Review 2310: Jane Austen at Home

Although I read Claire Tomalin’s biography of Jane Austen years ago and thought it was very good, I feel that historian Lucy Worsley’s book provides a more personal look at Austen with more detail about her everyday life. Although some references are drawn from Worsley’s knowledge of Georgian society, she doesn’t hesitate to draw inferences from Austen’s novels and letters. Further, I think she has a better sense than some biographers of when in Austen’s letters she is joking

Worsley points out how important a settled home is in Austen’s fiction. Certainly, from the time of her father’s retirement from Steventon, that is something she and her sister and mother did not have that provoked much anxiety.

It was Tomalin’s suggestion that Austen was unable to write when she was unsettled, but Worsley suggests that Austen was working on novels all along but not doing much to market them. She also pointed out some subversive ideas in Austen’s fiction that I never noticed despite how many times I’ve read the novels. In any case, she does a good job of showing how revolutionary Austen’s fiction was for her time.

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Review 2290: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder

In 1740, a small fleet of ships set out from Portsmouth on a mission to try to capture Spanish ships laden with treasure in the Pacific Ocean. This poorly conceived and executed mission was part of the War of Jenkin’s Ear, essentially an excuse to try to gain wealth by pillaging Spanish ships.

Because of delays in refurbishing and equipping the ships, they left late. They were trying to round Cape Horn during the southern hemisphere’s summer, which they thought was the calmest time to venture through those dangerous waters. By the time they got to the Horn, the Wager, the smallest ship, had already experienced a bout of typhus and another of scurvy. The loss of officers to illness had given them a new leader, newly promoted Captain David Cheap. They made it around the Horn but lost contact with the other ships and then were shipwrecked.

Nearly a year after they were last sighted at the tip of South America, a few of the sailors made it back to England. Six months after that, a few more appeared, including Captain Cheap, accusing the first group of mutiny and other crimes. Two more appeared even later, accusing the first group of abandoning them on the coast of Patagonia.

Using the widely varying accounts in the journals and memoirs of some of the survivors, David Grann has attempted to reconstruct a fair account of what happened. One of these survivors was the sixteen-year-old midshipman, John Byron, who became the grandfather of the poet, Lord Byron. It’s a fascinating account, with some of the thrills of fictional naval adventure. Yet its all true.

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Review 2275: The Books of Jacob

The Swedish Academy that awarded Olga Tokarczuk the Nobel Prize for Literature called The Books of Jacob her magnum opus. It is certainly a stupendous novel at almost 1000 pages, carefully researched, minute in detail, taking on such subjects as the nature of religion, forgiveness, the interconnectedness of things. It is a dense historical novel about a real figure in history, Jacob Frank, the head of an odd religion, a Jewish heresy.

Frank emerges from another Jewish heresy, a group called the Shabbatians, who believe the Messiah has already come and therefore according to teachings, the Mosaic law is broken. The new law, according to Frank, is whatever he says to do. This story is told from multiple perspectives, notably that of Nahman, one of his earlier followers, who attempts to document his life and beliefs.

The movement, which begins in the mid-18th century, is formed mostly of Shabbatians, some of whom are merchants but others of whom are very poor. Frank’s teachings seem to consist mostly of story telling, but as with other cult leaders, one big feature is the sexual exploitation of women, first by all of them sucking a woman’s breast and later by Jacob assigning men partners even from the unmarried girls. You can guess that Frank is charismatic.

This fantastic story follows this group of people, which gets larger and larger, first from southeastern Poland down to Turkey, where Jacob briefly converts to Islam, then back to Lwow in Poland. There, they are attacked by the Talmudic Jews until from revenge they tell the authorities that it’s true that Jews use Christian blood in their rites, a lie that ends in the execution of 14 Jews, including rabbis.

After fleeing Poland again, Jacob decides that their route lies with conversion to Christianity, an act that he can justify with teachings but that also has the end goal of the members being allowed to own land and gain other honors denied them as Jews. Although the path is not always smooth and a lot more traveling ensues, the upward mobility of the group after that decision is phenomenal. Ultimately, Jacob becomes an intimate of the King of the Habsburg Empire.

The research that this novel reflects is phenomenal. As a reader, I was often enthralled but reluctantly had to put up with some deep philosophical discussions, including deeply confusing ones about numbers, since some of the members are kabbalists. The most difficult part of it, though, was the sheer number of characters, especially Frank’s followers. I was keeping up okay until they converted and all changed their names. Then I was usually lost.

I wouldn’t recommend this book as the first you read by Tokarczuk, and it’s certainly not an easy read, but it’s a fascinating story.

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Review 2238: Castle Rackrent

Castle Rackrent is a novel I picked for my Classics Club list. Published in 1800 although set before 1782, it is an early example of the use of an unreliable narrator.

