Review 2431: Forest Silver

Forest Silver is a love story but not the kind you might expect. It is steeped in the love of the Lake District, particularly Grasmere.

It’s early in World War II, but Wing-Commander Richard Blunt has already been invalided out. He has received the Victorian Cross but been told his heart is not up to much. He has also broken off his engagement. Aware that the engagement news will be published soon, he jumps on a train to the Lake District to get away from everything.

Arriving in Grasmere, he finds it stuffed with evacuees as well as vacationers. He manages to get a room, but noting an island in the lake, he decides he’d like to live there and asks who owns it. He is directed to Bonfire Hall to speak to Miss de Bainriggs.

Much to his astonishment, he finds his prospective landlord is a tall teenaged girl who dresses like a boy. She agrees to lease him the island, which is occupied by a sort of barn called a hogg-house. However, there is some unpleasantness because a Gypsy woman named Jownie Wife has been living there and has to be evicted.

Corys de Bainriggs takes seriously her ownership of the estate and is determined not to sell an inch of it even though she is broke and a wealthy evacuee is offering large sums, foreseeing that the local hotels will be commandeered. However, Jownie Wife takes her revenge on Corys by burning down the house of one of her dependents, Old John. Old John refuses to live anywhere but his own home, and because she’s afraid he will die, she sells some lake acreage to Mr. Lovely so that she can rebuild Old John’s house.

Blunt befriends Corys and eventually understands himself to be in love with her. But Corys is much too young for such things. Things are made more complicated by the appearance on the scene of Gerald Lovely, a university student, and of Maimie Ozzard, Richard’s ex-fianceé, whose parents have been killed by a bomb and has no one to turn to.

The descriptions of the area are beautiful and the picture of wartime life in a place that has to adjust to so many new people is interesting and different than the wartime stories I have read. Ward is an evocative writer and storyteller.

I received this book from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2426: Mrs. Martell

Mrs. Martell is not a nice person. She is beautiful and ambitious. Her goal has always been to marry a wealthy, influential man. She’s always had plenty of attention from men, but somehow she has not been lucky. Mr. Martell was a mistake, of course.

Cathie Martell never paid much attention to her cousin Laura until Laura married Edward West, wealthy and with great connections. Since then, she has made it her business to befriend Laura and has almost succeeded in detaching Edward for herself, but somehow he stays married to Laura.

Just in case Edward doesn’t come up to scratch, Cathie has encouraged the attentions of Mr. Hardy, a young newspaper reporter, who is able to get free tickets for shows. He is madly in love with her, but she doesn’t want Edward to find out.

This darkish social satire rivals the story of Becky Sharp, only Becky is more likable. Eliot’s prose is sharp and biting, although she tends to shift point of view without warning, sometimes in the middle of a paragraph, which I found confusing at times. Still, I was driven to find out if Cathie would succeed or get her comeuppance.

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Review 2425: Murder Road

If you like a good ghost story, there’s no one to beat Simone St. James. Her last two books were especially excellent.

It’s July 1995. April and her new husband Eddie are on their honeymoon on the way to a motel on Lake Michigan when they get lost. Something about the road they are on, Atticus Line, feels wrong. April sees a light blinking in the woods and then they see a figure in the road, a girl who seems to have something wrong with her. Her name is Rhonda Jean, and once they realize she’s bleeding, they rush her to the hospital in Coldlake Falls.

Rhonda Jean has been stabbed, and she dies in the hospital. April and Eddie are covered with blood, as is their car, and they suddenly realize they look like murderers. And that’s how the cops see them.

April and Eddie soon realize that they need to try to solve the murder themselves. They learn that there had been a series of murders on the Atticus Line, mostly of hitchhikers on the way to a beach, starting in 1976 with an unidentified woman. There is also a story of a ghost who haunts the road. Once you see her, you die. April sees her when they return to the road, and the ghost tries to pull Eddie from the car, but they don’t die. What does the ghost want?

As far as the plot goes, and sympathy for the main characters, this one is right up there with St. James’s best. Unfortunately for me, Michigan native, it turned into What It Gets Wrong about Michigan, especially Midland, one of the novel’s settings and my home town.

Never mind me. If you like ghost stories, you’re going to love this one. No need to continue reading. However, if you like accuracy . . .

First, it was the weather. This is minor, but the characters experience a series of really hot days. Sure, it can be hot in Michigan, but in the northern lower peninsula, which is where the book is set, it’s usually not that hot in July. Mornings are usually cool and nights cold. There’s a bit about a flannel shirt that Eddie brought along in case it was cold. He would know it would be cold. Of course, weather in 2024 could be different, but I looked up the weather in that area in July 1995. They had one day in the 90s and a low in the 80s. Most days were in the 60s or 70s. But again, this is minor.

Then she shocked me by saying Midland was in the south, almost to the Indiana border, proving she never even looked at a map. Midland, as its name suggests, is smack dab in the middle of the lower peninsula, maybe a bit east of the middle. It’s a five-hour drive from Ohio. Indiana is further away. The main characters are from Ann Arbor, which is almost two hours further south than Midland, so they wouldn’t make that mistake.

