Library Loot

This week’s haul from the library included:

The Marsh King’s Daughter, by Karen Dionne. A “mesmerizing psychological suspense, the story of a woman who must risk everything to hunt down the dangerous man who shaped her past and threatens to steal her future: her father.”

The Wildling Sisters, by Eve Chace. “An evocative novel in the vein of Kate Morton and Daphne Du Maurier, in which the thrill of first love clashes with the bonds of sisterhood, and all will be tested by the dark secret at the heart of Applecote Manor.”

Quote of The Week

 

This seems appropriate for this week.  

Sacrifice and Survival in the Boer War

Title: The Lost History of Stars

Author: Dave Boling

Edition: Algonquin Books, June, 2017

Setting: Southern Africa, early 1900s

Genre: Historical Fiction

How many of us know much of anything about the Anglo-Boer war of 1899-1902? Before reading this fine novel, I knew that it was fought in what is now South Africa, that it was a war between the British and Afrikaners, and that concentration camps were somehow involved. One of the marvels of good historical fiction is that it can educate and illuminate and bring history to life. The book did just that.

The narrator, Aletta (called “Lettie”) is a young girl from a Boer farming family whose grandfather, father, and older brother have gone to war. The opening of the story is riveting: Lettie describes the raid on their farm by the British forces who brutally destroy everything on the farm and burn their home, threatening Lettie’s young brother Willem with a firing squad to try to get him to tell them where their men have gone. Lettie, Willem, her young sister Cecelia, and her mother are then forced into a concentration camp. The camp is a miserable, unhealthy place. Lack of food, poor sanitation, and overcrowding lead to disease and death (over 20,000 Boer women and children died in these camps).

Lettie survives through stories: by making up stories to tell her little sister, by imagining stories for herself and remembering those told to her by her grandfather, and by reading whatever she can get her hands on, including a copy of David Copperfield, given to her by a British camp guard, Tommy Maples. Maples is a nineteen year old guard who joined the army for adventure. He finds that he hates the war, and is ashamed and miserable guarding women and children in the awful circumstances of the camp. Lettie hides her growing relationship with Maples from her mother, who is steadfastly and violently opposed to anything to do with the British, including family members who have cooperated with them.

Boling explores issues of loyalty, imagination, sacrifice, and cost of survival in this finely written book. His descriptions of both the beauty and harshness of the land, and the misery of the camp are memorable. And while it sounds grim (and it is), the final chapter is a beautiful and hopeful resolution. Highly recommended.

Briefly Reviewed

Title: The Last Lost Girl

Author:  Maria Hoey
Edition: Poolbeg Crimson;  July, 2017
Setting:  Ireland, 1960s
Genre:  Mystery

 
This is the story of an Irish family (mother, father, and three sisters) whose lives change forever in the summer of 1976.   A dual timeline story, it follows the three girls in 1976 as the summer progresses toward the social event the eldest (Lilly) looks forward to.  Lilly is 15 and pushing boundaries.  Gayle, the middle daughter desperately seeks approval from everyone.  Jacqueline, the youngest, spies on her sisters.  Dad drinks more than he should, and the mother has aspirations to a better life.  All of this leads toward a family tragedy that Jacqueline tries to unravel as an adult.  This was a very well-written book - the sisters' characters are sharply defined as early as the first chapter - with lovely prose.  The story kept my attention; I burned through it over a weekend.  I didn't find the characters unlikeable; I found them to be deeply human with the strengths and faults so many people have.  I received a copy from the publisher.

Title: The Marriage Bureau

Author:  Penrose Halson
Edition: HarperCollins Publisher, May 2017
Setting: Britain
Genre:  Non-Fiction

This non-fiction book was a very enjoyable read. It's the story of two friends who started a marriage bureau in London just before the outbreak of WWII. Using material from a company archive (and how fortunate that these materials had been saved!), the author presents matchmaking stories that are funny, sad, touching, and occasionally outrageous or heartrending. The ins and outs of how the matchmakers dealt with their clients - and what a variety of clients they were - is fascinating. And the matchmakers themselves were quite unusual characters too. If you enjoyed Call the Midwife or Home Fires, this is the book for you. I received a copy from the publisher.

