Posts filed under 'Historical Fiction'
E.L. Doctorow returns to New York City in his latest book Homer and Langley. The title characters are based on New York’s eccentric siblings Homer and Langley Collyer who lived in their parent’s Fifth Avenue mansion for years while collecting and storing enough items to fill the several floors of the building.
Doctorow’s Homer and Langley started life as the privileged children of a physician and his socialite wife. However several profound events occurred in both brother’s lives as young men. Langley, a Columbia University student, joined the military during World War I and became a victim of mustard gas and shell shock. Meanwhile Homer, who had been gradually losing his sight for years, eventually became completely blind. Adding to the brothers’ misfortune, was the death of both their parents during the Spanish Influenza epidemic in 1918.
Soon after returning to his Fifth Avenue residence following the war, Langley began roaming the city streets daily looking for items to collect. In the meantime Homer, the narrator of the story, spent most of his time playing the family piano. Eventually their home contained a Model T Ford set up in the dining room, a Chinese bronze horse, machinery of all types and sizes as well as stacks of the many daily newspapers published in New York City. All that hoarding aside, Homer and Langley become witnesses to the changes in American society over the course of their lives.
While I enjoyed reading this book that was on my “don’t miss” list for the fall, I had problems with its basic structure. Homer (1881-1947) and Langley Collyer (1885-1947) were real brothers who did live in a Fifth Avenue mansion and became known as eccentric hoarders by the time of their deaths. While Doctorow’s novel used their real names and several basic facts, he moved their lives ahead almost 15 years and made other changes which I found distracting and difficult to reconcile with the real lives of his characters.
As a reader of historical novels, I would have preferred different names for the brothers while still following the general outline of their lives. That way, the author could have told the story and describe events during the 20th century without confusing the reader. In Doctorow’s book this confusion distracted from what was otherwise an interesting and entertaining view of two unique characters in history.
October 16th, 2009
Lesley - Central
If you like historical mysteries, I have two to recommend. The first, A Trace of Smoke by Rebecca Cantrell, is set in 1931 Berlin, Germany. Hannah Vogel is a single woman in a man’s world. She is a journalist for the Berliner Tageblatt and writes under a pseudonym. Crime is her beat. The mystery begins when Hannah gets the shock of her life while following leads at the police station. There in black and white she recognizes the identity of one of the photographs in the Hall of the Unnamed Dead. The nude dead man on the river bank is her beloved brother, Ernst, a gay transvestite cabaret singer. But she can’t tell anyone because her and her brother’s identity papers are being used to help Jewish friends escape Germany. So she decides to investigate on her own.
As she digs into her brother’s life Hannah discovers that Ernst was involved with some pretty powerful and decadent Nazis. As the investigation proceeds she must walk a fine line if she wants to stay alive and protect those close to her. This bittersweet mystery gives us a look into the life of an ordinary German trying to navigate the dangerous times as the Nazis were coming to power.
My second recommendation is set in fifth century Britain. It has Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere, and introduces the one-armed man, Malgwyn. In The Killing Way by Tony Hays, Malgwyn is asked by a young Lord Arthur to investigate the brutal death of a young woman - who just happens to be Malgwyn’s sister-in-law. Since he lost his arm in battle and his wife to a brutal death by the Saxons, Malgwyn has been drowning his sorrows in alcohol. Despite that fact he cannot resist Arthur’s request for help. Soon enough the investigation has him off the bottle and using his detective skills to find out who killed the young girl. In saving the accused Merlin, finding justice for the young woman and helping Arthur defeat those who would challenge his ascension to the throne Malgwyn once again begins to feel like he has a purpose and a life. I enjoyed watching Malgwyn change from an angry, old drunk to a sober, brave detective. I hope to read more of his adventures.
October 10th, 2009
Kathy K. - Central
Post World War II Hong Kong is full of intrigue and danger in Janice Lee’s first novel The Piano Teacher. In 1952 Claire Pendelton, bored and trapped in a loveless marriage, takes on a job teaching piano to young Locket, daughter of a wealthy Chinese couple, Victor and Melody Chen. Locket is a lackluster and disinterested student, but Claire remains on the job because of her curiosity about the Chens and because of her affair with Will Truesdale, the Chen’s chauffeur.
Will, a British expat, was in Hong Kong during the war and has never recovered from his wartime experiences during the Japanese occupation. The story of what happened to him as well as his love affair with the beautiful Trudy during that period, is juxtaposed with current happenings in the city.
