Gillian Tindall has written a large number of books. Looking Forward was written back in the early 80s and was lent to me by a friend. Because she is a popular British author, the book is still available.
As I read, I realized this story would be perfect for Masterpiece. It possesses all of the elements that American viewers like about British film series, and it has enough of them to fill several seasons.
Looking Forward opens in the early 20th century and follows the fortunes of a young woman from her early years to her death in the latter years of the century. Mary Howard studied medicine when it was not a common career choice for young women who were supposed to look to marriage as one's career. Mary worked in the poor East End neighborhoods of London, and eventually became a well-known pioneer for birth control. In contrast to Mary is her cousin Dodie born and raised in colonial India. After World War I Dodie falls into the fast life of a twenties flapper. As these two women grow and age, the reader follows their fortunes, loves, travels and mistakes.
Tindall writes well. Her story moves at a stately pace, but has enough of a plot that the reader does not become bored. If you enjoy British period drama, you may enjoy this novel.
Saturday, April 26, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
FORMER PEOPLE by Douglas Smith (non-fic)
The subtitle of this book is The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy. Douglas Smith has written a definitive and well-researched book about the decline of the Russian aristocracy. He is a well qualified historian having worked and lived in the Soviet Union for many years.
At the turn of the 19th century Russian had a long established class of nobles, much like those who lost their lives and fortunes in the earlier French Revolution. And, for many of these nobles well versed in history, the Russian Revolution came as no surprise. Nicholas II was a weak ruler with poor and greedy advisers. But this book is not about Nicholas and his sad end, it is about the noble families who were landowners, government officials, military elite and dilettantes. They were a diverse group and many, in one of history's tragic ironies, even supported the overturning of the old order. The story we follow is mainly about the fortunes of two great Russian families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns whose members chose to stay in Russian rather than flee. What became of them and their progeny is a somber yet fascinating tale.
The majority of the nobility had left Russia by 1921. According to one source,...no more than 12 percent of the prerevolutionary nobility, about ten thousand families or some fifty thousand individuals, was still in Russia. The revolution and civil war had torn the nobility in two...A chasm began to open between the nobles who had stayed and those who had departed that grew wider in the coming decades, and left family members strangers to one another.
There was a short interlude after the Great War when members of these noble families were able to find work in the new Russia. They had the education and skills that the peasants and workers did not possess. However Lenin and the Bolsheviks feared their presence and what they represented even as they depended on them for their skills. When the ruthless Stalin came into power and the Communists gained control of the government, they were determined to wipe out every member of the old ruling class.
The fortunes of the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns quickly descended into nightmare by the mid-twenties. Their great estates had been either destroyed or taken over by local governments, plundered or left to fall into ruin. The peasants turned on them, and many members of the family were murdered or sent off to hard labor in Siberia. Those who survived adjusted as best they could, living in poverty, growing their own food, some using a skill such as music to entertain those who used to serve them, and some serving as curators of the estate museums they spent their childhood living in. By the end of World War II, 95% of Russia's country estates had disappeared. They moved from town to town keeping one step ahead of their persecutors. Sometimes they were helped by sympathetic peasants, sometimes they were betrayed and were carted off in trains to work on government rail lines, in mines or building roads. What they were able to save from their former lives was quickly sold sometimes for mere pennies to unscrupulous black marketeers. Yet, babies were born, old people died, and a few descendants of the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns managed to survive, hiding the pride they still felt in their aristocratic ancestry. As poor as they were, they were noble in spirit to the end.
I highly recommend this readable book to any who love history and wish to learn more about the end of the Russian empire and the mighty who had fallen but whose spirit was not defeated.
At the turn of the 19th century Russian had a long established class of nobles, much like those who lost their lives and fortunes in the earlier French Revolution. And, for many of these nobles well versed in history, the Russian Revolution came as no surprise. Nicholas II was a weak ruler with poor and greedy advisers. But this book is not about Nicholas and his sad end, it is about the noble families who were landowners, government officials, military elite and dilettantes. They were a diverse group and many, in one of history's tragic ironies, even supported the overturning of the old order. The story we follow is mainly about the fortunes of two great Russian families, the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns whose members chose to stay in Russian rather than flee. What became of them and their progeny is a somber yet fascinating tale.
