Tag: book review

Tenterhooks: The Little Ottleys

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Leverson, Ada. The Little Ottleys: Tenterhooks. Virago, 1908.

Reason read: to continue the series started in August.

We return to the marriage of Edith and Roger. By this time they have been married for eight years. As a twenty-eight year old, Edith has more spunk in Tenterhooks. Her relationship with Aylmer is one of refreshing independence and gaiety. I practically cheered when she ended a letter to him with “I want you” even though it was not what she intended to say. Poor Aylmer! But there is hope for Edith. She spreads her social wings, becoming popular with the Mitchells to the point where they cannot have a social gathering without her in attendance. She is desirable and charming. She even laughs off her husband’s verbal abuse and silly philandering. She proves to be stronger than he ever imagined.
Tenterhooks is a society brimming with silly people. Someone could say “do not write to me but here is my address of where I will be…”; where when marriage happens by accident that relationship greatly scandalizes the community for decades. The insult of the day was to say that someone was dowdy or out of fashion. Eloping while married can be laughed at and ignored.

Quote I liked: even though I did not care for Mr. Ross as a person I liked when he said “Time doesn’t go by hours” (p 218). More quotes to quote, “Why cry for the moon?” (p 269) and “It is human to play with what ones loves” (274).

Music: Tosti, Melba, Caruso, Bemberk, Dubussy, and Brahms.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Viragos” (p 227).

Naples ’44

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Lewis, Norman. Naples ’44: a World War II Diary of Occupied Italy. Pantheon, 1978.

Reason read: In Naples, there is a pizza festival usually celebrated the third week of September.

Norman Lewis kept a clear-eyed diary from September 8th, 1943 to October 24th, 1944 when, as an Intelligence Officer in the Italian Labyrinth, he joined an established Field Security Service outfit in Italy near the end of World War II. Not having a specific assignment Lewis moved about Naples fulfilling various tasks. Beyond Naples Lewis visited the island of Ischia and the city of Caivano.
Besides a first-hand account of the Allied liberation of Italy, Lewis was witness to the civilian suffering and the colleterial damages of war. Wide spread bombings, children being prostituted by their parents, police and mafia corruption. Grossly underpaid officers resorted to crime to make ends meet. I found it interesting that Lewis learned to turn a blind eye from some small forms of corruption. He casually admitted “I am gradually becoming drawn into the system” (p 172). In the end Lewis enjoyed his time in Italy so much that he wished he had been born there.

Quotes I found telling, “I found Dr Lanza in his clinic, which smelt not only of ether but success” (p 141) and “This is the season and situation when insanity has become almost respectable” (p 145).

Author fact: Lewis lived to be 95 years old. He also wrote Goddess in the Stones (January 2036), Tomb in Seville (July 2037), and A Dragon Apparent (September 2056).

Book trivia: my audio version was read by Nicholas Boulton. In the book version there are no photographs.

Music: “O Sole Mio,” “Ammore Busciardo,” Torna a Sorrento,” and “Triumphal March” from Verdi’s opera Aida.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ciao, Italia” (p 46).

With His Pistol in His Hand

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Paredes, Americo. “With His Pistol in His Hand: a Border Ballad and Its Hero.” University of Texas, 1958.

Reason read: Parades birth month is in September. Read in his honor.

As with all great legends the stories about them are passed down through the generations to the point where no one knows the truth anymore. Ballads are sung to remember (misremember) and honor (or exaggerate) the legendary events and humans throughout history. “El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez” is the ballad for Gregorio Cortez. No one can agree on what he looked like or where he was born. Legend has it he shucked corn for a living. Maybe he picked cotton. Maybe he was a barber? Everyone said he could shoot a pistol and talk to horses. He might have been an expert trail tracker. He certainly was a weather predictor and a womanizer (No one can agree on who he actually married, though). He was also crafty and smart. He often got away from posses by blending in with the common folk on either side of the Rio Grande. He was peaceful yet he killed many men “in self defense.” Posse after posses chased the infamous man and his little mare across the wild Texas countryside. Cortez is able to walk amongst the commoners because, while they all knew of his exploits, he was unrecognizable in a crowd. Exaggerating the villainous nature of the Mexican people only increased the paranoia and prejudice against Cortez. When Gregorio Cortez is finally caught his legal battles raged for over three and a half years. For one trial Cortez’s supposed wife testified in his defense but by the next trial she had divorced him. Despite being found guilty, he was pardoned in July of 1913.
In the end, no one could decide how Cortez died. Was it a heart attack? Poison? He was only forty-one years one.
The second section of “With His Pistol in His Hand” is not nearly as exciting. Paredes spends this time comparing and critiquing the variations of the El Corrido de Gregorio Cortez ballad and describing the narrative elements and the development and quatrain structure of a ballad.

