The Shooting Party

Earl Grey tea goes well with English lit.

Author: Isabel Colegate

Category: This is the first time I’ve read this one. I discovered it while perusing reviews on amazon.com.

My thoughts: It took a minute for me to get into this book, but I really liked it. It did more to satiate my Downton Abbey cravings than Snobs. The Shooting Party, in fact, has some similarities to Downton. Both are set just before World War I and have an upstairs/downstairs vibe going on. The Shooting Party is set in the fall of 1913 at the estate of Sir Randolph Nettleby. He has invited a group of people to his estate for a shooting party. The action takes place less than a year before those fateful guns of August, and the threat of war is very much in the air. Colegate writes, “By the time the next season came round a bigger shooting party had begun, in Flanders.” It’s an ominous feeling reading about these characters, knowing that the very fabric of their lives would be rent in less than a year. There’s a parallel between the shoot and the brutality of war—the men in the story pick off pheasants left and right in a methodical way that foreshadows the mechanized warfare that was World War I.

I had to take notes on the characters, because there are quite a few of them. Aside from Sir Randolph, there is his wife Minnie, who may or may not have had an affair with King Edward VII (Minnie reminded me a bit of the Duchess of Cornwall), Lord Gilbert Hartlip, who is a renowned shooter, and his wife Aline, who is having an affair with Charles Farquhar, a fellow guest. Bob Lilburn, another guest, is there with his wife Olivia, who is smitten with fellow guest Lionel Stephens. Also, there is Cecily, Sir Randolph’s nineteen-year-old granddaughter, who is enjoying a flirtation with Tibor Rakassyi, a visiting Hungarian count. My favorite character is Osbert, Sir Randolph’s eccentric young grandson who has a pet duck.

The “downstairs” people include Glass, head groundskeeper of the Nettleby estate, and his son Dan, who shows a proclivity to science that is encouraged by Sir Randolph and looked upon skeptically by Glass himself. Also, there is Ellen, Cecily’s maid, who is in love with John, one of Sir Randolph’s footmen. There’s also Cornelius Cardew, an anti-blood sport fanatic who plans to “educate” those present at the shooting party about the perils of what they are doing.

I remember having to learn the causes of World War I in my high school history class, one of which was nationalism—the kind that is actually jingoism. And it’s very much on display here. Both upstairs and downstairs people believe Britain and the British Empire are the bees-knees. Ida, Sir Randolph’s daughter-in-law and Cecily’s mother, states that her husband is against Cecily marrying “anyone except an Englishman” (too bad for Tibor Rakassyi). Dan Glass liked “being part of an Empire that he had been told at school and had found no difficulty in believing was the best there had ever been.” There’s a very Kipling-esque vibe here. The Shooting Party gives a snapshot of a time when the sun never set on the Empire—an Empire that began to unravel when World War I was over.

Isabel Colegate’s writing reminded me of Maud Martha, in that both are written in a simple and profound way. There are no chapters in The Shooting Party, oddly enough. But this makes the story flow better. It’s just plain old damn good fiction. It’s a beautifully written novel, and I’m sure I’ll read this one again.

Great passage: He would have been surprised to learn that Sir Randolph, unlike Minnie who aspired to it, considered cosmopolitanism a vice. It was all right to know your way around Paris, Sir Randolph thought, and to visit Italian picture galleries or the relics of the classical world, but generally speaking a man should stick to one country and be proud of it. If one wanted to travel there was always the Empire.

Up next: The Guns of August (continuing the World War I theme)

The Age of Innocence

Fun bookmark!

Author: Edith Wharton

Category: I first read this about 10 years ago, and it ignited my utter love of and complete devotion to Edith Wharton.

My thoughts: It’s such a treat to read this book again! Edith Wharton won a very well-deserved Pulitzer Prize for writing this, and it’s easy to see why. This book is an absolute gem—a great story told by a master.

The main character of The Age of Innocence is Newland Archer, a product of upper-class late-nineteenth-century New York society. He is engaged to another product of this society, May Welland (Winona Ryder played May in the movie version of The Age of Innocence, and I can’t help but picture her as I read the book, even though May has blonde hair in the novel). However, their little world is disrupted by the arrival of Countess Olenska (what a great name), May’s cousin, who decamped to America to escape an abusive husband in Europe. Newland is at first sort of irritated by her presence, but soon becomes intrigued by her. Because she lived abroad most of her life, Ellen Olenska is different in ways that intrigue Archer. For Ellen, I think, Archer represents stability—which she never had during her nomadic upbringing or in her marriage. They fall for each other—but under some very impossible circumstances. Of course, Newland and Ellen are living at a time when divorce is a gigantic no-no. The whole of society seems to be forcing them apart.

