strange and random happenstance

The Mitford Scandal by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: January 21st, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 384 Pages
Rating: ★ 
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Louisa Cannon has turned her back on the Mitfords. She had such hopes, such dreams, and here she is a temp hired for a glamorous party at the Guinness household in London. Nothing but a domestic and not even one with a reliable salary. But this is also the night her life will change again thanks to the Mitfords, whether she wants it to or not. The debonair heir, Bryan Guinness, has been wooing Diana Mitford and what transpires at the party makes him realize life is too short and he and Diana should be wed. A maid tragically dies in what appears to be an accident and Bryan pops the question to Diana and she accepts! Now that she's the wife to a Guinness the world is Diana's oyster and she needs her own personal lady's maid, and who better than dear old Louisa? As for dear old Louisa, she isn't exactly in a position to turn the offer down. Such prestige, power, and pay, it's worth putting up with Diana's tempers. Yet murder seems to shadow Diana and Bryan when there's a death at their Paris residence three years later. No one thinks back to that poor maid on the eve of their new lives except Louisa. Louisa senses that they are somehow connected. Two accidents that shouldn't have happened is too much of a coincidence. And who better to ask for help than her old friend Guy Sullivan? He happens to be in Paris following a missing persons case with his best friend Harry and Harry's new wife, Guy's partner, Mary Moon! They sadly get nowhere on either case and Louisa is whisked off in the wake of Diana once again. Though the company Diana is starting to keep is far more political. She's turning away from the bright young things and turning towards Oswald Mosley. Louisa knows it isn't any of her business, she's paid to be Diana's friend and secret keeper, but these secrets are dangerous. And it doesn't help that this confidence doesn't go both ways. Diana won't hear about there being a murderer amongst her friends, even when a third body appears. What is Louisa to do?

If you haven't guessed by now we're working our way through the Mitford sisters in Jessica Fellowes's series, the ironically titled "Mitford Murders Mystery." So the third book means it's Diana's turn, with Unity, Decca, and Debo waiting in the wings, and yes, I feel sorry for them in advance with whatever Jessica Fellowes has planned for them. The problem with Diana is she's a deplorable. She is a genuinely horrible human. The fact that she was married to Oswald Mosley in Goebbels's drawing room with Hitler in attendance is the one sentence bio that adequately covers what a horrid human being she was. While this series has always been more concerned with the "look" of the Mitfords than the "spirit" of them I have to say that Jessica Fellowes did a good job portraying Diana, because not only did I hate the book for myriad writing and plotting reasons, but I hated it for Diana. And thankfully it feels like Jessica Fellowes hates Diana too, because I've come to terms with her being a bad writer, but if she was also a bad human, if she made Diana a heroine, well, I don't think I could stomach that. Though her hatred of Diana made the writing at times a tad heavy handed with the Nazi side of things. But I think that can be forgiven, because now, more then ever, people need to be reminded Nazis are bad. As I write this Nazi Germany is trending on Twitter, that is how relevant Nazis are. But the Diana hatred oozing off the pages made me dislike this book on a level not seen since I read Diana's autobiography A Life of Contrasts. It's really hard to like a book with an unappealing villain as the star. Add to that my myriad issues with the series as a whole, and there was no way I was going to like this. Throw in the weird timeline with us jumping years ahead at random intervals and we're supposed to believe that the crimes committed are in the front of everyone's minds all that time later? That's preposterous. Much like calling this series "A Mitford Murders Mystery."

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Life of Contrasts, Bryan Guinness, Diana Mitford, Guy Sullivan, Jessica Fellowes, Lady's Maid, Louisa Cannon, Murder, Nazis, Oswald Mosley, Roaring Back to Reading, The Mitford Murders, The Mitford Scandal

Bright Young Dead by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: October 30th, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 400 Pages
Rating: ★★
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Pamela may be turning eighteen, but she isn't one of the fast bright young things like her sister Nancy. Pamela would far prefer a quiet and sedate birthday party, perhaps with a nice ride through the country on her horse, but does Nancy listen? Oh no. Nancy and her friends have descended on Asthall Manor and have concocted quite a delicious scavenger hunt, because it is the done thing! Though most scavenger hunts don't end in a dead body at the base of the local church tower. Because if they did, this scavenger hunt would make all the partygoers winners. Adrian Curtis has been murdered and his sister's maid Dulcie is arrested. Dulcie's shadowy past working for Alice Diamond, the Queen of the Forty Thieves, makes her guilty because of her past. But Louisa Cannon is someone who was given a second chance from her own criminal past thanks to the Mitfords and she can't see someone else who has worked so hard trying to go straight to go down for a crime she didn't commit. Therefore it's time for Louisa to dust off her rusty detective skills and get to work. As luck would have it her old crime solving partner Guy Sullivan is now a Sergeant in the actual police force, no more of this railway police thank you very much! Even more of a coincidence is that he is working with his colleague, Constable Mary Moon, investigating Alice Diamond and her latest shoplifting spree. Who knows, the two cases could be connected! One thing is certain, they both need information the other has. As they flit through the underground of London's nightlife, from dance halls to pubs, responding the the thumping urgency of the music thrumming through the clubs, emotions will run high and relationships will be strained as a murderer is lured out into the open. Can they catch a killer before everything implodes?

The ability of humans to adapt shouldn't surprise me given everything we've all been through this year, but still it sneaks up on me occasionally. Case in point is this series. I can unreservedly say that I hate these books and yet I gave this one two stars. Meaning I didn't hate it as much as I thought I did, at least when I was rating it. I've often thought that a book should have two ratings, the one you give right after reading it and the one you give a few months later as to how your memories have either favored or soured to it. In this case they have soured, more and more. The reason this book got two stars is I have already adapted after reading only one book in this series to the fact they aren't good and any improvement, no matter how slight, means it's not complete shit. Perhaps there's a song here, "I've Grown Accustomed to Your Crap?" The main reason is I wasn't shocked this time around by the fact that there are basically no Mitfords in this series despite being "A Mitford Murders Mystery." In fact half way through Bright Young Dead Jessica Fellowes completely gives up on the Mitford pretense altogether and it's just Louisa, off doing stupid things, in particular abandoning herself to Jazz music, a trope that always annoys the hell out of me and makes me want to scratch out the author's eyes, until Jessica finally remembers she's writing a series with a veneer of Mitfords and drags them hastily back on scene for the denouement. A denouement I might add that is just ripping of the movie Clue. So watch Clue instead is my recommendation. Because besides being just boring and unoriginal, this book also talks down to the reader in a way that made me want to shake some sense into the author. You really had to tell us what a fence is in such a condescending manner? Because I think at this point you need all the good will you can get to have any reader pick up the next volume.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alice Diamond, Bright Young Dead, Bright Young Things, Clue, Jessica Fellowes, Jessica Mitford, Louisa Cannon, Mitfords, My Fair Lady, Nancy Mitford, Roaring Back to Reading, Scavenger Hunt, The Mitford Murders

The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: January 23rd, 2018
Format: Hardcover, 432 Pages
Rating: ★
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Florence Nightingale Shore, the goddaughter of the famous nurse, was brutally beaten and left for dead on a train. Days later she would die. But why would anyone want to kill a woman who gave her life to good deeds, just has her namesake had? Three people who are tenuously connected to Florence will band together to solve her mystery. First there is Louisa Cannon. She happened to be on the same railway line under duress when the crime happened. Second there is Guy Sullivan. He works for the railway as a policeman but longs to work for Scotland Yard and rescues Louisa from the clutches of her uncle. Finally there is Nancy Mitford. Louisa was on her way to interview for a position with the Mitford family at Asthall Manor in the Oxfordshire countryside when everything went pear-shaped. Nancy herself has a connection to the murder victim, in that her dear Nanny Blor's twin sister was a good friend to Florence Shore and that was where Florence was headed when she met her untimely demise. But it's only due to some grand plan that Louisa could never comprehend that despite being late for her interview she is taken on by the Mitfords and forges a friendship with Nancy that happens to revolve around solving this lurid crime that has everyone talking! So many what-ifs and twists of fate in Louisa's favor! But thanks to everything lining up just so it looks like Florence Nightingale Shore's murder will be avenged by a debutante, a nursery maid, and a four-eyed wanna be copper.

