Category: BookLust I

End of the Hunt

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Flanagan, Thomas. End of the Hunt. Dutton, 1994.

Reason read: to finish the series started in April.

Flanagan’s End of the Hunt picks up where Tenants of Time left off; right after the Easter Rebellion. So begins the birth of the IRA (Irish Republic Army). Flanagan weaves intimate portraits of widow Janice Nugent as she tries to find love again; Patrick Prentiss as he navigates the world as a World War I amputee; and Frank Lacy, a contradiction in character with his weapons and Virgil in hand. Character development is so on point you swear you have met these people before. Meshed with real historic events and people, it is easy to see why End of the Hunt is a best-seller.

As an aside, how can you be historically deliberate and accurate and yet only coincidentally name actual people? I realize the coincidence phrase is a standard blurb to cover an author’s ass, but either these people were a part of history or they weren’t.

Line I liked, “Dublin is a city of half sentence” (p 7).

Author fact: At the time of publication, Flanagan divided his time between Long Island (New York) and Ireland.

Book trivia: End of the Hunt is the final book in the Irish trilogy and has been compared to Leon Iris’s Trinity.

Playlist: “Lead, Kindly Light”, “Sean O Dwyer”, “Slievenamon”, and “A Nation Once Again”.

Nancy said: Pearl called the entire trilogy “magnificent” and End of the Hunt “good.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Historical Fiction From Around the World” (p 113) and again in the chapter called “Irish Fiction” (p 125). Funny how none of the other books in the trilogy are mentioned in this chapter.

Sweet Cheat Gone

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Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past: The Sweet Cheat Gone. Vol. 6. Translated by C.K. Scott Montcrieff. Chatto & Windus, 1961.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November for National Writing Month. Obviously, I have skipped a month or two.

If The Fugitive was all about keeping Albertine hostage, The Sweet Cheat Gone is her escape. Albertine’s departure sets the stage for volume six. Proust has this way of capturing obsession and grief in all their painful intricacies. You know that moment, right before coming fully awake when you thinks maybe yesterday has all been some kind of horrible nightmare? But then remembrance brings back the horror with a vengeance. Yesterday’s reality is today’s truth. Proust’s narrator is constantly remembering the times he bused Albertine’s love. He couldn’t tell her she reminded him of paintings of other female forms because he didn’t want her to think of female nude bodies. His jealousies were that strong. After her departure, he is inconsolable; able to pick up his grief right where he left off before sleep; as if he had never closed his eyes. He repeatedly fixates on how to return the escaped Albertine back to him. If you don’t believe me, count the times Albertine’s name appears on every page. It got to the point where I wanted to please take this man out behind the barn and put him out of his misery.
It is so cliché to say, but you really do not know what you have until it is gone. Proust’s narrator is no different. He enjoyed hurting Albertine while she was in his possession, but upon hearing of her death he fixates on all the times he took her for granted or thought her company to be a nuisance. Her charms, her innocence was something to be scoffed at until she vanished. Now that he has lost her everything she touched (including “the pedals of the pianola she pressed with golden slippers”) becomes all too precious. He knows he has abused her and admits as much in the way he describes her departure as flight, escape, gone, and on the run. His obsession grows worse when he thinks her dead. He couldn’t even read newspapers because the mere act of opening and lifting one to his eyes brought back memories of Albertine doing the same.
In volume two there is a return to M. de Guermantes and Gilberte. Everything remains the same. Our nameless narrator is still looking for love wherever he can find it. His mother is unwilling to let him see just how much she loved him and that bothers him.

Quotes to ponder, “An impression of love is out of proportion to the other impressions of life, but it is not when it is lost in their midst that we can take account of it” (p 107) and “We wish to be understood, because we wish to be loved, and we wish to be loved because we are in love” (p 111). This last sentence is probably my all time favorite quote of Proust’s.

Author fact: For the first volume I told you Proust’s full name. In the second review I explained where the term romans-fleuve came from. In the third review I mentioned Proust spent a year in the army. In the fourth review I mentioned the influence of Flaubert, but by the fifth review I had run out of things to say (either that or I just forgot to add an author fact). Now, in this sixth review, my author fact is Proust was also an essayist. I won’t be reading any of his essays.