I’m no Midland booster—I got out of there as soon as I could—but St. James depicts it as a sad little town. It’s actually quite prosperous as the home of Dow Chemical, which has pumped a lot of money into it, and it has a large percentage of people with PhDs. The characters think they are in a sad downtown area when they go to the library, but they are not, and in fact never get there. The downtown of MIdland was quite vibrant in the 90s, much more so than when I left in the 80s. The library is actually on a long main street that is commercial at both ends but middle- to upper-class residential in the middle where the library is, with the botanical gardens behind it and the performing arts center next to it. April is surprised that the library is surrounded by greenery, but most of Midland is quite green, although it gets a little seedy a few long blocks away, closer to downtown. Finally, there is no bank across the street from the library.

Just a little more research, even if she couldn’t make a visit, would have got these facts right. It’s kind of interesting that she didn’t do it or make up a different town, as she did with the setting farther north.

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Review 2424: The Bookbinder

Pip Williams revisits the Oxford University Press and the themes of World War I and rights for women in The Bookbinder. Again, she shows her skill as a storyteller.

Peg Jones has grown up around the Oxford University Press, but she’s a representative of town rather than gown. She works at the press as a bookbinder, but she has always yearned for more education and an opportunity to attend Somerset, the women’s college. Aside from the social and educational restrictions, she has been held back by a feeling of responsibility for her special needs identical twin sister Maude.

World War I has just started, and Peg gets an opportunity to apply for one of the positions on the men’s side, but she doesn’t take it. In a link back to The Dictionary of Lost Words, Peg helps Esme’s lover bind a printed copy of her collection of women’s words.

After the invasion of Belgium, Belgian women come to work at the press, and Maude becomes close to one of them, Lotte. Peg goes to volunteer at the hospital and is teamed a reader/letter writer with Gwen Lumley, an upper-class girl who becomes her friend.

Peg is torn between her feeling of responsibility for Maude and her resentment of it. She is both grateful to Lotte for helping with Maude and jealous.

Her contact with Gwen along with the help of her supervisor, Mrs. Stoddard, leads her to an opportunity to apply for a scholarship to Somerset. But she must pass two series of exams.

Williams is skillful at involving readers with her characters’ ups and downs as well as their self-development. I enjoyed this novel very much.

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Review 2333: The Halt During the Chase

Sophie is an intelligent, vivacious young woman who is in love with Philip, whom she considers perfect. It’s clear, however, that she is subduing her personality and dressing to please him. She, her mother, and friends have been waiting for a proposal of marriage, but none has been forthcoming. Then, during a romantic tryst in a hotel room, he says something that she finds unforgivable, and it becomes clear to her that, although he loves her, he wants a wife with money.

Sophie realizes she needs to be more independent of her mother, too. After attending some “spiritual” lectures that sound like they are about self-realization, she realizes that their relationship as it is, with her coddling and reassuring her mother, is bad for them both.

Sophie decides to split from Philip, although it is difficult to do so because she still loves him. But she wants to live her own life. Her elderly friend Pussy has told her that once she tries to leave, he will try to get her back, and he does.

This novel is intelligent and funny. It contains unusual turns of phrase and vividly conveys emotions. Sophie is a sparkling heroine. I just loved this novel.

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Review 2328: Tom Tiddler’s Ground

At the beginning of World War II, socialite Caroline Cameron takes her baby daughter to stay in a country village with her old school mate, Constance Smith. Caroline is witty but spoiled, and she has begun to feel that her husband John is coddling her too much. She thinks that Constance is nice but naïve, and her husband Alfred, who married up, is a social climbing bounder.

Caroline is surprised by how involved she gets with the lives around her. Constance also has an evacuee mother and baby staying with her. The mother is a sullen girl who pays little attention to the badly underweight baby. Once Nurse and Caroline change his food, he begins to gain weight and Constance begins to care for him.

Alfred is embarrassed because his half sister Mary moved to town as the grocer’s wife. He tries to avoid her, but Constance welcomes her.

Caroline, however, is being tempted into an affair with Vernon, an actor friend. She is displeased with her husband because he doesn’t want to discuss his first marriage, which she’s heard conflicting stories about. When she is in town with Vernon’s friends, she finds herself telling stories about her country friends and then feeling a little disloyal to them.

Although it deals with some serious issues, this is a charming novel about growing to understand other people.

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Review 2325: Homestead

In her research for Homestead, Melinda Moustakis incorporated her grandparents’ stories of homesteading in Alaska. Yes, in 1956, you could still receive a homesteading grant in exchange for working and making a home on the land. That was a surprise to me, too.

Lawrence Beringer is a withdrawn and hard man who has just filed homesteading documents for 150 acres of land when he meets Marie. Marie has traveled from Texas to stay with her sister Sheila and Sheila’s husband Sly with the plan of finding a husband so that she never has to return home. Within hours of meeting each other, Lawrence and Marie are engaged.