The majority of the nobility had left Russia by 1921. According to one source,...no more than 12 percent of the prerevolutionary nobility, about ten thousand families or some fifty thousand individuals, was still in Russia. The revolution and civil war had torn the nobility in two...A chasm began to open between the nobles who had stayed and those who had departed that grew wider in the coming decades, and left family members strangers to one another.
There was a short interlude after the Great War when members of these noble families were able to find work in the new Russia. They had the education and skills that the peasants and workers did not possess. However Lenin and the Bolsheviks feared their presence and what they represented even as they depended on them for their skills. When the ruthless Stalin came into power and the Communists gained control of the government, they were determined to wipe out every member of the old ruling class.
The fortunes of the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns quickly descended into nightmare by the mid-twenties. Their great estates had been either destroyed or taken over by local governments, plundered or left to fall into ruin. The peasants turned on them, and many members of the family were murdered or sent off to hard labor in Siberia. Those who survived adjusted as best they could, living in poverty, growing their own food, some using a skill such as music to entertain those who used to serve them, and some serving as curators of the estate museums they spent their childhood living in. By the end of World War II, 95% of Russia's country estates had disappeared. They moved from town to town keeping one step ahead of their persecutors. Sometimes they were helped by sympathetic peasants, sometimes they were betrayed and were carted off in trains to work on government rail lines, in mines or building roads. What they were able to save from their former lives was quickly sold sometimes for mere pennies to unscrupulous black marketeers. Yet, babies were born, old people died, and a few descendants of the Sheremetevs and Golitsyns managed to survive, hiding the pride they still felt in their aristocratic ancestry. As poor as they were, they were noble in spirit to the end.
I highly recommend this readable book to any who love history and wish to learn more about the end of the Russian empire and the mighty who had fallen but whose spirit was not defeated.
Saturday, April 12, 2014
A CONSTELLATION OF VITAL PHENOMENA by Anthony Marra (fic)
This is Anthony Marra's first novel, and it is superb! Marra is a young professor teaching at Stanford University, and he has chosen a volatile area of the world to write about, one we in the west know little of except for its violence and being the spawning place of terrorists and crime. The setting of his novel is Chechnya in the North Caucasus. The novel introduces us to realistic characters who remind us that in the middle of whatever nightmare they are caught in, they have the need for love and friendship in the face of the overlying anxiety they live with in their daily lives. This helps us to understand them and identify with their universal needs.
The novel takes place between 1994 and 2004, a time that encompasses the two recent Chechen wars, and its policing by Russia. One of the characters, Khassan has been working for most of his life on a 6 volume history of the region, and through him, the reader learns a bit of Chechen history. After the 1917 Russian revolution, Chechnya was an autonomous republic and part of the USSR. Then after World War II, Stalin forcibly shipped off most of its Muslim population to Kazakhstan because some of the inhabitants of this rural region preferred to be conquered by the Germans than live under the reign of Bolsheviks. They were eventually allowed to return to their homeland.
The novel opens in a rural village where we meet a group of three friends who had grown up together. One of the men, Ramzen, betrays his innocent friends to the Russians who are stamping out all resistance to their regime and looking for Muslim Jihadi sympathisers. The story we follow is that of Akmed a gifted artist who is also an incompetent doctor. After Ramzen betrays his friend Dokka who is taken away by the secret police, Akmed helps Dokka's eight-year-old daughter escape. He takes her to Hospital #6 where we meet the other main character in the novel, Sonja.
The woman whose story intersects with that of Akmed is Sonja Rabina, a Russian whose family had relocated to the area in the 50s when the native Chechens were move out. Sonja is a physician who was living and working in London. She returned to Chechnya between the wars to search for her sister, Natasha, who had disappeared after she had been kidnapped and forced into a life of prostitution. What Sonja returned to was a destroyed city with bombed out apartment buildings, including the one that had been lived in by her family. Eventually she is reunited with Natasha between the wars. Their relationship is an interesting one. When Natasha leaves for a second and final time, Sonja never gives up hope that she will find her sister again.
