strange and random happenstance

Behind the Shattered Glass by Tasha Alexander
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: October 15th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 272 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Emily and Colin are rusticating and recuperating at Colin's ancestral home Anglemore Park in Derbyshire after the birth of their twins. Aside from a few staffing issues involving their ward Tom their calm is only strained by the continued presence of Emily's mother, Lady Catherine Bromley, and her opinions on child rearing. After another torturous night en famille the calm is finally shattered when a man staggers through the French doors and drops down dead on the Axminster. Thanks to Lady Bromley's obsession with the aristocracy she quickly identifies the victim as the new Marquess of Montagu, Archibald Scolfield, who just happens to be Emily and Colin's neighbor. Emily rushes to Montagu Manor to deliver the tragic news to Archibald's cousin and Emily's acquaintance Matilda who is holding a party for her now deceased cousin. But could Matilda have had a motive for killing Archibald? She inherited all her grandfather's money but the title and the ancestral seat went to Archibald. Could this have strained their cordial relationship? Once Colin convinces the police to let him handle the investigation he vows they will get to the bottom of this crime.

As Emily and Colin dig into Archibald's life his character isn't as upstanding as one would assume. He had two fiancees, one an American buccaneer, Miss Sturdevant, the other the daughter of the local vicar, Miss Cora Fitzgerald. His rapacious attitude toward women might have been the reason for a scandal at Oxford. He ruined his best friend, Mr. Porter, with plagiarism accusations after they toured the continent together. And as for Matilda, who thought she was next in line for the title, in walks Rodney, the heir apparent, a treasure hunter who might be from the wrong side of the sheets. With everyone having a motive and more than a few of them lying Emily and Colin have their job cut out for them. And while they are trying to come to grips with this horrendous crime they have romance blooming under their own roof as their house guest, Simon Lancaster, Earl Flyte, seems to have fallen for their housemaid Lily. Things are precarious enough with a murderer on the loose but a romance crossing classes might be the final straw for everyone.

Every Anglophile of a certain age can trace the origins of their affliction to PBS airing Upstairs, Downstairs in the 1970s. I myself am a second generation sufferer with my parents indoctrinating me throughout my childhood until the whole series became available on DVD and the binge watching commenced. In fact I'd go so far as to say that Downton Abbey succeeded because it tapped into this need of American Anglophiles to root for the denizens of a grand manor house from both sides of the baize door. Behind the Shattered Glass is a break, pun intended, from Tasha's other Lady Emily books in that her secondary story isn't letters, diaries, or correspondence, but a view behind the baize door. We are seeing Emily and Colin from the POV of the servants. But more than that we are a party to their trials and tribulations, their loves and their animosities, we are finally seeing Cook in the kitchen instead of her sending up a menu. Davis the butler isn't just proffering port he's holding court in his chambers. There is just so much more that happens in houses of this period that for the first time in this series we're getting a complete picture instead of just a view upstairs.

While I have seen a few reviews critical of this installment saying the narrative is constricted I would like to firmly refute that by saying a more focused narrative doesn't mean a more constricted narrative. Just look to Gosford Park! A long weekend, a murder, and all the suspects available to us which is the bedrock of so many British mysteries and is a movie I could watch again and again. And much like Gosford Park, Behind the Shattered Glass shines a light on the issues that arise when those from the two different levels of the house interact. This is a powerful book to read in the #MeToo movement because it deals with many facets of consent. Not just sexual consent, though that is the core of this book not just with Archibald Scolfield's predilections when he is away from home, but the burgeoning relationship between Simon and Lily and how they navigate a relationship when one member is viewed as having all the power. But also consent to access someone's personal space. I know Lady Emily is involved in a dire investigation when she searches the servants rooms, but at the same time, it sat badly with me. She was wielding her power over her servants and not being the enlightened employer, showing that even Emily can occasionally stumble.

Which brings everything back to Colin's argument against aristocracy and why he keeps refusing to accept a title from the Queen. Who is anyone to set themselves up as better than their fellow man? Just because they treat their servants well at Anglemore doesn't mean that these people should be stuck being servants forever. There's almost this idolatry going on at Anglemore where all the servants drank the Kool-Aid and just love their work making everything perfect for their masters. What's more they view them as their betters! Hard, physical labor, and yet they love it because they are given basic humane conditions in which to live? This here is showing how the class system really started to fall apart and how the era of the grand country houses would implode. This era needed to end because it wasn't glorious or wonderful, it was hard work that for some is soul crushing. Just look to kitchen maid Prudence! She is miserable and I think she more accurately depicts what life was truly like downstairs. You are cut off from family and friends and work so that others can just live the idle life. Yes, this might be harsh on Lady Emily and the dream of Downton Abbey, but it's the truth!