I like how Edith Wharton depicts the slow burn of attraction and love that occurs between Newland and Ellen. The two only kiss a couple of times, but each encounter between them is quietly erotic. The Age of Innocence is mainly told from Newland’s point of view, but the novel, I think, is really about the women. Ellen Olenska and May Welland are very intriguing characters. May has the appearance of a placid milquetoast. She’s called childlike several times in the novel, but Wharton also compares her to Diana quite a few times. Toward the end of the book, a part of May’s personality is shown that suddenly renders her more complicated than her image suggests. Ellen Olenksa, for her part, seems like she’d be fun to hang out with. She is smart, loyal, and possesses a very hard-earned wisdom. She is sort like a tougher version of Isabel Archer. And then there’s Granny Mingott, May and Ellen’s venerable old grandmother who says and does the things that only older people can say and do—and get away with.

Another interesting female character is Medora Manson, Ellen and May’s weird aunt, who, if she existed now, would be some sort of New Age former hippie. I love Edith Wharton’s description of her outfit when Newland meets her: “This lady, who was long, lean and loosely put together, was clad in raiment intricately looped and fringed, with plaids and stripes and bands of plain color disposed in a design to which the clue seemed to missing.” Ha! This made me wonder how Edith Wharton would describe the outfits of hipsters.

I never noticed until now how literary The Age of Innocence is. Wharton mentions poetry by Tennyson (yay!), Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It warmed my little English major heart! I got the urge to dig out my Victorian poetry book from grad school and reread “The Lotus Eaters” and “How they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix.” I have to say that although I love Tennyson, I’m not a big fan of “The Lotus Eaters” (neither is May Welland).

I had forgotten how melancholy the last chapter of this novel is. It has a wistful, almost sad tone, but is not maudlin. The last chapter highlights an element that has been prominent character in the entire novel—change. The novel starts in the 1870s and ends and ends about a quarter of a century later. During this time, the elements of change shift the strict mores of New York society, the face of New York itself, and the world outside the insular community in which the characters live.

Great passage: There were certain things that had to be done, and if done at all, done handsomely and thoroughly; and one of these in the old New York code, was the tribal rally around a kinswoman about to be eliminated from the tribe.

Up next: The Shooting Party

Snobs



Earl Grey tea cookies!

Author: Julian Fellowes

Category: I was in the local library, happened to see this book, got intrigued, and picked it up.

My thoughts: OK, I was attracted to this book for two reasons: 1) Julian Fellowes is the creator of Downton Abbey, and I’ve been going through some definite Downton withdrawals and 2) my latent Anglophilia was recently brought to the surface because of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubiliee and needed some sort of expression. Having said that, I was a bit underwhelmed by this book. I thought it was OK, but not something I’ll read again.

An unnamed narrator who is an actor relates the story of Snobs. In this book, an upper-middle-class young woman, Edith Lavery, meets and marries Charles, Earl Broughton, and heir to the Marquess of Uckfield. However, Edith is initially bored with her aristocratic marriage and, when a period drama comes to film at Broughton, the family home, Edith decides to plunge into a tawdry affair with one of the actors, Simon. Lady Uckfield, Charles’s formidable mother, never warmed to Edith and saw her affair as typical behavior for those not “to the manor born.” Reading this book, I was reminded of The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate (set in England’s upper class society) by Nancy Mitford, but I also thought about The Portrait of a Lady—the latter because Edith’s decisions are in stark contrast to those of Isabel Archer. Isabel realizes she’s married to a man far more evil than Charles Broughton, but she, Isabel, decides to stick it out and live with her decision.

There isn’t a character in Snobs that I really liked a lot. I was ambivalent about Edith, and she started to get on my nerves as the novel wore on, to be perfectly honest. I kept thinking, “Make a decision and stick with it, girl!” Lady Uckfield, snob though she may be, is probably the character I liked the most. I can see her growing up to be the Dowager Countess . In fact, Fellowes mentions Edwardian England—the era in which Downton Abbey is set—several times. I wonder if the idea of Downton occurred to Fellowes while writing this book. One thing I liked about Snobs is all the references to historical figures, from Nell Gwyn to Consuelo Vanderbilt (whose life was right out of an Edith Wharton novel. There were also some funny moments in Snobs, but, like I said, I don’t think this is one that I’ll revisit.

Reading this book, I got a strong craving for tea. But it’s pretty hot here in Memphis, and I don’t like to drink hot stuff in summer—unless it’s my morning coffee. However, I came across a recipe for Earl Grey tea cookies. Problem solved! They were quite good, and here’s the recipe.