Lines I liked, “If the ballad maker wants to justify the deeds of his robber hero, he will transform him into a border raider fighting against the outside group, the Americans” (p 144).

Author fact: Paredes was able to talk to singers about the variants of corrido the performed.

Book trivia: “With His Pistol in His Hand” was illustrated by Jo Alys Downs.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Texas Two-Step (After a Bob Wills Song)” (p 225).

Brass Dolphin

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Trollope, Joanna. Brass Dolphin. Viking, 1997.

Reason read: In September Malta celebrates their independence.

As a young woman, Lila Cunningham dreamed of running away. She had been saving for her escape from her widower father for years. Freedom seemed just around the corner until one day her father admits they are in debt so deep they are going to lose their house. How can Lila leave her father now? Financially ruined, he only has his art…and he is not that talented of a painter. Even Lila does not believe in his paintings. [As an aside, I found Lila’s father to be a very selfish man. He bartered Lila’s mother’s pearls for paints. But Lila has her immaturities as well.] Neighbors Mr. & Mrs. Perriam come up with a plan to send Lila and her father to the island of Malta where their second home needs looking after. The plan is perfect except for the timing. Hitler has appointed himself war minister of Germany. Lila is naïve to this and she goes to work as a secretary for Count Julius. The theme of naivety runs strong with Lila. She doesn’t realize the importance of Malta to Hitler’s war. She is naïve about Malta’s society. She doesn’t understand the proper decorum of the wealthy. She has never been in a relationship. Readers watch Lila mature as she is faced with difficult and life-altering situations.
As an aside, the first time readers meet a brass dolphin it is in the shape of a knocker, placed high up on an enormously tall door of the Tabia Palace, home of Count Julius. It becomes a symbol of hope for the future later in the book.

As an aside, Joanna Trollope introduced me to the plumbago plant. It is beautiful!

Author fact: Joanna Trollope also wrote under the name Caroline Harvey, probably to scape her famous novelist ancestor, Anthony Trollope.

Music: “Flat Foot Floogie,” and “Jeepers, Creepers.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Messing Around on Malta” (p 144).

Too Many Women

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Stout, Rex. Too Many Women. Viking Press, 1947.

The backstory: a businessman falls victim to a hit-and-run driver. Accident or murder? The firm, Naylor-Kerr, Inc, where the businessman worked, is convinced it was foul play. The board of directors hire Nero Wolfe to prove it. The only problem is Wolfe thinks the clues to solving the case are hidden in the executive offices of Naylor-Kerr. It is up to wise-cracking and devilishly handsome Archie Goodwin to find the evidence by going undercover in Naylor-Kerr. He starts in the Structural Metals section but gets distracted by the Correspondence Checker, namely the victim’s fiancé. In fact, there are too many beautiful women for Archie to handle. He starts dating a few of them to get to the gossip. The best part of his job is entertaining the women in the company. Dancing, dining, and drinking to interview them all.
Once his cover is blown, true to form, Archie is still the sarcastic and sharp-tongued sidekick to Nero that we all know and love. When a second man from the same company is found dead in the exact same manner on the exact same street the pressure mounts to solve the mystery. Even though this was a case that was harder than most for Wolfe to solve as Wolfe mysteries, they wrap up Too Many Women like an episode of Scooby Doo with a long narrative about how it all went down.

A favorite quote, “It wasn’t a conception that hit him, it was a sedan” (p 96).

Author fact: Rex Stout held a job as a bookkeeper.

Book trivia: There was a significant absence of Nero Wolfe in this installment.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

Lyndon: an Oral Biography

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Miller, Merle. Lyndon: an Oral Biography. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1980.

Reason read: Lyndon’s birth month was in August. Read in his honor.