Book trivia: Sweet Cheat Gone is also called The Fugitive or Albertine Gone. So many different titles, I can’t keep track! Another tidbit of info: in the French text Albertine Disparue volume one ends before chapter two, “Mademoiselle De Forcheville.” It is at this time that the obsession with Albertine abruptly ends. She is not mentioned on every page life the first volume.

Nancy said: Pearl said absolutely nothing about this volume of Remembrance of Things Past.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romans-Fleuves” (p 208).

Boy’s Own Story

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White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Iconic Books, Open Road Media. 2000.
White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Vintage International, 1982.

Reason read: June is Pride Month.

First published in 1982, A Boy’s Own Story‘s main character has been compared to Teddy Roosevelt and characters from Lolita and Huckleberry Finn. The first in a trilogy and supposedly autobiographical in nature, A Boy’s Own Story introduces themes of desire, coming of age, and identity. The book’s nameless young narrator navigates his own sexuality in an age when parents simply warn their children about predators who seem “oversexed” and “take advantage of younger boys.” Our hero fights his homosexual tendencies while wondering why the adult camp counselor doesn’t rub his back in the middle of the night. Torn between propriety and passion, he struggles to find normalcy in his desires. Will his feelings for other boys fade in time? It this something to grow out of? In an effort to “change” he first seeks the advice of a priest. When that does not work, he convinces his father to send him to an all-boys boarding school. Maybe being in the presence of so many males would normalize his sexuality and set him straight? Not so. Next came a psychiatrist. Maybe he can address the psychological aspects of being attracted to men? Ultimately, he is looking for a way to have sex with a man and then disown him so to disavow his homosexuality. The secret to his longing is power which makes A Boy’s Own Story all at once poignant and sad.

Line I liked, “The subject of this book might be that brief eloquence between the fantasies of a dream-bound child and his implementing through charm, sexuality, his wits” (p 6). The saddest sentence in the book, “I had spent so much of my childhood sunk into a cross-eyed, nose-picking turpitude of shame and self-loathing, scrunched up in the corner of a sweating leather chair on a hot summer day, the heat having silenced the birds, even the construction workers on the site next door, and delivering me up to the admonishing black head of the fan on the floor slowly shaking from left to right, right to left to signal its tedious repetition of no, no, no, and to exhale the faintly irritating vacillations of its breath” (p 126).

Author fact: White lists Proust as one of his influences. I love it when I’m reading a connection to another book.

Book trivia: A Boy’s Own Story is autobiographical.

Playlist: “Dies Irae”, Juliette Greco, “Nothing Like a Dame”, Odetta, “Pat Boone’s “Twixt Twelve and Twenty”, “Now is the Hour”, “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah”, “Kitten on the Keys”, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, “The Tennessee Waltz”, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Liberace, Schubert’s “Unfinished”,

Nancy said: Pearl said Boy’s Own Story was “set prior to Stonewall” (Book Lust p 94). For those who don’t know, Stonewall refers to the Stonewall Rebellion or Stonewall Uprising; a riot in the early morning of June 28th, 1969. Police violently raided an establishment known as Stonewall. The community in and around Greenwich Village, New York, protested the attack.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the too-short chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93). There are so many other great novels Pearl could have mentioned (like Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden).

At Weddings and Wakes

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McDermott, Alice. At Weddings and Wakes. Farrar Straus Giroux, 1992.

Reason read: June is a very popular month for weddings…to the point where it is almost cliché.

Time is handled in a “This Is Us” fashion: time goes backwards and forwards in At Weddings and Wakes. Time moves through memory and observation and seems incrementally slow. This is the story of what it means to be Irish-American in New York, told from the point of view of Lucy Dailey’s school-aged children. Again, I was reminded of “This Is Us.” The viewpoints are poignant and sad, tender and true to life. This Is Life. Lucy dutifully brings her children from Long Island to see her sisters and stepmother in Brooklyn. The three generations of family all have a rich bittersweet history to tell. Aunt Veronica needs alcohol to numb her grief. Aunt Agnes is nothing but sharp-tongued and career driven. But, the sweetness and light is found with Aunt May, a former nun in the midst of a romance with mailman.
McDermott is a master at displaying human emotions and behaviors in a way that you swear the characters are in your life; just ghosts who have just passed into another room while you weren’t looking.
As an aside, can I just say how much I love the slug scene that appears in the beginning of the book and then returns at the end?

Line I liked, “She inherited her mother’s easy access to regret” (p 52) and “The need to disagree rose in her like appetite” (p 87).

