The Last White Rose

 In her author's note, Alison Weir says historical records tell us what happened but don't show the conversations or personalities. Weir is both a biographer and novelist and The Last White Rose is the fiction companion to her biography of Elizabeth of York.

We first meet Elizabeth as a 5 year old feeing into sanctuary during the Wars of the Roses. Her father, Edward IV, eventually triumphs and she, her mother, two sisters, and the newborn heir return to their life of luxury. Bessy adores her splendid father, but as she approaches her tenses he sees him age prematurely. She also watches as relations with her favorite uncle, Richard of Gloucester, decline.

When she was 17, the family once gain returns to sanctuary. Edward IV is dead and Richard has taken Edward V hostage before usurping the throne and allegedly killing his two nephews. Bessy finds herself her family's backbone, caring for her sisters and trying to temper the conspiracy-tinged rants of her mother. Here, I think Weir could have shown a better transition from the calm regal queen to the paranoid captive. We don't see the Queen's point of view, so maybe she was a bit suspicious from the start but it's a bit jarring. During this captivity, Bessy still hopes to marry Henry Tudor but willingly accepts the advances of her uncle Richard whose queen is dying of tuberculosis. Simultaneously, she plots with Lord Stanley, Henry's stepfather, to help with Henry's invasion. Richard and Henry meet on Bosworth and Henry becomes Henry VII.

Henry's claim tot he throne was tenuous, but he won his crown on the battlefield so it shouldn't matter. Still, his marriage to the heir of the Yorkist King should, ,in the dowager queen's eyes, make them co-regnants. Henry disagrees and Bessy, more concerned with bearing and supervising the upbringing of their children, doesn't object. What does vex her is Henry's parsimony and (warranted) suspicions. He's challenged by two pretenders and a feeble minded cousin of Bessy's and she can't agree with his imprisonment of her feeble minded relative. She objects, but cannot act.

Still, their marriage is happy and Bessy loves her children...except, perhaps, Arthur. She regrets her inability to bond with him - when he was a premature infant, frail child, or a boy installed in a distant palace. She questions whether he's healthy enough to marry Catherine of Aragon, and henry admits that perhaps he two should live apart after consummating the marriage. That act, which years later led to the Great Matter, most likely never happened and Arthur dies of tuberculosis a few months later. And his mother mourns.

Arthur's death leaves the succession less secure. Elizabeth's prior pregnancy had been difficult, but she and Henry decide to have another child. in giving birth to her seventh child, a girl named Katherine who died soon after, Elizabeth sealed her fate. As she hemorrhages and dies, she sees the faces of her loved ones who died before her. Weir uses this trope in most of her novels and it's effective if wearing a bit thin. Other than that, The Last White Rose effectively fleshes out the frame of Elizabeth of York

Katherine Parr: The Sixth Wife

 Anne of Cleaves probably had the best life of Henry VII's wives, but Katherine Parr probably had, on the whole, the best marriage (Catherine of Aragon's was good...until it wasn't). In Katherine Parr: The Sixth Wife, Alison Weir brings her Six Wives series of novels to a satisfying close. 

Katherine was a highly educated woman and Weir depicted her as someone who found comfortable and joy in learning. She also portrays her as a loving and resilient person, whose close friendships an family relations (with her siblings Anne and William and her cousin Magdalen) carry her through her father's early death, three widowhoods, and political intrigue. Katherine's first marriage is to the son of a violent and controlling man, but she does develop some affection for her incompatible husband and mourns his death. Her second marriage, to Lord Lattimer, brings her two stepchildren aunt he realization that she's stronger willed and savvier than her husband. 

She also discovers her Protestant leanings. Henry's break with Rome wasn't, in his mind, a rejection of Catholicism and he disliked and distrusted Protestants as much as those who "clung" to Rome. Heretics were executed publicly, so Katherine took risks when she stepped away from Catholicism.

As she approached her 30s, she had other matters to deal with. Her husband, whom she loved, was dying of tuberculosis and she was simultaneously being pursued by Thomas Seymour, brother of the late Jane, and by Henry VIII. She loved Tom, but her family (like most attuned to political issues) convinced her to marry Henry. By this point, he wAs morbidly obese and had a leg wound that stank and could not heal so marriage to him would have been unpleasant, even if he weren't so mercurial. Their years together, at least as portrayed here, were affectionate. Both were bright and well read and enjoyed intellectual debates. Katherine was also a good stepmother to his son and daughters, with the hope of becoming regent when Henry died.