The Mitfords are what brought me to this book, but the truth is that this book only has the thinnest veneer of Mitfords while all the heavy lifting is done by two characters out of central casting, Guy and Louisa. I don't take issue with Guy and his tenacity that gets the job done where his intellect and poor eyesight can't, I take all my issues with Louisa. A Victorian street urchin whose family has fallen on bad times and who has learned some unsavory skills in order to make a few bob transplanted out of a hundred different stories and placed in the 1920s. I've read about a "Louisa" in so many books that having her the star here just baffled me. There was no hook, no interest, just her. Again. And this when you have the Mitfords right here! Mitfords that are so two-dimensional I seriously wonder if Jessica Fellowes did any research on them at all. She uses their nicknames and that's about it. Well, other people besides Mitfords have nicknames so really, they could have been anyone. Therefore I had to pin my hopes on the "true crime" angle. Alas, this let me down as well with the murder in the end not being properly explained. Also "no one saw her alive again" as a tagline is WRONG she didn't die for like four days! The bigger picture couldn't hold my attention so the little errors started piling up and annoying me, like an itch I couldn't scratch deep under my skin. Louisa drinking from a cup of tea and then the cup being untouched. Little things over and over that hand me flipping back and forth through the book going, hang on a minute, that's wrong from what we learned earlier. Why did Nancy's birthday have to be moved up a year? Why does time have no meaning anymore? How long have I been reading this book again? Questions that will never have answers, especially that last one.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Asthall Manor, Florence Nightingale Shore, Guy Sullivan, Jessica Fellowes, Louisa Cannon, Mitfords, Murder, Nancy Mitford, Oxfordshire, Roaring Back to Reading, Stock Character, The Mitford Murders, Trains

Six sisters raised in an unorthodox manner, with their own argot, Honnish, with education being for boys, not girls, they never had a formal education, yet despite that hindrance, two of them went on to become celebrated writers, with Nancy Mitford regarded as one of the best writers of the 20th century. They are a topic of conversation that would make any Anglophiles sqweee with joy and historians of the bright young things generation pant. In any time period the Mitfords would be called eccentric which made them all the more memorable. As The New York Times said: "A Nazi, a Fascist, a Communist, a Novelist, a Countrywoman, a Duchess...Sisters." The eldest, Nancy, went on to be famous for her novels satirising her family, Pamela's lesbian relationship didn't raise many eyebrows especially because her younger sister Diana married the heir to the Guinness fortune then left him for Walter Mosley, the leader of Britian's Fascist movement, eventually marrying in Joseph Goebbels' drawing room with Hitler in attendance. Unity was much like her sister Diana, in that she too flocked to Hitler, but was so torn when Britain and Germany declared war that she shot herself in the head, but didn't die until after the war, lingering but wounded. Jessica meanwhile was a staunch Communist and ran off with her cousin to the Spanish Civil War, they eventually married. Deborah on the other hand was quite docile, having married the Duke of Devonshire and eventually taking the reigns of Chatsworth, one of the great houses of England, and turning it into one of the most successful country homes and tourist attractions. Of the six sisters, only Pamela and Unity never took pen to paper. While Nancy wrote fiction, it seems that the sisters main literary interest was in non-fiction. Writing biographies, not just of famous people, but also contrasting biographies of themselves. Besides their own writing there has been a plethora of books written on them, even a series of murder mysteries wherein they solve crimes from when they were bright young socialites. Controversial, stylish and notorious... They are an unforgettable family.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Argot, Chatsworth, Communist, Deborah Mitford, Diana Mitford, Duchess, Duchess of Devonshire, Fascists, Jessica Mitford, Mitfords, Nancy Mitford, Nazis, Pamela Mitford, Roaring Back to Reading, Unity Mitford, Writer

A Friendly Game of Murder by J.J. Murphy
Published by: Signet
Publication Date: January 1st, 2013
Format: Mass Market Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

The Algonquin is having their big New Year's Eve Party. Up in the penthouse Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford are giving the party of the season. Down in the lobby Dorothy is waiting for Benchley to arrive so that perhaps she might have the forbidden midnight kiss she has dreamed of. Though things go a little south when the hotel is put under quarantine... they can party, but they can't leave. Which is not a problem for the residents like Dorothy or the guests, so long as the booze holds out. When the new Broadway sensation Bibi Bibelot decides to make a bit of a spectacle, in nothing but her birthday suit and some bubbly, tensions become high, and heated for many of the young bucks. When Bibi turns up dead, things go from bad to worse. But with her wit and her friends by her side, Dorothy knows she can solve this mystery before the quarantine is lifted, it doesn't hurt that she has the creator of Sherlock Holmes on hand to help her. Though he might need some friendly coercion. Of course she does have to figure out how to kill Alexander Woollcott before the night is out... sadly that crime is only in fun, being "a friendly game of murder."

In the previous two installments, the characters have been boozing it up and running hither and yon and, while always a great read, all that toing and froing can be a little tiring. So having them locked in the Algonquin was a nice respite from all that rushing about greater Manhattan. Yet this means we are now working within that greatest of detective tropes, the locked room mystery. Does J.J. settle there? No! He one-ups that and makes the murder a locked room in a locked room, the Agatha Christie fan in me did a double squeal of joy, followed by a polite throat clearing in the manner of Poirot. There is also the method of murder being not apparently obvious, so the suspect is not obvious, therefore the how comes before the who. I'm just giddy now. As for the "guest stars" who wouldn't be over the moon with Arthur Conan Doyle becoming a reluctant sleuth? I love how Dorothy tries to draw him into their world of fun and games, but the stoic Doyle with his walrus moustache tries to stay apart from the rabble... an endeavour that is bound to fail when Dorothy's involved! Yet nothing warmed the cockles of my heart more than Doyle being all blustery and Woolcott being all blustery and having at each other... the denouement of their butting heads is hilarious. Then there is the game of "murder." I think it's spiffing that J.J. used a game that the members of the Round Table actually played and was able to use this as a framing device for the novel, as well as a wonderful title. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Friendly Game of Murder, Agatha Christie, Alexander Woollcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Douglas Fairbanks, J.J. Murphy, Mary Pickford, New Year's Eve, Poirot, Roaring Back to Reading, The Algonquin Round Table

Your Might As Well Die by J.J. Murphy
Published by: Signet
Book provided by the author
Publication Date: December 6th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy
 
Ernie MacGuffin is a truly bad artist. No one likes his art and no one much likes him. He decides to end it all and gives his suicide note to Dorothy Parker figuring she'll understand. Yet Dorothy feels that something is not quite right when she sees the scene of the crime on the Brooklyn Bridge. Something doesn't add up, and to top it off, New York seems to be going cuckoo because now they all love MacGuffin and his work! The paintings values have skyrocketed. Ernie's ex-mistress decides to make a little extra for herself claiming that she's a medium and starts holding seances to talk to the deceased Ernie. Parker has Benchley benched for most of her investigation because she has a real seance skeptic to aid her, none other than Harry Houdini! He would give anyone good money to prove that contact with the other side is possible. And who's Dorothy to turn up her noise at good money when her credit is no longer good at the local speakeasy. But detective work is hard and detective work while sober is even harder. Racing around the city trying to figure out all the crosses and double crosses Dorothy feels like she's in Harpo Marx and Alexander Woollcott's famous game of croquet, being played anywhere and everywhere, football fields to rooftops to theaters! While solving the mystery of what truly is going on with MacGuffin is well and good, getting enough money to pay off her bar tab is the final solution.