Merle Miller spent more than five years compiling Johnson’s oral history. The miles he put in, literally and figuratively, are astounding. Lyndon B. Johnson was a complicated man living in the time of the greatest society. Known for his aw-shucks attitude, he started out being a good ‘ole boy who voted against antilynching and antidiscrimination laws but ended his career as an instrumental advocate for federal aid to education, the creation of Medicare, changes in voter rights, and stronger civil rights. The death of Texas Congressman James P. Buchanan was a turning point in Johnson’s political trajectory. His campaigns were memorable – arriving by helicopter when running for senator. By the end of his political career Lyndon had weathered a tumultuous era: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., the march in Selma, Alabama, the Vietnam War.
As with any oral history, the chronology jumps around a bit. Case in point: the birth of Lyndon’s first child came before the purchase of the radio station, KTBC.
Miller provides an intimate primer on the inner workings of the United States government. Probably the most fascinating section was the hour by hour, behind the scenes account of the Kennedy assassination and the transition of power to Lyndon B. Johnson. He also peeled back the curtain on Lady Bird Johnson’s life as well. Just as Lyndon was thrust into presidency, Lady Bird became the First Lady overnight. There was no time for preparation but she acclimated to her position with grace. As an aside, her note of encouragement to her husband was beautiful.

Author fact: Miller died when he was only 67 years old. My copy of Lyndon was signed by him.

Book trivia: Miller does not leave a detail unexplored. By default, readers get glimpses into the personality of President Roosevelt and a short biography of Lady Bird (Claudia)’s life leasing up to meeting her husband, to name a couple.

Music: Lena Horne, “I’ll Be with You When I’m Gone,” “Kate Smith on the South,” “God Bless America,” “San Antonio Rose,” “Dixie,” “The Eyes of Texas are Upon You,” Beethoven, “Hello, Dolly,” “The Eyes of Texas,” and “Ruffles and Flourishes.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Merle Miller: Too Good To Miss” (p 155). If Pearl wanted, she could have included Lyndon in the “Presidential Biographies” chapter as well.

Sunne in Splendour

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Penman, Sharon Kay. The Sunne in Splendour. St. Martin’s Press, 1982.

Reason read: King Richard III died in August. Read in his memory.

Fabulous. Glorious. Beautiful. Absorbing. Exceptional. Painstaking. Immersive. Captivating. These are the words critics used to describe Sunne in Splendour when it was first published. The only word I focused on the most? Painstaking. I was intimidated by all 900+ pages. I will be the first to admit that historical fiction is not my thing so I thought this would be a slog. And yet. Sunne in Splendour is a best seller. And. And! And I admit, very entertaining.
This is a time in history when boys of ten wed for political positioning. Brothers killed brothers for the throne. Beheadings were the entertainment of the hour. Backstabbing and betrayals of all kinds ruled the day. Christmas truces could be broken without warning. Penman delivers a glorious fifteenth century England that is bloody and brutal. Richard III is right smack in the middle of it; becoming king on a technicality of legitimacy.
Everything about Sunne in Splendour is detailed perfection. Everything from the food people ate, their choice of drink (spiced hippocras), where they lived and the clothes they wore.

Author fact: Penman died in 2021.

Book trivia: Sunne in Splendour contradicts the well known view of Shakespeare’s Richard III.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Digging Up the Past Through Fiction” (p 80).

Mystical Paths

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Howatch, Susan. Mystical Paths. Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

Reason read: to continue the series started in recognition of Easter back in April.

As with every other Starbridge novel, Mystical Paths is designed to be read independently of others in the series, but it is recommended to read them in order. Characters who were in the background in previous novels jump to the forefront in later ones. This time, Jonathan Darrow’s son, Nicholas, narrates the story. Nicholas and his father are modeled after the work of Christopher Bryant and are both psychics. Nicholas is now twenty-five years old and has a “sex-mess” in the middle of the 1960s. He believes he is one half of his father and suffers from somnambulism. Every night he has to tether himself to something before falling asleep for fear of wandering off somewhere. He leads a double life in order to protect his father, his other half. Yet at eighty-eight years old, Jonathan Darrow is still sharp as a tack and can run circles around his son. Like the other Howatch books, psychological situations are examined through a spiritual and theological lens with the help of a spiritual advisor or religious mentor. Mystical Paths is one of my favorites due to the plots many twists and turns.
I think I have said this before, but the benefit of reading the Starbridge series in order, one right after the other is that besides character development the reader gets the varying perspectives of the same history. Each character recalls the same point in time with different feelings and memories. It reminded me of Michael Dorris’s Yellow Raft in Blue Water.

Every Howatch book (so far) has a character with sexual hang-ups or has trouble with alcohol. Nicholas Darrow is no different. Lines I liked, “As I mooched around, bored out of my mind, I wondered how the Church could survive the 20th century when one of its most famous training-grounds had been so wholly smothered by the dead hand of an irrelevant past” (p 19), “Funny how the vast majority of the human race has to generate a repulsive amount of noise before it can convince itself it’s having a good time” (p 55),

Author fact: Beyond the Starbridge series I have two more Howatch books to read for the Challenge.

