Tag: Fiction

Member of the Wedding

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McCullers, Carson. Member of the Wedding. Library of America, 2001.

Reason read: September is Southern Gospel Month, or at least I read that somewhere. McCullers is the epitome of southern fiction.

Frankie Jasmine Addams wants people to stop calling her Frankie as if her rough and tomboy nature can be erased overnight by the new name, F. Jasmine Addams. Some would call her cheeky or obstinate in her behavior, but at times she is downright wild and violent. She should be just a twelve years old girl, dreaming of a bigger, more exciting life outside her small town. Instead, Frankie is a knife throwing, pistol toting confused preteen; impressionable and immature. Convinced Frankie is going to live with an older brother after his wedding, she repeatedly tells her father, cousin, and live-in housekeeper she is going to leave them. As the wedding date moves closer the tension builds with anticipation. Because Frankie is without any real parental supervision it seems highly possible she will make good on her threat to run away. Her widower father barely registers a parental word. Her cousin is only six and the housekeeper has her own grief to manage.

Bernice’s prayer sent shivers down my spine, “No stiff corpses hanging from the Europe trees and no Jews murdered anywhere” (p 546). Amen to that.

Favorite quote, “She planned it so that people could instantly change back and forth from boys to girls, whichever way they felt like and wanted” (p 547).

Author fact: In many of Carson’s photographs she is smoking. Despite dying at the young age of fifty in Nyack, New York, lung cancer was not the cause. She suffered from alcoholism, breast cancer, and other ailments.
Personal connect: I lived in New Jersey for a bunch of years. Every time I traveled North I went through the town of Nyack.

Book trivia: Member of the Wedding was made into a movie in 1952.

BookLust Twist: from two different books. First, in Book Lust in the chapter called “Girls Growing Up” (p 101) and again in Southern Fiction” (p 222). Pearl thought it best to also include it in More Book Lust in the chapter called “You Can’t Judge a Book By Its Cover” (p 237). Indeed! My copy has a photograph of Carson McCullers, looking all of twelve years old, smoking a cigarette.

Phineas Finn

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Trollope, Anthony. Phineas Finn: The Irish Member. Gebbe and Company, 1901.

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

I feel like Phineas Finn (all three volumes) covers all the same themes as Can you Forgive Her? The male characters are vying for seats in parliament, the women are looking for financially stable men, and everyone is breaking someone else’s heart, sometimes intentionally. Every story has a hapless, heavy in debt, political wannabe who is unlucky with the women. Enter Irishman Phineas Finn. As a lawyer from Ireland he has political ambitions to be in Parliament. Lady Laura Standish, the object of Phineas Finn’s initial affections marries someone else for the convenience of wealth. Luckily, they remain friends and Laura turns out to be one of Phineas’ biggest champions. Ever the naive romantic, Phineas then turns to Violet Effingham who was supposed to be promised to Laura’s brother. Of course there needs to be a duel over Violet. It solves nothing. In the end Phineas does not win the heart of Laura or Violet. Who he turns to next is amusing and oddly beautiful.
The question remains: what is Trollope’s fascination with scheming women? Why are the female characters always bailing the men out of debt? Lady Laura marries Robert Kennedy so that Laura’s brother’s debts can be paid off.
Other similarities: weird names (Mr. Shortribs?), Trollope steps out from the narrative curtain to voice regrets in the novel, and there is even an accident during a hunt that is very similar to the accident in Can You Forgive Her?

Favorite lines, “There was to be an early dinner out in tents at five, and after dinner men and women were to walk about, or dance or make love, or hay, as suited them” (p 152). Oh those crazy Victorians! Here is another, “I think you will acknowledge that if there be a difference of opinion between you and me as to any question of social intercourse, it will be better that you should consent to adopt my opinion” (p 307).

Author fact: Trollope was just as involved in voter reform as his characters in Phineas Finn.

Book trivia: Phineas Finn contains photogravures/illustrations by C.R. Grant, Victor Perard, Hy. Leonard, and R.B. Morrison.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Barsetshire and Beyond” (p 15).

Lifeguard

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Fani, Eamon. Lifeguard: Absurd Tales and Minimals. Word Vulcan Press, Inc. 2026.

Reason read: as a member of the Early Program for LibraryThing it is my responsibility to write a review in exchange for reading interesting books.

