The Crocodile on the Sandbank

After years of seeing Elizabeth Peters novels on the bookstore shelves, glittering with the promise of Egypt and mystery (though it's hard to glitter in mass market paperback, so perhaps they only beckoned), I finally decided that it was time to give them a whirl and I am quite pleased with the decision. They're more whimsical than I otherwise would have expected, but Peters certainly can craft amusing characters. The Crocodile on the Sandbank is the very first in a series of mysteries that feature Amelia Peabody, a nineteenth century woman with the spirit of Indiana Jones... if Dr. Jones was a bit more prone to solving mysteries and leaping to conclusions that got everyone into a spot of bother. As proof of my enjoyment, you should know that within forty-eight hours, I purchased two copies of this book -- the first for my nook and the second in paperback for my mother, as I could tell that she would never forgive me if I didn't pass copies of this series along to her.

Amelia Peabody, a thirty-two year old self-professed spinster with both a figure and a personality that are decidedly not in season, has just inherited her father's half-a-million pounds upon his death. After amusing herself for a while by watching men fall all over themselves to ask for her money--er, her hand--she decides that she will not stay locked up in the house like her father, reading about far-off lands. Miss Peabody intends to venture forth to see the world for herself -- and she is not a woman easily dissuaded from a course of action. The conventions of the time might have stopped other lesser women, but not Amelia Peabody; she plans quite well for her journey, supplying herself with plentiful first-aid materials, a simpering companion whom she can bully for the entire trip, and a study parasol. Top it all off with her no-nonsense British sensibilities and confidence in the power of the British empire, there's nothing in her way -- until she reaches Rome and her companion takes ill. Even Amelia Peabody knows that society will prove quite troublesome if she disregards all convention by traveling alone, but a solution immediately presents itself when she picks up the young Englishwoman Miss Evelyn Barton-Forbes in Rome. Quite literally, she picks up a fainting Evelyn from the streets of Rome and finds a delightful and brave young woman who made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong fellow. By running off with him, Evelyn enraged her grandfather and was struck from his will -- thus resulting in her unworthy lover's abandonment. With her honor ruined and with no one to whom she might turn, Evelyn finds her savior in Miss Peabody... and Miss Peabody finds a devoted companion and friend.

Together, Amelia and Evelyn take off for Egypt... and Amelia promptly entangles them in the affairs of others after noticing that Evelyn might have a worthy admirer in Mr. Walter Emerson, an expert in Egyptian hieroglyphs who is currently working on an excavation headed by his brother. Said brother is a different kettle of fish -- introduced to us in the form of a howling bear, furious with Amelia for picking up shards of pottery in the antiquities section of the museum, an incident which only fuels his rage at the curator for failing to run a proper institution. This is Mr. Radcliffe Emerson, a temperamental ogre of a man with an unrivaled knowledge of ancient Egypt and no good opinion of tourists or English ladies. We can all see where this is going.

Noticing Evelyn's fondness for Walter (Amelia has a matchmaking streak, despite her own unwed state) and eager to see an actual excavation site, Amelia manages to reroute their own travel plans so that their paths will cross with the Emerson brothers' site. Of course, her plans are fortuitous, as they arrive just as the elder Emerson is struck will illness; Amelia manages to save his life while allowing Walter and Evelyn time to get acquainted. Evelyn, tormented by the belief that no good man would want her in her fallen state, actually finds herself with an abundance of suitors when her cousin shows up, insisting that her romantic mistake can be forgotten about if she will marry him and come home. If this seems a bit fishy, then don't be surprised when other figures appear, too -- like newly risen mummy that frightens the locals and threatens our main characters. Everything works out in the end, of course, and since we're surrounded with sensible British stock, you can bet that they get to the bottom of this mummy nonsense.

If you're looking for a great mystery novel with twists, turns, and gasps... then this isn't your best bet. The mystery and the plot are a distant second to the personalities, but if that's okay with you, then I think you'll be as delighted as I was in discovering some terribly entertaining characters. Amelia Peabody is a delightful heroine, full of enthusiasm and energy, eager to barrel into danger yet still concerned for the well-being of her friends. At once quite rational and yet imaginative enough to wildly hypothesize, she's a wonderful blend of wit and whimsy. I did rather assume that romance might not happen quite so quickly for the resigned spinster, but evidently Peters had different ideas and wanted a couple to tackle these Egyptian mysteries as opposed to Amelia on her own. With her stubborn nature, she's willing to take on both mummies and the even more foreboding Emerson... both to very amusing ends. The reader will figure out exactly what's what far ahead of the characters as far as mysteries and romance are concerned, and yet to watch everything play out is a delight.

This is clearly a novel written with the intention of being the first in a series, establishing personalities and acquainting the reader with the world of Egyptian excavations in the 1880s. It certainly helps that the characters are well worth the effort and left me eager to read anything that might come after. It also helps that Elizabeth Peters is quite a creditable writer with an unimpeachable knowledge of ancient Egypt and an ear for charming dialogue. It didn't much feel like a mystery novel, but I trust that such instincts will improve... and quite frankly, even if they don't, I'll still happily content myself with the banter between Amelia and Emerson. While Walter and Evelyn are a bit one note, they were somewhat of a relief from the strong personalities of Amelia and Emerson, and yet I suspect their presence will be limited, as characters like this have a tendency to settle down and produce a large brood of children, thus rendering them unable to run around the Egyptian deserts after mummies. As a series that will likely have each book strike a very similar chord (mystery in Egypt, Peabody and Emerson clash while adoring each other), I suppose it all has the potential to grow tiresome after a while, but I certainly hope that Peters will be quite capable of presenting fresh scenarios as we go.

Man Walks Into a Room

While Man Walks Into a Room was Nicole Krauss's debut novel, I was first brought to experience her genius in The History of Love. Her first work feels like less of a novel and more like a lengthy short story -- though, to its credit, it certainly doesn't feel any longer than a short story. Instead, it's more of a lingering discussion on an idea that begs to be explored. As a result, it feels hard to summarize the plot in a tantalizing way beyond the initial scenario, as a large part of the novel is really a reaction to just that.

Samson Greene is found wandering the desert outside of Las Vegas eight days after going missing in Manhattan. Almost immediately, he undergoes surgery to remove a newly discovered brain tumor and when he wakes up, he has no memory of his life after the age of twelve. No memory of his loving wife, his career as an English professor at Columbia University, his friends, his dog, his mother's death... nothing. Remarkably, he appears able to make new memories and is still an intelligent and functioning adult, but the slate appears to have been wiped clean of over twenty years of experiences. Without any connection to this life, he doesn't particularly feel a desperate need for these memories to return so much as he just wants everyone to stop looking at him with expectation. This is an unusual response to memory loss and is incredibly painful for Anna, his wife, who just wants her husband back, intact, with memories of their ten years spent together. As he adjusts to this new world (though thankfully we are spared the Big ideas and he seems to have the mentality of an adult if not the personal memories), he struggles to establish a relationship with Anna and find some purpose to his own self. Unsurprisingly, things do not go well. Samson retreats further into himself as he realizes he cannot really make Anna happy, developing a strange friendship with a former student and relying on the companionship of his dog, Frank, who does not expect Samson to remember their time together. This is all moving along when Krauss throws in a bit of a twist: a neuro-scientist offers Samson the opportunity to take part in a hushed-up memory experiment and Samson quickly signs up. The experiment does not claim that it could return his memories, for those are lost for good, but instead the experiment is attempting something much more revolutionary and potentially much more traumatizing. Of course, if one picks up the novel and reads the very first few pages, one might wonder how the depiction of a young soldier witnessing an atomic bomb testing plays into the rest of the story. It is this memory that will hit Samson with all its atomic force, finally breaking him open to understand everything that has befallen him. It takes the story a while to get there, but impact is astounding.

As I mentioned, this novel is not one that should be read for plotlines; it's the exploration of a "what if...?" idea. From the beginning, you should be pretty aware that everything cannot end well. It might end not terribly, but that's about all you can hope for after a tragedy that takes someone from those he loves without actually killing him. Indeed, as characters wonder in the story, would Samson's death have been preferable to wiping his memories but leaving him standing? For a large part, I enjoyed the awkward and painful examination of what to do with this man who has been cut from the ties of his life, yes remains floating around. It's believable and heartbreaking, which is a hard emotion to muster when it comes towards the beginning of a novel and you have not really had time to get to know your characters. Your sympathy focuses mainly on Anna, the "widow" who is told to act against her hopes, to smother her desire that the Samson she knows will return to love her, and to simply help him adjust to his new life as a helpmate rather than a loving wife. Even though Samson is the one to experience the memory loss, he has no real remorse for something he has no attachment to in his present condition, so it's Anna who has experienced the real tragedy.... though Samson does come to understand his loss, in a way. Once we arrive at the memory experiment, things change a bit. Krauss is not interested in creating a science-fiction epic, though its aim to graft the memories from one person to another is rather fearsome in its implications. She uses this experiment as an opportunity to give Samson new ties and to allow him to explore his loss and the burden of what he gains.