The couple live on a bus the first year while Lawrence clears land, plants a crop, and finally builds a cabin. Life is difficult, but for Marie, most difficult is understanding Lawrence, who is very withdrawn. For Lawrence has found he cares too much and must stay away to keep himself together. A miscarriage when Marie is almost at term doesn’t help, especially because Marie understands that her part of the bargain is providing children.

Conditions begin to improve, but even when things are good between them, Lawrence is aware that he’s keeping a secret from Marie.

I felt some distance from both of these characters but found the story fascinating nonetheless. It is written telegraphically, in short, sometimes partial sentences. Despite the descriptions of such activities as plowing, building a cabin, or planting potatoes, this novel is mostly a study of two distinct characters.

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Review 2321: Classics Club Spin Result! Weatherley Parade

Note: the name on this cover image is misspelled. The cover on the book I have looks the same but is spelled correctly.

In Weatherley Parade, Richmal Crompton takes a look at changes in society through the lens of one upper-class family, the Weatherleys. Her novel begins with the return of Arthur Weatherley from the Boer War in 1902 and ends in the midst of World War II in 1940.

The novel is written in vignettes, chapters that take up a few hours, a few days, or a few months. What with children, grandchildren, and other relatives, there are many characters. No one is completely lovable or unlikeable. They are shown with their good points and flaws.

During the years, there are many events—happy and unhappy marriages, separations, a divorce, and deaths. Among these events, there is one treatment of a child that is hard to forgive.

Among some of the characters is Aunt Lilian, a young woman in 1902 of whom her brother Arthur despairs. He can’t understand why she keeps jilting one fiancé after another. She runs with a fast crowd and seems restless and bored. At first, I thought she was just ahead of her time, dissatisfied with traditional women’s roles, but I liked her less as time went on, and she eventually turns to alcoholism.

Arthur’s two children are Clive and Anthea. Clive is a boy who thinks everything should be done properly and by the rules, which doesn’t make him a popular schoolboy or, later, schoolmaster or father, even though his intentions are good. Anthea likes to have people’s attention, which works well when she is the mother of many children but isn’t so successful when they begin leaving the nest.

The novel stops in to visit these characters and their descendants at key periods of their lives. The scope here is broad rather than particular, so we don’t get to know any characters extremely well. I thought the depiction of changing times and attitudes was interesting, but I felt fairly neutral about most of the characters.

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Review 2320: The Haunting of Alma Fielding

The two previous books I’ve read by Kate Summerscale were Victorian true crime stories. In The Haunting of Alma Fielding she changes genres (slightly) and periods to write about the spate of supernatural cases, and one in particular, that hit England when World War II was threatening in 1938.

The principal figure in the book is Nandor Fodor, a Hungarian emigré who studied the supernatural but also had an interest in Freudian psychology. When the Fielding case cropped up, he was in a difficult position, because although his mission was to prove whether there were legitimate supernatural occurrences, when he tried to use somewhat scientific methods of observation, he was accused of being unfriendly to mediums. His role at the Society for Psychical Research was contradictory at best and his notion of the scientific not very well developed.

The Fielding case began with a frightened family haunted by a poltergeist that hurled dishes and toppled furniture. Fairly quickly, it became clear that the activity centered around Alma, who lived in the house with her husband and lodger, and the spirits began to branch out by producing objects from her clothes at séances.

Fodor seemed so happy to have found what looked like legitimate supernatural activity that he believed everything he was told and actually encouraged the “spirits.” When later he found evidence that Alma deceived him, he still believed that some of the events were real and continued his investigation.

I found this book less interesting than the true crime books because I became so impatient with the gullibility of the investigators. And the medium tricks! After all, even if a spirit could produce small objects (called apports) from a person’s body, why would it want to? Obviously, because it’s an effect that can be faked.

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Review 2317: William

William Nesbitt is a successful ship builder and owner, and at the beginning of this novel, he is contemplating the successes of his life. The only thing he feels he has missed is some romance in life, his wife Kate being a very practical woman. But he experiences romance vicariously, through his favorite daughter, Lydia, whom he views as a source of light.

Kate Nesbitt is a worrier, and she has a sense of impending doom. She also is extremely conventional and I think old-fashioned, even for the time (1925). For example, she disapproves of her daughter Dora going to visit Lydia in London without her husband. Kate has a sense that something is going to go wrong with what she sees as her family’s happy and content existence.

Of course, she is being almost willfully blind. Their son Walter and his wife Violet are content, but their daughter Dora is increasingly discontented with her husband Herbert. Their daughter Mabel and her husband John are self-righteous, and Mabel likes to complain and pretend they are poor when John’s business is going well. Janet, the youngest, unmarried daughter is silent and unhappy. Later, it becomes obvious that she thinks she’s in love with Oliver, Lydia’s husband.

Then, something bad does happen: Lydia leaves Oliver for Henry Wyatt, a writer. William is still accepting of Lydia, thinking she is trying to live her life honestly, but he begins to see that Kate is more rigid and unaccepting than he realized.

This novel is an insightful and nuanced study of how a crisis can affect a family. Since Young ran off with a married man, it’s interesting to speculate how autobiographical this novel may be. I found the novel deeply interesting, with complex characters.

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