Author fact: I am reading five McDermott books. I cannot wait for That Night and Child of My Heart. I have already read Charming Billy and The Bigamist’s Daughter .

Book trivia: this should have been a movie.

Setlist: “All the Things You Are” by Jerome Kern, “Wild Irish Rose”, “I’ll Be Seeing You”, “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad”, “Rambling Wreck From Georgia Tech”, and “The Caissons Go Rolling Along”.

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about At Weddings and Wakes.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…is for Alice (p 1).

Brothers Karamazov

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Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Reason read: I no longer remember why this was chosen for May.

The question of nature versus nurture has always been a topic for debate. Who are we? Why are we here? Do we have a divine reason for being on this planet? In short, Dostoevsky is asking for the meaning of life. Sort of. This is the story of a patricide when any of Fyodor’s children could have been his killer because no one has a good relationship with him. Not to mention the competition between father and son over Agrafena (Grushenka). Here is a brief overview of The Brothers Karamazov:

  • Book One sets up the family dynamic
  • Book Two introduces the dispute over the family inheritance
  • Book Three is about the love triangle between Fyodor, Dmitri, and Grushenka
  • Book Four – you can skip. It’s a side story
  • Book Five is pros and contra, the Grand Inquisition & Jesus (reason and blind faith)
  • Book Six is about the Russian monk; the life and history of Elder Zosima, dying in his cell
  • Book Seven introduces Alyosha and the death and decay of Zosima
  • Book Eight illustrates Dmitri’s greed in order to run away with Grushenka
  • Book Nine is Fyodor’s murder (finally)
  • Book Ten is another side story
  • Book eleven is about Brother Ivan and his quest to find his father’s killer
  • Book Twelve is the trial of Dimitri

Author fact: Dostoevsky died shortly after finishing The Brothers Karamazov.

Book trivia: The Brothers Karamazov was originally published as a serial.

Nancy said: Pearl said “A good part of reading life can be spent most productively with the great (and well-known) Russian books…” (Book Lust p 210). She said more but you’ll just have to read it for yourself.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Russian Heavies” (p 210).

The Prisoner

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Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Modern Library, 1956.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November in honor of Proust.

Whatever you want to call this volume of Remembrance of Things Past, whether it be “The Prisoner” or “The Captive”, it is also for obvious reasons called “The Albertine Novel.” In the beginning of “The Captive/Prisoner” Albertine is the narrator’s mistress. As soon as she wants to visit friends he (as narrator finally named Marcel at times) bribes Albertine with furs and jewels to make her stay in his family’s Paris apartment. There he keeps a close eye on her. Despite this possessive nature, he (Marcel) soon grows tired of Albertine but cannot completely let her go, hence the title of prisoner or captive. He becomes progressively more jealous, possessive, obsessive to the point of borderline psychotic worrying and wondering about who Albertine is with, male or female. Her confession of a friendship with lesbians forces Marcel to stoop to spying to see if she has relationships with other women. As usual, Proust has his finger squarely on the pulse of human nature. Albertine is the epitome of freedom while Marcel embodies jealousy and rage.
Sadly, because I had to switch to another publication, this version does not have the beautiful and whimsical illustrations of the other volumes.

Lines to like, “People who learn some accurate detail of another person’s life at once deduce consequences which are not accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of things that have no connexion with it whatsoever” (p 2).

Book trivia: The Prisoner was published posthumously. The next book to read is The Past Recaptured.

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about “The Captive” or “The Prisoner.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romans-Fleuves” (p 208).

Tenants of Time

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Flanagan, Thomas. Tenants of Time. Warner Books, 1989.

Reason read: to continue the series started in March in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

This is the account of the Fenian Rising of 1867 in the time of the Parnell Special Commission. All of Ireland rises up and greets war with bravery and stern determination. The chief storytellers are Patrick Prentiss and Hugh MacMahon, but you’ll also meet Robert Delaney, a shopkeeper and Ned Nolan, a terrorist. Like Katherine by Anya Seton Tenants of Time walks a tightrope between fact and fiction – a beautiful balance of great storytelling.

As an aside, I have a pang of nostalgia reading about Waterford crystal. I dated someone who lived in Waterford. He was my first “exotic” love.

Quotes to quote, “It was in a different world that he tended his roses, not the world of the white March morning” (p 174), and “It was a moment hinged upon silence, upon dreadful expectation” ( 201).