Again JJ Murphy has delighted me beyond measure. Witty banter, shenanigans, antics, croquet, and the sheer joy of a 1920s screwball comedy with the addition of Houdini as a stronger foil than Faulkner in the first installment the book just buzzed along. Also addressing, even in an offhand manner, Dorothy's struggle with depression and her several attempts at suicide was a nice nod to the fact that Dorothy's life was much more than it appeared on the surface. What really made the book work for me though were two things I have a very strong interest in: art and spiritualism. The whole idea of an artist's work being more valuable after their death has led, I am sure, to many artists thinking of faking their death. I know, I've thought of it, but then, creating a new identity and all that rigmarole, too much effort, especially if the market is soft at the time or if they don't go up in value till a significant time after your "death" it just wouldn't be worth it. As for the spiritualism? Yes please! I find it interesting that the next book will have Arthur Conan Doyle as the literary guest star, who was a huge proponent of spiritualism, and who was in fact a good friend of Houdini's until they clashed over the idea of life after death. Houdini wanted to believe, desperately, but as a showman he could see through all the hoaxes and tricks better than anyone else. The whole history of this time period, the Cottingly Fairies, the unexplainable versus the people obviously tapping at tables just enthralls me. I went to an exhibit quite a few years ago at the MET where they showed all these original pictures as "proof" of spirits... while the pictures where interesting, much like Houdini, I think I need some more solid proof. I don't need more proof though as to how much I love this series. It's going to be a long hard wait for that next book, much like Dorothy waiting for a drink.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Alexander Woollcott, Arthur Conan Doyle, Cottingley Fairies, Dorothy Parker, Harpo Marx, Harry Houdini, J.J. Murphy, Roaring Back to Reading, Spiritualism, The Algonquin Round Table, You Might as Well Die

Hair of the Dog by J.J. Murphy
Published by: Amazon
Publication Date: May 17th, 2011
Format: Kindle
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Dorothy Parker just wants a quiet lunch, but the dining room at the Algonquin is anything but. There's a big brouhaha over some missing meat. With the owner steaming mad he points the finger at the likely suspects, the waiter, or Dorothy's dog. One being in the vicinity when the veal was purloined, the other being a dog. But in this day and age with liquor being illegal counterbalanced by the continuing need to slack the thirst, there's more fluidity to crime and punishment. There's a give and a take. There's a barter system that might just be what's at work. This quick little story was not nearly enough to slack my thirst for this new series. Hair of the Dog was a quick little read that offered yet another glimpse into the bygone era Dorthy Parker lived in. Here instead of the publishing world we see more the lower classes and how, even in the darkest of times, there are ways to have a grand celebration, if you are willing to turn a blind eye and bend the rules but not break them.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Dogs, Dorothy Parker, Hair of the Dog, J.J. Murphy, Kindle, Murder Your Darlings, Mystery, Prohibition, Roaring Back to Reading, The Algonquin Round Table

Murder Your Darlings: Algonquin Round Table Mystery Book 1 by J.J. Murphy
Published by: Signet
Publication Date: January 4th, 2011
Format: Paperback, 336 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

"In all reverence I say Heaven bless the Who-dunit, the soothing balm on the wound, the cooling hand on the brow, the opiate of the people." - Dorthy Parker

Dorthy Parker may be at the center of a vicious circle of writers in New York, in fact, THE Vicious Circle... that still doesn't mean that any of them are responsible for the appearance of a corpse under their celebrated round table at the Algonquin. But, as any good writer knows, that doesn't eliminate them from the suspect pool. The fact that the corpse is a reviewer that one or more of them has wished dead at one time or another doesn't help matters. Once the press gets a hold of the story and starts to sensationalize the scenario, things are libel to get out of hand. Dorthy and her fellow writer, Robert Benchley, decide to solve the case on their own without the cops, who seem to be questioning all the wrong people. Not to mention the flatfoots seem obsessed with the young wannabe writer Billy Faulkner, who Dorothy just knows couldn't have done it. She must make sure that Billy is safe and not the prime suspect! With her dog's lead in one hand, a cup of tea filled with anything but in the other, and a heart longing for the married Benchley, Dorothy will solve this crime if she has to go to every illegal gin joint, speakeasy, and bad play that stands in her way.

Murder Your Darlings throws you headlong into the heart of the Vicious Circle at the height of their powers. Therefore I will caution, the unwieldy cast coupled with the plethora of puns does take a while to adjust to, like getting your sea legs or finding your tolerance level for alcohol. But once you grasp who everyone is and what they're notorious for the story fully captures you. I wouldn't say that it's one of those books you just start and plow through cover to cover, with it's wonderfully short chapters and it's witty dialogue it's a book you can pick up and set down like an indulgent afternoon snack. You get a little bit of refreshment and go on with your day, mulling over the wonderful little world you've been reading about. It's a nice leisurely stroll to the conclusion, which, when reached, makes you wish that you had a few more hours to bask in the time period. I was left with a happy glow that I still look back on fondly and look forward to having again when the next book comes out. Perhaps this time a who's who and maybe a map would improve the reading experience. Or little bios of everyone... because this wonderful world is made that much more interesting when you know the history. Thanks Wikipedia, I phrase I rarely utter and which I'm sure Dorothy would abhor.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 2 comments  

Labels: Bright Young Detectives, Dorothy Parker, J.J. Murphy, Murder Your Darlings, Mystery, Roaring Back to Reading, Robert Benchley, The Algonquin, The Algonquin Round Table, The Vicious Circle, William Faulkner

Dorothy Parker is easily the most quoted American author known for her caustic wit and sharp tongue. An American Oscar Wilde, if you will. She had the brains and the bite. Dorothy Rothschild, not those Rothschilds, was born in New Jersey but quickly whisked back to New York, so as she could be a true New Yorker. Once her mother died her relationship with her father was contentious until his death when she was twenty. A year later she sold her first poem to Vanity Fair, a magazine she would eventually work at after a two year stint at Vogue. In fact she'd bounce around the various New York publications, from The New Yorker to Esquire and all those in between, for many years, though it was her work as the theatre critic for Vanity Fair, where she was filling in for P.G. Wodehouse when he was on vacation, that made her career take off. This time in her life was centered around her lunches at the Algonquin Round Table. She held her own as one of the few women at a table of (almost) equally smart and wisecracking male colleagues.

As a member of the Algonquin Round Table she became famous as much for her biting remarks as for her brilliant writing. A prolific poet and critic, Dorothy published more than 300 poems in the 1920s. The collection of her writing, The Portable Dorothy Parker, has never gone out of print. Her romantic life was a bit of a roller-coaster, marrying Edwin Parker just before he was deployed in the Great War, by the time he was demobbed their marriage was over. Numerous affairs led to a pregnancy, an abortion, and her first suicide attempt in that order. She had slightly better luck with her second husband, Alan Campbell, even if at times it was tempestuous their union brought about two Oscar nominations for Best Writing-Screenplay. The looming second war brought out Dorothy's political side, she took up pet political causes, and numerous pets, and eventually bequeathed her literary estate to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. After his assassination her estate passed to the NAACP. For her tombstone epitaph she suggested “Excuse My Dust.”