Book trivia: According to the author’s note, Mystical Paths is the penultimate book in the Starbridge series. However, Pearl lists a seventh book, Wonder Worker, to round out the series. Wonder Worker is actually the first book in a different series.

Setlist: Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Beethoven, Rolling Stones, “River Deep, Mountain High” by Tina Turner, John Lennon’s “Money,” Mick Jagger, “It’s All Over Now” by the Rolling Stones,” Ella Fitzgerald, Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Berlioz, Dead March,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Fathers, Mothers, Sisters, Brothers: the Family of Clergy” (p 86).

Maine Woods

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Thoreau, Henry David. The Maine Woods. Decorations by Clare Leighton. Ticknor and Fields, 1864.

Reason read: the Maine Lobster Festival is always the first weekend in August.

Henry D. Thoreau made three separate trips to Maine. Most of the Maine Woods is a descriptive narration about the journey and the nature witnessed along the way. From navigating rapids and hunting moose to observing flowers, trees, and small animals. From a cultural perspective, The Maine Woods paints a picture of Thoreau’s interactions with the natives in Maine: especially their canoe building and cooking skills and their hunting and fishing practices. Thoreau wanted to learn from the natives (“I would tell him all I knew, and he should tell me all he knew” p 221).
Thoreau could not help but insert a little politics into his narrative from time to time, “The Anglo-American can indeed cut down, and grub up all this waving forest, and make a stump speech, and vote for Buchanan on its ruins, but he cannot converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the poetry and mythology which retire as he advances” (p 309).
While the narrative just ends abruptly, the appendix includes a list of trees, flowers, shrubs, and birds seen along the excursions. It also includes how to outfit and excursion with tents, tools, etc. There is also a glossary of Indian words and their meanings.
I did not know this about Maine: in 1837 there were 230 sawmills on the Penobscot river.

Thoreau had a sense of humor, “We saw a pair of moose horns on the shore; and I asked Joe if a moose had shed them; but he said that there was a head attached to them, and I knew that they did not shed their heads more than once in their lives” (p 127).

As an aside, I thought of my papas when Thoreau was explaining how to steer a boat into waves to avoid capsizing or taking on water.
As another aside, Thoreau mentioned John Smith from 1614. That is the same year Captain Smith landed on Monhegan. Interestingly enough, Thoreau mentions a “Manhegan Island.” I’m not sure it’s the same one.
I’m glad to know some things never change. The nuisance of mosquitoes was just as bad then as it is now, “We were considerably molested by mosquitoes at this camp” (p 253).

Author fact: beyond being a naturalist and an essayist, Thoreau was a philosopher.

Book trivia: If only there were photographs! Or a map. I swear Thoreau mentions Monhegan (spelled Manhegan).

Music: “O Susanna!”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “The Maine Chance” (p 135).

Young Men and Fire

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Maclean, Norman. Young Men and Fire. University of Chicago Press, 2017.

Reason read: Hurricane Katrina destroyed New Orleans twenty years ago this month. Young Men and Fire is about a different natural disaster; one started by lightning strikes and odd wind patterns.

On August 5th, 1949 thirteen out of fifteen smokejumpers lost their lives in the Montana Mann Gulch fire. Started by multiple lightning strikes, Mann Gulch and the surrounding area was soon a blazing inferno, completely out of control. For years, researchers have studied the tragedy to make sense of how only a handful of men, two being smokejumpers, survived. Someone needed to be blamed. Explanations were dire. Controversy surrounding foreman Dodge’s intentional lighting of an escape fire only added to the mystery. In 1978 Norman Maclean brought Robert Sallee and Walter Rumsey, the two surviving smokejumpers, back to Mann Gulch. Their memories of the tragedy were so sharp they were able to remember a can of white potatoes with two knife punctures. Nearly thirty years later, they could find the same can complete with puncture holes.
Beyond walking the scene of the catastrophe, Maclean and others plotted a course of reasonable explanation. They rationalized that if mathematics could be used to predict fire, why couldn’t math be applied to a past fire to reconstruct it? The science behind this was fascinating.
As an aside, this was the first time I read a publisher’s note explaining how a book which was published posthumously, came to be structured, fact-checked and released to the world. The University of Chicago Press was able to express its gratitude for the people who brought Young Men and Fire to bookshelves. I thought it wise of the University of Chicago Press to include “Black Ghost” as the preface to Young Men and Fire. A seemingly unrelated essay, it introduced Maclean’s personal experiences with fire and why the Mann Gulch tragedy was important to him.
In the end Maclean desperately wanted to believe the thirteen smokejumpers did not suffer. He consulted a doctor who said that asphyxiating in a fire is much like drowning; “it is not terrible,” was the conclusion. If you have read A Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger you might remember his play by play description of what it is like to drown. No thank you.