Playlist: “A Nation Once Again”, “The West’s Lake”, and “God Save Ireland”.

Nancy said: Pearl called the entire trilogy “magnificent.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction for Kids of All Ages” (p 114).

Katherine

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Seton, Anya. Katherine. Houghton Mifflin, 1954

Reason read: I needed a book with a name in its title for the Portland Public Library reading challenge. Katherine was next in line.

This is a love story. A fourteenth century story to be exact. Katherine Swynford has loved John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster ever since she first laid eyes on him as a young girl of thirteen. As a commoner, predestined to marry a lowly knight, Katherine’s standing in society is, at best, only to be a lady-in-waiting for the Duchess of Lancaster. That is as close as she can get to the man of her dreams. Yet, meeting the duke has sealed her fate. The saga that follows spans three generations of life and love. Seton does a fantastic job weaving true history with a fabricated backstory of romance. If you get the chance, listen to the audio version. It’s fantastic.

Author fact: Seton also wrote Green Darkness which is on my challenge list.

Book trivia: the 14th century of England is accurately portrayed in Katherine.

Audio trivia: I don’t think I have ever heard someone pronounce “joust” as “juiced.”

Setlist: there were lots of songs sung, but not many by name. “Here We Come a Wassailing” was the only one.

Nancy said: Pearl said Katherine is a good example of Seton’s ability to combine fact and fiction in her work.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the odd chapter called “Romance Novels: Our Love Is Here to Stay” (p 203). I would have thought it would be in a chapter about history.

West of Kabul

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Ansary, Tamim. West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002.

Reason read: I can’t remember why I chose this book.

Ansary writes with a duality that matches his bicultural heritage. His words are at once graceful and blunt; elegant and funny. He calls his upbringing “straddling a crack in the earth”, but what he doesn’t tell you is that his ability to navigate both the American and Afghan cultures is nothing short of expert mountaineering. His siblings may have chosen a definitive side after September 11th, but Ansary decided to use his bicultural perspective in an effort to find a deeper truth. It all started with an emotional email fired off to friends and family after the fall of the World Trade Towers. The email is included at the end of West of Kabul, in case you were wondering.
The entire time Ansary was traveling around Tangier I was on edge. His experiences with the “guides” were troubling; as was the time he was duped about an upgrade to a sleeping car on a train. (By the way, I would like to see jovial and overly congenial Rick Steves navigate those kinds of harassments.) Even when Ansary traveled to city to city waiting anxiously for a letter from his girlfriend, I was on edge. Would she wait for him? You just have to read his memoir to find out.

Lines I liked, “But I never liked him much personally and neither did someone else, because Uthman was assassinated” (p 48), “Power is a social construct, right down to the kick-ass level” (p 157), “Traveling can erase everything except the present, and turn the present into a hallucination” (p 184).

As an aside, the killing of the sheep was really hard to read. I am such a wuss.

Author fact: Ansary is also an author of books for children. West of Kabul is the only book I am reading for the Challenge.

Book trivia: There are no photographs in Ansary’s memoir.

Playlist: Bob Dylan, Elvis Presley, Everly Brothers, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Led Zeppelin, B.B. King, Mozart, Ahmad Zahir, “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Tell Laura I Love Her”,

Nancy said: Pearl said the first chapters of West of Kabul are fascinating. I am not sure what she thinks of the rest of the book.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Islamic World” (p 127).

Heart of Darkness

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Conrad, Joseph. Heart of Darkness. Penguin Classics, 1987.

Reason read: I needed a short book for the Portland Public Library reading challenge. This us under 150 pages.

We begin with two rivers of contradiction, the Thames and the Congo. Marlow’s journey begins and ends on the Thames.
After reading Heart of Darkness did you ask yourself, “what is the definition of civilized?” I know I did.
Also, I found myself paying attention to light and dark imagery throughout Heart of Darkness. There were contradiction of light and darkness – the sun setting versus the lighthouse’s beam and the glare of the stars. Light needs the dark in order to be its brightest. Night falling has an impact on people and places. All in all, the plot was slow and plodding. I kept waiting for something drastic to happen because I knew the horror could jump out and gnash its teeth any second. The pages leading up to the grand finale seemed nothing more than a vain attempt to rattle the nerves.
I know many people who couldn’t stand Heart of Darkness, but I have to offer this as an alternative. Why? Why is it so hated? I can remember reading a book about a woman working up the courage to commit suicide. I cared to little for the character that by the end of the book I was wishing she would just get it over with! I wanted her kill herself. Instead of saying I hated the book because I wanted the main character dead, I applauded the author. The power of the writing forced me to feel that strongly about a character. Maybe, just maybe, Conrad was forcing his audience to hate much in the same way.

