Revolutionary Road

I grew up in the 70s and 80s, so the 50s were a recent memory to which the current day was unfavorably compared.  It wasn't until later that the general pop culture allowed us to see that, like all eras, the 50s had both positive and negative sides.   Still, there was the occasional movie or book, like Revolutionary Road, which cast a jaundiced eye on the contemporary landscape.

Revolutionary Road showed the unpleasant and unhappy people behind the shiny curtain of 1950s suburbia.  April and Frank Wheeler married too young, had children before they were ready (if they'd ever be ready), and moved to the suburbs because it was expected.  They're miserable - a frustrated actress reluctantly keeping house and an insecure pseudo-intellectual in a do-nothing office job.  It's possible that neither would be happy in any life - wealthy April was abandoned by her parents as a toddler and raised by a remote aunt; born to older parents a generation after his brothers, Frank spent his childhood moving constantly as his father's sales career spiraled downward - but they seem to feed on each other's misery.  

The book opens with a community theater production that goes poorly.  April was the star, and after a few good scenes, gave as wooden a performance as the rest of her cast mates.  This starts a multi-day fight with Frank, and you get the idea that the two of them never have a reason for their disputes and yet are rarely on speaking terms with each other.  Against this bitter backdrop, they go through the motions of normal life - work, housework, drinks and dinner with a neighborhood couple.  Then April decides they should move to Paris - she's worked everything out, government agencies need secretaries and Frank can 'find himself' abroad - and at first this dream brings them back together.  They spend long nights discussing their dreams and making love.  

And then it falls apart.  Maybe he's afraid of change, maybe it's because he's actually engaged at work for the first time, or maybe he just sees the problems in April's plan, but Frank starts to waver.  Then April discovers that she's pregnant.  Neither really wants a third child, but a baby is a good way to postpone moving to Paris.  Maybe Frank really doesn't want to move, but is that a reason to see keeping April from self-aborting as a battle to win?  It's an uncomfortable passage.  For some, even contemplating abortion is reprehensible; and yet Frank seems concerned only with winning the battle with April, not with the baby.  Frank was never a particularly sympathetic character, but when he wins, he seems to let his crueler nature peek through.  That mean streak, and a pair of visits from their realtor's disturbed son, leads up to a fight that ends tragically for all.  

Revolutionary Road is depressing and compelling.  I knew from the start that the characters were doomed, but I wanted to know how.  The characters are generally unappealing, but I still wanted to know more about them, maybe find some redeeming characteristics.  

My copy of the book is a movie tie-in, so there's a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet on the cover.  Normally, when I read a book that's been made into a movie I haven't seen, the cast doesn't influence how I see the characters, but for some reason I saw DiCaprio as Frank.  I'm not sure why (I haven't seen many of DiCaprio's movies), but I think it's because he looks uncomfortably boyish.  In his 30s, he still has a baby face but an adult presence.  He's one of those people whose age you can't place because he seems both younger and older than he actually is, and that's Frank - a world-weary but immature 30-year-old manchild.

Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster

It's a Lacroix, darling - Edina Monsoon

I've never really understood the appeal of labels and logos.  Part of it is that when you get right down to it, I'm frugal (unless you ask my mom who'll tell you I'm cheap, and back it up with tales of unbroken twenties and moth-filled wallets, some of which may actually be true) and can't get my mind around the idea of paying a 300% premium for the privilege of wearing someone else's name across my butt.  I'm a rarity though, as Dana Thomas tells us in Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster.  Thomas traces luxury houses from their early years of hand-crafting beautiful luggage, clothing, and accessories for the very wealthy through their expansion into new markets in the 1980s, to their status as mall stalwarts earning profits on entry level products.  Along the way, she stops for factory tours, a ride-along with a detective who specializes in busting counterfeiters, and a gossipy look into the world of celebrity stylists.  

Luxury used to belong only to the wealthy - wealthy women ordered couture dresses and custom-made handbags.   That was fine for small, family owned houses which took pride in their craftsmanship, but as the luxury companies merged into publicly-held groups, profits became more important.  To keep up with the pressure from stockholders, brands initially expanded into emerging markets (especially Japan) and lower cost items such as perfume and accessories.  The next step was to cut costs.  Thomas mentions the move towards unlined items and one (unnamed) house which shortened the sleeves of their jackets by half an inch, saving thousands of dollars (a move which particularly bothers me, a 5'8" woman with very long arms).  She also discusses outsourcing, a practice most houses try to hide, by placing the "made in China" label in an inconspicuous place or by emphasizing the European site at which the Asian-made parts were assembled.  These sections poke a hole in the "I'm paying for quality" argument I sometimes hear from women carrying designer bags - the entry level bags are at least sometimes made in sweatshops and from substandard materials, just like the counterfeit versions and the no-name bags found in discount stores.