Krauss is simply exploring the trajectory of a lost soul... what one might do in today's day and age if completely unanchored from the life they knew and yet somehow still inhabiting the shell of it. Strangely, if there were kids involved, Samson might have felt obliged to make more of an effort at rekindling a relationship with Anna. He trusts her because she's there but perhaps he does love her after all, if he would only open himself up to the idea. Instead, he struggles to find his own way, feeling untethered and yet concerned for Anna's welfare and future. Whether this springs from the knowledge that she tried to reorient him to the world, the fact that she seems so terribly hurt by what has happened to Samson, or a growing/returning love for this woman... well, without memories to understand one's motivations, perhaps everything is wrapped up together. By removing us from the story arch that might define more conventional novels, Krauss achieves a dreamlike state of wandering exploration... perhaps a more pleasant version of what Samson might feel as he suddenly finds himself as a thirty-something year old man with no knowledge of the twenty-odd years that led to his current state. It's haunting and painful, causing readers to question how they might react in similar circumstances, and ultimately having to accept that there is no way to know, as the person one now is would no longer exist without the last two thirds of one's life to shape him/her.

Nicole Krauss writes with such beauty that I now know I'll read anything she publishes. I might not push Man Walks Into a Room on anyone with the same passion as I did The History of Love, but I still think it's a lovely work of incredible quality. Reviews that I've read online have lamented that the ending doesn't seem to bring any real closure or epiphany, but then, the situation hardly suggests that there will ever really be closure. As for an epiphany, well, quite honestly the understanding that life continues on seems to be a rather painful and yet hard-won moral. It may not be the ending that one wants, but such is life.

An Unfinished Woman

An Unfinished Woman is one of several autobiographical works penned by the American playwright, Lillian Hellman. It was published in 1969 and two others followed it: Pentimento in 1973 and Scoundrel Time in 1976. If you're wondering why there were multiple memoirs, I can't quite answer that (having not read the other two), but isn't it lovely to think that our lives require multiple volumes? It's not that they're first, second, and third acts, but rather, I imagine they each have a different focus, a particular gaze through a different lens so each might see an alternate perspective, and perhaps all together they come up with something disjointed but real. If nothing else, I do hope that the other two fill in the gaps on a few events that were not touched upon in this volume. There's no doubting that Hellman is, indeed, a hell of a writer, but she was quite selective in describing events within this memoir. She knows it and has no problem letting you know that, too, but it still doesn't mean she's giving you a complete picture. Ultimately, though, An Unfinished Woman is a unique work by one of America's great female playwrights whose life spanned remarkable events and the things she does have to say are quite fascinating in their telling... and, of course, beyond the events you have a perfect blend of wit, cynicism, and straight-forward observation that characterizes both her work and her own self.


I'll admit that prior to picking up this volume, my knowledge of Dashiell Hammett was greater than that of Lillian Hellman. My mother would send me care packages at college, but occasionally forget that she'd sent me something and I would wind up with doubles or triples of an item; the worst case included no fewer than six copies of the DVD Charade. (During break, I carted them home and lined them all up to impress upon her that we owned it -- stop buying it already.) Another such item that snuck into my care packages multiple times was Lillian Hellman's An Unfinished Woman. This particularly happened around the time that I took a month-long course on hardboiled crime fiction and so Hammett featured in heavily. Unsurprisingly, books that were not on my reading lists often went unread. I attempted to start it a few times (as evidenced by some occasional underlining and margin notes in the first few chapters), but a few days ago, I saw this on the shelves at my parents' home and decided it was time.


In An Unfinished Woman, Hellman selectively relates parts of her life and then closes with three chapters each focused on a separate person. These surprised me when I reached them, though ultimately I was pleased as I felt that at least two of these people had been short-changed by their limited presence in the rest of her narrative versus the impact even I knew they had on her life. Hellman begins her memoir right at the beginning: her parents, her family, and her childhood in the south. (This is perhaps the only part of the narrative that feels linear, but don't worry, she'll bounce back to it later on, too.) While she did spend time in both New York and Louisiana during her childhood (often bouncing between the two), she preferred her Louisiana upbringing and so it absorbs the majority of her focus. Bouncing between schools left her off balance, succeeding wildly in one and struggling to catch up in another. Despite that, though, she had a great love of reading and came to understand the benefits and trials of an only child. Having grown up in the south under the guidance of a strong black woman, it's no surprise that questions of race play an interesting role in her perspective. (Indeed, one of the three people she talks about at the end of the book is Helen, her black housekeeper who was a friend of a sort, but the relationship of employer/employee made things complicated.) Hellman's description of her first job in publishing is interesting for the fact that she paints a picture of a rather inept young woman, ultimately keeping her job as a result of sympathy from the men in charge after she has an abortion (which each of those men in charge speculate belonged to one of them, even though it actually belonged to the man Hellman would eventually marry a year later). Her first (and only) marriage is rather glazed over, but then, it seems as though the experience really just made her bored and she'd rather save her ink for other topics. She traveled, of course, but her motives for that travel were surprising, both for the lack of focus to start and then the actual focus that continued:

"I wandered around Europe in a jumble of passivity and wild impatience. I believed I was not doing or living the way I had planned. I had planned nothing, of course. I was bewildered: if I really felt there were a million years ahead of me, why then did I feel so impatient? So restless?"

This youthful lack of direction is common, but seems strange coming from a woman whose writing seemed to truly convey the imperative need of the present as the world became an increasingly unstable place. "I watched other people go to a war I needed to be part of," she wrote, and then finally got her chance in the form of a "cultural mission" to Russia. She nearly died from the journey but went on to Moscow and joined the Russian army at the front. She wrote about the Spanish Civil War from various locations in Spain. Hellman uses excerpts from her journal in both of these locations to paint a very vivid picture of what it is to live in war beyond the heat of battles. She talks about the hunger, the struggle of each long day, and the people frightened to think about a future. "That's the way I remembered many nights during the way, somebody reciting Pushkin, long, long, long." I was repeatedly surprised by her front-row seat to such events... and by her way of talking about them, which cast her in the role of a rather unlikely spectator who didn't seem to much want to be in either location at the time. She traveled back to Russia twenty years later and had a very different experience, particularly dwelling on her age.

"Twenty-two years later, the same week in October when I had arrived during the war, the plane lowered for the Moscow airport. I put out my cigarette, took off my glasses, closed my book and was shocked to find that I was crying. All women say they do not cry very much, but I don't because I learned long ago that I do it at the wrong time and in front of the wrong people. The two young English commercial travelers opposite me stared and then turned their heads away, but the German in the next seat made no secret of his interest, and a Russian across the aisle shook his head at me. I shut my eyes on all of them. What fragment at the bottom of the pot was the kettle-spoon scraping that it had not reached before?
"I told myself that maybe I was worried about seeing my old friend Raya: it is not easy to see an old friend after so many years, and certainly not women because they change more than men. But I knew the tears were not for Raya: they were for me who had, twenty-two years before, been able to fly across Siberia for fourteen days in an unheated plane, lying in a sleeping bag on top of crates, knowing the plane had few instruments even for those days, starting to be sick in Yakutsk, unable to explain in a language I didn't know, not caring, thinking that whatever happened the trip was worth it, although when the pneumonia did come, I changed my mind about that. The tears had to do with age and the woman who could survive hardships then and knew she couldn't anymore. I was sorry I had come back to Moscow."

My understanding of her work focused primarily on her playwright status as opposed to any journalistic contributions. And as far as the writerly set is concerned, it would seem like name dropping if she hadn't really lived in an age and within a group where she got rides to parties from F. Scott Fitzgerald, spent time in Spain with Hemingway, fell asleep while Faulkner was talking, was the dear friend of Dorothy Parker, and spent thirty years together with Dashiell Hammett (who she still referred to as her "dear friend" in much of the book). I feared that we might lose Hellman to the stories of these others, but I shouldn't have worried -- even when focused on someone else, the reader is distinctly aware that this view is through Hellman's eyes and while she's content to let someone else have the spotlight, she never lets herself get pushed aside.

Hellman rarely tackles a topic in a conventional way, which is interesting as she still manages to see straightforward in her eventual discussion of things. One has to get used to her sidling up to a story and then being very direct. She's particularly like this when it comes to a discussion of emotions and people that she loves. Seeing Dorothy Parker through her eyes is quite fascinating, for such a legendary wit can gather an image that loses its humanity. Hellman presents "Dottie" as wonderfully human and flawed, the way a girlfriend can. Second to her wit, Dorothy Parker was known for her love affairs, and Hellman does not ignore this: "She had been loved by several remarkable men, but she only loved the ones who did not love her, and they were the shabby ones." Their friendship was uncommon and perhaps the more precious for that.

"I enjoyed her more than I have ever enjoyed any other woman. She was modest--this wasn't all virtue, she liked to think that she was not worth much--her view of people was original and sharp, her elaborate, overdelicate manners made her a pleasure to live with, she liked books and was generous about writers, and the wit, of course, was so wonderful that neither age nor illness ever dried up the spring from which it came fresh each day. No remembrance of her can exclude it."