Fani takes readers into a world of absurd and strange with tongue-in-cheek humor and sleight-of-hand doses of life lessons. Because there is very little substance to each story it is difficult to linger on deeper meanings. I could not become attached to characters or their stories as much as I tried. I really didn’t care about the lessons they were apparently trying to teach. Much like the person who takes your ticket as the amusement park, the characters could be anyone. All you care about is the ride. Lifeguard is definitely a ride to remember.

Short stories in no particular order:

  • The Lifeguard – Arman is eleven and wants to become a life-saving human.
  • The Beggar – a story about having trust issues.
  • The Mustache – a man is fascinated with the facial hair of a prize-winning author.
  • How My Wife Became a cat – just that.
  • Some Pens and Another Item – working in a bookstore.
  • Going – we know something the driver does not.
  • Aremestan – a que of people using an ATM
  • The Student Who Had No Ethics
  • Abyss – code for apathy
  • Ascension – sheep herding
  • The Mouse and the Moon
  • The Plane-Tree Residents Across the Alley
  • Daisies the Size of a Fried Egg
  • Stonewalls and Hedgerows

Author fact: Fani is funny. You can tell just by his dedication in Lifeguard.

Book trivia: this is volume one of Lifeguard so one can only assume there will be more.

Triple Jeopardy

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Stout, Rex. Triple Jeopardy. Viking Press, 1952.

Reason read: I am still working my way through Rex Stout’s entire Nero Wolfe canon.

Home to Roost – Mrs. Benjamin Rackell and her husband come to Nero to find out who killed their nephew. The young man died of cyanide poisoning in the middle of a dinner with five other people. Was it a communist conspiracy? Was he a plant working for the FBI? Stout tries to confuse the matter by introducing a few shady characters. Immediately, readers are supposed to suspect Fifi Goshen. She goads Nero by disturbing his orchids and pouring her cocktail into his beer. Is she trying to cause a commotion to distract everyone from the truth? And speaking of drinks, Archie has moved away from tall glasses of milk and now prefers cool coke and limes.

Cop-Killer – Two Illegal aliens working in a barbershop come to Nero Wolfe for amnesty. They are wanted for murder but cannot claim their innocence because they are too afraid of being deported back to Russia. The cop investigating the murder visited the barbershop to hunt down a lead on a hit-and-run that happened the day before. Carl and Tina Vardas fled thinking their illegal status had been discovered. Their flight makes them look guilty, but as Archie surmises, “to qualify as a hit-and-run driver you must meet certain specifications, and one of them is knowing how to dive a car” (Triple Jeopardy p 94). Dear Archie, I would beg to differ. I would argue that you are more likely to hit someone while driving a car if you have no idea what you are doing. It is during this case that Nero Wolfe leaves his brownstone to get a haircut. Shocking!

Squirt and the Monkey – Harry Koven, a comic book writer, accuses someone on his staff of stealing his gun. To reveal the culprit, Koven enlists the help of Archie. Instead of learning the identity of the thief, Archie is framed for murder, thanks to a rare tropical monkey named Rookaloo. As an aside, this case introduced me to the Sullivan Act of 1911.

True to form, Archie is always flirting with the ladies. I still think it is cute the way Wolfe cares for Goodwin’s appetite.

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

From Sea to Shining Sea

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Thom, James Alexander. From Sea to Shining Sea. Ballantine Books, 1984.

Reason read: August is Friendship month and there is no doubt Lewis and Clark were friends. However, From Sea to Shining Sea is less about the relationship between the two adventurers and more about the entire Clark family.

What a violent time the late 1700s were for fledging America. Battling Native Americans and British soldiers simultaneously. It is as if James Alexander Thom lived in these brutal times in a previous life. His attention to every detail is astonishing. From chamber pots to fashion, mannerisms and foodstuff, real and imagined characters; it is all picture perfect. Each character is fully realized to the point you feel as if you are living beside them at every moment. Was is another character drawn in excellence. It becomes clear that was is not noble; it is not glorious or heroic. War is the explosion of blood and the shattering of bone.
From Sea To Shining Sea tells the story of the tight-knit Clark family from birth to death. Each member of the family receives ample page space to create biographies for all.
Confessional: it took so long to get to the “Lewis and Clark” part of the story that I started to get impatient. William Clark does not meet Meriwether Lewis until page 573. The expedition does not start until another thirty or so pages. On page 616 Discovery finally departs from Camp Wood.

Personal connection: Thom mentions Captain John Smith in the early pages of From Sea to Shining Sea. Captain John Smith is credited with being the first white man to settle on my island. Of course, there were people already there, but the history books ignore that elephant-in-the-room detail.