By this time Sonja is the only doctor left in what had once been a thriving hospital in Volchansk. Akmed arrives on the scene with Havaa, the little girl and throws himself on the mercy of Sonja to collude in hiding the child. At the same time, Sonja takes on Akmed as she is in dire need of help with the unending stream of patients who come for help, most needing surgery and amputations. Their relationship allows a bit of levity into what is is a thoroughly depressing situation.
While the subject is a heavy one, Marra skillfully keeps the story moving between darkness and light as he shifts back in time to fill in back stories in the 10 year span which is the largest section of the book. The reader truly believes in and cares for these characters. Especially touching is the relationship that develops among Sonja, Akmed and Havaa. This section of the story takes place over only five days in 2004. By the end of the novel, all the characters are connected in one way or another.
The title of the novel comes from a Russian medical textbook that Natasha finds and becomes fascinated with. The text defines life as a constellation of vital phenomena--organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction,adaptation. All this is contained in the wonderful and amazing story Marra relates to us. I highly recommend this book, though I caution that it deals with sad times in an area of the world that is in constant turmoil. It would be a good choice for a reading group as there is much to ponder on in these pages.
The novel takes place between 1994 and 2004, a time that encompasses the two recent Chechen wars, and its policing by Russia. One of the characters, Khassan has been working for most of his life on a 6 volume history of the region, and through him, the reader learns a bit of Chechen history. After the 1917 Russian revolution, Chechnya was an autonomous republic and part of the USSR. Then after World War II, Stalin forcibly shipped off most of its Muslim population to Kazakhstan because some of the inhabitants of this rural region preferred to be conquered by the Germans than live under the reign of Bolsheviks. They were eventually allowed to return to their homeland.
The novel opens in a rural village where we meet a group of three friends who had grown up together. One of the men, Ramzen, betrays his innocent friends to the Russians who are stamping out all resistance to their regime and looking for Muslim Jihadi sympathisers. The story we follow is that of Akmed a gifted artist who is also an incompetent doctor. After Ramzen betrays his friend Dokka who is taken away by the secret police, Akmed helps Dokka's eight-year-old daughter escape. He takes her to Hospital #6 where we meet the other main character in the novel, Sonja.
The woman whose story intersects with that of Akmed is Sonja Rabina, a Russian whose family had relocated to the area in the 50s when the native Chechens were move out. Sonja is a physician who was living and working in London. She returned to Chechnya between the wars to search for her sister, Natasha, who had disappeared after she had been kidnapped and forced into a life of prostitution. What Sonja returned to was a destroyed city with bombed out apartment buildings, including the one that had been lived in by her family. Eventually she is reunited with Natasha between the wars. Their relationship is an interesting one. When Natasha leaves for a second and final time, Sonja never gives up hope that she will find her sister again.
By this time Sonja is the only doctor left in what had once been a thriving hospital in Volchansk. Akmed arrives on the scene with Havaa, the little girl and throws himself on the mercy of Sonja to collude in hiding the child. At the same time, Sonja takes on Akmed as she is in dire need of help with the unending stream of patients who come for help, most needing surgery and amputations. Their relationship allows a bit of levity into what is is a thoroughly depressing situation.
While the subject is a heavy one, Marra skillfully keeps the story moving between darkness and light as he shifts back in time to fill in back stories in the 10 year span which is the largest section of the book. The reader truly believes in and cares for these characters. Especially touching is the relationship that develops among Sonja, Akmed and Havaa. This section of the story takes place over only five days in 2004. By the end of the novel, all the characters are connected in one way or another.
The title of the novel comes from a Russian medical textbook that Natasha finds and becomes fascinated with. The text defines life as a constellation of vital phenomena--organization, irritability, movement, growth, reproduction,adaptation. All this is contained in the wonderful and amazing story Marra relates to us. I highly recommend this book, though I caution that it deals with sad times in an area of the world that is in constant turmoil. It would be a good choice for a reading group as there is much to ponder on in these pages.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
THE BULLY PULPIT by Doris Kearns Goodwin (non-fic)
This hefty book is as large as its title, The Bully Pulpit Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism, and it took most of the month to read, but it was well worth it. If you have read any of Doris Kearns Goodwin's books then you know she is a superb writer of non-fiction who will keep the reader involved and interested until the last page is turned.