While time is spent on Parker, it's Hammett that naturally trumps all. Lillian Hellman certainly is not a woman "made" by her relationship with a man, but she does know that he had a remarkable influence on her, even as she maintained her individuality. She speaks a little about their political differences and how she could never quite reach Hammett's degree, which pained them both for the facts of their commitments to a cause and if it could influence their commitment to each other:

"For Hammett, as he was to prove years later, Socialist belief had become a way of life and, although he was highly critical of many Marxist doctrines and their past and present practitioners, he shrugged them off. I was trying, without knowing it, to crack his faith, sensed I couldn't do it, and was, all at one time, respectful, envious, and angry. He was patient, evidently in the hope I would come his way, amused as he always was by my pseudo-rages, cold to any influence. I do not mean there were unpleasant words between us. None, that is, except once, in 1953, after he had been in jail and gone back to teaching at the Jefferson School. I was frightened that his official connection with the school would send him back to jail and was saying that as we walked down 52nd Street. When we were a few steps from Sixth Avenue, he stopped as said, 'Lilly, when we reach the corner you are going to have to make up your mind that I must go my way. You've been more than, more than, well, more than something-or-other good to me, but now I'm trouble and a nuisance to you. I won't ever blame you if you say goodbye to me now. But if you don't, then we must never have this conversation again.' When we got to the corner, I began to cry and he looked as if he might. I was not able to speak, so he touched my shoulder and turned downtown. I stood on the corner until I couldn't see him anymore and then I began to run. When I caught up with him, he said, 'I haven't thought about a drink in years. But I'd like one. Anyway, let's go buy one for you.'"

Hammett seems to have brought out the best in her, despite some lost years of parties that may have ruined them both and, indeed, Hammett didn't really recover. Perhaps the lasting tribute to these years of wit and booze is The Thin Man, which Hammett wrote using himself and Hellman as the models for Nick and Nora Charles. Hellman wrote, "It was nice to be Nora, married to Nick Charles, maybe one of the few marriages in modern literature where the man and woman like each other and have a fine time together. But I was soon put back in place--Hammett said I was also the silly girl in the book and the villainess. I don't know now if he was joking, but in those days it worried me: I was very anxious that he think well of me." But he was clearly the love of her life, even if she uses terms like "dear friend."

"Even now as I write this, I am still angry and amused that he always had to have things on his own terms: a few minutes ago I got up from the typewriter and railed against him for it, as if he could still hear me. I know as little about the nature of romantic love as I knew when I was eighteen, but I do know about the deep pleasure of continuing interest, the excitement of wanting to know what somebody else thinks, will do, will not do, the tricks played and unplayed, the short cord that the years make into rope and, in my case, is there, hanging loose, long after death. I am not sure what Hammett would feel about the rest of these notes about him, but I am sure that he would be pleased that I am angry with him today."

While Hellman does not in any way become explicit about her relationship with Hammett, what is obvious is the love they shared, despite what might have seemed an unconventional arrangement in a time when marriage was the norm. Her description of Hammett's declining years is terribly sad, and this is where Hellman ends her narrative, even if she's insistent about life continuing on.


While the memoir is wonderful, I would feel remiss if I didn't also admit to a feeling of surprise when Hellman left out certain things. She never talks about the writing experience much, the general experience of being a playwright as it directly contributed to her work. Sure, Hellman talks about how she didn't much like the theater even though it was her livelihood and every now and then she mentions working, but she never really specifically goes into her work... the inspirations, the writing of each, the initial reception (though once or twice she does give credit where credit is due, in citing the origin of a line that someone said to her and she then used). She occasionally uses the names of her plays as touchstones, such as an event taking place after The Little Foxes, but a description of opening night or debut performance is not to be found. The second (and perhaps even more surprising) gap was of everything surrounding the House Un-American Activities Committee and McCarthy. It's enough to make you think that you must have skipped some pages the way this period of time is so absent from her memoir. In one of the only places where she makes mention of that time, she is discussing the selling of her farm in Pleasantville.

"I stopped there to look at the hundred French lilac trees in the nursery, the rosebushes waiting for the transplant place they would never get, the two extravagant acres of blanches asparagus, and standing there by the road that May afternoon of 1952, I finally realized that I would never have any of this beautiful, hardscrabble land again. Now, in the Moscow room, I was glad it was gone, but sorry that the days of Joseph McCarthy, the persecution of Hammett, my own appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee, the Hollywood blacklist, had caused it to be gone. There could never be any place like it again because I could never again be that woman who worked from seven in the morning until two or three the next morning and woke rested and hungry for each new day."

Perhaps she wished that it never happened, but Hellman is not one to ever shy away from unpleasant things. Certainly, it would have been hard to write about, so perhaps other works deal with her experience here in a more comprehensive way, but it left me with the sense that things were incomplete.


Hellman's tone suggests that if you're reading this, then you must have some knowledge of the things that passed. There's no real implication that this will be read by those who might not be familiar with these figures and events, and thus, she has no need to explain about anyone or anything beyond herself. Her whole life, indeed, seemed to be lived with this same focus on the present -- the future was undetermined and likely to be snatched away at any moment, so it was the present that deserved her attention. Indeed, the book's last lines speak to this need to live in the present:

"But I am not yet old enough to like the past better than the present, although there are nights when I have a passing sadness for the unnecessary pains, the self-made foolishness that was, is, and will be. I do regret that I have spent too much of my life trying to find what I called the 'truth,' trying to find what I called 'sense.' I never knew what I meant by truth, never made the sense I hoped for. All I mean is that I left too much of me unfinished because I wasted too much time. However."

I underlined the hell out of my copy and I don't usually underline things in books anymore. Her turn of phrase and crystal-clear vision yields some fascinating observations about others and herself. If you have any interest in Lillian Hellman, then I suggest reading this very short memoir to gain some insight on a rather remarkable woman... and if you're only vaguely familiar with her, then it might be a great introduction. Either way, I don't think you can lose spending some time with the inspiration for Nora Charles. Her dry wit and cynical smirk are apparent on every page and while those might be the initial appeal, it's the heart and mind behind it all that prove to be the more engrossing elements.

The Lost Symbol

While I'm pleased that I didn't purchase this book for myself, I must note that I don't disapprove of Dan Brown the way some people do. This is the third Brown book that I've read and if nothing else, he's usually entertaining... though for me, a fair amount of that entertainment might be experienced at his or his main character's expense. To read Brown, you have to accept the ridiculous plotlines and the large number of inaccuracies. He's not going for accurate so much as he's a master of finding random facts, tossing everything into a pot and asking, "What if they were all connected?" He doesn't believe that they are, but to weaker minds, he might be easily seized upon as uncovering conspiracies. Brown is not a conspiracy theorist, he's a best-selling fiction writer. He writes suspense novels and you usually get an interesting city tour out of it (even if it's not a trustworthy one). He's not a brilliant writer, but he has stumbled upon a formula that works for him. He writes short chapters that always end on cliffhangers and works up a plot that is designed to make the reader feel intelligent without actually understanding anything that's going on as it pertains to the complicated ideas -- the reader just has to keep up with the constant dashing from place to place. Puzzles that are hyped as unsolveable turn out to be numerals that are just upsidedown and Robert Langdon, the physically fit Harvard professor of "Symbology" (because "Semiotics" was apparently too difficult a word, Brown had to invent "Symbology"?), always seems to be called into a crisis situtation where his interpretation of some symbol, code, or painting will be the key to saving the world.

This time, Langdon thinks he's heading to Washington, D.C. to serve as the last-minute speaker for an event as a favor to his friend and mentor, Peter Solomon. When he arrives, Langdon does not find an audience ready to hear his lecture on Masonic symbols in our nation's capitol, but rather, he finds his friend's severed hand and Langdon realizes that he's been led right into a trap. Peter has been kidnapped (and mutilated), this big tattooed guy named Mal'akh is holding him hostage (and is also looking to eliminate Peter's sister, Katherine), and Langdon's only chance at saving Peter rests in his uncovering a secret that the Masons have spent centuries keeping safe. I'll give you a hint: even though we spend a lot of time talking about Katherine's scientific research in the field of noetics, it has absolutely nothing to do with that. The whole noetics thing has no bearing whatsoever on the main plot, it's just a cool idea Brown thought he'd toss in so we had some "science" in there somewhere. Instead, the focus here is on the Freemasons, an often misunderstood society known for harboring a whole lot of secrets.