Author fact: James Alexander Thom was a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, a freelance writer, and a professor.

Book trivia: From Sea to Shining Sea is over 900 pages long. I had to take this behemoth to work to read on my lunch break as well as before breakfast and at night. Phew!

Music: “Betsy Kiss My Lips,” “A Patriot Song,” “Barbara Allen,” “Hang on Till Morning,” “The Hog’s Heart,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “Johnny Has Gone for A-Soldier,” “Katy Cruel,” “The Lawyer Outwitted,” “The Quaker’s Wooing,” “The Spoiling o’ Katy Morah,” “Yankee Doodle,”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Lewis and Clark: Adventurers Extraordinaire” (p 136).

Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina

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Graves, Robert. Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina. Harrison Smith and Robert Haas, Inc. 1935.

Reason read: to finish the series started with I, Claudius.

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus has come a long way from the weak and stuttering fool in I, Claudius. After the murder of his cousin, Caligula, Claudius is now the new emperor at fifty years old. He still is a cripple, but has gained a wisdom from carefully watching those who went before him. He creates safeguards against perceived assassination attempts. He refrains from doing anything that would make the ghosts of his family disapprove. Despite all this, and if you know the story, you know what happens to dear Claudius in the end.
Even though Claudius is deeply in love with his seventeen year old wife Messalina, she does not factor much in the beginning of the story. The life of Harold Agrippa is more fully examined than Messalina’s. Towards the middle of the tale, Messalina reveals a devious side. She encourages Claudius to have an open marriage, as long as the other women do not outrank her. Messalina begins to emerge as a strong power player in Claudius’s life, politically and emotionally. Towards the end of the tale the moral of the story is love weaves a tangled web.

Quote I loved, “I detest forensic oratory” (p 123).

Author fact: I already told you about the connection to Natalie Merchant. Graves also wrote Goodbye to All That which I have already read. Claudius the God marks the end of my time with Mr. Graves.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Classical World” (p 60).

Lightning Song

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Nordan, Lewis. Lightning Song. Algonquin Books, 1997.

Reason read: Nordan’s birth month is in August.

The crackling electricity of doing something sneaky can be thrilling to a boy coming of age. Lightning Song begins with twelve year old Leroy Dearman, lost in complete innocence while furtively studying naked woman in the pages of a glossy Playboy magazine. Nordan must have tapped into his own boyhood innocence, because he describes Leroy’s naive thoughts perfectly as he stares at the smiling women.
Leroy is a sheltered boy, growing up on an llama farm in rural Mississippi with his parents and two younger sisters. He confronts adult things: naked women, his mother’s coy and giddy behavior around his uncle, and the creepy death of his grandfather in the attic. Lightning Song only becomes more bizarre as you read on: to name a few: the New Couple’s oddity, Leroy’s mother’s obsession with a kidnapped prime minister, Leroy’s sister and her ferocious courage (confessional: my favorite act of bravery was when she was not afraid to take her father’s withered hand).
The lightning is another character in Lightning Song. It creates tension and an air of danger. It is witness to illicit behaviors and illuminates dark secrets.

Favorite line, “He longed to be his father’s son” (p 122).

Author fact: as there is a whole chapter for Lewis Nordan in Book Lust, I am reading a few. Eight to be exact. I have finished three so far.

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

Music: Elvis Presley, “Dixie,” “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” and “Are You From Dixie?”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter “Lewis Nordan: Too Good To Miss” (p 172).

Shattered Silk

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Michaels, Barbara. Shattered Silk. Atheneum, 1986.

Reason read: Michaels passed away in the month of August. Read in her memory.

Shattered Silk begins with such a benign plot I questioned the seriousness of including it in a More Book Lust chapter called “Girl Guides, Or It’s a Dark and Stormy Night…” (p 99). Karen Nevitt, soon to be divorced, has sought refuge at her aunt and uncle’s home in Georgetown, Washington D.C. under the auspicious of housesitting and dog watching. This is a return to her college roots, complete with old frienemies and an old boyfriend with whom a relationship ended badly. What originated as an escape from a bad marriage turns into a business venture when a family friend urges Karen to start a vintage clothing shop. That’s when the trouble starts. Karen experiences harassing behavior from an unknown person, but no one knows why. The sad thing is, I honestly did not really care to know the reason. Karen’s personality was such that I did not root for her either way. She wasn’t a likeable or believable character. She was just meh. All of the characters were just blah. I didn’t believe them. Why would a cop buy a house for a woman’s business before even asking her?
I will say this about reading Shattered Silk: I know more about taking care of various fabrics than I ever cared to. Even though Michaels introduces Karen as not knowing much about fine fabrics, Karen brings herself up to an expert in record time. Readers will learn about designers, textiles, and even receive fashion tips.