Thomas's book is more a collection of essays on related topics than a unified work, and the chapter on the rise of the Hollywood stylist was the most fun to read.  Old Hollywood was a pretty, escapist, world where everyone wore evening dress and each studio employed stylists who not only designed gorgeous costumes but also dresses for stars to wear when they were nominally off-duty.  As the studio system fell, and a more naturalistic style of film came into vogue, movie characters wore off-the-rack clothes and stars were on their own on the red carpet.  Dressing movie characters in the sort of clothes their characters would wear in real life (no more picnicking in elaborate silk dresses) makes the movies more realistic, but also freed stars to indulge in tackiness.  Stylists stepped in, saving stars from their baser tastes and the public from seeing a repeat of Kim Basinger's self-designed, one-armed 1990 Oscar gown.  As stylists became more powerful, they began making demands on the houses, some of which were unreasonable and none of which were substantiated in the book.  I understand that Thomas's sources for this chapter probably spoke off the record to preserve their own jobs, but they ring true, perhaps because I've seen so many beautiful stars wearing the wrong dress from a hot designer.  The chartreuse dress Nicole Kidman wore to the Oscars in 1997 made her look seriously ill, and the dress as seriously ugly as Demi Moore's bicycle shorts from a few years earlier, and the only explanation I can think of for her wearing it was a backroom deal by her stylist.  

I enjoyed Deluxe, but for the most part it confirmed what I knew or suspected.  Luxury brands are no longer a sign of high quality but a public badge consumers wear to say "I've arrived" or a marketing-driven indulgence.  A complex web of advertising and product placement has convinced us that a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes or an Armani dress or a Vuitton bag are necessary indulgences, or at least of higher value than a similar item with a less prestigious name.  

Wearing a logo means you've won the economic game when Deluxe was published in 2007, but does that still apply?  As I read, I felt the ghost of the Great Recession - are consumers as willing to spend for a name without a clear increase in quality?  Is shopping still a hobby, and if not, will it become one again in the future?  How many of the women who bought a new 'it' bag every season have had economic setbacks and look at the shelf full of designer accessories with regret?  Entertaining and well-written, Deluxe, may have profiled the final days of a label obsessed society.

The Lady Elizabeth

We know how it ends.  Elizabeth R, Gloriana, the Virgin Queen ascended to the throne of a tiny, near-bankrupt island nation set it on the path to empire and cultural domination.  Alison Weir's The Lady Elizabeth tells us how it began, with a startlingly intelligent little girl, who before her third birthday asked why she was no longer Lady Princess, but merely Lady Elizabeth.  The reason, of course, is that her father has declared her illegitimate after executing her mother on trumped-up charges of adultery and is once again in search of a wife and an heir, leaving Elizabeth and her half-sister Mary in limbo.  

The Lady Elizabeth is a novel, so Weir can play a little bit with the historical record.  We know the basic facts - Elizabeth was a brilliant scholar but a bit of a little girl lost who never really experienced family life until Katherine Parr married Henry VIII.  She remained Elizabeth's guardian after the king died, and seemed to tolerate her fourth husband's early-morning visits to Elizabeth's room.  Thomas Seymour's physical improprieties with Elizabeth are part of the historical record (and historical rumor), and the scenes are a bit uncomfortable to read.  At 14, Elizabeth was old enough to marry - in fact, Seymour had tried to marry her - and found the Admiral attractive at first, but we're still reading about a teenager being molested by her step-father, with the apparent tacit approval of the only mother she's ever known.  Maybe Weir could have skipped this episode, but instead she uses it as Elizabeth's introduction to the treachery of courtiers.  It's a lesson she needs, because her youth will be spent dealing with shifting political and religious alliances.  Elizabeth survives the proto-Puritan reign of her brother, and the Inquisition-tinged reign of her sister because she's smart and savvy enough to stay out of the political intrigues which might land her on the throne - or the scaffold.  True, she has some brilliant advisors like William Cecil, but she's also poorly served by other alleged protectors like her governess/companion Kat Astley who encourages Seymour's attentions to her charge until long after they've gotten out of hand.