When Henry moves to another castle for Christmas, 1546, Katherine does not know she will never see him again. Or that the courtiers, particularly Thomas Seymour, have control of a weary, dying Henry. She doesn't even learn of her husband's death until the public does, 3 days after its January 28th occurrence. She fights briefly for control but gives in to the inevitable. Reading this in 2023, I can't help but see echos of the rumors that a frail Elizabeth II was controlled by courtiers who'd taken sides in the family business conflicts. 

Widowed for the third time, Katherine retreats from court only to have Tom Seymour renew his pursuit of her. She tries to resist but her earlier passion and the possibility of having a child lead to a secret marriage. Their household includes his ward, Lady Jane Grey, an intellectual but proto-puritain Protestant girl who finds wearing colors sinful and is being groomed to be Edward VII's eventual wife. It also includes teenage Elizabeth and her lady and waiting Kat Ashley. It's Mrs. Ashley who tells Katherine of Tom's early morning visits toElizabeth's chamber and the inappropriate behavior. Tom is clearly molesting his stepdaughter whom he initially wanted to marry, but while uneasy, Katherine doesn't see how serious the situation is. She's preoccupied with intrigue between the Seymours and eventually with a long-wanted pregnancy. Tom continues to flirt with and molest Elizabeth, eventually cutting a dress off her in Katherine's presence. Katherine sends Elizabeth away for her own good and is still unsure how to deal with Tom when she dies from childbirth complications, a few days after delivering a healthy daughter named Mary.

Historical fiction isn't fact, even when written by a historian. That being said, I enjoyed how Weir brought the six wives to life. As she's shown in some of her recent work, we don't have a lot of information on even famous or well connected women of the past. They're cyphers and novels bring them to life.

Katherine Howard - The Scandalous Queen

 Catherine Howard followed her cousin Anne Boelyn in two ways, as wife to the mercurial and cruel Henry VIII and to the executioner's block for adultery. Unlike Anne, there may be some truth to the charges against the younger and less educated Catherine. Katherine Howard - The Scandalous Queen is the fifth book in Alison Weir's Six Wives series and as with her other novels (and occasionally non-fiction books) about Tudor women, she has to fill in some gaps.

We first see Kathryn at her mother's deathbed. Her father, a disreputable member of a good family, has no way to support his children from two marriages while looking for an heiress to marry so the children are sent out to various relatives. After her protective and much older half-sister Isabel marries, Kathryn ends up in the household of the Dowager Duchess of Norfolk where late night parties teach her about sex and sexual politics at a young age. As a flirtatious young woman, she takes part in these games and becomes involved with two very different young men. This comes back to haunt her as Queen to a besotted but jealous Henry VIII when she carries on an affair with one while being threatened with blackmail by the other. Young, shallow, and uneducated it's no surprise she found better company with a dashing courtier than with her much older, physically failing but intellectually-minded husband, but when that husband is Henry VIII, doing so meant death. 

Anna of Kleve: The Princess in the Portrait

Ask the average person about Anne of Cleves, and you'll  probably hear "Oh, yeah, she was the ugly one." Allegedly Hans Holbein's portrait of Anne was much more attractive than the real woman and Henry fell in love with the fantasy. Alison Weir turns that around in the fourth of her Six Tudor Queens novels. Anna might be described as plain and the portrait was painted from her most flattering angle, but it's Henry who doesn't live up expectations. Anna fell in love with a vision of a vibrant king and instead finds an obese and ailing man who appears much older than his 48 years. Henry was disappointed as well, but in other ways. Kleve was a serious and sedate court with plenty of scholarship and no dancing or games. Unlike the Tudor court, the daughters of Kleve were only taught to read and manage households, so Anna spoke little English and had little to say about music or literature.