Which brings me back to Pru. I literally spent the entire book hating her, because there's always that one servant that you hate, hello Thomas Barrow, meet your new BFF since O'Brien fled the coop, Pru! Though I doubt Thomas would talk to her, a kitchen maid being so far below a footman... But there it is, Pru is our Thomas, we are meant to hate her, yet by the end you see her more fully, more clearly, and pity should be your only feeling. She is what the class system made her. For comparison, whenever someone asks me "why are you angry" I think, hang on, I wasn't angry until you insinuated I was and therefore you made me what you thought of me. Pru has been made to be bitter and spiteful! So going back to those critics who call Behind the Shattered Glass constricted, no, it's not, it's you who have a constricted mind. You are unable to see how Tasha is exploring all these different angles of what it means to be a servant and what it means to be a master and how there's not just a symbiotic relationship there but a duty of care, actually in both directions. To say a book that is grappling with all these rather weighty issues isn't dealing with enough I just think you, whomever you are, need to open your mind.

But in today's America a closed mind is more common than an open one and we women, well, we are facing some scary realities. Our rights are in peril so it's nice to look back on historical context and precedent and think, at least we got from there to here so if we have to keep fighting we can. Also, please, go out and vote next week! Back to the book... it's interesting to see historical precedent which occasionally favors women. Because titles going down the male line is total BS. With Matilda it makes sense that she would want her family's title, not just because she was closest to her grandfather, but because she is for women's suffrage. She's Lady Emily on speed. She's throwing bricks and taking names versus trying to gently persuade. So much of this book is showing that change was needed and change was coming but it needed people like Matilda and Emily and Lily and even Pru for that change to happen. A man isn't always right and a patriarchy isn't always the right way. An episode of Magnum, P.I. I was watching the other day had a bumper sticker that said "The right man for the job is a wo-man." Now, I'm not going all militant feminist here, all I want is equality. Therefore can we hear it for Marchioness Matilda? Even if Queen Victoria wouldn't agree.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: #MeToo, Alexander Autumn, Anglophile, Aristocracy, Behind the Shattered Glass, Consent, Downton Abbey, Gosford Park, Magnum P.I., Murder, Patriarchy, Servants, Tasha Alexander, Thomas Barrow, Upstairs Downstairs

Summerset Abbey by T.J. Brown
ARC Provided by the Publisher
Published by: Gallery Books
Publication Date: August 6th, 2013
Format: Kindle, 322 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Rowena and Victoria Buxton are reeling from the death of their beloved father. Yet there are more shocks to come. The two girls were raised in a rather unorthodox manner growing up with their nanny's daughter, Prudence, as their closest friend and confidant. But now their lives are in the hands of their Uncle and things are going to be different; proper. Banished to the countryside so their uncle can secretly sell their London house, Prudence was only allowed to accompany the sisters by posing as their lady's maid. Something Rowena failed to mention to Victoria and Prudence... but then Rowena doesn't do conflict. She'd rather hide her head in the sand than face what her life has become, an endless parade of changing clothes to please her aunt's sense of propriety. Rowena's behavior drives a wedge between the girls and Prudence, more so than Victoria, feels that her life has been irreparably changed. Banished to living a half life among the servants she doesn't fit in either upstairs or down. What's more there are forces at work trying to oust Prudence from the family seat. Because Prudence is the living breathing proof of a long buried secret that could destroy the Buxton family. Rowena and Victoria's lives could be ruined by the person they love most in the world and who they've inadvertently wronged.

Summerset Abbey is an odd little book in that it was obviously written to cash in on the Downton Abbey craze. Some books are more subtle about this cash grab, Summerset Abbey isn't. That actually makes it kind of refreshing. It doesn't have delusions of grandeur, it knows what a knock-off it is and plays it up. Every trope you could ever possibly imagine in an "upstairs/downstairs" world is used. It's not just one trope played up and overused, it's all of them. Illegitimate offspring, tragic child death, Cinderella story, long lost relatives, improper liaisons, suffrage, evil lady's maids, sweet kitchen maids, deep dark family secrets, money problems, looming war, newfangled gadgets from cars to airplanes, omniscient butlers, Bohemian brothers, beautiful ladies against societal norms, the list goes on and on. In a little over three hundred pages Summerset Abbey uses almost every plot point from seven seasons of Upstairs, Downstairs and never lets up. Yet this overabundance pays off. It's like a giddy headlong rush into this Edwardian world where we get every kind of scandal and twist we could possibly imagine or want. It's like Downton Abbey concentrate. Here, have it all AND the kitchen sink! And you as the reader say thank you very much.