Religion plays a major part in the novel, as it did in the Tudor Era.  Although Henry VIII broke from Rome and is the founder of the Anglican Church, he died as a Catholic, just not one who followed the Pope and who nearly brought heresy charges against the secretly Protestant Katherine Parr.  Elizabeth, too, is a Protestant, and often portrayed herself as a modest Protestant maiden, albeit one who seems to be a forerunner of the Sexy Librarian ("Why, Lady Elizabeth, you're beautiful!").  Unlike her siblings, the fanatically Protestant Edward VI and the equally ultra-orthodox Catholic Mary I, she takes a more nuanced view of faith, believing it to be more of a private matter.  

I agree with Elizabeth, but wonder how much of her half-siblings' fanaticism is natural and how much grew from their circumstances.  Edward VI became king at age 9 and while intelligent, was a sheltered, naive boy ripe for manipulation by Protestant courtiers who wanted to scrub the Anglican Church of its Catholic roots.  He outlawed Catholicism and made the Pope a favorite villain, then died at age 16.  Mary, who first found solace in her faith allowed that faith to grow into an intolerant ultra-orthodoxy during the decades in which she was a political impediment to her father and thwarted in her desire for marriage and children.  After ascending to the throne, she married a man as intolerant as she who argued for her sister's execution, and embarked on the persecution of those who would not embrace the True Faith.  Both monarchs encouraged evil in the pursuit of religion, and I give Weir some credit for showing Edward as weak and Mary as desperate rather than as merely despotic bigots. 

This is Weir's second novel, and I enjoyed it more than her first.  Innocent Traitor was good, but the dogmatic, slightly priggish Lady Jane Grey isn't as interesting of a character as the brilliant and vivacious Elizabeth.  Weir also stays with Elizabeth's point of view, which gives the book a more unified feel than the shifting narration of Innocent Traitor.  She has since returned to biography, including a recently published book on Anne Boleyn's final days, but I hope she returns to fiction, perhaps with a novel about Mary or a humanization of Edward.

To Kill or Cure

How does a doctor expose a snake-oil salesman when the most skilled physician has little more than a belief in hand washing and a few symptomatic treatments at his disposal?  That is Matthew Bartholomew's dilemma in To Kill or Cure, Susanna Gregory's thirteenth mystery set in 14th Century Cambridge.  Trained in Europe by an Arab physician, Bartholomew is the most modern of Cambridge's five medical men - he has studied anatomy (illegal in England at the time) and has a basic understanding of contagion and the connection between dirt and infection.  Still, many of his patients die, leaving the residents of Cambridge vulnerable to the charms of Richard Arderne, a charismatic man who claims to cure any ailment (for a large fee, of course) with his magic feather.  A magic feather might not impress us as much as, say, ginko biloba capsules, but since even doctors in 1357 didn't know how or why their patients recovered, I can understand how people might want to believe Arderne's spells.

Arderne works against a backdrop of growing town/gown tensions.  Several years after the plague, prices have increased but the rents University students pay are statutorily kept artificially low and the landlords have organized, asking that the rates be tripled, or else they will no longer rent to students.  An apparent accident which kills one of Cambridge's other doctors leads to a riot in which a student and a townsman are killed, and a second, injured student disappears.  Bartholomew, acting as the University Corpse Examiner, finds that his colleague was actually murdered, but when Arderne brings the dead student back to life as Bartholomew begins his examination, he begins to question his skills. 

I've mentioned before that I'm rarely tricked by mysteries that don't cheat, and I solved the Arderne plot, perhaps a little too quickly.  The rent plot was a bit murkier, and while Gregory didn't quite cheat, she threw in a few too many suspects and motivations in the last few chapters.  I think Gregory may have realized that the Arderne plot was too thin and the rent plot too hard to solve for either to stand alone and tried to shoehorn them into a single novel.

It may look like I didn't enjoy To Kill or Cure, but I did.  Although thin, the Arderne plot was amusing and I was happy to see Gregory return Brother Michael to his earlier characterization.  Senior Proctor (and Chancellor in all but name) and Bartholomew's Michaelhouse College colleague, Michael had begun to veer towards the stereotype of the gluttonous, jolly monk with a somewhat cavalier attitude towards his vow of chastity.  The rent plot, while not particularly satisfying, brought Michael the courtier - an intelligent man skilled in balancing the competing interests of multiple parties and a lover of University politics - to the forefront.  He's not the fool he's played in the last few novels, but a skilled professional who manages to control a tinder-box town in tense times.

