Tag: historical

City of Light

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Belfer, Lauren. City of Light. New York: Dial Press, 1999.

As a 36 year-old spinster Louisa Barrett is the headmistress of a well-to-do boarding school and she harbors a dark secret. While she is trusted and beloved by her community she is a contradiction in character. It’s this contradiction that makes her human and extremely likable. She worries about propriety and yet goes out of her way to create confusion about her personal life. She’s modern and yet knows her place in society when dealing with members of the opposite sex. At the height of Louisa’s tenure as headmistress Buffalo, New York is going through a metamorphosis. The husband of her late best friend owns a power plant that, by using nearby Niagara Falls, promises to light the entire region. Environmentalists are up on arms over the draining of the falls and suddenly people start dying. Somehow, Louisa finds herself in the middle of the mess. It’s her secret that has her tied to the drama.

City of Light is one of those books I like to call a “location” book. It brings the sense of a particular place to reality. For City of Light that place is Buffalo, New York and its famed Niagara Falls. Set in the early 1900s this is a period piece. A time when women barely held a place in society beyond practiced restraint and stiff decorum. City of Light is also an environment versus science debate as the development of a hydro-electric plant threatens to drain Niagara Falls of its rushing waters for the sake of lighting Buffalo and beyond. Set against the political and environmental debates of the era City of Light is also a mystery as two men are found dead under suspicious circumstances. It is hard to ignore they were both prominent men, connected to the power plant. Yet, no one can prove with absolute certainty they were murdered. Finally, City of Light is a nontraditional love story. Louisa learns the best way to love is to let go.

Favorite lines: “Love made me doubt myself” (p 24), “Magic had become science, science had become magic, everything was possible and the future was ours” (p 278), “…I wondered if Miss Love would attempt the challenging role of Marie Antoinette without her head; probably it was too much to hope for” (p 320).

Interesting word: “unmarriageable” Hm. I think it sounds like “unmanageable.” Wonder. Are they one in the same?
Statement that had given me pause the first time I read it – the air quality was better in electrified homes. Gaslights consumed oxygen; electricity did not. Interesting to think of what fuel consumed rather than what it put out into the air.

Author Fact: On her website Belfer names Jane Eyre as one of her favorite classics to reread.

Book Trivia: City of Light inspired a theater version. Interesting.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “American History: Fiction” (p 22).

PS ~As soon as I saw the map of Buffalo, New York my eyes scanned the streets looking for Pearl Street; the spot where I enjoyed an unforgettable grilled pear salad with drunken abandon in the post-concert buzz of too loud music.

Raising Holy Hell

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Olds, Bruce. Raising Holy Hell. New York: Harry Holt & Company, 1995.

At first glance this book scared the crap out of me. For starters, the cover. It’s an illustration based on a photograph of John Brown. It’s blurry and staring and Mr. Brown looks like he’s on fire. Maybe he is? I’m not sure. Then there’s a blurb from Robert Olen Butler on the back, “…is a brilliant novel about the complexities of hatred…the hatred of hatred…” The hatred of hatred sounds, well, harsh. But it’s the truth.

Defending Raising Holy Hell: I have to say this upfront. I read this along side Cloudsplitter by Russell Banks so I find myself making comparisons instead of writing a review strictly about Raising Holy Hell. Since I have such a persistent problem I think I should list the comparisons, if only to get them out of my system and move on:

  1. Cloudsplitter is long – well over 700 pages whereas Raising Holy Hell is barely over 300.
  2. Cloudsplitter is long winded – long sentences, long chapters, heavy with words and details. Raising Holy Hell is choppy – pages of lists, pages with 2-3 simple quotes. One page contained less than a dozen words “One year before the Ferry. One year and counting down” (p 196).
  3. Cloudsplitter is told from the point of view of Owen Brown, John Brown’s third son. Raising Holy Hell comes at the reader from every angle. Told from the point of view of wives, sons, interviews, prayers, articles, diaries, etc. It’s this last point I want to focus on the most.

Raising Holy Hell is unique. Bruce Olds tells John Brown’s story from every direction. Quotations, mythology, folk tales, court transcripts, lists, poetry,  diary entries, letters, interviews, Bible quotes, historical data, advice, agreements, and the perspectives of stepmother, father, first wife, second wife, eldest son, younger sons, daughters, neighbors, friends, Frederick Douglass, past Presidents, all piece together to tell not only the tale of Harper’s Ferry, but of the biography of John Brown, the man. Perfect for someone with a short span of attention!

Book Trivia & author fact: Raising Holy Hell is Bruce Olds’s first book but not his last.

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Biographical Novels” (p 38).

Cloudsplitter

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Banks, Russell. Cloudsplitter. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.

Aside from its daunting size (well over 700 pages) this was fascinating to read. Owen Brown, the third of John Brown’s sons, tells the story of his father’s controversial life, beginning with Owen’s own childhood. Cloudsplitter opens with a written apology to Miss Mayo, a young Columbia University student who had been rebuffed by Owen after she traveled to his remote mountainside home in Altadena, California in hopes of inviting him to a reception. After chasing Miss Mayo away Owen is feeling the pressures of mortality, for he is not a young man anymore, and decides to tell his entire story from start to finish. While he is apparently ambivalent to his father’s tragic path of life he is deeply reflective and apologetic, detailing the process of how his father become of of history’s most complex antislavery agitators and martyrs. Owen desperately wants to appear open and honest by saying, “I will tell all” over and over again. Seeing as how Cloudsplitter is told from the point of view of John Brown’s surviving son it is safe to say the story was not meant to be yet another retelling  of the famous yet failed raid on Harper’s Ferry specifically. It is more accurately an illustration of how one man’s religious beliefs can grow to become the catalyst for one of the most well known events in history, in this case, the anti-slave movement. While Banks’ style of writing is, at times, rambling and contradictory (a reflection of Owen’s ability to tell the story) he is able to seamlessly weave nonfiction into fiction; reality into imagined to create a vivid political and cultural 19th century landscape.

One of the reoccurring themes of Cloudsplitter is guilt, guilt driven by religion, guilt driven by family obligation and guilt driven by society. As the child of John Brown, Owen is pulled in many different directions by his guilt and it apparent in every story he tells.

Profound lines: “I was, during those first few weeks…precariously balanced between opposing commitments which were set to create the shape of the rest of my life, and I knew that not to chose between them would lead me inescapably to a resolution that expressed not my will, but my father’s” (p 199), “It was the year that Lyman Epps and I finished our elaborate dance, and I went howling into the wilderness, leaving wreckage and smoldering ruin behind me” (p 536), and “Our specialty would be killing men who wished to own other men” (p 549).

BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter called “Biographical Novels” (p 38).

ps~ I have read four out of five of the Russell Banks books on my list.