of XXth Century Murder would be The Lindbergh Child. I couldn't have been happier. This book, this series, combined two things I love, true crime and art. While many people might take issue with how simple his drawing style is, nothing more than line work, there is a place for ALL kinds of graphic novels in the world and this style suits the pared down, spare, clean way he lays out the crime and methodically analyzes it. Maps and cross sections of buildings make Geary the David Maccaulay of True Crime! In each of Geary's books I've read he has told and shown the crime more succinctly than any other author I've ever read. He has a gift for distillation and visualization that is remarkable.

But all this could apply to any one of his books I picked up from The Borden Tragedy: A Memoir of the Infamous Double Murder at Fall River, Mass., 1892 to The Murder of Abraham Lincoln. Here I want to talk about his handling of the Hall-Mills double murder that happened in the fall of 1922. This book just struck me so forcibly I can't quite understand why. It's almost as if I have a weird connection to the crime. It felt familiar somehow and yet, I'm sure I'd never heard of this crime before. While it lead to a media circus what I was drawn to was the more personal nature of this story. So many of the great unsolved crimes are serial killers who were never caught, yet here it's just an adulterous couple at the center of the media firestorm. Plus, the way the crime was committed, the removal of the organs that allowed Eleanor Mills to sing, plus having her favorite song removed from every copy of every hymnal in the church, I agree with the victim's daughter, it sounds like a crime committed by a woman. In fact, that's one thing I really like about this series by Geary, he shows that despite public opinion, women are just as capable of committing really heinous crimes. While this case was never solved, and was very much muddied by an attention seeker known as "the pig lady," Edward Hall's wealthy wife and family were tried and found not guilty. And yet the tale does have a sense of closure. Because a woman had to have committed the crime, and whether it was Frances Noel Stevens or another female parishioner whose advances were spurned by the priest, you have a handle on the probability of who the culprit was. Yes, Frances could have used her money to walk away from a crime she committed, she did act very oddly over the days following her husband's disappearance. But unlike Jack the Ripper, you can clearly see the motive if not the culprit.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adultery, Adventures of Blanche, Charles Lindbergh, Comics, Homicide, Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, Lovers' Lane, Murder, Rick Geary, The Hall-Mills Mystery, Treasury of XXth Century Murder, Unsolved Mysteries

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Published by: Everyman's Library
Publication Date: 1985
Format: Hardcover, 350 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Offred once had a husband. She once had a daughter. She once had a different name. But the United States fell. It feel so fast that it's hard to remember what it was like. There was a constitution, there were rights, but they were suspended. Women who could reproduce became a valuable commodity. They were rounded up and distributed to the ruling elite. Offred is a handmaid to her Commander. Hopefully, God willing, she will provide him with an heir. It's best not to think what would happen if she's unable to conceive. She has her daily routine, shopping for the household as a way to be useful and keep herself healthy for reproductive purposes, and lots of time to think on all that she has lost and the little she has. The room with the bed and the desk and the window. The room with the carving from it's previous occupant, the previous Offred: "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." Yet soon Offred's life starts to change. The Commander has a shrewish wife who used to be televangelist and now does nothing by garden and knit and long for the baby Offred will give her. This has distanced the couple and the Commander feels a void, a void he fills by inviting Offred to come into his study. At first they only play Scrabble, a wordy luxury to Offred. Soon she is given magazines and moisturizer. She knows she's playing a deadly game, if she were to be caught, if his wife were to find out... but "his wife" found out once before when she first met her husband Luke... But when the Commander invites Offred to a "special club" she can't help but notice the hypocrisy. Yet there is also hope. Yes, there is an easy way out, a way the other Offred took, but perhaps she can find another way...

If you're an avid book reader there are books that everyone just assumes you've read. Certain classics that make up the bedrock of the literary world. If you actually admit that the only Dickens you've dabbled in is a perfunctory reading of A Christmas Carol and that you prefer the movie version with Mickey the Mouse they might throw you out of the club. Of course it's not that I don't have these classics by the titans of the literary world, it's that I've just never gotten around to reading them. There are A LOT of books in the world and my "to be read" pile is so staggering it could possibly crush me to death if it was to fall on me, so I hope I'll be forgiven for slowly getting around to these classics. This is one of the reasons for my "theme months." They give me a focus. That month I'll tackle E.M. Forster and get around to reading all his work. Or those months I'll do nothing but indulge in Sherlock Holmes. This way I create content for my blog while getting myself to read the books that are de rigueur. One book that's been languishing was The Handmaid's Tale. Yes, yes, I know, it's been a long time coming, but see above! I can easily see why this book is a Classic with a capital "C." I read this book almost two months ago but it's still with me. I can't help thinking about it all the time. I think waiting to read The Handmaid's Tale until now gave the book more impact. In fact, at the moment reading any dystopian literature makes it seem eerily prescient and also, in some way, a rebellion. These books are a how to not end up in the same situation. You can see the correlations yet see how you can revolt! I can easily see the government oppressing women to this extent because every day there's some new and crazy legislation trying to take away our rights. But we have to fight. We have to keep ourselves informed. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum!