Henry was unable to consummate their marriage (probably due to ill health), but they have an affectionate relationship, dining together and playing card games. When Henry's eye roves towards Anna's lady in waiting Catherine Howard, Anna's only potential reason to regret relinquishing her position is the possibility that Kleve would lose Henry's protection. Once that's negotiated, she gracefully steps aside and becomes the King's Sister, taking precedence over all women at court barring the Queen and growing close to Henry's daughter Mary. The historical record covering Anna's post-consort years is sparse, so Weir fills in what we know (she tended to overspend her income) with what we can assume (battles with scheming courtiers). She also gives Anna a romance, but one which depends on a trope (an early seduction by a man with greater power) which feels even more uncomfortable now than it would have a few years ago. That aside, Anna of Kleve was an enjoyable emersion into the heroine's life.

Jane Seymour: The Haunted Queen

 Anne Boleyn dramatic life and death feature in many novels, plays, and movies, but Jane Seymour doesn't get much notice. She was quiet, demure, wrote few letters, and died young. While that means she didn't leave a lot of drama, her silence leaves room for speculation, particularly whether Jane was as much of a social climber as her brothers or whether she was their pawn.

Alison Weir leans towards the latter, although she gives Jane a strong enough character to allow her to rationalize her role in Anne Boleyn's downfall. we first meet her as a devout 10-year-old who wants to become a nun. Obedient, domestically inclined, and devoted to her family, she helps her mother run the household until at age 18, she enters a local convent. She finds that contemplative life is not her calling (and that the convent is not quite the place of purity and devotion she thought). After returning home, her parents find a place for her as a maid-of-honor to Queen Katherine through the help of Sir Francis Bryan

Jane arrives as Katherine's court begins its fall from favor. Henry (still handsome and able to charm but with flashes of the mercurial despot he became with age and illness) has begun his flirtation with Anne Boleyn. Secret Protestants, including Jane's ambitious older brother Edmund and her sponsor (and potential suitor) Sir Francis, see the King's "great matter" as a route to Reformation. Jane, however, loves her mistress and cleves to the True Church. She dislikes what little she sees of Anne and disapproves of how Henry banishes Katherine to smaller and more dilapidated royal houses and of his treatment of his daughter, Mary.

Eventually, Jane finds herself unemployed as Henry all but eliminates Katherine's court. Sir Francis, still believing in reform but no longer enamored of the increasingly ill-tempered Anne, finds Jane a position in the new Queen's retinue. Jane doesn't want to serve the Lady but follows the wishes of her ambitious parents. At court, her calmness and submission catch Henry's eye. although aging and beginning to suffer from the leg wound that plagued the last decade of his life, he retained enough charm for Jane to fall in love with him.

Jane remains placid as the increasingly panicked Anne vents her fury on her rival and leaves her service. Ensconced in Edward's apartment, she continues her courtship with Henry and her gossip helps lead to Anne's downfall. The hasty marriage history sees as a political ploy is a love match to Jane, and the year or so she spends with Henry is generally happy, despite his rages and her insecurity as a knight's daughter raised to royalty. She argues (with limited success) against the dissolution of the religious houses and more successfully brokers a reconciliation between Henry and Mary before giving birth to the male heir Henry so desperately wanted (and needed) and dying a week after. Jane fills her final days with fantasies of growing old surrounded by princes and princesses, and ye we know the teven if she lived, Henry's encroaching chronic illnesses would have made a large family unlikely. While I wonder how differently history would have been if Jane had survived to produce a second son, Weir presents her death as a personal tragedy, and lets Henry grieve for the woman he truly loved...at least at the time.

Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession

Alison Weir's second installment in her Six English Queens series presents at technical problem. How can you write a compelling and original novel about whom there's very little reliable documentary evidence but scores of previous fictional portrayals? Weir draws on her previous biographies of Anne and her sister Mary, and fills in the rest with reasonable speculation.

What we do know about Anne is that she was an intelligent woman with ambitious parents.  That led to her positions in European courts where she acquired polish, and learned about both courtly love and the new learning from her first mistress, Regent Margaret. her frivolous sister Mary, who joined her when Anne moved to the French court of Henry VIII's sister Mary, did not learn these lessons but still did not deserve to be raped by one king and to become the  unwilling mistress of another. Using, in part, her sister's fate, Anne focused on fending off Henry's advances when she came to court as one of Catherine's Maids of Honor

Here Weir departs from the popular, romantic view of Anne's relationship with Henry. As the title says, Henry was obsessed with Anne, and she didn't love him. She held off his advances until, in a particularly manipulative move, Henry explains his theological qualms about his marriage to Catherine and convinces Anne to accept his proposal