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bright Young Detectives, Dorothy Parker, Esquire, Excuse My Dust, New York, Oscar Wilde, Oscars, Roaring Back to Reading, The Algonquin Round Table, The New Yorker, The Portable Dorothy Parker, Vanity Fair, Vogue

If you pay any attention to the cozy genre you'll have seen an adjacent subgenre that's been making itself more and more prominent in recent years, the famous author as sleuth. Yes, there are more "literary" ambitions thrown in like Arthur and George by Julian Barnes, but for me, when they hew closer to the cozy they are more fun. A complete fantasy versus something mired in reality. Josephine Tey, Dorothy Parker, Daphne Du Maurier, and even Agatha Christie herself have solved crimes at the hands of modern day authors. What speaks to me about these books is their meta nature. It's a fun what if! What if these writers, especially those who wrote crime fiction, had some real life inspiration? What if they stumbled on a crime and had a compulsion to solve it? What if said crime inspired them to write? A completely and wonderfully absorbing fantasy. But I also love it when popular literary figures who are in no way connected with crime solve mysteries. One of my favorites in this very niche genre is the Algonquin Round Table Mysteries that has that ever so chic of twenties authors Dorothy Parker solving crimes, often with the likes of Houdini and Conan Doyle! Then there's the Mitford Murder series by Jessica Fellowes. While none of the Mitfords who took pen to paper actually wrote mysteries, the six sisters were a staple of twenties gossip columns so it makes sense that they would fictionally turn to solving crimes. Or at least it does in my mind. So join me in experiencing the roaring twenties through the prose of modern authors envisioning the past through the eyes of some of the twenties most interesting literary and historical figures.      

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Bright Young Detectives, Cozy, Daphne Du Maurier, Dorothy Parker, Jessica Fellowes, Josephine Tey, Mitfords, Roaring Back to Reading, The Algonquin Round Table

Agatha and the Truth of Murder
Starring: Stacha Hicks, Joshua Silver, Ruth Bradley, Michael McElhatton, Liam McMahon, Clare McMahon, Pippa Haywood, Brian McCardie, Amelia Dell, Richard Doubleday, Derek Halligan, Samantha Spiro, Blake Harrison, Tim McInnerny, Bebe Cave, Dean Andrews, Seamus O'Hara, and Ralph Ineson
Release Date: December 23rd, 2018
Rating: ★★★
To Watch

Agatha Christie has asked Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for help. She needs to know how one pushes through writer's block. She doesn't want her career to be over just when it's starting. His oblique advice is to design a golf course. Though Agatha does attempt this it's not very successful given the real reason she's blocked; her husband Archie wants a divorce because he wants to marry his mistress. Who just happens to be a golfer. The perfect antidote to her problem arrives on her doorstep in the form of Mabel Rogers. Six years previously the love of Mabel's life, Florence Nightingale Shore, was brutally attacked on a train and succumbed to her injuries days later with Mabel by her side. Mabel has spent the last six years devoting her life to solving the murder of Florence and has come to Christie believing she can help. At first Agatha is disinterested, but then realizes that this might be just the thing to fix her writer's block. They decide to lure the suspects to a country house with the incentive that they might get a share in a large inheritance. Agatha will be "Mary Westmacott" a representative of the law firm sent to validate the claimants legitimacy and suitability, with many questions needing answering, in order to figure out who might be a murderer. Mabel will act as an all-round servant, able to root through the guests possessions when they are otherwise engaged. The suspects are a young nurse, whom Florence censured, Florence's cousin, whom inherited Florence's not inconsiderable estate, a solider, a boxer, and a mother whom Florence was intending to visit before her untimely death. Agatha and Mabel have set it up just like one of Christie's novels, get all the suspects together and find out who the guilty party is. The only problem is their ruse results in the death of one of their suspects. So now they have a second murder to solve as their time runs short. There's only so long they can hold their suspects and the outside world has gone mad with Christie's disappearance! They must catch the culprits AND get Agatha out of the news with her timely reappearance as soon as possible.    

Agatha and the Truth of Murder is based on the clever conceit of taking two real life mysteries and having the investigation of one being the reason for the other. The first mystery is the murder of Florence Nightingale Shore in 1920, which this film postulates Agatha Christie as solving during her 1926 disappearance. It's complete fabrication, they don't even stick too closely to the actual facts, especially where suspects are concerned, but for it's entertainment value it's a fun diversion in the style of Christie's own work. Though what faults it has could have been easily fixed. The movie's problems, like the mysteries, number two. Firstly there needed to be a better understanding of exactly who Florence Nightingale Shore was. She was an amazing woman, a war hero, a nurse as formidable as her godmother and namesake. Yet we only see a glimpse of her at the beginning of the film when she's attacked and then learn secondhand through her friend Mabel Rogers about the crime and only a little about the woman she loved. How can we care about Florence's murder if the character isn't grounded? This wouldn't have taken much to solve, just a little more exposition instead of passing over her to get to Agatha as fast as they could. And that speed is the second problem, the pacing is all off in this film. The narrative is rushed. I defy anyone to actually know whose country house the investigation is taking place in and how all the suspects are connected to Florence Nightingale Shore before the revelation of the killer who you can't see coming and then the final denouement! The filmmakers were too intent on getting everyone closeted away from the world, cloistered in that big house just like Agatha Christie would do in one of her own books that they forgot that as an author she always made her books accessible. If you paid close enough attention you could solve it. Everything made sense. Here it's just a jumble whirling around you like an out of control ride at an amusement park. That's not to say it isn't fun, it just isn't as satisfying an experience as it could have been if a little more care had gone into making it. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 1 comments  

Labels: Agatha and the Truth of Murder, Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Disappearance, Florence Nightingale, Florence Nightingale Shore, Mabel Rogers, Mary Westmacott, Murder, Roaring Back to Reading, True Crime

Agatha Christie's Poirot: The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Based on the book by Agatha Christie
Starring: David Suchet, Roger Frost, Oliver Ford Davies, Malcolm Terris, Nigel Cooke, Jamie Bamber, Rosalind Bailey, Gregor Truter, Clive Brunt, Selina Cadell, Daisy Beaumont, Flora Montgomery, Vivien Heilbron, and Philip Jackson
Release Date: January 2nd, 2000
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Poirot arrives at a bank. He carefully removes a waterlogged journal from a safety deposit box. He sits himself down and reviews the journal of a depraved mind. A mind for murder. The events of which happened when Poirot retired to King's Abbot to grow mallows. On the day that Mrs. Ferrars was to kill herself Dr. Sheppard accompanied Roger Ackroyd's butler over to his neighbor Poirot's house. Poirot was attempting to successfully cultivate mallows with the loving care only an obsessive compulsive could lavish on the vegetables and yet he does not succeed. Thankfully Parker has come at the request of his employer to ask if Poirot's tour of the factory could be moved forward an hour, to which Poirot is glad to accede, the mallows will only frustrate him more. Years earlier Poirot lent his friend Roger Ackroyd startup capital and he has turned it into an empire. An empire with many pieces and many players, some of whom aren't happy. Before the tour concludes, Poirot will see Roger's unhappy secretary, Geoffrey Raymond, and Roger's distraught stepson, Ralph Paton, who is begging his father to not announce his engagement to Flora Ackroyd, Roger's niece, in this coming Sunday's paper, as well as a frantic phone call from Mrs. Ferrars. That night Mrs. Ferrars takes her own life and the next morning Roger asks Poirot to stop by his house. Poirot is disturbed to learn that Mrs. Ferrars was being blackmailed, though she refused to say who the culprit was. Poirot leaves as a dinner party arrives at Roger's house and he goes home to ruminate. Something isn't sitting right with him and he's worried for his friend. He has every reason to be worried because by the time Poirot returns to Roger's house later that evening Roger is dead, in a locked room. The sequence of events seems to be simple enough and Ralph Paton seems to be the culprit, but Poirot isn't so sure. He is reluctant to return to detection but to avenge his friend he must! And when another old friend arrives to help solve the crime it's like old times. Too bad it's old times that drove Poirot to the mallows.    