I am always curious about the relationships people have with one another. Exactly who is Karen to Jill and vice versa. What Michaels writes, “They parted with mutually insincere expressions of affection” (p 24), I had to wonder.

Personal connection: When Michaels was describing Karen’s relationship with her mother she could have been describing mine. A mother who asks what you did wrong when you share that a serious relationship is coming to an end. Failure is on you o matter what happened.

Author fact: Peter Mertz’s photograph of Barbara Michaels has her looking like a character straight out of a Victorian romance; big hat, fuzzy cat and all.

Book trivia: this could have been a movie.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter with the long title, “Girl Guides, Or It’s a Dark and Stormy Night, Good Thing You Have a Flashlight” (p 99). As an aside, Shattered Silk is the first book I am reading for this chapter. Believe it or not, after ten years of this Challenge there are still some chapters I haven’t touched.

Have His Carcase

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Sayers, Dorothy. Have His Carcase. Harper & Brothers, 1932.

Reason read: a murder takes place on a beach. July is beach season. Confessional: I did not read this on a beach, but I should have!

Harriet Vane, a twenty-eight year old writer of detective fiction, stumbles across the prone body of a man lying awkwardly across some rocks on a deserted beach. Upon closer inspection she discovers the young man’s throat has been cut and, with the tide coming in, his body will be soon swept out to sea. Harriet’s first order of business is to photograph the dead man. She writes detective stories, after all. She thinks she knows what to do at a crime scene. Next she faces the challenge of trying to find someone to sound the alarm about the murder; someone who will believe her and jump into action before the tide comes up and drags the man out to sea. The ridiculousness of Harriet not being able to find a single person to help her set the tone for me. So begins the adventure of Have His Carcase.
Harriet is supposed to be on vacation after being acquitted for the murder of her boyfriend. After acquiring a fair amount of wealth she decided to go on a walking tour of the southwest coast of England and plan her next mystery plot. Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet’s friend and not-so-secret admirer arrives to help her solve the mystery at hand. He steals the story for me.

As an aside, this is the perfect case for that crime show called “Accident, Suicide, or Murder.” Did Paul Alexis kill himself or was he murdered? The coroner’s jury all voted for suicide.

Most irritating detail – Inspector Umpelty didn’t know the difference between written Chinese and Russian.

Confession: I had to look up the word carcase and figure out what a trunk call was. Also, this was the first I heard of a locked-room mystery.

Best line, “I am a mannequin by profession” (p 295). Excuse me?

Author fact: Dorothy Sayers’s full name is Dorothy Leigh Sayers Flemming. I think that is a beautifully full name.

Book trivia: Each chapter is evidence which begins on June 18th.

Music: “Blue Danube,” “God Save the King,” Eine Kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart, Lieder ohne Worter by Mendelssohn, Bach’s “Air for G Strong,” Handel’s Suit, Beethoven’s Eroica, and “Moonlight.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Ms. Mystery” (p 170).

French Lieutenant’s Woman

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Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Little, Brown, and Company, 1969.

Reason read: there is something called a Swan Upping in England every July. Read in honor of that event.

John Fowles approaches the story of The French Lieutenant’s Woman as if he is a modern man looking into a Victorian crystal ball and sharing what he sees with his readers. His technique allows him to make lengthy comments on society, religion, science, politics and economy of the time. He can (and often does) insert himself into the story and even imagines various endings to the romantic saga. Fowles begins his tale by introducing us to Charles Smithson, a thirty-two year old independently wealthy wannabe natural scientist. Charles has impulsively become engaged to the young and beautiful Ernestina Freeman. Ernestina (Tina) also has wealth in her family, being the daughter of a savvy dry goods merchant. As the saying goes, every good romance needs some sort of tension. Enter Sarah Woodruff, an older and mysterious redhead. Rumor has it she was abandoned after a torrid affair with a French naval officer. The entire town of Lyme Regis thinks of her as a whore; utterly damaged goods. And yet Charles cannot help but be drawn to this silent and haunted woman who waits on the quay quietly staring out to sea. As much as he tries to keep his distance, there is something about the French lieutenant’s woman he cannot resist. What is redemption in the heart of an atheist? Fowles imagines three different possibilities for the love triangle’s conclusion. Everyone roots for passion, but I am not convinced there is a happy ending to satisfy all.