As she waits for Henry's annulment, we see Anne change from the well liked lady she'd been to the suspicious, imperious woman who had little support available when she needed it.  Elizabeth's birth and a stillborn son leave Henry without the male heir he wants and needs, so he begins to doubt the validity of this marriage as well.  Anne becomes desperate, but her vindictive treatment of Catherine and Mary, along with her increasingly imperious behavior, leave her with little support. After two miscarriages, both of male fetuses, Anne finds herself accused of adultery with several men, including her brother George. As Weir outlined in The Lady in the Tower, most of these charges were impossible because Anne and the men in question weren't in the same place at the time of the alleged encounters and because Anne was pregnant or recovering from giving birth during at least half of them. The executioner had already been sent for, though, and it would be a waste not to convict. Weir ends her novel with a few seconds of Anne's final thoughts, where she rightly takes credit for some of Henry's religious reforms.  Anne Boleyn proves herself no less compelling than Catherine of Aragon.

Caroline: Little House, Revisited

I loved the Little House books as a kid (the TV show was another matter - it strayed too far from the script and was cloyingly maudlin so it became my first hate-watch show).  I've re-read them a few times as an adult and while I now cringe at parts, I still enjoy them.  Caroline: Little House, Revisited, as the title says, tells Little House on the Prairie from Caroline Ingalls's point of view.  Laura backtracked when writing her novels (the family moved from Wisconsin to Kansas in 1870, and then back to Kansas a little over a year later), in part because she didn't plan Little House in the Big Woods as part of a series and in part because her publisher didn't trust a three-year-old protagonist.

Ma was always stoic in the Little House books; not exactly cheerful but considering gloom as improper as boisterousness.  She was the anchor, the practical woman who anchored her wanderlust-stricken husband.  She came from a stoic era, but she'd also spent much of her child in deep poverty after the death of her father.  That colors the internal monologue that makes up most of Caroline.  Where Charles always sees the possibilities of life, Caroline anticipates problems. And yet she follows him, joins in his dream, separating from family and a comfortable life to spend weeks tracking across the endless prairie with nothing to distract her (I can't even handle a half-hour car ride without a book; Caroline went months without reading materials) and to give birth nearly alone (Carrie was born in Kansas, and Mrs. Scott who lived 3 miles away acted as midwife).  There's less action in Caroline than in the Little House books, but more fear because an adult can anticipate death (by drowning, due to malaria, or under the logs meant to build shelter).  It's quieter and more reflective, and while good, perhaps not quite as memorable.

The Marriage Game

Elizabeth I started a small, bankrupt kingdom on the way to global empire, but that accomplishment is secondary to The Marriage Game.  She was the greatest marital prize of the mid-16th Century and played suitors off each other until she had aged out of the Game.  Alison Weir's novel looks mainly at the personal side of Elizabeth's political maneuvering and on the Queen's personal reasons for not marrying.

I've never believed the theory that the Virgin Queen wasn't.  By the time she was 16, Elizabeth had seen her mother executed and two stepmothers die in childbirth.  She'd also been subject to rumors and scandal regarding her relationship with Thomas Seymour, Katherine Parr's husband.  Today, we'd see their relationship as molestation but 470 years ago, it was attempted treason for him, near-ruin for her.  With childbirth such a risky undertaking and a family history linking sex and scandal, I doubt the calculating Queen would be willing to risk death to consummate a relationship.

Marriage would also deprive Elizabeth of her power.  Her sister Mary had been England's firsts undisputed Queen Regnant and her unsuccessful reign had not been helped by her marriage to Phillip of Spain.  As ruler of the country but a subject of her husband, a Queen married to a foreign prince had divided loyalties.  A Queen who married one of her subjects would exacerbate factions within the court.

The Marriage Game adds another complication.  Elizabeth was in love with Robert Dudley.  Both safe (because he was then married to Amy Rosbart) and dangerous (as the brother and son of traitors), she'd known him from their childhood in the Tower of London.  Weir uses their flirtatious, physical relationship as the background to the perpetual negotiations.  Shifting perspective between Elizabeth and Dudley, she portrays a complex relationship hindered by Elizabeth's vanity and position, and later by complacency and Dudley's desire for an heir of his own.  A partially requited love story with political undercurrents, The Marriage Game provides a view of Elizabeth as a person more than as a monarch.