I went into this episode of Poirot expecting many changes from the source material. There are some things unique to literature that can not be replicated in a visual medium. A story narrated by the killer whilst simultaneously concealing their guilt from the reader, a trope that Christie used several times, would be virtually impossible to pull off for television, so in swoops the dramatist, Clive Exton, who restructures the story to a more traditional Poirot story. He takes Poirot, who was more a spectator, an outsider in the original story and puts him in the thick of it while bringing Chief Inspector Japp along for the ride, as we have seen in countless previous adventures. And that's what I missed most about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I missed how unique and original it was within Poirot's cannon. I missed this different kind of story that could have been told, instead we are given a framing device of the journal of the killer, which when you read the book is actually the book you are reading. What's more Exton upped the vitriol of our killer who is woefully miscast resulting in the denouement being totally unsatisfactory. Yet, despite all this it isn't a "bad" episode, it just could have been so much more, but it is thankfully saved because of the charm of Suchet and Jackson. The nuanced humor these two actors have developed over the years of working together brings joy to the screen because you can see how much fun they are having. What's more, Suchet is so effortlessly Poirot that he brings humor and pathos to the role in even the quietest of moments. My favorite scene is at the very beginning when Dr. Sheppard and Parker come over to Poirot's house. In the book I always thought it was odd that Poirot would retire to the country in order to raise mallows. Well, here we see a far more honest depiction of how that might have gone. His exasperation with his garden given with a sigh, a grunt, a flung vegetable, and a raised eyebrow are sheer perfection. In fact I couldn't help but think his babying of his garden combined with his frustration is something all of those who have taken to our gardens during quarantine are feeling. There's a little bit of Poirot in us all I think. 

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, Agatha Christie, Clive Exton, David Suchet, Gardening, Jamie Bamber, Mallows, OCD, Philip Jackson, Poirot, Quarantine, Roaring Back to Reading, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Unreliable Narrator

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie
Published by: Black Dog and Leventhal Publishers
Publication Date: June, 1926
Format: Hardcover, 288 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Dr. James Sheppard has just been attending to the suicide of one of his patients, a Mrs. Ferrars. This tragedy effects another patient, and friend, Roger Ackroyd, who invites Dr. Sheppard to dinner with his family and other house guests at Fernly Park that night. The dinner isn't the most congenial of affairs, the other guests include Roger's sister-in-law and her daughter Flora, who announces her engagement to Roger's stepson Ralph Patton, Major Blunt, a big game hunter, and Geoffrey Raymond, Roger's personal secretary. The guests wouldn't be that important if it wasn't for what happened after. Roger reveals to Dr. Sheppard that his fiance, the widow Mrs. Ferrars, killed herself because she was being blackmailed! She apparently killed her first husband and the blackmailer knew it! Before the two get into too great a discussion about what all this could mean a letter from the late Mrs. Ferrars arrives and Roger asks the good doctor to leave. Dr. Sheppard though is soon called back to Fernly Park as Roger Ackroyd has been found murdered! The police suspect Ralph Patton, but nothing adds up. The room was locked, the letter from Mrs. Ferrars is missing, the call Dr. Sheppard received telling him of the death can't be traced, a chair has been moved at the scene of the crime, what does it all mean? It means Poirot is needed and Flora calls him in. As luck would have it he has retired to King's Abbot to grow vegetable marrows and is now living next door to Dr. Sheppard. Poirot is glad to come out of retirement because Roger Ackroyd was his friend. Dr. Sheppard, being such an important witness to the crime, becomes Poirot's Watson; leading him through the events as they happened and writing down the case for posterity. What an honor to work with the great Poirot! What an honor to see if the great detective's little grey cells are still up to the task of catching a criminal or are only good for cultivating vegetable marrows.

Sometimes you just need a really good whodunit. I was reading a list of the greatest locked room mysteries and The Murder of Roger Ackroyd topped the list. Now I loved a good locked room mystery, and while I still think that technically A.A. Milne's The Red House Mystery might be the more locked of the rooms due to a window that the generators of this list seem to have overlooked, I will say that this Poirot outing was fun and unexpected in many ways. What I found most fascinating about The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is that this is only Poirot's third book, his forth if you count the short story collection, and Agatha Christie already has him retired to the countryside to raise marrows! If you're wondering what a marrow is it's a vegetable similar to zucchini, and yes, leave it to Poirot to grow something that the majority of modern readers have to look up because they are no longer fashionable. Though I think even contemporary American readers would probably have had to look it up as well... or at least that's my hope in a desperate plea to not feel totally ignorant about vegetables. Given that Poirot is the star of 50 short stories, 33 novels, and 2 plays, I was thrown that we see Poirot pleasantly ensconced in retirement. Of course it doesn't last, but the fact that Christie was willing to toy with the idea of retiring her greatest detective so early as a sort of red herring goes to show how she revolutionized the detective genre by continually playing with the medium and not hesitating to take a risk. And in another unexpected twist we aren't seeing Poirot through the hero-worshiping eyes of Hastings! We get an entirely new view of Poirot through the eyes of our unreliable narrator Dr. Sheppard. Which then makes one think if we can even trust Hastings' narration in his stories. There are just so many implications to everything here that it makes one dizzy. In fact I'd say Christie subverting the detective genre's and her own most common tropes versus solving the murder brings more joy to the reader; but that just might be me.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A. A. Milne, Agatha Christie, Hastings, Locked Room, Marrows, Mystery, Poirot, Roaring Back to Reading, Subverting, Suicide, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, The Red House Mystery, Unreliable Narrator, Watson

When people think of authors from the 1920s I don't think many people think of Agatha Christie because she was prolific for such a long time, her final book being published posthumously in 1976 a few months after her death. Hercule Poirot might be inseparable from the the Art Deco trappings of the 1920s but Christie herself has become timeless. Yet her first book featuring the Belgian detective, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, was published in 1920 and she went on to publish ten more books during this decade. From an early age it was clear Christie was a voracious reader and budding writer. Her mother, due to some whim, decided that Agatha wasn't to learn to read or write until she was eight. Agatha taught herself at age four. By age ten she had written her first poem, "The Cowslip," which is so beautiful and elegant it's hard to imagine a girl of only ten writing it. By age eleven her father died and she viewed it as the end of her childhood. What came next was marriage and war. Two things that would forever change her.