If you really like Dan Brown, then it probably doesn't matter what this book is about -- you'll read it and be mildly entertained. I preferred Angels and Demons to The Da Vinci Code and think The Lost Symbol is the weakest of the three. Perhaps it's because we're no longer running through European cities, but sticking close to home in our nation's capitol. Perhaps it's because I probably would have enjoyed watching National Treasure more than reading this if I wanted conspiracies about Freemasons. Perhaps it's because the threats didn't seem quite so mind-bogglingly ridiculous and so they were disappointing. Perhaps it's because I didn't feel like Brown had achieved his goal of at least keeping me entertained. (I stopped in the middle of one of his three-page chapters when I glanced at one of my houseplants and wondered if I could develop a cutting in water. I then proceded to carry out this spontaneous experiment. To me, that's a good indication that someone is bored.) Whatever the reason, by the time I was a quarter of a way through The Lost Symbol, I knew that finishing it would feel more like a chore than a pleasant diversion. It seemed as though Brown had let a lot of criticisms get to him and so things seemed less ridiculous (Dan Brown books have become synonymous with "ridiculous," so what's the point when they don't live up to that?); the ultimate threats seemed lame and the final revelation of Mal'akh's true identity was something every reader should have guessed by Chapter 20 (aka roughly around page five). Langdon spent a lot of time repeating himself and then, in turn, being lectured at by others -- every person at one time or another seemed to serve the purpose of being a human encyclopedia. Even more so than in his other books, I felt like Brown tossed in a lot of random details that seemed cool. Brown books are entirely composed of random facts thrown together, but there were lots of stragglers this time that had no tie-in. Among these random things were Katherine's noetics studies, heat-sensing vision goggles that could show the temperature differences of objects (thus indicating where people had been and so allowing one to sort of see back in time), and breathable oxygenated liquid serving as a means of torture.

I suppose poor Dan Brown must be feeling intense pressure after the success of his past books -- but then, this sold something like a million copies on its first day of release, so in those terms, this one's a success, too. I do hope, though, that if Brown has another Robert Langdon book in the works, he returns to the crazy kind of plots that involve priests piloting helicopters to save Rome from city-leveling explosions during conclave. It's what made him the best-selling success that he is. Yes, it's ridiculous... but better ridiculous and entertaining than driving one's readers to mid-chapter hydroculture experimentation.

The Black Moth

Even the Queen of Regency romance had to start somewhere, so when I picked up what I knew to be Georgette Heyer's first published piece, I was expecting a poorer version of her later work where fledgling ideas did not reach their full potential even if one might see a shadow of what was to come. I must tell you, then, that it's terribly depressing to note that this might be the most exciting Heyer novel that I have yet to read and she wrote it when she was only seventeen. Heyer originally wrote The Black Moth as a serial story to amuse a sick brother, but her father (who always encouraged his children to read and write) found a publisher for his daughter's manuscript and so it was that The Black Moth was published in 1921 when Miss Heyer was only 19 years old. Having read some of her later works, it's easy to see that The Black Moth is the work of a younger writer. It is not as witty and polished as the best of her later work... but it is full of swashbucking, honor-bound silence, thwarted romance, abductions, cruel villains, spendthrift wives, and tearful confessions. In short, it's a rollicking good time that an older writer might not be capable of printing in good conscience. So thank goodness that Heyer went through with it, as it's certainly the most exciting work by Heyer that I have yet read. Its plot rarely flags and the assembly of characters are certain to amuse as we gaily spin off into a happy ending for just about everyone.

Six years ago, Richard Carstares cheated in a game of cards and his elder brother, Jack, took the blame. Their father, the Earl of Wyncham, disowned his elder son and all of society snubbed him, despite the general incredulity that wonderful and charming Jack Carstares should have cheated. Jack disappeared from England, leaving Richard with an unsullied name and the chance to marry a lady named Lavinia, whom both brothers had been courting. For years, this devil plagued Richard's conscience... such turmoil only heightened when his coach was held up... by none other than his brother, Jack! Desperate now to find and help him, believing his brother reduced to such circumstances as highway robbery as his only means for survival, Richard also wants his brother to return home and so assume all that is rightfully his... aka the entire Earldom and estate. But Jack was disowned, right? Well, Richard convinced their father, on the old man's death bed, to reinstate Jack as the heir, thus giving his conscience a bit of peace by cheating himself out of wealth and property, for Richard does not want anything that belongs to Jack. So Jack has been Earl for a month without knowing it... and yet when Richard's lawyer does finally make contact with Jack, the new Earl insists he wants none of it, either. He does not appear bitter, unhappy, or wanting for money... and indeed, he has no intention of returning home with such a ruined name, but nor does he want his brother to confess. He has resigned himself to his life and appears to be in far better spirits than his conscience-stricken brother, making his living by gambling and merely enjoying life as a highwayman so he might roam the countryside of his beloved Surrey.

Richard seems to have nothing but problems, for if he isn't overcome with guilt over the situation with his brother, he's trying to make his flighty and selfish wife see reason. Lavinia belongs to a family of spendthrifts who have no thought of others and seem to exist on pleasure. Her younger brother Andrew is always hitting Richard up for money and her elder brother, Tracy, well... he's quite a villain, indeed. Tracy, the Duke of Andover, is also known as the Devil Belmanoir for his professed concentration of evil and his rather unscrupulous dealings with everyone. (He's also referred to as "the Black Moth" at some point, but it was so quickly in passing that I admit I'm a bit surprised that such became the title of the novel.) His latest intrigue involves a lady that has inspired such a passion within him (indeed, the word "love" seems incongruous with his nature) that he insists she will be his, willing or no... and it seems that Miss Diana Beauleigh knows a bad egg when she sees one, so it will have to be the latter.

Meanwhile, Jack Carstares gets himself arrested for attempted highway robbery and nearly sentenced by his former best friend, Miles O'Hara, who (upon seeing Jack unmasked) is delighted to find his friend once more, having never believed the idea that Jack could ever be capable of cheating in a card game. (O'Hara is a charming and buyoant Irishman with a very pretty and well-meaning wife who impetuously takes it upon herself to save Jack from her husband's justice before she even knows that they used to be friends, simply because she would hate to see a charming nobleman go to the gallows. They might not be the most intricate characters, but I confess that I have a sweet spot for them simply due to the fact that O'Hara calls his wife "alanna," the Irish endearment for "beautiful one" or "fair one.") After being reunited with Miles, Jack is out riding when he stumbles upon quite a scene: a beautiful young lady being forced from one coach into another, resisting with all her might. This is, of course, the beautiful Miss Beauleigh. Jack fights the ringleader of this abduction (aka the Devil Belmanoir) and bests the man, but still the Devil pulls out a pistol and shoots Jack in the shoulder. Jack loses consciousness after ensuring that the abductors have gone. He awakens a week later in Miss Beauleigh's father's house, being nursed by Miss Beauleigh and her aunt. He insists his name is Mr. John Carr and, of course, falls in love with Miss Beauleigh nearly as quickly as she falls in love with him. However, Jack believes that Diana deserves better than one such as he, and so he removes himself from their home, letting Diana know that he wished it could be otherwise.

The story continues on to show that the Devil Belmanoir has certainly not given up on his pursuit of Miss Beauleigh, and indeed, believes he has no choice but to attempt her abduction once more. Richard struggles with his decision to come clean about his brother's innocence and his own guilt, believing that he must ultimately choose between Jack and Lavinia, for Lavinia vows she would never stay with him if he insisted upon ruining himself. Lavinia continues to be a silly goose but perhaps there's hope for her yet before she completely alienates her husband with her behavior. Ultimately, you will not be surprised to find that things end well for Jack and Diana, and the delightful telling makes this a very quick and amusing read. With all the swordplay, I had a hard time not picturing Errol Flynn as the honorable Jack Carstares, willing to sacrifice himself for the love of a brother and risking all to save the woman he loves but believes he cannot marry. Diana is sweet and has an excellent moment when she and Jack speak in a veiled manner about their prospects, insisting that a woman truly in love would not care one whit about some nonsense that happened six years ago... nor would she care if the man in question was a highwayman, even if her father did. Other than the time surrounding this, though, Diana simply remains a lovely but rather uninteresting girl and instead, one gives one's attention entirely to Jack. As for the Devil Belmanoir, well, one can see that Heyer strives to make him more than a one-note villain. He's certainly selfish in all his dealings with his family, and capable of being quite ruthless, but I find it charming that Heyer wants to show that real love can change even a villain... if not in his outward actions, then at least with his outlook on the world. Don't worry, Tracy doesn't suddenly become a good guy or anything, but early on, he has a friend who rather curses him with the wish that Tracy should be genuinely affected by a worthy woman, which will undoubtedly pan out, even if it's not in the Devil's favor.

The Black Moth is certainly the work of a young and wildly imaginative writer as it dashes along with such drama. The whole bit about silently dealing with another's dishonor is very Scarlet Pimpernel (which I imagine could have been an inspiration to Ms. Heyer at some point)... and since most Heyer heroes are such fops, it's quite easy to picture Sir Percy Blakeney. The modern heir to this style seems to be Lauren Willig with her Pink Carnation books (which grow directly from the Baroness Orzcy and the Pimpernel). In later writing, Heyer tries to attain the level of Austen in her romantic plotlines, though not Austen's excellent social commentary. The Black Moth might be my favorite Heyer yet, for all the disconnect with her more mature writing. The enthusiasm is catching and she wasted no time on subtler details, sticking instead to the frolic, fun, and drama of a real serial. Heyer later proves herself to be quite a wit, but The Black Moth is pure fancy.