The one trope that niggled at me a little from the plethora of tropes on hand was the backlash of the Bohemian lifestyle. When reality comes a-crashing down the sisters just can't cope. I am really of two minds as to this plot contrivance. What I really liked is that Brown actually bothered to establish the credibility of this Bohemian lifestyle they were living. It wasn't just an aside, like it is in most books, it was discussed and built on. The jobs and independence of the girls. The friends of the family that embodied this movement, such as Picasso. The fact that women struggling for suffrage were referred to properly as suffragists NOT suffragettes. Even how their beliefs were reflected in their beloved home's architecture and how the rooms were incorporated into large communal spaces. I loved all this. What I didn't love is the girls being unwilling or unable to comprehend that their father wasn't as farsighted as he should have been. If they truly were the Bohemians and strong independent women their father raised them to be they should have been able to face this new reality and take it head on and make of their lives what they wanted. They should have been strong, independent, "new" women that get things done, not roll over! Yes, technically the book is about them figuring out how to do this in little ways, but overall it just annoyed me that they couldn't at least make a better attempt at living the life they wanted.

This is exacerbated to the nth degree with Prudence. I mean how could she be so ignorant? She knew how lucky she was being raised alongside Rowena and Victoria, yet when reality comes a calling she is unable to face it. She is the daughter of a servant, did she really expect to be treated as one of the family? Yes, her Cinderella story seems unfair, but the way she handles it. Ugh. Cinderella buckled down and accepted her new fate until she found a way out. Prudence whines and moans and actually is a rather belligerent lady's maid. Just, ugh. How!?! How could she not know or expect this? Plus, once she starts learning more about her past and her mother, she should have no doubt that this is the life that should have been hers. She was lucky. She spent her childhood in this little magical bubble that protected and coddled her, but in no way prepared her for reality. In fact, that I think is what annoys me most with the "Bohemian" aspect to this book. The girls were all raised in a word that showed them truth and reality, not that rarefied magical gentrified world that would soon come to an end. Yet somehow they were in an even more magical world that made them less able to handle harsh reality. I guess I just can't come to terms with my heroines being so stupid and not knowing that this is how life works. That this would be their life. It's like they are purposefully deluding themselves.

But there is no one better for delusions than Rowena. Rowena is obviously the Lady Mary of the sisters. She has no focus in life, no goals, and can not confront reality so just sits around doing nothing. The pain she inflicts on Victoria and Prudence by her hording secrets is just viciously cruel. All the more so because she knows how it will hurt them but just ignores it. And her acquiesce to her uncle's plans. Ugh. She could have tried. She could have had Victoria at her side trying to fight this, but no. She just lets it happen. See, the thing with having "bad guys" is that you need to love to hate them. Like Thomas and Lady Mary, you can see other sides to them through the bad behavior, they're not just one dimensional. Rowena is one dimensional. She is all about whatever is best for her. I hated her more than any other character in any book I've read recently. She doesn't just deserve to be smacked, she deserves to be smacked with a lead pipe. By someone who can do serious damage. Rowena in fact keeps grinding the book down every single time she appears on it's pages. What's even worse is that with the pilot she meets and starts up a flirtation with, Jon, she is the only one of the three women who gets moments of happiness. She is a spineless self-centered bitch, she doesn't deserve one second of happiness. I wish she'd get in that plane and it would crash and burn. That is the only fitting end for her.

The tropes and the characters all being so a-typical I found the a-typical mystery a bit ludicrous. Are we really supposed to be surprised by the dark and dangerous secret that Prudence's past hides? Because it was handled so heavy-handedly that at times I was laughing at the book. I kept expecting someone to show up and drone on about there being something nasty in the woodshed. The melodrama was worthy of old silent films with the villain twirling his moustache while the damsel was tied to the train tracks. Here's a radical idea. If there's a big evil secret, don't have everyone know about it and then drop heavy hints left right and center. A mystery should be mysterious. There should be some work on the part of the reader to solve it. The solution to the enigma shouldn't be a foregone conclusion. But this would be expecting more than what this book is. This book is nothing more then a fun and cheesy Downton Abbey pastiche mashing up everything into a read that doesn't strain your braincells but gives you just the right amount of period immersion. To expect more wouldn't be fair to the book. As for the possibility of me continuing on with this series? I don't quite see myself taking that plunge. I just didn't love the characters enough and the thought that Rowena might actually get a HEA makes me physically ill. But I enjoyed it for what it was, at times despite itself.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: ARCs, Bohemian, Cinderella, Downton Abbey, Downton Denial Denouement, Downtonesque, Lady Mary, Picasso, Prudence, Rowen, Suffrage, Summerset Abbey, T.J. Brown, Thomas Barrow, Trope, Upstairs Downstairs, Victoria