Like another recent first novel I read (and liked less), The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, The Piano Teacher explores a turbulent wartime period and gives us a fascinating look at Hong Kong, life in detainment camps, and the ability of some to take advantage of wartime for their own benefit. Of the two, The Piano Teacher is a much more complex and readable book, with a lot more depth in its depiction of turbulent war time history. So if you’re in the mood for some wartime angst and intrigue, give Lee a shot.
August 31st, 2009
Mary K. - Central
When I saw that Robert Goolrick’s debut novel A Reliable Wife was about a mail-order bride AND it was set in Wisconsin, I had to read it. Wealthy, lonely Ralph Truitt has a dark past that sets him apart from everyone in the town of Truitt, Wisconsin (named after his entrepreneur grandfather) in 1907. He places an ad in the newspaper to find a “reliable wife” to help him get through the harsh winters, but what he finds is not so reliable. Catherine Land, the woman he chooses to marry from the many responses he receives, is clearly hiding something. As Ralph and Catherine become acquainted amidst snowstorms and ice, their pasts and possible futures are slowly revealed - as is the small bottle of arsenic Catherine has tucked away in her suitcase.
Goolrick manages to incorporate elements of a gothic tale, a Dickensian tragedy, and a Harlequin romance into this suspenseful drama. If that sounds like way too much to pack into one book, well, it probably is, but somehow, Goolrick pulls it off. Though Catherine and Ralph are melodramatic characters and the events of their lives border on ludicrous, their earnestness makes them intriguing, and I was willing to set aside my skepticism just to find out what they were going to do. A word of caution, though: this book is pretty racy. Be prepared for more than one R-rated scene.
August 21st, 2009
Kylee
The Help by Kathryn Stockett is a very polished and readable first novel, set in Jackson, Mississipi in the early 1960’s. Eugenia ” Skeeter” has returned to her childhood home after graduating from Ole Miss without an engagement ring. She has no plans for her life, except for a vague notion that she might like to write.
Skeeter’s childhood friends are all married and settled, with social lives which feature bridge games and meetings of the Junior League. In their households, black women wear white uniforms and work as maids in white households. They do everything for the families, including raising their children, but are never considered to be part of the family. And Skeeter ends up splitting with her best friend Hillie after Hillie begins a campaign to have bathrooms designated exclusively for the black maids so that the maids do not contaminate the facilities used by the white family.
Unsuccessful in her search for a magazine job in New York, Skeeter takes the advise of an agent who advises her to move out of her parents’ house and get a job as a writer. Unfortunately the only journalism job available at the Jackson newspaper is a column on household hints. Skeeter knows nothing about housework, so she turns to her friend Elizabeth’s black maid Aibileen for answers. This connection, and her falling out with Hillie, prompt Skeeter to write a book about the lives of the black maids. With the help of a determined Aibilleen, she gets the life stories of many maids and is able to publish the book anonymously.
The story is told in alternating chapters by Skeeter, Aibileen, and Minny, another maid which made listening to the audiobook a pleasure, with each character assigned a different narrative voice. I highly recommend this book for its portrayal of the time period, the racial strife, and the civil rights movement, as well as insider view of middle class white households in that era. The individual characters all show their strengths and ability to endure and Stockett makes them come alive for the reader.
August 17th, 2009
Mary K. - Central
I’ve had a fascination with the Salem witch trials since I first read The Crucible in high school. I followed up many years later with a research paper on the connection between midwifery and the trials. It’s such a sad passage in our colonial history. Martha Carrier was one of the women hanged in Salem, after refusing to admit to being a witch. Her descendant, Kathleen Kent, after hearing her family’s stories about Carrier, spent several years researching historical records to create a heart wrenching account in The Heretic’s Daughter.
The Heretic’s Daughter details early New England Puritan life. Martha married a Welshman, Thomas, who was rumored to have been the executioner of King Charles I in England. An immense but quiet man, he and his independent and obstinate wife scratch out a minimal living in Billerica, Massachusetts. When smallpox threatens their family, they sneak under the cover of night (violating the quarantine) to Andover, where they stay with Martha’s mother. But Andrew, one of Sarah’s 3 brothers, was already infected and through him, 13 people in the town get the pox and die, including Martha’s mother. The family stays on the farm, precipitating a dispute with her brother, who believes he should inherit the place.