Should you find yourself unable to purchase a copy of The Black Moth, I direct you to this link, which contains the full text: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/heyer/moth/moth.html

Arabella

For those who enjoy light regency fiction, Georgette Heyer is a staple of the genre. Arabella is an excellent example of the author's renowned skill with creating charming characters and ridiculous scenes that make for a silly read, perfect for when it's either raining or you happen to be sick. (Or if you're recovering from reading a violent novel and there are no kittens on hand to comfort you.) One always knows what to expect from Heyer's endings (and, indeed, most of the middle, too), but if a light romp is what you want, then look no further.

Arabella's titular heroine is the eldest daughter in a vicar's family of eight children. Blessed with a wealthy and socially significant godmother (who has no daughters of her own to fuss over), Arabella Tallant is going to London so that her godmother, Lady Bridlington might present her to society and oversee the girl's first season... which will hopefully be her *only* season, as she needs to make a good match if there's any hope for her younger siblings and the money to get a girl through a London season doesn't grow on trees. No one seems too concerned that Arabella will make a good match, for she's a beautiful young woman and smart enough, with her only real flaw being a bit of an impetuous streak that often results in her acting before she's thoroughly thought on the matter. Unsurprisingly, for the daughter of a clergyman with eight children, she has very little dowry to speak of, but she does at least have a smart mother who has saved for this very occasion, setting by money and keeping her own old items from her youth so that they might be made up new for her daughter. No one need be in any doubt that everything ends well... and that Arabella not only makes a suitable match with a decently established fellow, but that it will be a matter of love, too, and not just acceptability... but at least the road to get to this happily ever after is entertaining.

While traveling to London in her uncle's coach, an accident drives Arabella and her companion to seek shelter at a nearby home... which turns out to belong to the most fashionable man in London, Mr. Beaumaris. Elegant and wealthy, he is tired of women hunting after him and so when this pretty young girl shows up at his door, he is not inclined to think favorably of her. When Arabella hears him saying just as much to his friend, implying that Arabella might be some girl who has traveled just to disturb his peace and create a sham impromptu meeting, Arabella is furious and acts on impulse. She lies and "lets it slip" that she is an heiress, also tired of being hunted for her enormous fortune, and she makes it clear with her demeanor that she has no interest in Mr. Beaumaris whatsoever.

Well, Mr. Beaumaris's friend might have been taken in by Arabella's heiress claims, but the man himself is not... and yet he decides that to set the girl up as the toast of society would be quite amusing. He allows his friend to spread word of the new heiress come to town and Mr. Beaumaris pays special attention to Arabella upon meeting her. With the approval of the most fashionable man in London and the gossip quickly spreading about the enormous Tallant fortune, Arabella quickly becomes the most sought-after girl in town... and she is just as quickly mortified when she realizes that it's all to do with her lie about having a fortune. Mr. Beaumaris continues to spend time with Arabella, realizing that he's never met a girl quite like her, while Arabella keeps her emotional distance, aware that he's probably just trifling with her, but she can use his attention to her advantage in society. Of course, with news about that she's an heiress, she doesn't feel right accepting any proposals of marriage... not even should Mr. Beaumaris himself offer. Of course, what Mr. Beaumaris wants is for Arabella to trust him enough to tell him the truth so that he can find out her true feelings about him and assure her that his feelings are in no way linked to her mythical fortune.

Before we can settle all this, Arabella's younger brother Bertram appears in town and quickly gets in over his head with gambling debts and bills... which provides Mr. Beaumaris the perfect opportunity to swoop in and attempt to settle everything, but not before Arabella contrives of her own ill-conceived plan to get her brother out of debt. It's all quite ridiculous, yes, but when does one read Georgette Heyer for something commonplace?

Mr. Beaumaris is a charming leading man, cut from the same cloth as many Heyer heroes... a bit older, a bit wiser, and under the impression that he's immune to the charms of a fresh young woman. The twist in this relationship is Arabella's tendency to speak her mind, thus saddling with Mr. Beaumaris with the results. First it's an orphan boy who falls through Arabella's chimney that she refuses to hand back over to his "master" -- Mr. Beaumaris surprises even himself when he offers to take charge of the boy and make him useful. Then it's a dog that Arabella sees being beaten and she swoops in to rescue him... only to realize that her godmother probably won't want him in the house so wouldn't Mr. Beaumaris please keep him? The mongrel dog becomes Mr. Beaumaris's bosom companion (much to his dismay) and some of Mr. Beaumaris's funniest moments come as a result of his single-sided conversation with the dog that he names Ulysses as he scolds the worshipful dog for being a "toad-eater" and muses aloud as to what he can do to get Arabella to confide in him. Arabella, meanwhile, can be a bit soppy as she frets about what he father might think of her if he knew all the wicked lie she has told... but her flashes of fury are amusing enough to absolve her of the soppier moments. Plus, it's nice to see a girl who knows how to play the society game, consciously working the innocent angle from time to time to her own advantage. She blatantly uses Mr. Beaumaris for his society connections and doesn't have any scruples in telling him so. As for Bertram and his storyline of debt, I found myself incredibly bored. It was terribly obvious where everything was going and I didn't particularly care for him, but he must be endured so that everything can turn out right in the end... I should have much rather preferred more scenes with Ulysses, though, rather than Arabella's brother.

In the end, Mr. Beaumaris is quite too good a man all of a sudden, but such is the case with this style of novel. A quick and charming read, Arabella is, at least, a feisty young heroine who has quite a conscience (a vicar's daughter could not escape it) and one can sympathize with poor Mr. Beaumaris, who has visions of his future comfort and happiness being constantly disturbed by Arabella's causes... but of course, that is all part of her charm.

Finn

Mark Twain noted that he could never depict violence as completely and truthfully as it occurs in real life, particularly not when he wrote with a market of young boys in mind. He confessed once to a friend that to write the truth of such violence "would require ... a pen warmed up in hell." In Finn by Jon Clinch, you'll note that Clinch has no such problem in wielding that damned pen. Indeed, Finn might be the most violent book that I've ever read... not for depictions of battle scenes and carnage, but for small acts of unspeakable cruelty in cold blood. I warn you that if you're squeamish... well, then actually, you probably should read this book and learn a few things about yourself. And don't worry, no violent acts towards animals are depicted in the course of the book.

Finn does many things but perhaps what struck me most was the fact that it has an objective to not only to create a back-story for Huckleberry Finn's father, but to see just how far one can push the limits of violence in fiction. Our eyes might glaze over at the evening news and think nothing of the tragic violence there, but when it comes to a work of literature, we tend to balk. I say literature because Finn is certainly one of the finest works of literature that I've read this year. Jon Clinch is a master wordsmith with tremendous talent. I rarely underline things in books these days, but I found myself underlining simple phrases or fragments, just so I might return to bask in their beauty and grace at a later moment. One can easily call such writing poetry, for the words beg to be read aloud and lingered over.

Of course, many people do not associate "poetry" with the people and actions depicted within Finn. Our protagonist seems to be a man without conscience or care, living for himself alone in a crude and dirty existence. There are no simple southern days spent whitewashing picket fences here. I'm not questioning the focus, mind, simply noting the juxtaposition of such beautiful language with such a harsh setting. Finn is as fascinating as he is detestable, but he cannot be dismissed by a simple judgment -- his internal contradictions reach down into his very soul. Since Finn is already an adult by the time we come upon him, we never see a Finn clear of blame and in any way on the "right" side of morality. Finn seems to have his own moral code, even if it waxes and wanes with his needs. What we do see is a man who continues to make choices as though he will never feel the repercussions (even if he is unconsciously twisted by those choices) and there comes a point when you can no longer be redeemed, even by love. His descent makes for a twisted and fascinating tale. Clinch writes that this is Finn's book, and Finn is many things in his life, including a father to Huckleberry, the town drunk, a bigot, and a murderer. Calling this a "prequel" to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn would be incorrect, for while it certainly casts its net to earlier years, it also takes place right along side the events of Twain's novel, too. Clinch neatly fits in his narrative so that takes some liberties with characters, but never contradicts the original Twain text, even if it does pose some significant theories. While it's not important to have read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, one might find Finn to be more rewarding with some knowledge of the text. Small details here and there cause the reader to delight in their own intelligence, as though they're in on the joke when they can pick up on people and objects that appear in Twain's original text.

The novel opens with a body slowly drifting down the Mississippi River. Both the body and the river are of supreme importance to the text, for the river will be our near-constant companion and the specter of the body will loom over the entire story to remind us of what has happened and what is sure to come. It is important to note even now that the body is stripped of its skin, skin that might identify the color of the woman that once animated the muscle. The color of one's skin is terribly important in the world of this novel, and perhaps to no character more than the woman whose body is found drifting down the river.