Memorable line, “No one who survived saw what happened to those who became crosses on that hillside” (p 307).

Author fact: in the introduction by Timothy Egan he shared that when Maclean was looking for a publisher for Young Men and Fire he was approached by a publisher who had previously turned him down for A River Runs Through It. As everyone knows, River was a smashing success. Big mistake. Big. Big. Mistake. Maclean was reported as saying he wouldn’t give this well known publisher Young Men and Fire if they were the last company on earth. Talk about a Pretty Woman moment!

Book trivia: Young Men and Fire includes photographs that not only show the devastation of the fire but also explain how the tragedy occurred.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “What a (Natural) Disaster!” (p 242).

African in Greenland

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Kpomassie, Michel-Tet. An African in Greenland. Harcourt Brace Janovich, 1983.

Reason read: August is the last month of freedom for students returning to school. Every once in awhile I chose a travel book to recognize this fact.

Before Kpomassie can tell you about his time in Greenland he needs to explain where his life began and all that Western Africa entails. To understand his culture you must first embrace his origin story.
Upon discovering a book about Greenland, Kpomassie became obsessed with traveling to that “other” green land. Kpomassie exhibited a great deal of patience – it took him six years just to make it out of West Africa. But he was also smart and ambitious. Being bilingual he was able to pay his way as he traveled. He had hopes of living with seal hunters, sleeping in igloos, and riding the sledge. He wanted the full experience. He got more than he bargained for in the northern Greenland village of Rodebay. Families too poor for groceries ate rabid dogs. Their bathroom was a bucket by the door for everyone to see. A father takes his son-in-law hunting so his daughter and Kpomassie can have four days of intimate alone time. Parents ignore their young son while he practices oral sex on his two year old brother. Dos are so hungry they attack and devour their master. When the community is not hunting or fishing, they are fall-down drunk. Besides culture, Kpomassie learned about the science of fashion; what it took to survive temperatures that reached forty or fifty below zero.
I did not expect to laugh while reading An African in Greenland but Kpomassie’s account of using the grease from a lizard to grow one’s penis was hilarious.

As an aside, animals and there shed blood is very important to tribal cultures. I saw it in The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down as well as An African in Greenland. The butchering of whales, seals, and even dogs was difficult to read.

Confessional: Kpomassie’s father had five wives and how the hierarchy within that system worked: who was intimate and for how long; who did the cooking and how other chores were parsed out. Polygamy was natural in Western Africa, yet Kpomassie found it hard to share a woman with another man in Greenland. Curious.

Author fact: Kpomassie is the first African to choose to live in Greenland, trading in one green continent for another.

Book trivia: I do not know why I feel this way, but the preface by Jean Malaurie is a little self-indulgent.

Music: the Beatles

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Where On Earth Do These Books Belong?” (p 258). Armchair travel, maybe?

Silent Speaker

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Stout, Rex. Silent Speaker. Bantam Books, 1946.

Reason read: to continue the series started in November.

One of the aspects of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe that I just adore is that Wolfe’s unscrupulous tendencies. He does not mind stooping to all new lows when trying to solve a case. When Cheney Boone, Director of the Bureau of Price Regulations, is murdered right before he was due to deliver a speech to the National Industrial Association, Wolfe pounces on a way to make NIA his client. Since the BPR and NIA are not exactly friendly, it is easy to pit them against each other. What better way than to accuse NIA of murder? Wolfe then finds a way to turn a $30,000 fee into an $100,000 reward along with faking a mental breakdown. As usual, it is Archie who steals the show.
Who would have predicted Nero Wolfe would come to the defense of Cramer? When Cramer is taken off the case Wolfe actually disapproves of the way the inspector has been treated. It is strange to not have him be the rival of a case.

Small confession: when I don’t take a lot of notes while reading that usually means I am not into the plot. But! I did find this quote that I liked, “An unaccustomed chair always presented him with a complicated problem” (p 238).