New Year's Resolution

I started this blog a year ago because I'd entered a "52 books in 52 weeks" challenge and wanted a place to put my reviews.  Well, for the 3rd year in a row I read fewer than 52 books (I should finish #35 by Thursday) and have given up on catching up on my reviews.   I don't regret it - I fell behind because the Phillies played to well for me to turn off the TV or try writing with the game on in the background - but it's time to start again.  I've signed up for the 2010 challenge, so this year I will

1. Read at least 52 books
   
2. Not buy any new books until I've read 10 unread books lying around my house (I bought at least 10 more books than I read last year)
   
3. Make a conscious effort to never have more than two books waiting for a review and to post at least three reviews each month.  
   
4. Be less self conscious about what I'm writing.  I started posting reviews so I could get used to having others read what I write, and I've been debating whether I should continue posting my thoughts 'as-is' or if I should put more thought and editing time into them.  Both methods have drawbacks - when I spend too much time editing, I feel like discarding the post, but if the only editing I do is a quick grammar check, then I feel that I could have done a better job.  I've decided that the lesser evil is to just post, and (I hope) my reviews will just get better with practice.
   

Happy New Year!

A Royal Affair

As an American growing up in Philadelphia, all I knew about George III is that he was the bloody tyrant against whom the American colonist rebelled, ensuring a steady stream of tourists to my home town every summer.  Stella Tillyard's A Royal Affair barely mentions George's political life and focuses on his siblings.  Frederick, Prince of Wales and Augusta had nine children, six of whom lived to adulthood.  George III was unusual for his time and social position in his monogamy and acetic habits; his siblings more than made up for him.

His older sister, Augusta, was too smart and too forward for the marriage market and eventually married a German Duke, producing the ill-fated and uncrowned Queen Caroline.  Edward, Duke of York was the consummate playboy and a financial drain on the royal treasury before dying of malaria at age 28.  Henry, Duke of Cumberland, was co-respondent in a society divorce before entering a scandalous but ultimately successful marriage with a commoner.  William, Duke of Gloucester, married the illegitimate and widowed society beauty Maria Walpole, only to abandon her after reconciling with his brother.

The saddest and most scandalous marriage was that of George's youngest sister, Caroline Matilda.  Married at age 15 to the cruel and unbalanced Christian VII of Denmark, she was essentially abandoned by her husband after giving birth to their son.  She eventually entered into an affair with Johann Fredrich Struensee, one of her husband's advisers, was involved in an unsuccessful rebellion against her husband, was exiled, and died of scarlet fever at age 24.  Tillyard spends about half of A Royal Affair dissecting Caroline Matilda's marriage, perhaps because it's a case study of why arranged marriages are a bad idea.  Unfortunately, it wasn't a very interesting or long-lived marriage and A Royal Affair never comes alive like Tillyard's previous book, Aristocrats.

Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife

I want Mary Roach's job.  She investigates odd topics like how we handle dead bodies or investigate the afterlife and writes witty essays which walk the line between irreverent and disrespectful.   She freely admits in Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife that she's a skeptic, but still treats her interview subjects, which range from a little Indian boy believed to have the reincarnated soul of a man from a neighboring village, to a scientist investigating near death experiences, to the woman whose career serves as the basis for the show Medium, with sincerity and asks serious questions.  Roach saves her more sarcastic comments for the chapters on past paranormal experiments and fads (the chapter on ectoplasm is more disgusting than almost anything in Stiff), and for herself.  Like Roach, I'm a skeptic, but I think I could conduct a professional, respectful conversation with a paranormal investigator.  What I don't think I could do is enroll in psychic school or help with an experiment which involves listening for the ghosts of the Donner Party.   Roach did both of these, and managed to both keep a straight face and make herself the butt of the joke ("I can't believe I'm doing this!") in her essays.

Careless in Red

Warning - there are some minor spoilers for With No One As Witness.

Elizabeth George hooked me the first time I read one of her novels.  For the Sake of Elena is her fifth Lynley/Havers novel, and George made her victim an unpleasant young woman who used people and painted the killer in a more sympathetic light.   Too many evil to the core killers and sweet, innocent victims cheapen the mystery genre.  Most of George's novels present a messier world, where murder isn't justified but is perhaps explicable.  The murderer acts in the heat of passion, the victim has done something horrible, and the worlds of those around the pair are shattered.