On Christmas Eve, 1914 she married Archie Christie while he was home on leave. To do her patriotic duty she worked first as a nurse and then as a dispenser, which is where she learned all about medicine, and more importantly, about poisons. No one could ever fault her writing for getting these details wrong due to her experience. During the war in 1916 she wrote her first detective novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, being inspired by her work in the dispensary and the Belgian refugees she encountered in the hospital. But before she would see it published the war would end and she would have a child. The twenties also brought about the death of her mother and her divorce, which lead to her own mysterious disappearance in 1926 that was never explained and had the country in an uproar. Whether the public thought it a publicity stunt or not, one thing was clear, they needed Agatha Christie and her books. Lucky for them she wrote 66 detective novels and 14 short-story collections in total that have sold over two billion copies, an amount surpassed only by the Bible and the works of William Shakespeare.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Agatha Christie, Art Deco, Belgian, Bible, Christmas Eve, Detective, Disappearance, Nurse, Poirot, Poison, Reading, Refugee, Roaring Back to Reading, Shakespeare, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Writing, WWI

Life in Squares
Starring: Phoebe Fox, Eve Best, Christian Brassington, Eleanor Bron, James Clay, Lydia Leonard, Catherine McCormack, James Norton, Rupert Penry-Jones, Ed Birch, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, Jack Davenport, Sam Hoare, Andrew Havill, Elliot Cowan, Edmund Kingsley, James Northcote, Deborah Findlay, Anton Lesser, Al Weaver, Guy Henry, Jenny Howe, Charlie Appleyard, Maximilian Scull, Finn Jones, Louis Fisher, Edmund Digby-Jones, Rosie Ede, Lucy Boynton, Simon Thomas, and Emily Bruni
Release Date: July 27th, 2015 - August 10th, 2015
Rating: ★★
To Watch

Siblings Vanessa, Virginia, and Adrian Stephen have been liberated from societal, conventional, and parental expectations with the death of their father. Though Virginia's mental health remains delicate a hovering Aunt is no match to their desire to freely express themselves and break free of the assigned rolls expected of them. If they use only one spoon for the entire household, so be it! Dishes take up so much time that could be used productively in the pursuit of art! In an effort to give the girls a glimpse of the greater artistic community Adrian invites over his college friends for salons. At first Vanessa and Virginia feel that they are still constrained, being the hostesses of these evenings, but slowly they become equals to the Cambridge and Oxford educated boys. Thus the Bloomsbury Group came to exist, but their relationships would often be fraught. The love triangles were endless and endlessly discussed. Virginia was forever concerned with losing her sister to marriage, the state to which their hovering Aunt approved above all others! The art critic Clive Bell seemed the most likely candidate to whisk Vanessa away. And after the heartbreaking death of their brother to typhoid Virginia lost her sister to Bell and her sisters newfound love of copulation which soon brought about her first child, Julian. But five years later Virginia would marry Leonard Woolf, though wouldn't take as much joy in copulation as her sister and sadly would have a bad breakdown resulting in a suicide attempt. She was able to come back from this and her first book was published in 1915. With war on the horizon a significant portion of the Bloomsbury Group decamped from Bloomsbury. Vanessa, Duncan Grant, and Duncan's lover David Garnett moved to the Sussex countryside where Vanessa and Duncan could paint while Duncan and David worked the land instead of serving in the army. But this move to the countryside would complicate everything, as Vanessa realized that the homosexual Duncan was the love of her life and she decided that they would have a child together, which they did. Years pass in which no one talks about all their trysts and on the eve of another world war everything starts to break apart. 

Dorothy Parker famously quipped that the Bloomsbury Group "lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles." The squares and the circles of this adaptation are pitch perfect. The atmosphere, the rooms with every visible surface decorated, the feeling of a lived in artistic space is spot on, so much so that I've started to look at my door jambs and think that they are lacking something in being painted a flat white. I wanted to walk through those rooms and just absorb the creativity. Unfortunately this miniseries is all about the triangles. And I have a feeling that watching the background as I did wasn't the intended purpose in making this promiscuous miniseries. Comprising of three episodes the first two episodes are all about graphic copulation while the third is the Group clumsily dealing with the fallout of said copulation. Now I'm not one to be a prude, I just feel that graphic sex needs to be in aid of something, in particular, the story being told. Here it just seemed to be shorthand for their freedom, both intellectually and sexually. Yet there was a line that struck me as odd, Vanessa receives a letter from Virginia who is on her honeymoon saying she doesn't think sex is all it's cracked up to be and Vanessa blithely replies that the Duckworths messed Virginia up. This sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole learning about Virigina's sexual abuse at the hands of her stepbrothers, the Duckworths. I'm sorry, what!?! There's a real issue here that should be dealt with instead it's glossed over or made bawdy, more copulation please! This was the turning point for me. And this doesn't even cover Vanessa's daughter marrying her father's ex-lover! If something so important could be shoved aside as nothing then how could I enjoy anything I was seeing? This disconnect was made "easier" by the switching of the cast between the second and third episodes. In the first two episodes we see glimpses of their future selves played by different actors, and these glimpses were fine and were meant to cushion the blow of switching to the older actors. The problem was I was invested in the younger actors and their relationships, the older actors, once on their own, had no chemistry. None! Nothing at all, it was horrid. And as for Eve Best as the older Vanessa, do they do Razzies for television?

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bloomsbury Group, Cambridge, Dorothy Parker, Duncan Grant, Leonard Woolf, Life in Squares, Love Triangle, Miniseries, Oxford, Razzie, Roaring Back to Reading, Sex, Sexual Abuse, Vanessa Bell, Virgina Woolf, WWI, WWII

Mrs. Dalloway
Based on the book by Virginia Woolf
Starring: Rupert Graves, Vanessa Redgrave, Amanda Drew, Oliver Ford Davies, Natascha McElhone, Alan Cox, Hal Cruttenden, Lena Headey, Amelia Bullmore, Rupert Baker, Alistair Petrie, John Franklyn-Robbins, Phyllis Calvert, Katie Carr, Selina Cadell, Michael Kitchen, Robert Portal, John Standing, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Hardy, Denis Lill, Kate Binchy, Sarah Badel, Janet Henfrey, Faith Brook, Tony Steedman, and Christopher Staines
Release Date: September 4th, 1997
Rating: ★★★
To Watch

It is a beautiful summer's day in June. Mrs. Dalloway wonders aloud how is she so lucky to have her party on such a perfect day. When she was young, at Bourton, every day was perfect and spent with her friends, several of whom are coming to her party that night. As she walks to the florist she runs into one of them, Hugh, a rather hopeless case then and now. But he has his purpose. After picking out the sweet peas at the shop, just like her dear friend Sally Seton used to decorate the table one night all those years ago, a car backfires and she sees a young man in distress through the shop window. Septimus Warren Smith is out with his wife Rezia. They are due for an appointment later at the doctors because Septimus keeps threatening to kill himself and sees his dead friend Evans wherever he goes. The image of that young man will stick with Clarissa all day as she prepares for her party. And she has some unexpected hurdles; her daughter, Elizabeth, is insisting she won't attend because she'll be helping her friend Miss Kilman in her charitable work. There is also a little do-to about a boring acquaintance wishing to attend whom Clarissa would rather not. But the biggest surprise is when Peter Walsh walks through the door. Peter has been in India ever since Clarissa threw him over for her husband all those summers ago at Bourton. Peter's life, and in particular his love life, is a shambles and he breaks down in front of Clarissa. He can't help be overwhelmed by what his life has become and the thought that he loved Clarissa. He's uncertain if he still does, but the fact that he did has colored his entire life. Despite saying that under no circumstance would he be invited to the party he gets an invitation shouted after him as he flees the Dalloway's residence. Then finally, the hour has come, the party is to start, and Clarissa is sure it will be a failure. She just wishes to create this one perfect evening for her guests so that they can go out into the world afterwards and look back on the wonder of the perfect memory, the perfect evening, the perfect conversation, the perfect party. She worries that one of her guests, a rather renowned doctor, will ruin everything by discussing the suicide of his patient Septimus Warren Smith, by bringing death into her domain, but sometimes life, love, and memories, are greater than death, which has it's own kind of freedom.   