Confessional: for the longest time I kept calling the book The French Lieutenant’s Wife instead of Woman. I have no idea why. Here is an interesting tidbit – my husband also thought the same thing.
Another confessional: I did not care one whit about Charles. As Noah Kahan says, I kept “rooting for [his] downfall.”

As an aside, I have to wonder if Josh Ritter read The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Was he inspired by John Fowles’s description of Sarah’s eyes, “…they bubbled as the best champagne bubbles” (p 75).

Lines I Loved, “People sink out of sight, drown in the shadow of closer things” (p 337) and “Love had left the world” (p 429).

Author fact: Fowles has written a great deal but I am only reading The French Lieutenant’s Woman for the Challenge.

Book trivia: The French Lieutenant’s Woman was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Jeremy Irons. I have to put this one on my list because I love Meryl (who doesn’t?).

Music: “As Sylvia Was Walking.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Lyme Regis” (p 134).

Singer’s Gun

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Mandel, Emily St. John. The Singer’s Gun: a Novel. Unbridled Books, 2010.

Reason read: the first fingerprints used to solve a crime were in July of 1901. Read in honor of Crime Prevention Month.

Anton Waker comes from a long line of scammers and thieves. The desire to commit crime should naturally flow through his veins. For as long as he can remember his parents have stolen antique valuables to resell them. Anton’s beautiful and brash cousin ensnared him early into the business of creating fake documents such as passports, social security cards and birth certificates. Anton himself has faked his own academic credentials in an attempt to get a “real” job. Despite his intimacy with fraud, Anton continuously tries to make a clean start. This makes him a likeable character. New job which he is successful at. New marriage with the girl of his dreams. Every decision starts with good intentions yet deception always finds a way to fray the edges. Every time Anton thinks he has escaped, corruption sucks him back down the hole. There is always one more job to do. Like a trapped rat, he cannot escape his criminal family until his cousin offers him one last job. She promises him his freedom if he delivers this one last package on a remote island in Italy. However, it will mean the end of his carefully constructed crime-free lifestyle.
I thoroughly enjoyed Mandel’s work. I had only one cringe moment. Elena, a Russian recipient of a passport, was instructed to not carry a handbag to the meeting place yet at the end of a transaction she puts the documents in a bag.
As an aside, when I was in college a professor said to me that if you introduce a gun in an early chapter it has to go off before the book ends. His exact words were, “If you put a gun on the table in the first chapter it has to be fired by the last chapter.” Mandel must have gotten that wisdom as well, but she was far more clever with the advice. She debuts the gun in the title but withholds the singer and his or her weapon until you have all but forgotten about them.

Author fact: I am also reading Last night in Montreal for the Challenge. I am excited to be revisiting Mandel’s work in the future.

Book trivia: the audio version of Singer’s Gun is narrated by Morgan Hallet.

Music: New Order and Depeche Mode.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “O Canada O Canada” (p 51). Note: Singer’s Gun has nothing to do with Canada except Emily St. John Mandel (and one character) is from Canada.

Copenhagen

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Frayn, Michael. Copenhagen. Anchor Books, 2000.

Reason read: July is the birth month of the atomic bomb.

Michael Frayn took real historical events and wrote a play about what he thinks happened next. It is true Danish physicist Niels Bohr really did take a walk with his German counterpart, Werner Heisenberg, but no one knows what was really discussed away from spying microphones. In Copenhagen Frayn imagines the private conversation between Bohr and Heisenberg, now spirits of the past; their words heating up to an argument. As scientists and physicists once working together on atomic physics and quantum theory, they both have competitive spirits and neither likes to be wrong. Complicating their relationship is the fact Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, are Danes under German occupation. Heisenberg is, of course, German. Frayn imagines Heisenberg struggling to make small talk with Bohr, a once trusted friend and mentor, but every time he opens his mouth it is to blunder around some insensitive topic. As former partners prior to 1941, the exchange is awkward. They want to stick to paradox and contradiction; the foundations of science through an objective universe; classical mechanics and the particle theory, but they cannot. Along for the garden stroll is Bohr’s wife, Margrethe. She offers a different perspective on Bohr and Heisenberg’s relationship, one that is grounded in human nature rather than scientific discovery.