In a environment where Indians were still raiding, killing and kidnapping colonists, and where smallpox threatened to kill off entire families, several young women begin to accuse their neighbors of witchcraft. When Martha’s brother, an alcoholic, is accused, he points the finger at his sister, Martha. Martha refuses to confess to the charges of witchcraft; as a matter of fact, she calls the accusers insane. Soon, all of her children but the youngest daughter are accused as well. The older boys, Richard and Andrew are tortured by a rope tied from their throat to their legs behind their backs - causing them to cut off their own air supply - until they confess. Told by Martha to do anything to save themselves, all of the children eventually accuse their mother of raising them as witches. Martha is easily convicted and is sentenced to hanging.
Told from Sarah’s perspective, the horrible events take on an even more evil character. Kent does a wonderful job of building the suspicion around Martha through her own daughter who, though very young, chafes against her mother’s stoic and outwardly cold personality. It takes the threat to her life for Sarah to see the iron-like strength and courage of her mother in the face of death. Kent especially brings the colonial world to life. For example, she demonstrates how the Carrier family completely falls apart when Martha is imprisoned. The loss of an important contributor to the family’s upkeep cripples their ability to keep up with the extraordinary amount of work it took to farm and raise a family. Though not a unique history of the witch trials, Kent’s version is nevertheless an affecting read.
For further reading, here’s a transcript of the trial of Martha Carrier.
August 5th, 2009
Lisa - Central
2008 was a great year for witches. Brunonia Barry’s The Lace Reader and Kathleen Kent’s The Heretic’s Daughter were both excellent reads. John Updike’s The Widows of Eastwick was rather eh, but still a big book as far as witches go. Even if that book was only eh, I spent far too much time going back to read the Witches of Eastwick and then watching the 80’s movie. I had never seen the movie before and found it highly entertaining, if only for Cher’s fantastic hair.
I predict the witch book this summer is going to be the biggest one, yet. The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe combines elements of all three of last year’s books. There’s mystery and intrigue. There is a modern day Salem element with flashbacks and psychic visions of previous Salemites. The main character, Connie Goodwin, is a Harvard graduate student specializing in American Colonial life, so there’s history, history, and more history. And there is a common thread that ties generations of women together: women who have special skills with herbs and healing and possibly other more magical powers.
The plot revolves around Connie discovering an exciting primary source for her dissertation. She desperately needs to come up with something new and starts investigating the possibility that a centuries old book of recipes or “physick book” is still floating around. Her advisor is a little too invested in her finding the book and weird things start happening after she relocates to her grandmother’s home outside Salem. When Connie finds some old “recipe” cards in her grandmother’s kitchen written in Latin, the plot really starts to heat up.
This book certainly gets you thinking about women and their role in the history of medicine. Many of the books about the Salem witch trials focus on the innocence of the accused or what the idea of witchcraft stood for in a Puritanical society, but this book draws attention to the women who did have special skills in healing. The witches and their physick as presented in this book more closely resemble modern medicine than blood letting or blistering or prayer, common medical practices in Colonial times. It makes you wonder how much progress may have been lost because women and their recipe books were not trusted or taken seriously.
You may also wonder what hidden gems are tucked away in the special collections of libraries, though I’m pretty sure we don’t have any physick books shelved alongside the local yearbook collection here in the basement at Madison Public Library. If you’re looking for a spellbinding physick book, stick with Deliverance Dane.
July 29th, 2009
Molly - Central
Before this month, I’d never heard of the Reform Firm. That was the name of a group of women in the Victorian era who fought to improve women’s education, among other feminist causes. During this time when all women were supposed to be married and the property of their husbands, those who couldn’t marry had very few choices. One of those few choices was becoming a governess. The English Woman’s Journal was founded by two members of the Reform Firm, Barbara Leigh Smith and Bessie Rayner Parkes; they were hoping to influence old legislation that prevented women from owning property after marriage and kept women and girls from attending public schools. The Journal was published by the Victoria Press, which was run by Emily Faithfull; through the journal and the press, the women were able to employ many women to prove their theories by putting them into action.