Remember the days when you'd just channel surf and see what was on because the only other way was to drag out the TV Guide, an actual, physical, small newsprint block of information, not that glossy mag that's still around today, and try to figure out which channel was which because each cable company had a different channel lineup? Well, back then I stumbled on this wonderfully British and evocative movie. I only got to watch about twenty minutes of it because dinner was ready but it left enough of an impression that I bothered to dig out the TV Guide after the fact and figure out that it was called Mrs. Dalloway. Knowing it was based on the book by Virginia Woolf, and at this time I would never watch an adaptation without reading the book first, I went out and got myself a copy of Mrs. Dalloway and it sat on my shelves for years. Then after The Hours came out a new edition of Mrs. Dalloway was released including the short story which was the initial inspiration for the book so I thought to myself, lucky I didn't read Mrs. Dalloway without reading it's precursor first! So the first copy sat around for five years and the second copy sat around for, I'm almost ashamed to say it, seventeen years, until it was finally dug out and read this year. Here's the thing, the book is a lot of work to read whereas this is an easy adaptation that you don't have to work for. Which means it's probably the exact opposite of what Virginia Woolf would have wanted but makes for a pleasurable moviegoing experience. Eileen Atkins, yes, that Eileen Atkins, the Dame, has taken Mrs. Dalloway and made it into a rather sweet coming of age story combined with the wistfulness of aging and first and lasting loves with an edge of social satire that has everything to do with the casting and nothing to do with the source material. In fact, the closer it gets to the source material, especially with regard to Septimus, played by Rupert Graves, and his PTSD, the less the movie works. This movie falls squarely into the time period of Rupert Graves's acting that I hate. He took himself so seriously and overacted so abysmally that I don't know how anyone can watch him in anything he was in from the start of his career to about 2005. In fact it wasn't until Sherlock in 2010 where I started to like him after the loathing and indifference. So if you can stomach some truly bad acting on his part and want a nice summery escape to an England that exists only in dreams of the past this idyll is for you.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Adaptation, British, Dames, Eileen Atkins, Michael Kitchen, Mrs. Dalloway, Party, PTSD, Roaring Back to Reading, Robert Hardy, Rupert Graves, Septimus, Sherlock, Suicide, The Hours, Vanessa Redgrave, Virgina Woolf

The Mrs. Dalloway Reader by Virginia Woolf
Published by: Harcourt Books, Inc
Publication Date: November 15th, 2003
Format: Hardcover, 345 Pages
Rating: ★
To Buy

Mrs. Dalloway is having a party and she has gone out to buy the flowers herself, as her maid is busy with other preparations for the event that night. The walk she takes through the parks and streets of London on this beautiful day in mid-June has Clarissa remembering a summer long ago in the countryside at Bourton, a summer where, little did she know it, the rest of her life would be set in motion by choosing the reliable Richard Dalloway over the lovesick Peter Walsh. As fate would have it Peter Walsh has just returned to England after a long sojourn in India. After being rejected by Clarissa he proposed to the first girl he met on the boat to India and has come back to England seeking a divorce because he has fallen in love with a married woman with two young children and they mean to marry, once their respective spouses are disposed of. But seeing Clarissa all these long years later hidden emotions come bursting forth like a damn collapsing and he finds himself crying in her presence. Fleeing her sight the two of them dwell on each other in their thoughts the rest of the day. Clarissa thinking of the failure their marriage would have been and Peter wondering if perhaps it isn't too late for them... As people cross her mind and the past is more relevant than the present, what is and isn't important shifts. Because while it may seem crazy to some, this party Clarissa is throwing is very important to her. It lets her connect to people, show them a little kindness, make it known that she thinks about others above anything else. Be it a book they'd like to read or a certain dish they'd like to eat, she always has others on her mind and at the end of the night one person will be on her mind more than even Peter, a young shell shocked veteran, Septimus Warren Smith. She hears from the young man's doctor at her party that he had committed suicide earlier in the evening. Little did she know that her day mirrored his, as his wife mused on their lives, as we followed Septimus and his Lucrezia, decidedly unable to enjoy this day in mid-June due to their burdens that, in the end, get set down.

The thing about "classics" is some classics aren't for everyone. You can see their historical significance, you can admire their ingenuity, you can even applaud them for breaking down barriers, all while not actually liking the book; and I did not like Mrs. Dalloway. At all. Written in a steam of consciousness style that played like a game of regimented tag with a shifting point of view the book is bound to easily lose your attention when it isn't infuriating you. Right now it's hard to escape the ever growing horror that is the news and reading is a refuge, a refuge that is at the moment hard to escape into even with the most perfect of books. Therefore to have a book so fragmentary and dreamlike, more poetry than prose, I found it simply impossible to connect with Mrs. Dalloway and it's complete lack of narrative. Mrs. Dalloway isn't even the star of her own book for Pete's sake! At times I felt I was going insane, which maybe was Virginia Woolf's goal? I seriously don't know what she meant to do here, because this "Reader" includes a plethora of critical essays and I was supposed to hate the doctors trying to help Septimus when I thought their care was thoughtfully presented... so therefore I'm disconnected from the meaning of individuality over conformity because I wanted him to get better instead of kill himself? Ugh. At least I didn't feel totally alone in my dislike. The author Sigrid Nunez, who wrote a book on Virginia Woolf's monkey Mitz, says that in her opinion Mrs. Dalloway is contrived. I personally think it might have just been overworked, because the book's precursor, "Mrs. Dalloway's Party," read fresher to me, but if you can imagine it, bleaker. And I won't even start on my contempt for The Hours which arose from reading all the critical essays. How can a "retelling" by A MAN win all these accolades? Unacceptable.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Clarrisa Dalloway, Classics, Doctors, Mitz, Mrs. Dalloway, Mrs. Dalloway's Party, Party, Roaring Back to Reading, Sigrid Nunez, Stream of Consciousness, Suicide, The Hours, The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, Virgina Woolf

Most people know Virginia Woolf. Of course most people know the bare minimum; she was a feminist writer who killed herself. If you know a little more you know she was a feminist writer who was part of the Bloomsbury Group who killed herself with rocks. This is ingrained by high school curriculum and is a simplification of a life filled with brilliance and madness. Virginia Stephens was born into a blended household, with two boys and a girl from her mother's previous marriage to Herbert Duckworth, and a girl from her father's previous marriage to William Mackepeace Thackeray's youngest daughter, Minny. Her parents went on to have four more children together, including her, despite attempts to curtail their family at five children after the birth of Virginia's older sister Vanessa. Over the years it has become accepted knowledge that Virginia's accusations of sexual abuse at the hands of her half-brothers wasn't a product of her active imagination and probably fed into her mental collapses, the first of which happened when she was thirteen with the death of her mother.

She would suffer mental collapses many more times, the final resulting in her taking her life. Yet despite the fact that the death of her father triggered one of these collapses, it also resulted in her liberation. After his death the family moved to Bloomsbury where they lived as they wished, often holding salons for her brothers' college friends. They became known as the Bloomsbury Group, compromised of writers, philosophers, artists, intellectuals, friends, and lovers who's "prime objects in life were love, the creation and enjoyment of aesthetic experience and the pursuit of knowledge." Her first book, The Voyage Out, was published in 1915 when she was 33, under her half-brother's imprint, Gerald Duckworth and Company. But her second book, Mrs. Dalloway, published in 1925 is easily her most famous. This was printed by Hogarth Press, a publishing house that Virginia established with her husband Leonard in 1917. Though married to Leonard until her death her great love was Vita Sackville-West. Though all the love and family in the world couldn't help her with the depression she felt with the onset of the second world war, and in 1941, at the age of 59, she committed suicide.       