The story jumps back and forth along a timeline, so assume that if you feel something hasn't been sufficiently explained, soon enough the story will reach back to do so. Finn's father is the Judge, a loveless and bigoted man who is, just the same, highly respected in the town. He might be disappointed in his sickly younger son, but outright despises his degenerate and drunken firstborn. Finn owes his ramshackle home and supplementary income to his younger brother, who essentially cooks the books so he can slip his brother some money. Finn makes his "living" by fishing and selling whatever he catches to various establishments with various amounts of profit. (By "living" I also mean his whiskey money, as Finn seems to consume nothing else in such quantity as alcohol.) Primarily, he catches and sells catfish, the ultimate bottomfeeder that so nicely echoes Finn's own existence. The river is also Finn's primary source for acquiring other items that might be sold or might find a place in his home, from small things like nails to larger things, like a female companion who is referred to simply as "that woman" for quite a while in the text until we discover her story. After chance finds him on a steamboat, Finn foils the attempt by two black slaves (a father and daughter) to commandeer the vessel and sail to a free state. As a reward for these actions (and as payment for his skiff that was destroyed by the steamboat and, thus, led to his presence in the first place), Finn is given the daughter, Mary. Mary, who is educated and was treated rather decently by her previous mistress as far as slavery goes, is plunged into a much rougher life with a very rough man. Her motivation can make for extensive debate, largely stemming from why on earth she stays with Finn when it seems that the chance of escaping by risking death is a much more appealing prospect, and while words of love are never spoken, the emotion itself must be assumed. Finn has complicated ideas about blacks, ultimately viewing them as lesser creatures than whites but that doesn't stop him from essentially building a home with Mary and having a child with her. She is both his property and his lover, a black slave worth his contempt and yet an educated creature who reads him poetry. He is faithful to her as he is faithful to nothing else. Whether this stems from emotional attachment or the fact that this is the only kind of woman who can't reject him and demand that he change his ways, well, that's something to ponder, and perhaps the two are not mutually exclusive. It is a complicated relationship that seems incapable of yielding happiness, and yet it does seem to result in a contented family for a time.

The revolutionary idea that Finn poses is that Huckleberry Finn is the son of a black woman and it's only the fact that Huck has light skin that later allows him to unconsciously "pass." This question of parentage is a significant issue at a time when having a black mother would mean that Huck, too, could be claimed as a slave. As a result, some incredibly heartbreaking moments occur late in the book, involving Mary's struggle with these facts. This is one in a series of tragedies for Mary, who upholds the literary (and real-life) tradition of minority women enduring extraordinary tragedy with grace. Mary is not the only example of such in the novel and perhaps this other woman suffers even greater sorrows than Mary, but she, too, can also lay the blame for those sorrows at Finn's door. When it comes to sins, perhaps the greatest are not those that require action, but those where one does nothing to stop a terrible deed from being committed, thus tacitly condoning it.

My book club had the great pleasure of being able to invite Jon Clinch to discuss his book with us, which was an incredibly enlightening experience in terms of actually speaking with the man who was responsible for such a novel. I challenge anyone to read this book and not, at some point or other, wonder about the author himself who would conceive of such situations and characters, somehow able to find the words to describe what might seem to be unspeakable violence. It's not the kind of violence that might seem "entertaining" in any way, but it's violence that occurs in the world nonetheless and most of us probably want to forget that fact. No such chance here. Yet Jon Clinch is a very pleasant and well-spoken man, a loving husband and father whose liberal inclinations led him to slip a Dick Cheney joke into Finn at the last minute (hint: look for a scene involving an accidental shooting and "Whittington"). Clinch speaks eloquently about a novel that is regularly denounced for its content; he's had a great deal of practice in answering questions about the grislier aspects of it. He even told us a great secret that I disclose here: in order to keep up the constant stream of rather terrible events, he had a rule that something dreadful had to happen every seventy-five pages. My response to this was, "It was really only every seventy-five?!" Indeed, the stream of violence is as steady as the ever-moving waters of the Mississippi itself, which seems so at odds with this lovely man who lives in Vermont and dotes upon his daughter. Of course, Clinch is also fiercely intelligent and patiently eager to argue out the fact that violence exists all around us and has shaped our literature and society, even as books increasingly become less violent. To remove it from fiction is to delude ourselves into thinking it is no longer in our lives when the nightly news confirms the opposite.

Of course, if you let the violence overwhelm you, then you can miss out on many of the other terribly interesting things that this novel does, particularly exploring those complicated ideas about race. After all, in Twain circles, it's evidently quite a controversial idea to make Huck half black (personally, I had always assumed Twain was implying something about Native American ancestry in his dusky complexion and strange reserves of knowledge). In today's world, we tell ourselves with increasing frequency that race "doesn't matter" (or at least "shouldn't matter"), and so it is jarring to explore a novel that purposely calls our attention to the facts of a racist time. Another major theme of the novel concerns the sins of the father as we examine Finn and the Judge, both terrible fathers for very different reasons, who have lasting impact on their children, no matter the age of the child.

Whether the reader finds Finn to be a sympathetic character is something that I cannot predict, for even as I loved the novel, I admit that I took comfort in the knowledge that Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer one day find the body of Huck's pap in a floating house. The knowledge of future justice (or at least an end to one man's capacity for terrible actions) is perhaps the only kindness that we are allowed in the stream of unrelenting violence. The price of this is the knowledge that worse actions happened in the real world at this time, actions grounded in bigotry and hatred, and a great many of those perpetrators went unpunished. For Finn, he might meet a bad end in a bad life, but I cannot be sorry for the conception and telling of his story. Finn is worth the intense scrutiny and study... and Clinch more than acquits himself of being a worthy teller of the tale.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden

With all the hype surrounding the US publication of The Vanishing of Katharina Linden, I was eagerly anticipating Helen Grant's debut. Sadly, the marketing copywriters are doing better work than the actual author and once halfway through the book, I found myself impatiently waiting for the completion of a book that was decently written but poorly conceived. The publisher would do well to stop likening it to other works because not a single comparison pans out... particularly the idea that the narrator here, Pia Kolvenbach, bears any resemblance whatsoever to the intelligent and delightful Flavia de Luce (the creation of Alan Bradley). If anything comes close, it's the reference to the book having the air of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tales -- but the real fairy tales that are frightening and twisted, not the Disney-fied versions, thank goodness -- and yet one wishes that the real plotline had enjoyed some of the imagination that the stories suggest rather than simply lacing Pia's perspective with the stories so that she might half-wonder if fantastic things really are coming to pass. In short, everything that I read about the novel beforehand led me to expect something quite different... and probably soured my reading experience as a result. I found myself a bit annoyed in the beginning because of all this, then was more pleasantly disposed as I focused on the story... but quickly grew annoyed again when the "mystery" worked itself out to be disappointingly predictable. Grant's writing style is acceptable if not particularly noteworthy, but had it not been for the author stumbling onto the legends of this particular German town and retelling them here, I would have found the whole thing very dull indeed.

The Vanishing of Katharina Linden is set in the late 1990s and I started the novel feeling surprised, as nothing I had read seemed to hint at the modern time period. Also surprising was the fact that since the author's European location is hyped, I expected a translated work and was a bit thrown by the ridiculous abundance of German words purposely inserted into the English text. I feared that this would be the only consistent way to tell that the story was set in Germany and not simply any old European town with a history rich in folklore but there are enough subtle differences of to make this somewhat unfounded... and of course, there's the occasional awkward reference to Nazis and the war. There's a glossary in the back of the book, but it's rather unnecessary once one accepts the presence of the liberal scattering of German words. Needless to say, the author is English and simply moved to the Continent with her family... and actually lived in the town where the book is set, as a matter of fact, but I can't see any townspeople thanking her for putting their location on the map if it's to do with the abduction of little girls.

Bad Münstereifel is a small German hamlet, filled with people who like to gossip and since everyone knows everyone (and often knows everything about them for several generations back), few things are ever forgotten. What our ten-year-old narrator, Pia Kolvenbach, would like everyone to forget is the unfortunate incident of her grandmother's demise, which involved an Advent wreath, a match, and an abundance of hairspray. As a result, Pia is the girl whose grandmother exploded and even if it isn't true (she technically died from a heart attack as a result of the surprise of going up in flames at the dining table), it's the thing Pia will be known as to the rest of the town's inhabitants... particularly the nasty school children. After this, Pia can only claim to have one friend, the class pariah known as StinkStefan, and even having this one friend is enough to make Pia depressed if she's sunk so low as to need Stefan's companionship. (Thankfully, Stefan's unfortunate moniker is a result of his tendency to linger like a bad smell rather than from any odor emanating from his personage.) Pia herself is the daughter of a German man and an English woman, a first of two progeny from very tense marriage that is clearly heading for divorce from the get-go. (Side note: they're also terrible parents. Pia's little brother is a baby and given little attention from the narrator. Neither parent seems to make any attempt to connect with their first born and the entirety of their parental concern is expressed in forbidding Pia to go places so she can be safe in the house.)