Coincidentally, the last two books I’ve read involved these interesting women. Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres, Ruth Brandon includes a chapter on the women of the Reform Firm. Actually, the book takes up with governesses much earlier. Brandon, analyzing journals, letters and literature of the time, recreates the sad lives most governesses led. She begins with Mary Wollstonecraft, author of The Vindication of the Rights of Women, who actually spent a short time as a governess before her writing career took off, and includes Claire Clairmont (Lord Byron’s mistress); Anna Leonowens, the model for The King and I, among others. Brandon shows how precarious governesses’ lives were; always at the whim of their employers, they could be fired for any reason - getting on the wrong side of the mother, for example. As the middle class grew in the Industrial Revolution, more families were able to hire governesses to educate their girls, but they didn’t have the large estates that the wealthy did. As a result, governesses were forced to live intimately with the families, causing much strife. And wages dropped to unliveable levels. The final chapter tells how the Reform Firm began to work at challenging the social mores regarding women’s education, though it was still many years before schools allowed girls in.
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue is a novel based on an illustrious divorce case in 1864. Helen Smith, British, but raised in Italy and India, captured the heart of a much older man, the Vice-Admiral Henry Codrington. They have a few good years of marriage and have two daughters. The Admiral is often away for long periods of time at sea. During one of those absences, Helen invites a good friend of the family, Emily Faithfull!! (she of the Victoria Press above), to live with her and keep her company. By the time Henry comes back Helen is tired of her husband and when the arguments ensue, Emily is asked to leave. Eventually the family is off to Malta on assignment, where Helen begins to “befriend,” if you know what I mean, a few of the officers. When the family eventually returns to London, one of the officers follows, and Helen is caught. The divorce was an incredible scandal, the trial sensational with accusations of rape and a lesbian affair. Though Emily remained a force in the feminist movement until her death, her name was always associated with the scandal.
Both books were incredibly good. Brandon writes a remarkably interesting and readable social history of a small aspect of the lives of Victorian women. Donoghue captures Victorian England so well, fitting in period details without interrupting the flow of the story. All three of her characters have been perfectly rendered; no one is the victim or the victor, each is a unique individual with a complex personality. For those as interested as I am in the Victorian age, add these to your list.
June 24th, 2009
Lisa - Central
Paulette Jiles‘ (Enemy Women) latest novel, Color of Lightning, is based on the life of a true figure in Texas history and legend. Freed slave Britt Johnson, his family and former master leave Kentucky toward the end of the Civil War. They move to North Texas and establish a small community at the edge of the Great Plains.
One morning in October of 1864, while Britt travels to a nearby town for supplies, a combined force of 700 Comanche and Kiowa Indians from their reservation north of the Red River travel south and attack the small village of Elm Creek, killing Britt’s oldest son and kidnapping his wife and two young children as well as another woman and child. The Plains Indians, instructed by a U.S. government treaty to stay north of the Red River, conduct several raids throughout Texas during this time returning with their captives to a life of hardship on their desolate land in North Texas.
In a parallel story line Quaker Samuel Hammond is sent to the reservation’s Indian Agency as the representative from the Office of Indian Affairs. His assignment is to “improve” the lives of the Indians by giving them farming tools and other equipment to establish houses and farms on the Plains. Samuel’s biggest battle (often a losing one) is his attempt to stop the Indian raids and the taking of captives. The Plains Indian’s culture has included raids in neighboring lands for generations and illustrates the failure of the two cultures to understand each other.
Both Britt and Samuel struggle to understand the impact each side has on the other. This story, one of many little known events during the settling of the West, is brought to life by an excellent storyteller and researcher of the history of north Texas.
June 1st, 2009
Lesley - Central
Some books become popular because readers talk about them and recommend them to others. Of course, there is also publisher publicity, and book reviews to spark interest (not to mention Oprah and other television shows). The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, a first novel by Jamie Ford, seems to be one of the quietly popular books. After a brief stint on the bestseller lists it’s still gaining momentum and has a long waiting list in LINKcat.
Henry Lee is a Chinese-American 12-year-old living in Seattle. He is a scholarship student at a private school where he has no friends and is often bullied and because it is 1942 and wartime, it is very important to Henry’s father that the family is recognized as Chinese; Henry has to wear a button that says “I am Chinese.”
When Keiko, a young Japanese girl begins to attend the school, she and Henry develop an immediate friendship and protect each other from the other students. Keiko’s family is soon relocated as part of the Japanese internment, and Henry is able to visit her at both the temporary housing and the permanent camp.
This story is told in flashbacks alternating between 1986 and wartime. In 1986, Henry is a recent widower, with an adult son, and he has not had any contact with Keiko for 40 years. He discovers that the Panama Hotel is being remodeled and a cache of Japanese family belonging are found in the the basement. These belongings bring back a lot of memories; Henry is actually able to locate some of Keiko’s possessions. With the encouragement of his son, Henry comes to terms with his past .