Bully pulpit was coined by Theodore Roosevelt on the campaign trial to describe how he planned to influence and mesmerize the voters, and that he did. While the book is scaffolded around Taft and Roosevelt, more interesting to me was the the story of Sam McClure and his brilliant writers who worked on McClure's Universal Journal. And what a magazine it was! The writers: Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, William Allen White, and later Upton Sinclair exposed the ugly underbelly of big city and national politics and its involvement with big business. They were as responsible as any politician for influencing anti-trust laws and championing the rights of the poor and disenfranchised in America. It becomes obvious as you read this book that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Before you get too deeply into your reading, you begin to realize that we are still fighting the same battles that the muckrakers fought, only these journalist were stronger and more powerful than our journalists today.
The story of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft is also fascinating. Kearns compares and contrasts these two very different friends and tracks their rise to power and their partnership that was forged through mutual goals. Both men were Republicans (equally interesting is the difference between today's Republican Party and that which these two Progressives represented). Both men were dedicated to righting economic inequality. Roosevelt was raised by an indulgent father, while Taft was brought up by what we would today call a "helicopter parent" heavily involved in his son's education and life path. Roosevelt went to Harvard, Taft to Yale. Roosevelt's first marriage was short-lived; his wife died giving birth to their only child, Alice, of "Alice-blue" fame. His second wife, Edith, was an intelligent bookish woman who was content to stay out of the lime-light. Taft married a woman who was very much in the spot-light. Nellie Taft was a blue-stocking who love the challenge of politics and pushed Taft throughout his career. Roosevelt was gregarious and a natural politician, Taft was shyer and would have preferred to be a judge his whole life. His large ambition was to become a Chief Justice which he did achieve after his one-term presidency. Roosevelt befriended and knew how to use journalists for publicity and legislation. The retiring but personable Taft stood aloof from the press.
The lives and story of these two large men became intertwined as soon as they both found themselves in Washington. Their friendship lasted many years, and then as Taft began to prepare the campaign for his second term there was a fatal break. Roosevelt, whose ambitions and ego challenged Taft for the presidency, desired a third term. He felt Taft was not assertive enough in persuing the progressive agenda Roosevelt had formulated. When Roosevelt could not muster the votes to be nominated during the contentious Republican national convention, he formed his own progressive party, The Bull Moose Party, which ultimately split and brought defeat to the Republicans. Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats easily defeated Taft. What had been a warm and enduring friendship between Taft and Roosevelt was finished. It was only at the end of Roosevelt's life that the two men were able to again find common ground.
This book is so thorough and introduces the reader to so many interesting characters, that it is hard to put down. Kearns Goodwin is a master historian and story teller. Her research is meticulous. I highly recommend this book to all readers. It will fuel many interesting discussions for book groups. Many of the domestic problems faced by pre-World War I America are still being talked about and still unresolved today.
Bully pulpit was coined by Theodore Roosevelt on the campaign trial to describe how he planned to influence and mesmerize the voters, and that he did. While the book is scaffolded around Taft and Roosevelt, more interesting to me was the the story of Sam McClure and his brilliant writers who worked on McClure's Universal Journal. And what a magazine it was! The writers: Ida Tarbell, Lincoln Steffens, Ray Stannard Baker, William Allen White, and later Upton Sinclair exposed the ugly underbelly of big city and national politics and its involvement with big business. They were as responsible as any politician for influencing anti-trust laws and championing the rights of the poor and disenfranchised in America. It becomes obvious as you read this book that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Before you get too deeply into your reading, you begin to realize that we are still fighting the same battles that the muckrakers fought, only these journalist were stronger and more powerful than our journalists today.