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Bloomsbury, Bloomsbury Group, Duckworth, Feminist, Hogarth Press, Leonard Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Roaring Back to Reading, Sexual Abuse, Suicide, The Voyage Out, Vanessa Bell, Virgina Woolf, Vita Sackville-West, WWII

Z: The Beginning of Everything
Based on the book by Therese Anne Fowler
Starring: Christina Ricci, Maya Kazan, Sarah Schenkkan, Jamie Anne Allman, David Strathairn, Kristine Nielsen, Scott Rosenfeld, David Hoflin, Jim True-Frost, Talia Balsam, Matt Malloy, Holly Curran, Jordan Dean, Corey Cott, Andrew Call, Andrew Bridges, Joel Brady, AJ Cedeno, Christina Bennett Lind, Natalie Knepp, Lucy Walters, Bill Phillips, Tony Manna, Cameron Scoggins, Conor Donovan, Randy Kovitz, Sean Bell, Ian Jarvis, Jun Naito, and Gene Jones
Release Date: January 27th, 2017
Rating: ★★★★
To Watch

Zelda is a bit of a whirlwind to the belles of Montgomery, Alabama. She swims, in a nude colored bathing suit, she dances, ballet as well as the more risque numbers, she parties, she drinks, she smokes, she hangs outside the local whorehouse with her friends shaming the men going inside. She isn't like anything that is expected or acceptable, yet she is endearing, even to her exasperated family. She's the baby who is going to break all the rules and when F. Scott Fitzgerald enters her life, he's the biggest break their is. A Yankee who aspires to be a writer who will break her heart again and again, yet she cannot live without him, she cannot give him up. And she does try. But then his book is finally accepted for publication and Zelda finally accepts his marriage proposal and their whirlwind of a life begins. Arriving in New York City Zelda is overwhelmed by how vast and big their new life shall be. They get married and the nonstop party begins that very night in the honeymoon suite of their hotel. Zelda soon realizes that in order to fit in she's going to have to be even bolder and brassier and bare herself to be accepted as Scott's wife. So she transforms into a character straight out of one of Scott's stories. Short hair, sultry dresses, no more frills and furbelows for the wife of F. Scott! But also because she's his wife, no more freedom with her own artistic expression. Any dreams of taking her "it" girl status to the next level in Hollywood is stifled by Scott. She's there to come to his readings, to inspire him, to be on his arm as he parades his success in front of all those who thought he'd never make it. A success that needs a followup if they are to keep living the life they are. Because the bills keep piling up and Zelda keeps spending the money, being kept in the dark by Scott as to their finances. Therefore they must leave New York and they get a house in Westport. There all their troubles are amplified and things come to a head. But one thing is certain, no matter how bad they are for each other they cannot survive apart. 

Therese Anne Fowler's book on Zelda Fitzgerald is an interesting logistical puzzle when you get to adapting it. From the framing device to Zelda and Scott's power dynamic to the narrative style, everything had to be reconsidered within this new medium. First and foremost is switching from a first person narrative to a hybrid which fleshes out the characters as something other than just how Zelda sees them while maintaining her voice. In order to successfully do this I was intrigued that instead of having Zelda and Scott somewhat equals they softened Zelda and hardened Scott, leaning heavily into being "Team Zelda" as Fowler herself puts it. Instead of Zelda's work and influence on Scott as a kind of "collaboration under duress" Scott is all out stealing her words and making them his own. He comes across as a pilfering, hostile, unlikable drunk, who will hurt Zelda any way he can. Now the book didn't endear me to Scott, but this series, it made me really hate him. There wasn't really any grey areas to their relationship, it was much more black and white, and to me, maybe a bit more romantic because there is the victim and the victor, and Zelda is deified as the true genius. While this might feel less realistic, Zelda has spent years being the millstone around Scott's neck in biographies and movies, so perhaps it was time for a little justice. Perhaps it was time for Zelda to be the out and out heroine. It sure made for bingeable viewing! Each thirty minute slice of life flowed into the next until the abrupt ending, which was meant to bridge into a second season which was commissioned and then cancelled. I can see why, once their daughter Scottie enters the picture their life changes and the show wouldn't have had the roaring twenties ritziness that so exemplifies the first season. The look, the feel, the sets, the costumes, everything made this time period come alive, almost more than the book. Because if anything, the twenties is about appearances, and well, no matter how well written a book is, sometimes things have to be seen to be believed.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: 1920s, Christina Ricci, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Roaring Back to Reading, Roaring Twenties, Team Zelda, Therese Anne Fowler, Wife, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Z: The Beginning of Everything, Zelda Fitzgerald

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald by Therese Anne Fowler
Published by: St. Martin's Press
Publication Date: March 26th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 375 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

On the eve of her husband's death Zelda looks back on their life and writes to him about their future, their next great act that she doesn't know will never come. She was the belle of the ball and he was the Yankee soldier with ambitions of being a writer who swept her off her feet despite a lack of prospects and a northern upbringing. But marrying an unpublished writer would be folly. Therefore Zelda broke Scott's heart in order to push him to finish rewriting his first novel. Eight days after This Side of Paradise was published they were married and their decadent life in New York City began. Their bank account would widely fluctuate from being able to afford the most luxurious raccoon coats to not being able to buy groceries. Not that Scott bothered to tell Zelda about their finances, when in need he'd sacrifice his talent and his time writing his next great novel to churning out a story for the magazines he vocally reviled. But New York would prove too costly and with a baby on the way they moved to Minnesota to be near Scott's family. There Zelda found a surprising opportunity besides being a new mother she started to write pieces for the magazines Scott disliked. But he didn't dislike the money or his wife getting credit, even if he often received partial or full credit on her work. Zelda did dislike that. But what was she to do as the wife of a famous author who was notorious for spending more than he could earn. This habit soon led them to a vagrant lifestyle in France where their money could stretch further. They surrounded themselves with artists and authors yet Zelda resented always being the wife. And then Hemingway came into their life. Driving even more of a wedge between the now acrimonious couple. But through the years to come, the ups and downs, the coast to coast relocations, the drinking, the hospitalizations, they always came back to each other, until they no longer could. Until that day in December when Scott left this world.

There's a fine line that is tread when writing a fictional book about a real person, you have to go more for the emotional connection while still keeping enough historical content to ground it in reality. I find this is even more so for wives of authors, and yes, this is a whole subset of historical fiction. Because so much is known about certain authors that their wives, even if they aren't as famous as Zelda, are part of the mystique of the author. Part of their legend. And a truly successful book about a "wife" is one in which she is able to break away from her husband's legacy and be seen for herself. The problem is with Scott and Zelda they are so intertwined that this book is more about their suffocating co-dependence and how that affected Zelda emotional, physically, and artistically. And to get this emotional connection Fowler has gone the logical root of being "Team Zelda" and demonizing Scott, to an extent. Because as she mentions at the end of the book, fans of the Fiztgeralds are all about taking sides. But just the basic facts of Scott viewing the life they lived together as fodder for HIS work ONLY should be enough to make you sympathize with Zelda. Her letters, her stories, her reviews, her diaries, her experiences, all of it, Scott laid claim to. She was his "wife" and nothing more. Fowler shows quite clearly and sympathetically that this is what destroyed them. They destroyed each other because Scott laying claim to Zelda's life forced her into a mental collapse resulting in him becoming her caretaker. So while I felt the narrative got to the heart of the issue I still felt that it could have been presented more eloquently. The beginning of the book is so beautifully written but as the story continues, as Zelda's life disintegrates, the quality trails off, the story becomes more elliptical and suffers. This book is a good start for those interested in Zelda and the Fiztgeralds, but as the author says herself; "Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true." Just don't look for it here.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alcohol, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, France, Minnesota, New York, Roaring Back to Reading, Team Zelda, Therese Anne Fowler, This Side of Paradise, Wife, Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, Zelda Fitzgerald