Parts of this book are appealing: the friendship between the two young people is believable, and the historical depiction is of a time that in many ways seems forgotten today. Jamie Ford has clearly done his research and has some personal family connections to that era.
Despite the buzz I did not enjoy this book as much as I expected. Besides the predictable plot line, there were several factual errors that got in the way. One big one is that even though the internet was not readily accessible in 1986 it still figures into the story. I also did not always find 12-year-old Henry to be a very credible, he is very mature and wise beyond his years.
Although I did enjoy parts of this novel and it has been favorably reviewed, I cannot recommend this book. That said, it may be an ideal choice for a book group, since there is much to discuss and opinions obviously differ.
May 19th, 2009
Mary K. - Central
City of God: A Novel of Passion and Wonder in Old New York is author Beverly Swerling’s fourth installmentin the series that began with Shadowbrook and continued with City of Dreams and City of Glory. Each story can stand alone although I enjoyed revisiting characters from the previous novels and their descendants.
The latest book takes place in the decades leading up to the Civil War and again follows the rivalries of the Devrey and Turners families as the city of Manhattan expands “uptown.” Merchant Samuel Devrey spent many years in China eventually trading opium for the beautiful and young Mei-Hua whom he secretly marries. Three years after the Chinese wedding ceremony, which wasn’t recognized in New York, Samuel makes an advantageous marriage to the heiress Carolina Randolf. Devrey successfully keeps both of his families separate for years as he tries to retain control of Devrey Shipping (lost by his father) by building the world’s largest clipper ship while wrestling the China trade away from John Jacob Astor.
The other story line follows Dr. Nick Turner, Samuel’s cousin and a relative of physicians found in the earlier novels. Nick’s ideas of painless surgery and staff washing their hands before caring for patients puts him at odds with the corrupt director of Bellevue hospital as he tries to raise money for medical research.
Nick is eventually drawn into his cousin’s dual life when he saves Mei-Hua in a medical emergency. The Turners and Devrey’s lives intersect again when Nick and Carolina begin a relationship and move together uptown to the newly developed part of Manhattan. Carolina takes over Devrey shipping along with her son and realizes Samuel’s dream of a speedy and profitable clipper ship.
In addition to the stories of these two prominent families, City of God also includes historical information on New York City from the 1830’s until the Civil War. Sections on the various religious groups trying to gain a stronghold among the many new residents, the establishment of Manhattan’s grid systems as the city expanded northward as well as The Great Fire of 1835 make this novel another interesting read in an excellent series.
March 17th, 2009
Lesley - Central
I somehow missed a very important aspect of Andrew Davidson’s debut novel The Gargoyle when I skimmed some blurbs about it: the protagonist is a former porn star/director/producer. I’m not usually easily offended, but I almost put down the book after the first few chapters, which detail the narrator’s history and the tragic end of his career due to a disfiguring car accident. The book wasn’t outrageously scandalous, but I just didn’t like the narrator. I didn’t think he had any redeeming qualities, despite his amusingly arrogant delivery. I kept reading, though, and I ended up getting pretty engrossed in the story. Once our hero ends up in a burn ward, anticipating a new life of celibacy, he meets Marianne Engel, a sculptress from the psych ward down the hall. Marianne Engel (who is consistently referred to by her full name throughout the book) claims that she has known the narrator since they were first lovers in the 14th century. As she becomes a frequent visitor, she tells tales of her own history, as well as stories of other lovers throughout time and space, whose lives seem to intersect with each other, as well as Marianne Engel’s. When Marianne Engel’s 14th century past collides with the present, the narrator is forced to come to terms with this woman and his relationship with her.
While I’m usually quick to buy into any fantastical setting or premise, I just didn’t love this book. I liked that it’s incredibly ambitious, and many of the historical flashbacks are fascinating stories in themselves, but I didn’t see the relationship between the two main characters as the tragic romance I felt I was supposed to. Their love that had supposedly lasted for hundreds of years seemed rather shallow to me, and the character’s conversations left something to be desired, especially in the scenes of their modern-day romance, a fault made more noticeable by the often eloquent prose detailing the historical scenes. For a really great time travel love story, I’d recommend The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, a book that may not span more than a single lifetime, but in which the dialogue generally doesn’t make me cringe.
February 11th, 2009
Kylee
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