Author fact: Among Stout’s many occupations he was also a sightseeing guide.

Book trivia: Walter Mosely provides the introduction to Silent Speaker.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe: Too Good To Miss” (p 226).

To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone

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Andersen, Christine. To Maggie Wherever You’ve Gone. Cloeofpleirn Press, 2025.

Reason read: this was an Early Review for LibraryThing.

I have this habit of trying to solve mysteries while I read. I needed to know if Maggie was a real person and if she was, who was she to Andersen? Like a detective searching for clues I looked for answers within the words. Andersen’s daughter? No. Stepdaughter? Maybe. As I read on I stopped caring if it was real or fiction. Andersen words flow as a clear stream of meaning and you cannot help but be caught up in the flow. The reader has a vivid picture of Maggie as a child, a rebellious teenager, a lost young adult forever adrift. The imagery of angst and inner turmoil is crystal clear. So is the author’s inability to save Maggie. The feeling of helplessness and the hopelessness of trying to save a drowning soul is palpable. I read this over and over and over. While the words were painful the language was so beautiful. Beauty among the thorns. “To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed” as Natalie Merchant would say.

Confessional: They say that once someone is deemed truly suicidal, meaning they have tried to die more than once, they won’t stop trying until they succeed. If that is the case, really and truly, then I am really and truly fukced.

I Thought I Had You Forever

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Gary’s Mum. I Thought I Had You Forever. Publish Nation, 2025.

Reason read: As a member of the Early Review Program for LibraryThing, I often read books that grab my heart and do not let go. This is one such book.

Gary’s mum lost her son when he was just thirty years old. While on vacation in Portugal Gary went to sleep one night and never woke up. For the first fifty pages of I Thought I Had You Forever Gary’s mum does a great deal of soul searching. There is a brief and didactic interlude (about ten pages) about various religions: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Spiritualism, and Atheist.
I have always compared grief to fire. You cannot control grief just as you cannot control a fire that has burned out of control. Both are unpredictable and ever-changing. Just when you think you have grief (or fire) licked, something will trigger a flare up and the fight starts all over again. Grief can be a rollercoaster of up and down emotions. Grief can leave you drifting without purpose. Grief is the rudder, always determining your course of healing. Grief is searching. Where did you go? Where are you now?
Confessional: I am not a mother. I do not know the pain of losing a child in any capacity, yet I Thought I Had You Forever kept me up at night. We all grieve differently. Gary’s mum lost her ability to enjoy music for nearly five years while I clung to every note and melody and lyric to keep my missing alive. Gary’s mum didn’t listen to music for four years while I couldn’t play mine loud enough.

The lesson learned is grief is grief is grief is grief. It does not matter what the relationship. Losing someone is hard.

Author fact: Gary’s mum wrote I Thought I Had You Forever “from one mother to another.”

Music: “Buffalo Soldier,” John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and David Bowie.

Love’s Shadow: the Ottleys

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Leverson, Ada. The Ottleys: Love’s Shadow. Virago, 1908.

Reason read: August is Levenson’s birth month. Read in her memory.

All three novels contained in The Ottleys are portraits of marriage or deep friendships. The three novels, published four years apart follow the relationship of Edith and Bruce Ottley. In Love’s Shadow Edith acts as a punching bag for her husband’s criticism. She takes the blame for things she did not do. She is often ridiculed for not being smart. Occasionally, Edith with participate in verbal sparing with her husband – only her jabs fall short of making any lasting impact of Bruce. Confessional: I found Bruce Ottley to be a detestable creature. He is even worse when his hypochondria acts up. There are other romances in Love’s Shadow that are just as ridiculous as Edith and Bruce. Edith’s friend Hyacinth has eyes for Cecil, who in turn desires the older, widowed Eugenia.
Levenson is a master at delivering sly humor. The subject of aging, “all men are good for, at a certain age, is giving advice” (p 89). Levenson’s insults are pretty clever, too. “You’re full of faults, and delightfully ignorant and commonplace” (p 147).

Author fact: it is a well known fact that Ada Levenson was a good friend of Oscar Wilde. His nickname for her was Sphinx. It is a shame that she was better known for that unique friendship more than her novels.

Book trivia: Love’s Shadow is the first book in the Ottley trilogy. Tenterhooks and Love at Second Sight follow. Sally Beauman wrote the introduction to The Little Ottleys.

Music: Schumann’s “Merry Peasant,” Mendelssohn’s Wedding March,

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Viragos” (p 227).