Author fact: Frayn is a prolific writer of plays and novels, in additional to being a documentary filmmaker and a translator of Chekhov.

Music: Beethoven in G Major, and Bach.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Bomb Makers” (p 42).

Hollow Land

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Gardam, Jane. Hollow Land. Walker Books, 2001.

Reason read: Jane Gardam’s birth month is in July. Read in her honor.

Jane Gardam introduces her readers to Bell Teasdale and Harry Bateman and we are witness to their childhood adventures through various linked short stories. When we first meet the boys Bell is eight years old. He befriends Harry, one of the Bateman children renting Grandpa Teasdale’s farm for a summer holiday. Every summer Bell and Harry celebrate boyhood and survive life changing events: becoming trapped in a mining cave, witnessing a horrific flood, recovering a table stolen by gypsies. Over the course of twenty years their lives change but their friendship remains constant. My only word for Hollow Land is pleasant.

Confessional: the friendship between Bell and Harry reminded me of my childhood. Like Harry’s family renting Light Trees, my friends from “away” would rent a cottage every summer in Maine. Each summer if we were lucky our friendship would pick up right where we left off the summer before. More often than not, the parents would chose not to rent consecutive years and the friends would become pen pals until we either saw each other again or fell out of touch.

Line I loved, “He can inherit this weather” (p 134).

Author fact: Sadly, Jane Gardam passed away last year at the age of 96.

Book trivia: Hollow Land was promoted as a book for young adults.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Jane Gardam: Too Good To Miss” (p 96).

I, Claudius

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Graves, Robert. I, Claudius. Random House, 1961.

Reason read: July is the month of the restoration of democracy in Greece.

Tiberus Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus paints himself to be a pitiful creature: deaf yet affectionate, stuttering and stammering, sickly with nervous tics and a queasy digestion; always shaking with weakness. Claudius plays the fool. And yet, this sad creature from a royal family becomes the Emperor of Rome by 41 A.D.. I Claudius is Claudius’s effort to set the record straight about his murdered father by embarking on a biography which turns autobiographical. Claudius has much to tell. Throughout his life he manages to escape murderous plots from all sides of his family, including his nephew, Caligula (need I say more?). You cannot help but root for poor (brilliant) Claudius
As an aside, if you think the story of Claudius is a steady stream of eye gouging, knife stabbing, and limb breaking, you would not be wrong. The list of methods of violence is long. But don’t forget, the gentle art of poison was a very fashionable method for murder as well, especially with women.

The list of Claudius is impressive. You have Claudius the Proud, the Fair, the Tree trunk, Claudius Nero (the Strong), Claudius Drusus…there is even a Claudius Audiena set a hundred generations into the future when Graves was writing for a 1934 audience.

Line I laughed out loud at, “As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned” (p 249).

Author fact: I first encountered Robert Graves through the genius of Natalie Merchant. She put a Graves poem to music.

Music: The Three Griefs of Lord Augustus.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “The Classical World” (p 60).

Sex Life of My Aunt

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Cheek, Mavis. The Sex Life of My Aunt. St, Martin’s Press, 2002.

Reason read: Aunt Day is on the 26th of July.

A chance encounter with a sexy stranger with beautiful blue eyes sets off a ravenous desire in Dilys like never before. Even her husband has never ignited such a flame. And so begins a complicated life for middle aged Dilys. Juggling a jealous lover and an overly trusting husband does not prove to be easy. Confessional: I did not really care for Dilys. Her sister hated her for having the perfect life: married to a successful (rich) lawyer who gave her everything she wanted, two grown kids, adorable grandkids, and a sexy young lover. She seemed to have it all. Her biggest dilemma appeared to be how she was going to keep her lover from pressuring her to leave her husband. Never mind that she had a sister who despised her and an aunt with a boatload of secrets of her own.

Lines I liked, “Shame made her wary of people” (p 20), “Is there any surer way of the hook of attraction than looking up the object of the attraction in a telephone directory?” (p 33), and “If there is one thing passion does to you, it is to reduce your brain to childlike proportions” (p 92).

Author fact: while Mavis Cheek wrote a bunch of books I am only reading The Sex Life of My Aunt for the Challenge.

Book trivia: Sex Life of My Aunt has a little story-within-a-story element to it when the aunt tells her story.

Music: “She Loves You,” Puccini, Mozart, Bryan Ferry’s “Let’s Stick Together,” Charlie Parker, and the Eagles’ “Desperado.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Wayward Wives” (p 231).