Longbourn

Jane Austen barely mentions servants, although we know they're there.  Jo Baker took the few mentions of servants in Pride and Prejudice and some historical research to create her downstairs family: housekeeper/cook (and Mrs. Bennett's confidant-by-circumstance) Mrs. Hill. her aged husband who acts as butler and occasional valet to Mr. Bennet, two maids (20ish Sarah and pre-teen Polly), and the new footman, James.  Longbourn meanders through several intertwined plot lines, focusing Sarah's choice between James and by Mr. Bingley's servant and former slave (and probable half-brother) Ptolemy Bingley.  Mrs. Hill, thinking of Sarah's future and her own history, gently nudges the younger woman in one direction, then the other, concerned more with Sarah's security than her heart.  In the end, though, it's Sarah's decision and that choice (like most of the novel) I easily predicted.

There are no surprises in Longbourn, but it's engaging and the well-drawn characters are sympathetic. Parts of the epilogue may be a little bit far-fetched, but downstairs life rings true.  The Bennetts are on the edge of respectability, socially unable to do their own work but not rich enough to afford the staff required to fully support their lifestyle.  Even the more benevolent family members (Lizzy and Jane) are  dismissive of the servants whose value comes from what they do rather than who they are, and Mr. Wickham appears more predatory towards young girls than Jane Austen ever imagined.    Mrs. Hill, more aware of the precariousness of a servant's life, worries about how the Bennett girls' marriages (and Mr. Collins's eventual inheritance of Longbourn) will break up the household and gently manipulates others where she can.  While not as good as Pride and Prejudice, Longbourn works as a companion volume.

Captive Queen

I have no illusions about Henry II's and Eleanor of Aquitaine's ruthlessness.  They were both brilliant and ruthless politicians.  What I can't imagine was that either one of them was petty.  Sure, they'd stab you (or each other) in the back, but for grander reasons than Alison Weir presents in Captive Queen.  Weir begins this, her third novel at the ceremony where Eleanor's husband Louis VII of France recognizes Henry's father Geoffrey as Duke of Normandy.  Their attraction is overpowering and Eleanor soon convinces Louis to ask for an annulment.  Eleanor and Henry marry and initial form a strong political partnership, but that disintegrates as he forms a close friendship with Thomas Becket.   As their marriage disintegrates, Eleanor and Henry both manipulate their children (who need little prompting) to view the other parent as an enemy.  Eventually, Henry imprisons Eleanor for her role in their sons' revolt and she spends sixteen years as a prisoner.

We all know the story, through both fact and fiction, so it's the presentation that counts.  The Lion in Winter portrays the two as brilliant sparring partners enduring  a family Christmas.  Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagent books use 1300 pages and shifting narrators (including all four of their surviving sons, one daughter-in-law, and several advisors both real and fictional) to paint a more nuanced picture of Henry and Eleanor than Alison Weir has managed here.  Alison Weir is one of my favorite non-mystery writers, and I enjoyed Captive Queen, just not as much as the author's prior work and other books on the subject,  Maybe it's because Eleanor and Henry are too grand for a single 400-page novel.  Cramming their entire lives into a single volume turns grand gestures petty.

Time and Chance

Trilogies should probably be read in sequence - particularly trilogies where each installment is over 500 pages.  That's a lot easier if all three books have already been published when you discover them than if you pick them up as they come out.  Time And Chance periodically refers to events in While Christ and His Saints Slept, and after 5 years, my memory of some of the details is somewhat hazy.  If I'd read them back-to-back, that wouldn't have been a problem, but since Devil's Brood didn't come out until 2008, I would have just shifted the problem to the third book. 

I read Sharon Kay Penman's Welsh trilogy alongside Alison Weir's biography of Eleanor of Aquitaine, and those books started my interest in medieval England.  Eleanor was a supporting character in Here Be Dragons (her granddaughter, John's illegitimate daughter Joan, married Llewellyn  of Wales), and she's the center of one of the plot threads in Time and Chance.  Her marriage to Henry II provides one of the plot threads in this sprawling novel, the compelling and sometimes explosive relationship between two intelligent and strong willed leaders which is eventually destroyed not by Henry's affairs but the fact that he falls in love with one of his mistresses.  Losing Eleanor's affection also means that he loses her shrewd political advice (the one time he goes against her counsel is when he nominates Thomas Becket to be Archbishop of Canterbury), and eventually leaves Henry alone in the political crisis of his own making.