And now, the end is near, and so I face the final curtain... Yes the time has come. The ultimate denial is about to set in. Because after that last gathering around the Christmas Tree while Thomas aids Carson (and no, I wouldn't count that as a spoiler she says with shifty eyes), the doors to the Abbey will close forever. Unless they need the money and do a movie, but still, it looks like the end and they're making all that money off the costumes touring, which is fabulous by the way so you should go. Back to previous train of thought, the end was so good that it should be the end. So let's say it is the end, big ominous capital letters and all, The End. Therefore you need something to fill that gaping void more than ever. I am here to fill that void, and no, stop with the naughty thoughts. Stop it. I know how you feel and I have tried to find solace in books to take away the pangs. Therefore, for the last time, unless I'm desperate come next February, which let's face it, I probably will be, I give you the denouement of Downton Denial! A month full of books I've read and some of which you should read if just to capture that elusive magic that Downton Abbey brought into our lives every Sunday night for the last six years. Here's to Downton!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:01 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Carson, Christmas, Downton Abbey, Downton Denial, Downton Denial Denouement, Spoilers, Theme Month, Thomas Barrow

Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Published by: Book-of-the-Month Club
Publication Date: 1894
Format: Hardcover, 259 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

Money. It's what almost all crime is in aid of; the procurement of more. The vast wealth that can be attained by some underhanded dealing, holding a Greek heiress hostage, crippling a horse, stealing state secrets. This is where Sherlock Holmes comes in. If a case looks too hard, if the criminal looks too cunning, there is always Sherlock Holmes. Few can best him, and only one would use his powers for evil, the Napoleon of Crime, Moriarty. Though that might be selling Sherlock's brother Mycroft short. But despite the stranglehold that Moriarty has on the underworld, he isn't the only one up to no good. Some cases have echoes of cases past, as "The Adventure of the Stockbroker's Clerk" has shades of a certain red-headed organization. Some cases of criminals that would never have been suspected by their victims, as they are trusted friends and servants. And some cases where the answer is right there all along. But Sherlock Holmes would have never become who he is today if not for that first case. That first time when his powers were awoken to the use they could serve. "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott" occurred at his friend Victor Trevor's house over the school holidays. If it wasn't for Mr. Trevor's amazement and encouragement, who knows what would have happened to the course of Holmes's life... sadly things didn't end quite so well for Mr. Trevor.

Reading so many of these stories you really start to yearn for some originality in the criminal class, oh hello Moriarty, we'll get to you soon. You can see why Holmes longs for something out of the ordinary, because even if they have unpredictable twists and turns, there end goal is always the same for each villain; all they seem to want is money, money, and yes, more money. They are boring and passe, but worst of all, predictable. Eight of eleven stories all about greed. How I long for other motives. So the villains have no more allure for me and I have therefore decided to look to the victims... and oh, they are themselves an odd lot as well, but for the moment far more interesting. I don't know if Conan Doyle is exaggerating their distress for dramatic effect when they call on Holmes or if he really thought people in dire straights would act this way, but they are so frenzied and manic that they go beyond relatability into comedic fodder. The hyperactivity, the pulling out of hair, oh, and in one memorable case, the actual banging of the head into the wall... what was this all in aid of? Seriously, tension? What? Because I really don't think this is how people where. In fact, I think the overt showing of not just emotions, but an overabundance of emotions, is what signifies that something "beyond the everyday" is occurring. If sometimes the scales tipped into parody, well, that was just the price that was paid to show how bad the crime was on these unsuspecting people. Personally, I don't know how I would handle a situation that would require Holmes, but hysterics and brain fever might be a little outside my wheelhouse of personality traits no matter what the situation.