What's interesting about The Handmaid's Tale is that our heroine Offred is unlikable. I know you might not agree with my opinion, she's oppressed, trapped, ritually raped, she is a sympathetic character in regard to her situation, but her situation and who she is are two separate things and I just don't like her. In the "present" tense I don't like her because she's very passive, she's willing to embrace the end if she can't take it anymore, she doesn't fight, she doesn't initiate change or outright rebellion. Yes, you could say to me that by surviving and getting her story, the story of all those like her, out into the world is a rebellion, but again, her escape wasn't of her own doing, she just took it. Likewise if the escape had never presented itself she would have just stayed put. But through her we do hear the stories of interesting and likeable characters, Ofglen, Moira, and others. Women who obviously didn't make it out and who, while they might have had more interesting lives, still, at the heart, lived the same life as Offred. But this is all the "present" it's Offred's past that I have issues with, that made me not like her. She was an adulterer who waited in hotel rooms for years waiting for Luke to divorce his wife and marry her. Yes, I know this situation takes two to tango, but I just can't like her because it makes me feel like condoning cheaters. And while yes, Luke and Offred might have been "meant to be" the way they got there just doesn't sit right with me and therefore makes me dislike Offred. Again, you might be saying what she's gone through should wipe the slate clean, but the thing is, who someone is deep down, what they do informs everything, and while I can pity her I can never like her. Like that bully at school who always picks on you, you might learn what made him that way but does it make it any better when he's still attacking you?

Then there's the odd narrative structure. Yes, it's first person and tends to flow backwards and forwards with Offred's memories and associations and her desire to escape her life into the story of one of her friends, but this inner monologue doesn't help you come to terms with the lack of forward momentum. The Handmaid's Tale is structured in such a way that it's one step forward and two steps back. Every time a plot development seems about to break Offred retreats into her reveries that just stops the narrative momentum in its tracks. At times you even forget what the next plot reveal you were waiting for was. She heavy-handedly keeps talking about the ceremony wherein she copulates with her Commander and yet we have to wait 109 pages until we learn what that ceremony is! And that ceremony is mentioned right at the start of the book! I couldn't help thinking over and over again "just get on with it!" I've said to a few people who were interested in what I thought of this book that I think it's a book that would be better the second time you read it. I stand by this statement. Because after you've read it once you know what happens next so the excruciating wait for certain reveals wouldn't annoy you. After awhile, knowing that the narrative was so drawn out I found myself less and less likely to pick up the book to grab a chapter or two before bed. Books take me, on average, about a week to read as I read at speaking pace. The Handmaid's Tale took me almost three weeks to read, which is almost unheard of for me. Because it's not a long book, and it's not a book I abjectly hated, it's just a book that is plotted in such a way that you become lackadaisical about when you pick it up.

Beyond pacing, there are lots of concepts and atrocities that I had problems with, yet these are problems that are what make the book the Classic that it is. These are the ideas and issues you keep dwelling on and that make the book leave a lasting impression. But what I had the biggest problem with stylistically was The Club that Offred's Commander takes her to. The Club is a brothel in a hotel which Offred visited with Luke before they were married and is there to tend to the "needs" of the high ranking officials of Gilead, whether those are personal or diplomatic needs it doesn't matter. Now it's not the hypocrisy that bothers me, because in a country enslaving women to the will of God it makes a sick kind of sense that those in power don't obey the laws, laws that they themselves have written. What bothers me is that for the first time in the book it felt dated. In the introduction written by Valerie Martin she says that the reason this book is a classic is that it becomes more relevant the more time has passed. This struck me as so very true. Yes we can play "what if" games and think about how certain technological advances, like the Internet, would have changed the outcome, but taken as it is there is a timelessness to The Handmaid's Tale in every instance EXCEPT The Club. For the first time you can feel that this book was written in the 80s. Yes, you've known this all along, you've caught glimpses here and there but Offred arrives at that Club and wham, it's the 80s right in your face. And the thing is I can't quite put my finger on why. Is it the hotel design with it's glass elevators that anyone growing up in the 80s stayed at at one time or another? Was it the weird dishabille feathered outfit Offred dons? Was it the makeup she applied? There's not one thing on it's own, but everything in total all of a sudden dates this novel and takes away it's timelessness.

The truth is with The Club monopolizing the final third of the book with Offred's story abruptly ending shortly thereafter if it wasn't for the epilogue of "historical notes" The Handmaid's Tale would have been a tale worth quickly forgetting. The Twelfth Symposium on Gileadean Studies gives the book a broader context. We get some indication of what happened to Offred, but more than that we learn a little about the cast of characters whom we've been spending so much time with. Hypotheses on who her Commander was, why she was called Offred (Of Fred) and so much more. Yet the "symposium" also gives a hint of what's to come in Offred's world, that it will become far harsher before it gets better. The times, the horrific times that Offred lived in are viewed by the academicians as rather lax, when having just spent all this time with Offred we know they are not. So one can draw some pretty horrific conclusions as to how much worse it got. What I also liked about this little end note was that it gave a stronger sense of reality and weight to Offred's story. She is the voice of the oppressed in Gilead. In a world where women weren't even allowed to read it's her story that survives. Her tale. Somehow these few pages made it all seem more real. I might have disliked Offred, I might have had issues in how she told her tale, but in the end the fact that her tale was told is viewed as a triumph because her voice got to be heard. This is oddly why I'm looking forward to the TV series so much. This epilogue opened up the world of Gilead more. Offred's world is so small, so cloistered, and yet there's this big world out there and I want to hear all the stories, I want to see all of this world, and then I want it burned to ash and stability and human equality returned.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1st Person Narration, 80s, Adultery, Charles Dickens, Classics, Dystopian, Dystopian Drama, E.M. Forster, Epilogue, Gilead, Margaret Atwood, Offred, Reproduction, Sherlock Holmes, The Handmaid's Tale, Women's Rights