That narrator is Thady Quirk, a servant to the ancient Irish Rackrent family, but the novel is also annotated by a scholarly character called the Editor. Thady informs us in the first paragraph that he’s known as “Honest Thady,” a phrase that puts us on the alert.

Thady quickly runs through the older history of the family and then tells in greater detail the story of the last three owners of the Castle, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy. These are satirical tales of mismanagement either by penny pinching and bleeding the tenants or by wasteful consumption. Thady is vehement in his avowals of support for the family and in this role makes some astonishing assertions, such as, about Sir Kit who married a woman for her money and then locked her away for seven years because she refused to give him her jewels, “He was never cured of his gaming tricks, but that was the only fault he had, God bless him.”

This novel is a light commentary on the class system and its abuses, as the series of barons get up to all manner of hijinks while the servants (particularly Thady and his son) arrange to purchase assets at low prices. It is moderately funny but is considered by critics to be an astonishing first novel by a woman at this period.

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Review 2195: Catriona

I was unaware until recently that there is a sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped, but there is, Catriona, and it begins right where the previous novel left off. (Note that apparently this novel is sometimes called David Balfour.) David Balfour has been confirmed in his estate and is ready to learn to be a gentleman, but first, he has some old business to take care of. He must arrange a ship to take his friend Alan Breck Stewart to France, and he must appear as a witness in the Appin murder case, for which he himself is wanted, to free James More, who is innocent.

The problem with this second plan, he finds when he visits the Lord Advocate’s office in Edinburgh, is that no one wants James More, who may not be guilty of Appin’s murder but is guilty of a lot else, to go free. David’s challenges are further complicated when, in the approach to the Lord Advocate’s house, he meets Catriona Macgregor, James More’s daughter, and falls instantly in love with her.

Conscientious David will not agree to any of the compromises proposed by the various lawyers as alternatives to his testimony, so David finds himself kidnapped again in an attempt to prevent him from testifying. So begins another set of adventures for our hero as well as for the innocent but feisty Catriona.

Kidnapped has long been my favorite Stevenson adventure but I liked Catriona very much.

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Review 2141: The Foundling

As a young woman, Bess Bright, a shrimp seller, has a first sexual encounter with Daniel Callard, a merchant. He disappears, leaving her with only a keepsake, half a whalebone heart, and a pregnancy. In 1748 London, she and her father, who already support her lay-about brother, cannot afford to keep the baby, so she takes her newborn daughter to a lottery at a foundling hospital, and she is accepted. She leaves the half heart as an identifier, so she reclaim her daughter.

Six years later, Bess believes she has saved enough money to redeem her daughter. But when she returns to the foundling hospital, she is told that she herself redeemed her daughter one day after leaving her, even identifying the keepsake.

Bess has discovered that Daniel died a few months after their encounter and that he was married. When she goes to consult Dr. Mead of the foundling hospital, he takes her to chapel, where she sees Mrs. Callard. With her is a six-year-old girl that Bess knows immediately is her daughter.

With unwitting help from Doctor Mead, Bess gets a position as a nursemaid with Mrs. Callard. There, she finds a strange household, where no one leaves the house except for the weekly chapel visit. Here the point of view shifts to that of Alexandra Callard, a woman full of fears and given to ritual.

I thought I had read a book by Stacey Halls before, but I was mistaken. I was at first disturbed by the first person narration, because it sounds nothing like a woman of Bess’s time and lack of education. Also, the first person narrative taken up later by Alexandra doesn’t sound like a different person. Hall could have easily avoided this problem by employing limited third person instead.

I got accustomed to the narrative style eventually and was pulled along by the story. However, without saying what it was, I found the ending spectacularly unlikely, especially the sudden change in Alexandra.

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Review 2138: The House of Fortune

It’s 1705, 18 years after the end of The Miniaturist. Nella Brandt is worried about her niece Thea’s future. Although her husband Johannes’s death left them fairly well off, his black servant Otto has not been trusted by Amsterdam businessmen to keep the business running. Instead, Otto has been working for an import company in a low-paying job. They are broke, and the only future Nella can see for Thea is to marry. However, there is the issue of her illegitimate parentage as the daughter of Maris, Johannes’s sister, and Otto, the servant, which the family has kept secret.

Thea has other ideas. She is young and romantic and devoted to the theater, where she has befriended Rebecca, a principal actress. But she hasn’t been spending as much time with Rebecca lately, because she is in love with Walter Riebeeck, a set painter. She disdains Aunt Nella and her attempts at an appearance of respectability, in full teen rebellion.

Nella gets Thea an invitation to a society party in hopes that she’ll meet a young man, and she does meet Jacob van Loos, a young lawyer. At the party, though, Nella believes she senses the miniaturist, whom she has not heard of in 18 years. And Thea receives a miniature of Walter.