The story of Teddy Roosevelt and William Howard Taft is also fascinating. Kearns compares and contrasts these two very different friends and tracks their rise to power and their partnership that was forged through mutual goals. Both men were Republicans (equally interesting is the difference between today's Republican Party and that which these two Progressives represented). Both men were dedicated to righting economic inequality. Roosevelt was raised by an indulgent father, while Taft was brought up by what we would today call a "helicopter parent" heavily involved in his son's education and life path. Roosevelt went to Harvard, Taft to Yale. Roosevelt's first marriage was short-lived; his wife died giving birth to their only child, Alice, of "Alice-blue" fame. His second wife, Edith, was an intelligent bookish woman who was content to stay out of the lime-light. Taft married a woman who was very much in the spot-light. Nellie Taft was a blue-stocking who love the challenge of politics and pushed Taft throughout his career. Roosevelt was gregarious and a natural politician, Taft was shyer and would have preferred to be a judge his whole life. His large ambition was to become a Chief Justice which he did achieve after his one-term presidency. Roosevelt befriended and knew how to use journalists for publicity and legislation. The retiring but personable Taft stood aloof from the press.
The lives and story of these two large men became intertwined as soon as they both found themselves in Washington. Their friendship lasted many years, and then as Taft began to prepare the campaign for his second term there was a fatal break. Roosevelt, whose ambitions and ego challenged Taft for the presidency, desired a third term. He felt Taft was not assertive enough in persuing the progressive agenda Roosevelt had formulated. When Roosevelt could not muster the votes to be nominated during the contentious Republican national convention, he formed his own progressive party, The Bull Moose Party, which ultimately split and brought defeat to the Republicans. Woodrow Wilson and the Democrats easily defeated Taft. What had been a warm and enduring friendship between Taft and Roosevelt was finished. It was only at the end of Roosevelt's life that the two men were able to again find common ground.
This book is so thorough and introduces the reader to so many interesting characters, that it is hard to put down. Kearns Goodwin is a master historian and story teller. Her research is meticulous. I highly recommend this book to all readers. It will fuel many interesting discussions for book groups. Many of the domestic problems faced by pre-World War I America are still being talked about and still unresolved today.
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
THE GLASSBLOWER OF MURANO by Marina Fiorato (fic)
Looking for a quick read while I was biding time in an airport, I picked up this book. An airport being full of distractions, I was able to read and remain aware of what was going on around me. For this book, which seemed interesting from its title, is a formula romance with bits of window dressing. You know the drill, impossibly gorgeous girl meets impossibly handsome Italian lad in romantic Venice, girl has rival for boy's affection, yadda, yadda. Along the way, you will learn a bit about glass blowing and its history in Murano that colorful island off Venice where all the glass blowers live. Mixed in with our heroine's story is that of her 17th century ancestor, Corridino who was accused of giving away to France the secret of making perfect mirrors. This was the more interesting story in the novel. The story, a pretty fairy-tale is entertaining enough for an airport read, though I would not recommend it as a serious novel.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
SWIMMING HOME by Deborah Levy (fic)
Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Mann Booker Prize in 2012, and it has some merit, being well-written, in parts funny, disturbing, satirical, but at times confusing. Having said that, I detested the characters, except for Nina a 14 year old through whose eyes we view the absurdities of the adults around her.
The story takes place on the French Riviera. As the story opens Joe Jacobs, a poet of some renown and his wife Isabel, a journalist, along with their daughter, Nina and another couple have rented a villa near Nice. They awake one morning to find a naked young woman floating in their pool. She is not dead, but she wreaks havoc on this dysfunctional little group. Her name is Kitty Finch, and she is anorexic, unstable, and full of anxiety, She claims to be a naturalist and spends most of her time au natural. She sets out to seduce the poet, or is it the other way around?
The title of the book is the title of a poem that Kitty has written which she wishes Joe Jacobs to critique. This poem seems to be the center around which the characters revolve. It is a bit of a mystery why Isabel agrees to allow Kitty to stay with them as it is obvious Kitty has designs on her husband. There are also several minor characters spinning in and out who are as unstable as the main characters.
The novel is a short one with a lot of emotional action packed into its pages. I was glad to reach the end and be rid of the characters and their self-absorption.
The story takes place on the French Riviera. As the story opens Joe Jacobs, a poet of some renown and his wife Isabel, a journalist, along with their daughter, Nina and another couple have rented a villa near Nice. They awake one morning to find a naked young woman floating in their pool. She is not dead, but she wreaks havoc on this dysfunctional little group. Her name is Kitty Finch, and she is anorexic, unstable, and full of anxiety, She claims to be a naturalist and spends most of her time au natural. She sets out to seduce the poet, or is it the other way around?