Well, if gossip is what the town wants, then that's certainly what it gets. Katharina Linden, a little girl nearly the same age as Pia, disappears in the middle of a town holiday celebration where children dressed in costume. The little girl dressed as Snow White simply vanished without a trace and the town can find no sign of her. Immediately, the other children in town feel the repercussions as parents go into overdrive to keep their children indoors and away from whoever or whatever snatched up Katharina Linden. Pia and Stefan are about as interested as anyone in the missing girl and mention as much to their elderly friend, Herr Schiller, a kindly grandfather figure who Pia used to visit with her grandmother and now continues to visit on her own and with Stefan. The allure of Herr Schiller rests in the fact that he treats children like intelligent beings... and has a never-ending supply of stories derived from the fantastic folklore of the area. Unfortunately, Herr Schiller only seems tired when they try to discuss Katharina's disappearance -- and then the children learn that this is due to the fact that Herr Schiller once had a daughter named Gertrud who disappeared years ago in another instance where young girls went missing. The town is inclined to point its finger towards local recluse Herr Düster, Herr Schiller's estranged brother. Frau Kessel, one of the old women in the town with a reputation for knowing everything tells Pia and Stefan that in their youth, both brothers fought over the same woman and Herr Schiller won -- only to have her die of illness during the war and then have his daughter stolen and murdered by a jealous brother. Of course, this is just her suspicion, but in a town where gossip is enough to condemn you, it was only the fact that Herr Schiller did not give credit to this theory that kept Herr Düster from real blame.

Three girls went missing then -- and more girls will go missing in the present time before Pia and Stefan ultimately play a role in solving the mystery. At least the author is not unaware of the danger facing young children as they attempt to solve a crime and adults aren't always as inept as they can sometimes be depicted. Herr Schiller continues to scare the daylights out of Pia and Stefan with his wonderful stories (which are, indeed, quite interesting) and the kids try to survive school and their home lives, turning to the mystery as a thing that they can work on together. At one point in the novel, Pia is sent off to spend part of the summer with her grandmother in England, enduring cruel cousins and intense boredom, before she starts realizing that perhaps this trip wasn't just to keep her safe from whatever is snatching children in her hometown, but perhaps the move might be more permanent as her parents continue to feud.

Ultimately, while I was disappointed with the novel as a whole, there were elements of Grant's writing that I enjoyed and I hope will serve as the cornerstones of her future work so she might improve... though if she continues to write books with this mystery edge to them, I'm not sure I'll bother much as the question of who (or what?) kidnapped the little girls was easy for the reader to decipher from the beginning. I also like the fact that the story is essentially told by Pia looking back on this time of her life with a few years' worth of distance so that occasionally she might note things she hadn't realized at the time, mostly dealing with the motivations of adults that don't make sense to children. Of course, what I particularly liked about this was the fact that adult Pia didn't feel the need to necessarily spell these things out. In all, I wasn't delighted with The Vanishing of Katharina Linden but I did see some promise in Helen Grant that I hope stretches beyond the creativity of the folklore that was the truly delightful part of this novel to carry her through the next few novels that "Delacorte eagerly snapped up" according to the ARC.

An Education

This was utterly fantastic. An Education is a wonderful memoir written by Lynn Barber, a journalist whose career led her to interesting people and places, and whose family led her to many important revelations about life and love. Chiefly, this memoir has gained recognition for the role it played as the jumping-off-point for Nick Hornby's screenplay for the film, An Education, but it deserves a great deal of fuss simply based on its own merit. Do not think that the movie encompasses the entire memoir -- the film is based on a single chapter from Barber's life involving a relationship with an older man while she prepared to attend university. I admit that I saw the movie first, loved it, and became interested in reading the memoir as a result of that, but when a friend (a journalist who bears a striking resemblance to Carey Mulligan) praised the memoir with such enthusiasm, I knew it would be lovely. I did, however, make the mistake of starting to read this in the evening before bed... and then I looked up to find it was after 2am. This could very easily be a single-sitting read and I already have great plans to give this volume as a gift to several witty and intelligent women in my acquaintance. In my discussion of the book below, I might inadvertently give something away, but when it's a memoir, one can hardly call it a "spoiler." Besides, if you're reading this memoir, you should be reading it for the wonderful style of storytelling.

I suppose one can point to her background in journalism for the fact that Barber was able to write such a short memoir with such substantial content and detail. She's able to focus in on the parts of her life that she feels are important without rambling... and without giving the impression that she's skipping anything as a means of glazing over it. She leaves the reader wanting more -- a true accomplishment, indeed, for a memoir. She quickly goes through her childhood and parents, pausing for some lengthier focus on her first significant relationship with an older man named Simon. Quite the charmer, he even wins over her parents with ease, never pushing Barber into anything and yet still making her feel like she was in his debt for first exposing her to the finer things in life. It helps that she also adores his glamorous friends, too. So she ignores his shady business deals and accepts the lack of information she receives about him, submitting to his infantile pet names and handing over her virginity when she reaches seventeen. When Simon proposes and her parents are delighted, noting that now she need not go to university, Barber feels betrayed by what feels like wasted years of education if this is all they wanted for her. What was the point of instilling such a respect for education and learning if she was going to make them just as happy by getting married? Ultimately, Simon turns out to be married already and even though Barber had to leave her school because of the engagement (coincidentally, at her school, they also believed there was no need for her to be both engaged and sitting for exams to enter university), she ultimately succeeds in her parents' original goal of having her attend Oxford University, but not without some cost... "an education," indeed.

Once at Oxford, she embarks upon a hedonistic lifestyle, determined to do the minimal amount of work at school in favor of learning other things from life... which seems to be working decently well for her until she meets the man that she knows is The One from first glance. After finagling herself into sharing a house with him, she and David quickly become an item and eventually get married, having two daughters and creating a non-traditional but quite functional marriage. Details of her marriage and family life are pushed aside for discussion of her career, which one assumes was true in the living of the experience as well as the re-telling. Barber begins her career by proofreading and writing for Penthouse and despite many people asking if she was ashamed of working for a soft-core porn publication, Barber insists that she's quite proud of the experience and indebted to the people she worked with for showing her the ropes of the industry (publishing/journalism, not porn), allowing her to be part of a small publication and thus experience many different perspectives. Ultimately, she moved on to more mainstream journalism, but also penned two books that offered sex advice to women at a time when many such publications were focused a bit more on seductive undressing and married couples communing with each other.

Her memoir covers her wide and varied career in journalism, relating just the perfect amount of witty stories to the point where one wishes there were more. She also discusses her brief experience as a stay-at-home mother and ultimately the narrative shifts to focus a great deal on her husband, whose health declines towards the end of the memoir. The book closes with his death and her coming to grips with her altered reality, touching upon the question as to whether we ever entirely know someone or if we can spend a lifetime with them and still remain a stranger. For Barber, this question comes up when she receives a photograph of David and believes that he must have been in love with the woman who look the picture -- instead of being furious at the idea of her deceased husband's wandering, she experiences a kind of relief for never being home enough or being a good enough wife. Ultimately, though, she comes to believe she was wrong about the question of David having an affair (at least with this particular photograph-taker) and Barber allows the reader to feel mixed emotions with this -- no doubt, the mixed emotions that she, herself, shared.

While the story of Lynn Barber's life to date makes for a great read, its her writing style and her own charm that are the truly appealing points to this memoir. With a reputation for being a savage writer, it should come as no shock that her parents are not treated kid gloves, but then, she herself is subjected to the same treatment. She frankly offers up the fact that she is not at all what most people expect when they meet her, citing her elocution accent as her worst attribute. Her rise within the field is something she rather attributes to chance, but one can see that her writing style is extraordinary. She really gets to the heart of matters, be in analysis of someone else or herself. In the closing chapters surrounding her husband, she is honest in her own feelings of distaste at lingering at David's side in hospitals, opting not to paint herself as a dutiful pillar of wifely devotion. She also brings David under scrutiny, but at last one can see that she's being somewhat delicate there; clearly there was a great amount of love between the two, whatever other problems might have cropped up.

Life is very real the way that Barber depicts it, without any attempt to dress it up or make false claims to spare the "innocent." People can become hypocrites without realizing it; time marches mercilessly on and somehow a loved one can grow old all of a sudden; money cannot solve everything and perhaps one would be happier without it. She's clearly had a very interesting career and I'm only sorry that it took a movie of her novel to bring her work to my attention. She certainly can stand as a bit of a mentor to any young journalists out there, even if the industry is always changing... her lessons on sticking to her own style and seeking out interesting colleagues are certainly timeless. The movie is a very different experience from the book, though a delight in its own right. I can't imagine a similar circumstance where I was as pleased with both book and movie but for very different reasons. That said, don't let the movie stand as a substitute -- this memoir is truly a gem.

Frederica

First off, let me say that this four-star rating is for the story of Frederica itself as written by Georgette Heyer... not the ebook publication -- if I were just rating the ebook edition, I'd be forced to give it two stars for the simple fact that chapters nine and ten were not formatted correctly, requiring the long and rather laborious persistence on the part of the reader as one is forced to translate every ",Äò" or "Äô,"into quotation marks... not to mention every dash, umlaut, or accented letter. And Heyer novels are filled with dashes and dialogue. It was terribly frustrating, particularly as the book was just settling into its delightful rhythm. Really, the publishers ought to be ashamed for such a shoddy publication.