 

Historical Fiction at its Finest

Title: Zemindar

Author: Valerie Fitzgerald
Edition: Bantam Books (paperback), 1983
Setting: 1857 India
Genre: Historical Fiction

Valerie Fitzgerald wrote only one book. But what a book it is. Don't be deceived by the paperback's romance novel cover: “Zemindar” is historical fiction at its finest.

Set in India at the time of the Sepoy Mutiny (also referred to as the Indian Rebellion or the First War of Indian Independence) in 1857, this is the story of an English spinster and poor relation, Laura Hewitt, who accompanies her newly-married cousin Emily and Emily's husband, Charles, on a honeymoon trip to India. It seems that Charles is related to a zemindar, a wealthy landowner in India named Oliver Erskine and since Mr. Erskine is childless, hopes to be named his heir. The relationship between these four people is complicated: Laura believes herself to be in love with Charles, Charles' and Emily's marriage is unhappy, and Oliver Erskine? Well, he's enigmatic. Slowly, Laura finds herself less and less enamored of Charles and more interested in Oliver.

It is during the honeymoon stay at Erskine's estate that the Mutiny breaks out. They escape to the Residency at Lucknow and join the many who are beseiged there. The hardships, fear, brutality and death during the Mutiny change each of Fitzgerald's characters. And they are superb characters: besides the four main characters who run the gamut from spoiled and shallow to strong and colorful, she gives us Toddy Bob, Oliver's Cockney servant; Kate, a tough but kind wife of an army officer; Moti, Oliver's Indian mistress, and many other vivid characters.

The author's grandmother lived through the Mutiny and that the author lived in Lucknow during WWII; her description of India (Erskine's estate, Hassanganj, and the Residency at Lucknow in particular) is superb, filled with detail that is included not for the sake of showing us how much research she has done, but to illuminate her story.

This is a sweeping, vivid book that reaches a deeply satisfying conclusion. It's long (almost 800 pages), so set aside some time to enjoy this superb novel, which has only recently been made available as a Kindle book.

Quote of the Week

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything.  
                                     - Cicero

I rather imagine Cicero's garden was probably much nicer than mine - fountains, ponds, cypress trees?   I would also guess that my library is much larger than his.  Not only the double-shelved bookcases, but the Kindle filled with books.  What would he think about that, I wonder?

A Coming of Age Classic

Title: Rumors of Peace

Author: Ella Leffland

Edition: Perennial Library, 1985 (first published in 1979 by Harper & Row)

Setting: WWII era small, industrial town east of San Francisco, CA

Genre: Coming of age story

Suse Hansen is a 10 year old tomboy, living a life of school, home, and family in her small, working class town east of San Francisco when WWII suddenly intrudes into her life in the form of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This powerful, beautifully written novel describes her moral growth from the 10 year old whose first prayer is that the sherrif shoot the Nisei citizens of her town to 14 year old who understands so much more about the nature of war and the nature of human beings by the time the US drops two atomic bombs on Japan. The bloodthirstiness (and fear) of her youth has grown into a deeper understanding of what drives people to fear and revenge, hate, war, and love.

Lest this all sound depressing or boring, be assured it is neither. Like many adolescents, Suse's view of her world: her friends, her teachers, her parents is extremely funny at times. And the instinctual goodness of her nature makes her question and question again how she feels about the war. She is helped in that questioning by Helen Maria, the genius older sister of her friend Peggy, and the example set by her loving, hard-working parents.

The book is filled with wonderful, vivid characters: Helena Maria and Peggy, Suse's sort-of friend Valerie, classmate Dumb Donny (who's not so dumb at all), good-time girl Eudene, and assorted teachers and parents.

Don't miss this neglected classic.