But the fact that the victims have such traits that are unique to each case shows a shift in Conan Doyle's storytelling. These stories are more character driven. We are getting to know Holmes more and more and, despite being originally this almost otherworldly being, he's being grounded in reality as time goes on, as evidenced by the fact that we finally meet his family! Yes, Mycroft Holmes makes his first appearance in "The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter." It is entertaining how Watson is almost incredulous at the mundanity of Holmes having a sibling. Yet thankfully Mycroft is anything but mundane, having the same, if not superior skills of Holmes, but lacking any moral compass or desire to "solve crime." He is the true armchair detective not even needing to have his hypotheses validated, because he knows they are right. Also, I oddly am starting to relate to Holmes myself. Not in his skill set, but in his work habits. He has intense periods or work wherein sleep or food are tertiary concerns. But come the end of the case he has his fallow periods, wherein he doesn't leave the apartment and just lays about all day in his dressing robe. Going to art school I have found that this is very much the temperament of the artistic mind. You go full steam ahead, hypnotically focused on your one task, until you are done and you crash, unable to even lift yourself out of a chair. I never thought that I'd relate to Sherlock in my habits... but there you go, sometimes I can be surprised!

As for another important character who finally makes his appearance, I'm talking about Moriarty! And the enigma that he is. Why is he an enigma? Because he is in one and only one story and is never built up to and then he's gone, taking Holmes with him. I can see why 20,000 people cancelled their subscriptions to The Strand Magazine! It's lazy storytelling! Over the course of the year leading up to the "death" of Sherlock Holmes and even in every single other story ever previously written about Holmes there has been no mention of an arch nemesis, something I think you'd, you know, mention. Instead in this short twenty page story Moriarty is mentioned, hunted, avoided, and then dispatched. Why isn't this built up to in ANY WAY!?! If Conan Doyle planned on killing Holmes off eventually, you'd think he'd lay some groundwork, build it up a little. Clues like breadcrumbs leading to this final "noble" act. Instead it has this feeling of a petulant writer who was sitting at home one day and cracked. "You only want me to write Holmes, well see how you like this!" Grumbling about the ungrateful reading public all the while. Because it really does feel like a slap in the face to his readers. "Here's the end, you didn't see it coming did you? Haha!" There is no elegance, there is no mystery here. Adaptations have tried to fix this, to romanticize this relationship more, much as they have done with Irene Adler, but that doesn't fix the source material. "The Final Problem" might be a good story, but it is still lazy storytelling because of everything that came before.

I will tell you one thing I have learned from reading all these tales, if you don't trust Conan Doyle anymore, there's someone you should trust even less, and that is your "trusty" manservant! Because, even if they have been with your family all their lives, even if their family and your family have worked side by side for centuries, given the chance, they will screw you over. It might be stealing your family fortune out from under your nose. It might be blackmailing you! They are the viper in the garden. Because they don't care about loyalty, they don't care about tradition, they don't care about trust, they only care about the monies! Long before Downton Abbey and Thomas, Conan Doyle showed us that those we let into our homes, who see us at our most vulnerable, will take advantage whenever they can. I don't know if this is just good storytelling, like Downton Abbey, or some sort of personal vendetta against backstabbing servants, but it sure is a theme running through these adventures. Did Conan Doyle get burned or blackmailed? Because there is a feeling of pure hatred, especially in how these servants meet their ends... One wonders if Holmes every worries about Mrs. Hudson turning on him... now that could make an interesting story right there... or even that random pageboy that is always showing people up to the rooms... seriously, who is this pageboy and where did he come from? He's like in every story and is never mentioned by name or anything!

The final observation I have on the Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes is the meta of it all. Throughout the tales Watson narrates in such a way as to make the audience complicit in the stories, as if we're old friends and know all the public affairs that he does. We get a kick out of it when Holmes takes him to task for romanticizing the prose and not sticking directly to the facts. But in "The Adventure of the Crooked Man" Holmes brings up a whole new slew of things to consider. He basically lays all the fault in any of the readers dislike of the stories on Watson taking artistic license. Holmes aims right for Watson's heart when he says: "It is one of those instances where the reasoner can produce an effect which seems remarkable to his neighbor, because the latter has missed the one little point which is the basis of the deduction. The same may be said, my dear fellow, for the effect of some of these little sketches of yours, which is entirely meretricious, depending as it does upon your retaining in your own hands some factors in the problem which are never imparted to the reader." So all this time we thought we were comrades in arms with Watson, and here he's been holding out on us to make a better tale! It's an interesting revelation on Holmes's and therefore on Conan Doyle's part. Because simultaneously you like Holmes more but also the perceived intelligence of Watson as Conan Doyle's conduit is increased. I was never one who thought of Watson as unintelligent, but if you were... well, this is a slap in your face. Apparently Conan Doyle is willing and wanting to smack us all around a little... ungrateful author!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Arthur Conan Doyle, Downton Abbey, Irene Adler, John Watson, Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, Meta, Money, Moriarty, Mycroft, Napoleon, Sherlock Holmes, Sherlocked, The Final Problem, The Strand Magazine, Thomas Barrow