Quotes to quote, “One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same” (p 29), “Black shadows of disease and starvation” (p 44), “Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others” (p 31),

Author fact: I was shocked to learn, according to Paul O’Prey’s introduction, that Conrad, distraught over debts and other failings, shot himself in the chest. What the what? A nicer fact is that Conrad was influenced by Henry James.

Book trivia: I didn’t realize the movie Apocalypse Now was based on Heart of Darkness.

As an aside, you know I have to make connections to my favorite singer, Natalie Merchant. I couldn’t help but think of “Hateful Hate” when I read in the introduction about the white man’s greed for ivory. To be fair, “Hateful Hate” is a 10,000 Maniacs song, but it’s Natalie’s voice I hear when she sings about spotted skins and ivory and that hateful hate.
Confessional: somehow I missed reading this in high school, college, grad school and beyond.

Nancy said: You can always tell when Pearl likes a book. She includes it in more than one Lust chapter and/or includes it in more than one Lust book. It was mentioned four times in Book Lust. Her most meaningful comments include Heart of Darkness is the story all other African novels are measured against and Heart of Darkness should be read along side The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. Having read Kingsolver and Achebe earlier in the challenge, I did not get to enjoy this grouping.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapters called “Africa: Today and Yesterday” (p 10), “African Colonialism: Fiction” (p 14), “Companion Reads” (p 63), and “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1900s” (p 175). Also, in Book Lust To Go in the simple chapter “Nigeria” (p 156). To be fair, Heart of Darkness should not have been indexed in Book Lust To Go. Pearl only mentions it because Chinua Achebe wrote an essay about racism in Heart of Darkness.

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast

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Richardson, Bill. Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast. St. Martin’s Press, 1996.

Reason read: April is the month people start planning their holiday get aways to B&Bs.

Confessional: I hate it when I read a book too fast and I don’t start a blog to take notes. I feel like I have a great deal of catching up to do. In a nutshell, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast is exactly that, a slim volume about two aging twin brothers who run a bed and breakfast on an island off the coast of British Columbia. Neither has ever married or had children, although one brother is dating. Their bed and breakfast is popular despite never being advertised. Guests share their experiences in alternating chapters, while the brothers share reading lists (Top 10 Authors, Books When Feeling Low, and Authors for the Bath), recipes, and stories of their mother who has since passed. In a word, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast is charming. Many reviewers have stated they wouldn’t mind staying a night or two with the brothers. With only ten guests at a time, I have to agree.

Author fact: Richardson has written quite a few books. I am only reading Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, and Waiting for Gertrude for the Lust Challenge.

Book trivia: Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Nancy said: the only thing Pearl mentioned about Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast is that she wished the B&B was a real place. I think we all do.

Connection to my own life: the Morris Dancers used to come to Monhegan every summer. I can remember walking by an open field and watching a group of people bouncing around with bells around their knees, waving hankies to and fro.

Setlist: “Allegra Ma Non Troppo”, “Auld Lang Syne”, “Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young Charms”, “English Countryside”, “Flow Gently Sweet Afternoon”, “Frosty the Snowman”, “Jingle Bells”, “June is Busting Out All Over”, “Just Wild About Harry”, “La Cucaracha”, “La Donna E Mobile”, Liberace, “Love’s Old Sweet Song”, “Moon River”, “Muzetta’s Waltz”, “O Susanna”, “Pachebel Cannon”, “She’s Like the Swallow”, “Shuffle Off To Buffalo”, “Sky Boat song”, “Summertime”, “The Swan”, “Voi Che Supete”, “William Tell Overture”, Edith Pilaf, Debussy, Joan Baez, Saint Saens, Vivaldi,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Gallivanting in the Graveyard” (p 96). In truth, I am not sure why this book and it’s companion, Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast Pillow Book, are included in this chapter. There is not enough ghostly activity for either book to be considered ghost stories. There is a separate chapter in Book Book Lust about parrots. Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast is not included, but should be because Mrs. Rochester is a prominent character in both Bachelor Brothers books.

Year of the French

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Flanagan, Thomas. Year of the French. Henry Holt & Company, 1979.