Although I didn’t find The House of Fortune quite as fascinating as The Miniaturist, it is still a worthy successor. However, there is so much arguing in the first part of the novel that it put me off, and Nella isn’t sympathetic until later in the novel. Plus, I found Thea to be a spoiled little brat at first and her romantic tragedy all too foreseeable. However, Burton still managed to make the book compelling.

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Review 2113: The Clockwork Girl

I liked Mazzola’s The Story Keeper well enough to try another book by her. This one looked interesting.

In 18th century Paris, Madeleine was forced into prostitution at a young age by her mother and so badly scarred by a customer that she now works in the brothel as a maid. She is determined to escape with her nephew, which is one reason she reluctantly agrees to spy for the police on the household of Dr. Reinhart. She is supposed to find out what he is working on, but once installed there, she finds it difficult to learn anything. Something about Reinhart seems off, but he locks up his secrets. However, his interest is in anatomy and he makes elaborate wind-up animals.

A second narrator, Véronique, is Reinhart’s daughter, newly returned from being raised in a convent. Her father has promised to train her in his work, but time passes and he works only with Doctor LeFevre on some project for the King.

Madeleine hears rumors that children are disappearing off the streets and worries about her nephew.

A third narrator is Madame de Pompadour, who is afraid she is losing the King’s affection and worried about what he is up to.

This novel is fast-paced and eventually gets very creepy, but there are some unlikely aspects about it, especially how neatly everything is resolved. Still, it certainly kept my attention.

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Review 2078: The Silver Collar

Antonia Hodgson states in the Notes to The Silver Collar that she intended to write this novel from the very beginning of the Thomas Hawkins series. The Silver Collar is the fourth book in the series.

It’s 1728. Things are going well for Thomas Hawkins and his beloved Kitty Sparks, but Thomas begins to feel discontented because he is being supported by Kitty’s wealth and her pornographic bookstore. Then the couple quarrel because Thomas learns she has secretly been seeing Magistrate Gonson, who recently got him unjustly convicted of murder.

After they argue, Thomas stomps out. He returns to find out belatedly two things—Kitty is pregnant and Magistrate Gonson has conspired to help her mother, Lady VanHook, kidnap her.

Thomas knows that Kitty is terrified of her mother, whose intentions are twofold—to take over Kitty’s fortune and to torment Kitty. Finding her pregnant adds some spice. Thomas gets help from Jeremiah, a black man whose little daughter is enslaved by Lady VanHook, and from Sam and Gabriela Fleet. They find that Kitty has been incarcerated in an insane asylum, but that’s just the beginning of this fast-moving, adventurous novel.

There was one place where the pace slowed to a slog, and that was in reading Jeremiah’s letter, which was too long and went into too much extraneous detail. Hodgson created a trap for herself when she gave him speech problems, because this section would have worked much better as a dialogue. However, in all, this was an exciting entry in the series.

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Review 2075: The Land Breakers

John Ehle grew up in North Carolina and can trace his ancestry back to one of the first three families to settle the remote western North Carolinian mountains (the Appalachians) in the 18th century. The Land Breakers is the first of a series of seven novels about the families who settled in that area.

It’s 1779: Mooney Wright and his wife Imy have been released from their indentures and are traveling around trying to buy land for a farm. However, no one will sell them land in the more settled areas. They find a store owner who offers them land in the remote western mountains, which have not yet been settled, and almost inadvertently they end up buying 600+ acres.

It is a hard journey to get there, but at last they end up in a pretty valley with soil that has never been cultivated. They are both hard workers, and they set about building a cabin and clearing land for planting the next spring. However, during the winter Imy dies of a sickness, and Mooney sinks into a depression.

Tinker Harrison, a comparatively wealthy man, arrives with his family and slaves the next spring. He wants to establish the valley as a settlement he can control. They arrive shortly after Mooney buries Imy. Following them are Ernest Plover and his family. The Plovers are in-laws to Harrison, because Ernest’s oldest daughter, Belle, married Tinker, although she is younger than Tinker’s son, Grover. Ernest is a shiftless man with seven daughters, the next oldest to Belle being Mina.

Once Mooney starts to come out of his depression, he becomes interested in Mina, who is beautiful but very young. However he has also noticed Lorry, Harrison’s daughter and the mother of two young boys. She married Lacey Pollard, but he left to look for a home in Kentucky four years earlier, and she never heard from him again. Mooney needs a wife to work for and make his plans succeed, and he is torn between the two women.

This novel is a sparely written story of the difficulties faced by those early settlers. These do not so much involve people as problems with wild animals and weather and the sheer remoteness of the area from anywhere else. Occasionally, when describing the landscape, the prose becomes lyrical. With its details of work, it reminded me a bit of the trilogy I read by Tim Pears, although that was set 150 years later. I was interested enough in this novel to order the second in the series.

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