The title of the book is the title of a poem that Kitty has written which she wishes Joe Jacobs to critique. This poem seems to be the center around which the characters revolve. It is a bit of a mystery why Isabel agrees to allow Kitty to stay with them as it is obvious Kitty has designs on her husband. There are also several minor characters spinning in and out who are as unstable as the main characters.
The novel is a short one with a lot of emotional action packed into its pages. I was glad to reach the end and be rid of the characters and their self-absorption.
Monday, February 24, 2014
A SPORT AND A PASTIME by James Salter (fic)
James Salter is a lovely writer. He writes with precision and poetic rhythm. His most recent book, All That Is, published last year is a reminder of the beauty and rarity of his writing. A Sport and a Pastime is one of his early books, written in 1967, but has been continuously in print. It caused a bit of a sensation when it was published for its explicit sexuality. As it states in the forward, it was less than 10 years since Lady Chatterley's Lover had been allowed to be printed in the United States. This is a book that had provoked discussion, both when it was published and even today.
The author tells us near the beginning of the novel, and repeats several times throughout, that the story is not real. It is related by a 34 year old narrator who is staying in a house belonging to friends in Autun, near Dijon, in France. Our American voyeur relates the story of a restless young American student, Philip Dean, who has dropped out of Yale and arrives in Paris looking for an escape from his family's expectations. His father is a famous critic and his mother committed suicide. The narrator meets him at a party attended by a certain avant-garde social set which includes American ex-pats reminiscent of the wild young things of the twenties, though these have come off World War II instead. It is the era of "Mad Men" and pseudo-sophistication.
Philip Dean ends up driving to Autun with the narrator. There he meets a 19 year old French waitress, and they begin a torrid affair, most likely the first for him. The story then becomes one of their obsessive sexual relationship (though not tawdry or cheap) as the couple travel through southern France. It is told with grace and feeling, yet it is dated by the era in which it is written. Clearly this is not a modern novel. The romanticism that Salter attaches to the young lovers is that of a young man experiencing his first deep sexual experience. Anne Marie, his French lover, is more open than an American girl of that time would be.
What to make of the mysterious narrator, is he the author relating a story, or is the character just making up a story? That is never explained but adds to the dream-like quality of the novel. Even though this book was written over 40 years ago, it still holds up today. The world was on the cusp of the rebellions and excesses of the sixties which "Mad Men" depicts so realistically. The author takes his title from a quote of the Koran: "Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime......"
The author tells us near the beginning of the novel, and repeats several times throughout, that the story is not real. It is related by a 34 year old narrator who is staying in a house belonging to friends in Autun, near Dijon, in France. Our American voyeur relates the story of a restless young American student, Philip Dean, who has dropped out of Yale and arrives in Paris looking for an escape from his family's expectations. His father is a famous critic and his mother committed suicide. The narrator meets him at a party attended by a certain avant-garde social set which includes American ex-pats reminiscent of the wild young things of the twenties, though these have come off World War II instead. It is the era of "Mad Men" and pseudo-sophistication.
Philip Dean ends up driving to Autun with the narrator. There he meets a 19 year old French waitress, and they begin a torrid affair, most likely the first for him. The story then becomes one of their obsessive sexual relationship (though not tawdry or cheap) as the couple travel through southern France. It is told with grace and feeling, yet it is dated by the era in which it is written. Clearly this is not a modern novel. The romanticism that Salter attaches to the young lovers is that of a young man experiencing his first deep sexual experience. Anne Marie, his French lover, is more open than an American girl of that time would be.
What to make of the mysterious narrator, is he the author relating a story, or is the character just making up a story? That is never explained but adds to the dream-like quality of the novel. Even though this book was written over 40 years ago, it still holds up today. The world was on the cusp of the rebellions and excesses of the sixties which "Mad Men" depicts so realistically. The author takes his title from a quote of the Koran: "Remember that the life of this world is but a sport and a pastime......"
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