Penman's usual style is to make a minor (or, in this case, fictional) member of the court a major character through whose eyes we see the plot.  In this trilogy, she gave Henry I an extra son (with 20 known illegitimate children, who's going to notice another one) named Ranulf.  Raunulf's mother was Welsh and in While Christ and His Saints Slept, he married his cousin and serves and a bridge between the two countries, as well as being the voice of reason to his nephew, Henry II.  Penman masterfully twines the two plot threads, but Ranulf's story frequently refers back to the prior novel and at times, I felt that I needed to check While Christ and His Saints Slept to fully understand Time and Chance.  Still, I enjoyed the novel and it's evocative descriptions of medieval court life - I just recommend reading the trilogy as more of a unit than three separate entities.

Mildred Pierce

I bought Mildred Pierce during my early-90s noir period - it's a 'quality' paperback on the Vintage Crime label, and the cover price is $6.95, considerably less than the rapidly disappearing pocket-sized paperbacks I prefer go for today.  "Crime" is also a bit of a misnomer - while Cain was best known for his thrillers and the 1944 movie adaptation was reworked as a murder mystery, Mildred Pierce is a straight domestic drama.  

At 17, Mildred married Bert Pierce and quickly had two daughters, Veda and Ray.  They lived well off the sale of new housing subdivisions until the Depression hit, leaving Bert (who'd never really had a job) essentially unable to cope with his uselessness.  Mildred, who'd been making a few odd dollars baking cakes and pies, threw him out, looked for work, and eventually swallowed her pride and became a waitress in a downtown diner.  With the help Bert's former business partner, she opens a restaurant, and eventually expands her business to three restaurants with different atmospheres and a commercial baking business supplying pies to other establishments.  Then, because of her poor choice in men and inexplicable devotion to her monstrous daughter Veda, loses it all.  

I know it sounds like a fairly routine book, but what saves Mildred Pierce is the characters.  Bert's a decent guy, just not quite up to the challenges of surviving the Depression, and he stands by Mildred, proud of her success and there for her when she fails.  They don't really want to divorce, and maybe Mildred would have been better of staying with him.  But she doesn't - as her business takes off, she begins an affair with Monty Bergeron, a wealthy man who sleeps with her and scorns her and take her money when he his family fortune disappears but bonds instead with Mildred's haughty teenage daughter Veda.  There's a subtext there that 'polite' novels would have ignored in 1941, but I suspect that pulp readers saw what I saw in Monty's comments about Veda's emerging bust, or in the closeness between the two.  Mildred, however, doesn't see anything inappropriate in the relationship between her daughter and her lover, and also doesn't see that her beautiful and musically talented daughter constantly manipulates her.  It's Mildred's devotion to Veda's musical career that leads to the loss of her business, and eventually to her loss of Veda.

The other thing I noticed while reading Mildred Pierce was how foreign the novel's setting appeared, even though it takes place in the decade before my parents were born.  Not everyone has a telephone, radio was new, and a blood transfusion from a professional donor with no testing or typing is seen as a potential cure for a bacterial infection.  Like Knots and Crosses, Mildred Pierce is set in the close enough past to be recognizable, but far enough away to be almost an entirely different world. 

The Vintage Caper

A friend of mine used to have a second job in a movie theater.  A few times a year, he'd tell us what lobby posters were available and he'd get them for us - I've got Casino Royale and A Perfect Year hanging in my living room.  While it's nice to see Russell Crowe in a sunbeam as soon as I walk in my front door, that's not why I wanted that poster - I'm a big fan of Peter Mayle.  20 years ago, my mom handed me Tojours Provence and I was hooked.  Mayle has crisp, descriptive writing style and a dry sense of humor - and he appreciates good food.