1798. Ireland. It all starts when a school teacher is asked to write a letter to a landlord. Arthur Vincent Broome offers a narrative of the events that followed. Malcolm Elliot writes a memoir. Sean MacKenna shares a diary. Characters from every angle share a voice in the telling. Thus begins a long and tumultuous history of Ireland, starting with the Rebellion of 1798. As with any war, the Rebellion is violent tide that sweeps up anyone in its path, be they Protestant, Catholic, Papist, landowner, landless, landlord, farmer, soldier, blacksmith, teacher, poet, peasant, gentry, French, English, Irish, man, woman, or child. Narratives come from all of the above and readers are cautioned to read carefully, to concentrate on the voices. Flanagan puts you into the plot so well that at any given moment you are either on the side of the Protestants or Catholics. Either the French or the English welcomed you into their camps. Year of the French describes war maneuvers as well as personal rifts between families, struggles in marriages and livelihoods.
As an aside, I felt like Year of the French was half written in a foreign language. Words like boreen, kernes and omadhaun kept me diving into Google for answers.

Line I liked, “I have never broken the law when sober” (p 92). Amen to that. Here’s another from the diary of Sean MacKenna, “There are some pf these fellows who don’t know that the world is round, and for all they knew, they were being marched off to the edge of it” (p 260).

Confessional: I always keep a running biography list of characters whenever I see there are too many to keep track of. For example, Citizen Wolfe Tone is the founder of the Society of United Irishmen. Donal Hennessey has a handsome wife and is the father of two sons. Malachi Duggan is a unicorn in Ireland because he doesn’t drink. Matthew Quigley owns the tavern where Duggan doesn’t take drink.

Orbital information: I love it when one part of my life informs another. In Year of the French Flanagan writes the words “the parting glass.” If I wasn’t listening to an Irishman’s music, I wouldn’t know “The Parting Glass” is a funeral song (and a very beautiful one at that).

Book trivia: Year of the French is book one in Flanagan’s trilogy about the history of Ireland. I am reading all three.

Author fact: Amherst College holds Professor Flanagan’s papers. Too cool.

Nancy said: Pearl called Year of the French magnificent.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Historical Fiction Around the World” (p 113).

Cities of the Plain

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Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. “Cities of the Plain” Translated by C.K. Scott Montcrieff. Chatto and Windus, 1961.

Reason read: to continue the series started in honor of Proust’s birth month.

All of the usual suspects are back in volume seven of Remembrance of Things Past. Swann, Guermantes, Gilberte, and Albertine are alive and well. Proust delves deeper into human emotions and behaviors in Cities of the Plain. This time he explores sexual deception in the form of homosexuality as a pact sealed with Gomorrah. A great deal of the action takes place at Guermantes’ party. The narrator is not even sure he wants to go to the shindig, but he’s also not sure he has been invited. A certain snobbery permeates the narration. Words like scandal, society, position, connexion (sp), privilege, exclusivity, eminence, aristocracy, class, glamour, regal, and influence pepper the pages.
As an aside, I am growing weary of Proust’s long-winded-ness. The man can go on and on. Here is just one example, “It is with these professional organisations that the mind contrasts the taste of the solitaries and in one respect without straining the points of difference, since it is doing no more than copy the solitaries themselves who imagine that nothing differs more widely from organised vice than what appears to them to be a misunderstood love, but with some strain nevertheless, for these different classes correspond, no less than to diverse physiological types, to successive stages, in a pathological or merely social evolution” (p 27).
His obsession with sleep and memory continues. I do adore the illustrations by Philippe Jullian.

Best line of the book, “Everybody becomes different upon entering another person’s house” (p 207).

Author fact: according to the web, Proust was influenced by Flaubert.

Book trivia: Sodom and Gomorrah is the French title for Cities of the Plain.

Playlist: Beethoven

Nancy said: Pearl didn’t say anything specific about Cities of the Plain because she only mentions Remembrance of Things Past.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Romans-Fleuves” (p 208).

Blue Diary

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Hoffman, Alice. Blue Diary. Berkley Trade, 2002.

Reason read: in honor of Alice Hoffman’s birth month I chose Blue Diary.