Now, on to the much more pleasing subject of Frederica, which is by far the most delightful Georgette Heyer novel that I've read to date. Quite honestly, I look to Heyer as a novelist whose Regency works all have much the same ring to them but I take some comfort in the predictability. A certain Regency time period (to which I am partial) will be depicted... similarly, there will be at least one couple who achieves a happy end by the time the book closes, usually with the requisite amount of worry that all will come to naught. Such is the case in this novel, but it's not the storyline that makes this such a singularly delightful book; it's the fantastic humor that glitters from most every page.

Indeed, Frederica is a terribly funny novel that follows the plight of one Marquis, Lord Alverstoke, a thirty-seven year old bachelor known for being one of the most elegantly dressed men in London... and quite a rake. He evidently cares for no one and takes pleasure in frustrating his others' plans to either have him matched or somehow make him pay for things that he knows they can quite well afford on their own. One of these sisters is quite determined that Alverstoke should hold a ball at his home to launch her daughter into the ton, but Alverstoke sees no reason on earth why he should saddle himself with such responsibility... not until a distant cousin turns up, asking a small favor that he can quite easily turn into some amusement. Since he's used to being asked for favors and money, it's a bit of a surprise when this cousin only wants a trifling thing and then she and her family spend the rest of the book decidedly trying to not inconvenience him... which only makes him want to offer them everything! Frederica Merriville wants Alverstoke's help in introducing her younger sister, Charis, to London society. A beautiful girl with grace and a sweet temper, Charis should not be allowed to languish in the country and be wasted... or so Frederica quite insists. Normally Alverstoke would not put himself out for anyone, but he finds himself liking Frederica's charming chatter and frank manner, so he agrees to not only own them as family, but stand in as a fake guardian so that they might easily pass in the first circles of society. Alverstoke agrees to host his niece's party... but only if his sister acts as the appropriate woman to sponsor the introduction of both Miss Merrivilles, gaining them access to parties and Almack's. It should be a simple duty discharged, but what Alverstoke doesn't count on is the fact that he becomes quite wrapped up with the Merriville family, including the young brothers Jessamy and Felix who are both unique and interesting boys that could really use a guiding male influence.

Having never really known the warm embrace of a loving family, Alverstoke falls in love with them all... but none so particularly as the smart and clear-headed Frederica, who might not hold a candle to Charis's looks, but he feels Frederica is worth a dozen of her sister. Smart, composed, and charming in her own right, Frederica seems to honestly believe that she's as good as an old maid. She's been running the household for so long that she's long given up any ideas on her own future so she can be mother hen to Charis, Jessamy and Felix... with some mild thought spared for Harry, the eldest boy who's up at Oxford and serves as the titular head of the family now that their parents have died. When problems turn up, though, Frederica finds herself relying more and more on the advice of their dear Cousin Alverstoke and Alverstoke is only too willing to put himself to great trouble for others for the first time in his life. And as another first, Alverstoke now faces a dilemma he's never before encountered: he might realize that he wants her, but what if Frederica does not want him?

It's hard to not fall for the Merriville family, they're such a large, loving and bumbling brood. They all have such good intentions and most of them are smart enough to be interesting conversationalists and characters. Felix is ridiculously intelligent and Jessamy is a bit of an old soul, struggling with moral issues without realizing he should be a boy while he still can. Charis is supposed to be the astonishing beauty, only made more attractive by her sweet disposition and genuine lack of pretension. Of course she's quite dim-witted, which means the reader will find her to be a rather negligible character; it's really Frederica and her brothers that delight. Then there's the wonderful Lufra, the family dog, who drags everyone into some scrape or another. (A particularly ridiculous and wonderful event involves Lufra chasing after cows in a London park and Frederica has to claim that the dog is a rare and expensive Barcelona collie that belongs to the Marquis. The Marquis then finds several disgruntled persons upon his doorstep and he has to snap into gear to catch up with Frederica's tale and insert his own humor -- "not Barcelona, Baluchistan! Baluchistan, Frederica!" -- to save Lufra from being seized by the authorities.)

Alverstoke is a wonderful character... thirty-seven and practically set against marriage, though not quite a confirmed bachelor. His rakish ways mostly occur in the past, so we have to take society's word for it, as he quite quickly begins to fall for Frederica. We at least see ample evidence of him being a selfish fellow without a wish to lift a finger for others in the beginning, but his change happens rather quickly, with occasional moments where you can see his old habits flashing up before his new self triumphs. Particularly charming was his interactions with the two schoolboys; he barks orders and calls them names, but it's all in good fun, so as a result, the boys adore him and obey his every command. Alverstoke himself experiencing for the first time the utter power held by an adoring young boy that might make one "[perjure one's] soul without hesitation" for the sake of that boy's peace of mind and do any number of unpleasant things, like tour a foundry or watch the launching of a balloon. His dry wit makes everything endurable and the boundless energy and antics of the Merriville family are made charming as he comes to think of them as quite his own.

I frequently laughed aloud, quite smitten with the ridiculous prattling of Frederica and the dry barbs of Alverstoke. Indeed, his reactions to tense situations are wonderful and I could quite easily see the dialogue (once the story was sufficiently trimmed and streamlined) being turned into a film. A bit of a comedy of errors, perhaps, even though everything is rather predictable, which isn't always a bad thing. The length of the novel could certainly have been trimmed -- somewhere over halfway through, I found myself wishing that we could get on with things. The names are all ridiculous, to be sure... but still, one endures for the sake of light comedy.

I certainly recommend this novel to anyone looking for a light Regency read, and I challenge you to not find yourself laughing out loud at some point as rakish and selfish Alverstoke transforms into a family man quite by accident. You might want to hit each of the Merrivilles at some point, but in the end, it's all quite worth the read.

Lord John and the Hand of Devils

Lord John and the Hands of Devils is a collection that contains three Lord John mysteries... one simply called a short story and the other two meriting the designation "novella" from the author. Prior to starting the Lord John novels, I should have done a bit of research, as the first of these stories comes before the first novel in chronological order... similarly, the second story comes before the second novel and then the third story finishes things up. Reading them out of order doesn't necessarily harm you, but I wish that I had somehow contrived to figure out the chronological order as it would have filled in some details within the larger books that get more attention in the stories (who kills someone in the Abbey, why suddenly the Prussian guy is pining for John, etc.). It's a quick read, but really only worth it to those who enjoy Gabaldon's other work and, in particular, Lord John.

"Lord John and the Hellfire Club" is the first and shortest of the bunch -- though it is to this story that we are indebted for all of the Lord John spin-off works, as it was this story that launched him as an independent protagonist. Lord John comes across the historically famous/infamous Hellfire Club at Medmenham Abbey as he investigates the death of a young man, a cousin of John's friend Harry Quarry. Immediately returned from his exile in Scotland and still burning with desire for Jamie Fraser, John is implored by Harry Quarry's (gay) cousin for assistance in a certain matter, but before John can meet him to discuss the matter, the young man is killed. John is then courted by the elite club, which includes an ex-lover of his among the members, but he's quite right to believe that there are many things amiss with the Hellfire Club. Very short and simple, this mystery solves itself quite quickly, but one must at least appreciate this story for spurring Gabaldon to write other Lord John tales.

In "Lord John and the Succubus," Lord John is stationed in Gundwitz with a companies of Prussian and English troops as they attempt to rout some French and Austrians, but the men seem more frightened by rumors of a demon spirit in the area. Of course, Lord John is smart enough to see mortal hands behind these actions... though it might take some real magic if he wants to keep out of a widowed Princess's matrimonial designs and get a moment alone to find out if his friendship with handsome German soldier Namtzen is just brotherly love or a bit more. The mystery isn't much of a mystery, but there are some amusing scenes of suspense and the standard fear that men have about their manhood and essence being stolen.

For "Lord John and the Haunted Soldier," you certainly need to have read Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade to understand everything well -- because the story largely concerns the battle of Crefield, which closed out that novel. Lord John is summoned before a military commission that is concerned with the explosion of the gun he had commanded and the death of a lieutenant, floating the veiled accusation that it might have been Lord John's inept leadership that led to it. The military seems more concerned about the gun, which leaves John to try and see what right he can do by the family of the lieutenant and the man's missing widow. Lord John also investigates some leads on what caused the gun's explosion and finds a few problems, including the faulty construction of guns due to someone inside the military stealing copper and the potentially volatile ammunition provided by John's half-brother's company.

In the author's notes before each story, Gabaldon makes jokes about the fact that by the time she's hit the page count for a Lord John novel, she generally feels like she's just starting up the story, so real short stories and novellas were quite the challenge indeed. Her real talent lies in creating wonderful characters and taking them through epic stories, so while individual stories might not be ideal as short stories on their own outside of the context of the larger world, they are lovely little installments in the ongoing story of Lord John Grey. I l like Lord John as a strong male figure who happens to be homosexual -- while this fact of his existence doesn't define his life, it does play a large role. He's witty and clever... and there's always the odd glimpse of Jamie, which is fun. I do hope that Gabaldon eventually gives us a story that takes us through the healing of his friendship with Jamie... which might relieve poor John from pining after his russet-haired Scot.