Movie producer Danny Roth has a problem.  It's not that he's totally repellant (apparently, that's beneficial to his career), but that no one appreciates his sophisticated palate and his multi-million dollar wine collection.  Naturally, he arranges for the LA Times to do a puff piece on his collection, and equally naturally, someone steals it while he's skiing in Aspen.  Elena Morales, the VP for private claims at Knox Insurance calls her ex-flame, lawyer-turned-criminal-turned-investigator (and all-around connoisseur) Sam Levitt look into the theft.  Sam's a typical Mayle hero - charming in a roguish sort of way and attracted to brilliant and witty  women who just happen to be incredibly attractive.  After a consultation (over a gourmet meal, of course) with a friend in the LAPD, Sam flies to France, meets Sophie Costes from Knox's French office, and Sophie's journalist cousin Phillipe.  Together, they conclude that Roth's wine was stolen by a media magnate I can only describe as a French Burlesconi and devise a suitable resolution.

The Vintage Caper isn't Mayle's best novel (that would be Hotel Pastis), because it's much too routine.  Sophie is suitably sophisticated and Phillipe is suitably rumpled, and at times the plot seems to be an excuse to string together a series of meals.  The meals, though, are fabulous - Mayle may have lightly lifted some dishes from his travel writing, but these meals are worth repeating - the plot holds together, and Mayle's dialogue is (as always) brisk and witty.  I read the final few pages on the train one evening, and smiled so broadly that my seat mate asked what I was reading.

Never Let Me Go

Warning - some spoilers

I'm not sure why I decided to read Never Let Me Go.  I'm generally not a fan of modern 'literary fiction' (too often, the author seems more interested in writing a great novel than a good book), I admired more than I liked The Remains of the Day when I read it 15 years ago. and I'd read a few movie reviews that gave away the plot.  Kathy's voice, however, drew me in, and when I was finished, I wanted to know more about the characters - my main yardstick of a good work of fiction.

Never Let Me Go feels a bit like an audio diary, recorded by someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness.  Kathy has been a 'carer' for nearly 12 years, comforting and hand-holding donors as they recover (or don't) from repeated surgeries, and she's recently been told that she will soon become a donor herself.  Perhaps that's why she's in a reflective mood, looking back at what she knew and didn't know as a child raised in an insular boarding school.  The children at Halisham are clones, bred and raised to eventually donate their organs, a fact that they 'know' from a young age but don't seem to really understand.  They live until age 17 or so in total isolation, with an art-centric education and no contact with the outer world except for monthly jumble sales where they can buy (approved) items cast-off by the wider world.  They learn about their origins and eventual fate almost through osmosis - no one ever says "you are clones bred for spare parts and will die in your 20s or early 30s" but somehow, the students know.  They don't understand, but they know and accept their fate.

In most ways, though, the students at Halisham are regular teenagers, and the Never Let Me Go centers on three of them: Ruth, Kathy, and Tommy.  Ruth is the most worldly, a somewhat manipulative girl who seems a bit less resigned to her fate and maybe deep down believes that she might work in an office some day and have an ordinary life.  She and Kathy are friends almost because they have no one else - they paired off as 'best friends' when they were 12 or so and with no opportunity for new friends, stay together until an argument leads Kathy to begin her training as a carer.  Tommy was in their year at Halisham and although Kathy was his confidant, he starts a relationship with Ruth.  Several years later, Kathy becomes Ruth's carer.  Ruth believes an old rumor, that a couple who are truly in love can postpone their donations for a few years, and she encourages Kathy to reconnect with Tommy so they can both get deferrals.  The deferrals, of course, don't exist, and deep down, Kathy and Tommy know this as well.

I just read what I've written, and to be honest, it doesn't sound like a book I'd like to read.  I enjoyed it, though.  It's a January book - slightly melancholy, rather lonely, isolated and grey even when a group of children are playing on a sunny field.  Sometimes a book or movie just 'grabs' me, and I can't explain why I like it (or doesn't grab me and I can't explain why I don't).  I think that's the case here.  Never Let Me Go is low-key and reflective, downcast but not quite depressing, sort of like the middle of January when the weather is cold and grey and we're coping with returning to the dullness of normal life after the holidays.  If I'd read it at another time of year, maybe I'd admire it more than I liked it, but I finished it a few days after the most depressing day of the year so that's not the case.

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.

Mr. Darcy's Dream

Jane Austen's novels aren't the fluffy rom-com forerunners they appear to be.  Austen was a witty writer who satirized social climbers, pricked the egos of the self-important, and saw courtship among the gentry as a cutthroat competition for the best merger of financial resources.  Elizabeth Ashton isn't Jane Austen and her Darcy novels are unashamedly frivolous.