George also created an engaging and intelligent detective in Barbara Havers.  Technically, the hero of her series is Inspector Thomas Lynley, Eight Earl of Asherton, but Havers is a much more interesting character.  Lynley may be rebelling from his aristocratic upbringing by being a policeman, but it's the nature rather than the existence of his career that strikes us as unusual.  When we meet her, Barbara Havers is a bright, striving, dowdy and dumpy, working-class woman still coping with a decade-old tragedy.  She's not supposed to amount to anything - maybe work in a shop for a few years, marry, and stay in the neighborhood.  Unfortunately for her, she's ambitious, highly intelligent, and not pretty, and therefore doesn't fit in.  The first eight or nine books split their focus between Lynley and Havers, and we see her break down her defenses, gain confidence in her abilities, and eventually carry a narrative on her own.

Then, almost inexplicably, George dropped the character.  Havers dropped back, starting with A Place of Hiding, and I missed her.  She's not just the most interesting character in the series, she's also the perfect foil for her aristocratic partner and his upper-crust best friend and late wife.  Lynley is smart and a good detective, but Havers is smarter, more intuitive, and a better lateral thinker.  She plays devil's advocate and looks for alternate theories instead of trusting the evidence as it falls.  Havers-light novels just aren't as good.

Careless in Red starts out as Havers-free.  Thomas Lynley is in the 43rd day of his walk along the South-West Coast Path, not trying to forget that his pregnant wife was murdered but because walking is the only way he can keep his will to live.  On the 43rd day of his walk, he finds the body of Santo Kerne who has apparently died in a climbing accident.  Since this is a mystery novel, we know that Santo was murdered, and because we know the mysterious Thomas is actually DI Lynley of Scotland Yard we know he will help solve the case.  

George writes long novels with multiple subplots, and while I usually enjoy this aspect of her writing, I think she could have trimmed some of the threads.  The earthy orchard owner, the teenager sent to live with her grandfather because she wants to enter a convent, and the conflict between local DI Bea Hannaford and her ex-husband don't add much to the story and aren't effective red herrings.  I also wasn't impressed with how George seemed to be setting up Hannaford as a Havers substitute, but at least the character keeps the investigation moving until the real Havers shows up, all attitude and flannel PJs confronting Lynley before breakfast at the only inn in town.  Still, Careless in Red is a partial return to form.  A few characters are drawn a bit too broadly, especially Santo's nymphomaniac mother and the teenager in the midst of a religious conversion, but most of them are believable.  The identity of Santo's killer isn't obvious (although I did solve the mystery with about 50 pages to go) and I didn't feel cheated, like I did in George's last three novels.  It's worth reading if you've read the rest of the series, but I can't recommend Careless in Red as an introduction to the Lynley/Havers mysteries.  

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy

I've read none of the books Ruth Rendell has written under her own name.  She's one of the modern masters, but there are only so many books I can read and her Inspector Wexler mysteries haven't made it on to my shelf.  I have read several of the psychological thrillers she has written as Barbara Vine, but I've also put two of them down after a few chapters.  Gallowglass never grabbed me,  but A Dark Adapted Eye is a near perfect mystery and I couldn't put down The Blood Doctor.  Her 1998 novel The Chimney Sweeper's Boy falls in between the poles - I enjoyed it, but it's not a classic.

Gerald Candless is a famous author in failing health.  At one time he was charming and well-reviewed, but he's become a shadow of himself; his latest novels have been released with little notice and he seems to get most of his pleasure from being rude to the younger writers who make the pilgrimage to his Devon home.  Gerald dies the night after one of these hazing luncheons, and his publisher asks his daughters to write a memoir of their beloved father.  Hope, a successful attorney, is too distraught to even attempt to write about her father so Sarah, a university lecturer, takes on the task.  She soon learns that the real Gerald Candless died as a child and her father assumed his name and identity when he began writing his unacknowledgedly autobiographic novels.

While Sarah tries to unravel her father's true identity, Vine tells the parallel story of Candless's widow, Ursula.  Forty years earlier, Ursula was a sheltered young woman, the youngest child by a decade of a comfortably affluent family.  What she didn't realize, but the reader can easily see, is that Candless was deeply closeted and married both for the public image and to have children.  His daughters were the center of his life, and after their birth, Ursula's only use to him was as material for a novel.  Vine mixes memories of the Candlesses' unhappy marriage with fragments of Gerald Candless's works and the slow development of Ursula's new relationship with a 60ish bookseller.  

I enjoyed The Chimney Sweeper's Boy but I was never surprised by it, and that's what separates it from Vine's better works.  Her best books leave the main mystery open ended, but each passage from Gerald's novels gives just a little too much information for the final chapter to be a surprise.