Ethan and Jorie are the perfect couple. From the outside looking in they have everything. Ethan Ford. Let us start with him. What’s not to love about Ethan? He’s a first-rate carpenter, a volunteer fireman who has saved many people from various burning buildings, an excellent little league coach, he’s extremely good looking, generous and kind, married to Jorie and father to sixth grader, Collie. This is a tight knot community in Massachusetts. Everyone knows everyone. Jorie, Charlotte, Trisha, Mark, Barney and Dave all went to high school together. Ethan is the odd man out. That’s the way he likes it.
Blue Diary bounces from third person perspective to the first person narrative of Kat, Collie Ford’s best friend. They will share devastation in common. Kat lost her father to suicide, Collie will lose his to incarceration. This is a story about perception.
Interestingly, everyone seems to be pining for someone else. Jorie’s best friend, Charlotte, has a deep crush on Ethan (but then again, who doesn’t?). Barney has the hots for Charlotte. Confessional: I didn’t like many of the characters so I had a hard time rooting for anyone.
As an aside, Hoffman likes to write in color so when I started reading Blue Diary I started to take note of everything described as blue: blue air, brilliant and blue, blue eyes, shimmering blue, blue ice, blue shadows (2), blue images, blue ponds, blue shapes, blue jays (several), blue blur, blue, blue skies, still blue, pinched and blue, blue flickering, Blue tint, blue silk, written in blue, China blue, blue frock, inkberry blue, blue skies, blue circles, blue dress, blue dusk, blue binding, blueberry, blue leatherette, wash blue, bluer still, frozen and blue, sweet blue, bluebirds, blue diary, milky blue, now blue, and the variations of blue, indigo and cobalt.

As an another aside. Usually, when an event as big as the arrest of a neighborhood’s favorite man, reporters are on the front lawn of the accused before it’s even on the evening news. In Blue diary it’s backwards.

Author fact: Hoffman is a New Yorker.

Book trivia: This is not a spoiler alert. While the title of the book is Blue Diary you never get to read the diary. The little key to the diary is literally the key to everything.

Playlist: “All You Need Is Love”

Nancy said: Pearl said something along the lines of if you want to see the evolution of Hoffman’s writing, read Blue Diary.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “A…is for Alice” (p 1).

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold

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le Carre, John. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Ballantine Books, 1963.

Reason read: while The Spy Who Came In from the Cold didn’t win an Academy Award, Richard Burton was nominated for his role as Alec Leamas. The Oscars are usually presented in March.

I had heard a lot of great things about John le Carre’s novels. Growing up, I can remember one or two titles floating around the house. I definitely think The Spy Who Came In from the Cold was one of them.
You know the story: someone is very close to retiring, getting out of the game, but there is one last job they need to do. After they complete this one final task, whatever it is, then they are out. Fini. Except, you know that’s not how it ends up. The job is always more complicated and/or dangerous. Something always goes sideways and the end is horribly wrong. The spy Who Came In from the Cold is no different. Alec Leamas is nearing the end of his career as a British agent. He wants out but die to a fabricated “problem” with his pension, he has one last mission in East Germany. All he has to do is spread rumors about an East German intelligence officer. After that, he can “get out of the cold” comfortably. Of course, nothing goes to plan. I knew this book was going to be trouble when, within 15 pages four people would die in quick succession.
Heads up: keep in mind this was written in a time when men were allowed to be sexist. It never occurs to Leamas that he might have to work for a woman.

As an aside, I love when books give me a connection to Monhegan however small. The Spy Who Came In from the Cold mentions the Morris Dancers. They performed on Monhegan every summer for years and years.

Line that made me think, “At first his colleagues treated him with indulgence, perhaps his decline served them in the same way as we are scared by cripples, beggars and invalids because we fear we could ourselves become them; but in the end his neglect, his brutal, unreasoning malice, isolated him” (p 23).

Author fact: le Carre died in 2020 and according to his Wiki page, his death was unrelated to Covid-19.

Book trivia: The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is the sequel to Call for the Dead and A Murder of Quality. I only have the former title on my Challenge list, but once again I have read these books out of order. Ugh.

Playlist: “On Ilkley Moor bat t’ at”

Nancy said: Pearl mentioned le Carre as someone to read if you are into spy novels. She also called The spy Who Came In from the Cold remarkable.

BookLust Twist: from a few places. First, Book Lust in the chapters called “100 Good Reads, Decade By Decade: 1960” (p 175) and “Spies and Spymasters: the Really Real Unreal World of Intelligence” (p 223). Second, in Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Berlin” (p 36).