Mr. Darcy's Dream is the sixth book in the series, and the heroine this time is Georgiana Darcy's daughter Phoebe Hawkins.  Phoebe is about to start her second London season when she receives an offer of marriage from Arthur Stanhope, scion of a prominent Whig family.  Her father, Sir Giles, refuses to permit the marriage, so to prevent a scandal Georgiana plants rumors of Phoebe's ill health and sends her to Pemberly.  Louisa Bingley, still single after three seasons, decides to join her and the two young women spend a pleasant few months at Pemberly planning a ball, dealing with a Catherine de Bourgh-like relative, and making social calls.  No one should be surprised that Mr. Stanhope decides to visit his sister near Pemberly, nor that Louisa Bingley falls in love with Mr. Drummond, the attorney hired to oversee renovations to  Pemberly, or that there's a happy ending featuring two engagements.  A subplot involving a French governess and the series' usual villain doesn't quite work but it doesn't distract from the main purpose of the book, which is to keep the hero and heroine apart until the final chapter.  Mr. Darcy's Dream is an ideal book to read on a tropic beach (which is where I read The True Darcy Spirit), but it also makes a fair distraction from a snow-hindered SEPTA commute.

Innocent Traitor

I don't read much straight fiction; I usually stick to mysteries, classics, and non-fiction.  Innocent Traitor isn't much of a deviation for me, though, because it's Alison Weir's first novel.  I've read and enjoyed most of her non-fiction but somehow missed Innocent Traitor until I saw her next novel, The Lady Elizabeth, in Borders.

Innocent Traitor is the story of Lady Jane Grey, the Nine Days Queen who was executed for treason, and it's familiar territory for Weir who counted her as one of The Children of Henry VIII.  Weir begins with the almost simultaneous births of Lady Jane and her cousin Edward and uses multiple narrators to chronicle Jane's short life, most of which was spent as a pawn to her abusive mother's ambitions.  

Although Weir could have portrayed Jane as a "poor little rich girl" or the sweet martyr of prior historical fiction, she creates a more complex picture of an intellectual, insecure, and surprisingly dogmatic teenager.  Yes, she is a pawn, but she's also a bit of a prig, a devout Protestant who seems to equate wearing bright colors with moral turpitude.  Jane is extremely intelligent and well-educated and described by others as pretty, but convinced that she's plain and will end up a spinster because of comparisons to her pretty, frivolous younger sister.  She comes across as a real teenager, albeit one with unusual family issues.  Her one triumph as Queen is when she realizes that her mother's words no longer sting - instead of obeying the venomous Duchess of Suffolk, Jane can now issue orders to her tormentor.   

Weir wrote Innocent Traitor after four non-fiction books on the Tudor court and her ease with the era shows.  Improbable yet true events, such as Catherine Parr's discovery of the heresy charges being prepared against her, flow naturally and the secondary characters feel like real people rather than historical figures.  Princess Mary feels particularly well developed, perhaps because she's so often portrayed as a one-dimensional character.  Mary is a tragic figure.  She's plain and politically suspect but desperate for marriage and children, heir to the throne but politically tone deaf, and as devout and dogmatic as her younger cousin.  Catherine Parr also stands out - an intelligent, maternal woman who takes Jane under her wing and protects her from her mother.  Even Guilford Dudley has an unexpectedly sympathetic scene.  He's introduced as a spoiled vulgarian who preens and sneers and gets drunk at his wedding banquet, and the consummation of his and Jane's marriage devolves into a rape.  In his final meetings with Jane, however, Weir shows him to be a scared boy whose father has been executed and knows he may soon lose his head as well.   Even Jane's mother, whose only personality traits are cruelty and ambition, feels like an actual person.  Not someone you'd like to know, but a McMansion-dwelling helicopter mom you've unfortunately met.

After two novels, Alison Weir has returned to non-fiction with a biography of Katherine Swynford, Duchess of Lancaster.  Based on Innocent Traitor, I hope she hasn't abandoned fiction for good.  As a reader, I'd like to see her alternate between fiction and history because I find her work in both genres so enjoyable.  Perhaps she'll write a novel about Queen Mary, focusing on the years between her mother's banishment from court and her ascension to the throne.