Great passage: The party was on its last legs. A few of us had been invited to stay on for dinner and we were in that uncomfortable, if familiar, period when almost everyone who is not invited to remain has gone but there is always a couple who do not realise that they are delaying the launch of the next stage of the evening. Usually, the hostess weakens and says to the obdurate, ‘Do stay for something to eat if you’d like to.’ To the trained ear, this translates as, ‘Please go. We are hungry and you are not invited.’

Up next: The Age of Innocence (can’t get enough of Edith Wharton)

Happy Birthday Gwendolyn Brooks!



Photo via http://www.poets.org/

Today is Gwendolyn Brooks' birthday! She was born on this day in 1917, and went on to write the lovely Maud Martha and a bunch of wonderful poems. She died in December of 2000. Doesn't she look like a sassy grandma in that picture?

The House of Mirth

Author: Edith Wharton

Outdoor reading (which is nice to do before it gets too hot!)

Category: I first read The House of Mirth about 12 years ago—because I thought it was a classy thing to read. And I don’t remember what my impression was. I read it for the second time about three years ago, while unemployed, and I got a whole lot more out of it then. This is the third time I’ve read it (yes, I really have a tendency to reread things).

 My thoughts: Have I mentioned that I think Edith Wharton was a genius and insanely talented? I really really love her! The House of Mirth is a tragic tale of Lily Bart, a woman who, at the beginning of the novel, is at the top of New York society at the turn of the 20^th century. She is groomed to be married, and seems to fight an internal battle over this—she makes efforts to attract wealthy suitors, but then loses interest (is it self-sabotage?) and her chances wither away. Two potential suitors circle her throughout the novel—Lawrence Selden, a sort of middle-class lawyer, and Simon Rosedale, an upstart businessman who is in the process of elbowing his way into society.  I once heard this book described as a Cinderella story in reverse (by whom, I don’t remember). That pretty much sums it up, as Lily experiences a gradual but definite (and heartbreaking) fall from grace.

It’s frustrating that Lily did not have more survival skills. She lacked cunning and the ability to look a reality in the face and deal with it. Other people do wrong by her, but part of Lily’s downfall is her own fault. To me, she needed more toughness and to make better decisions. I think also she does not have the ability to read people, and is a bit naïve. Bertha Dorset, a society maven (and resident mean girl) commits a casual strike against Lily at the beginning of the story. Lily could have learned not to trust her—but instead she puts herself in a situation where she is basically at Bertha’s mercy, and then becomes the victim of a mean betrayal by Mrs. Dorset. I wish that Lily had just married Selden. Or if she didn’t want to be middle class (because Selden was not quite poor), she should have just sucked it up and married one of the dull men whom she had been groomed to marry. Lily kind of wants to have her cake and eat it too, and she is a frustrating heroine. But despite all this, I really feel sorry for her. She is not a villain, and she is not a cruel person. She doesn’t strike back when attacked—which is frustrating, but admirable. I tell you, it’s a great book that can elicit such emotions about a fictional main character!

 It’s also interesting to read this book with Undine Spragg from The Custom of the Country in mind. Undine had the toughness and cunning (too much so, to be sure) that Lily lacked.  Undine Spragg knew how to play the society game. Lily couldn’t and didn’t. At one point, Lily tells her friend, Carry Fisher, “The world is too vile.” “It’s not a pretty place; and the only way to keep a footing in it is to fight it on its own terms,” says Carrie. That’s what our dear Ms. Spragg did. In the end, I think The House of Mirth is a cautionary tale.

 I was reading this book when I travelled to New York recently. There, my mother and I visited the Morgan Library and the Frick Collection—the latter is on Fifth Avenue, which was well trod by Lily Bart in the novel. It was quite nice being in the midst of reading this amazing book (I really do love it) and being in the world that Lily Bart—and Edith Wharton—knew so well.

 Great passage: But it is one thing to live comfortably with the abstract conception of poverty, another to be brought in contact with its human embodiments. Lily had never conceived of these victims of fate otherwise than in the mass. That the mass was composed of individual lives, innumerable separate centres of sensation, with her own eager reachings for pleasure, her own fierce revulsions from pain—that some of these bundles of feeling were clothed in shapes not so unlike her own, with eyes meant to look on gladness, and young lips shaped for love—this discovery gave Lily one of those sudden shocks of pity that sometimes decentralize a life.

 P.S. At a society party that Lily attends, female guests dress up as subjects of famous works of art in a tableaux vivant. Lily dresses up as Mrs. Lloyd by Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Mrs. Lloyd by Sir Joshua Reynolds

When I read this book before, I had no idea who most of the artists were—like Watteau, Kauffman, and Sir Joshua Reynolds himself. But now, after taking an art history class last year, I know about these people! Yay!

 Up next, Snobs by Julian Fellowes

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry

Nourishing breakfast. Nourishing book.

Author: Mildred D. Taylor

Category: Growing up, I was aware that this book existed. But when I was younger, I avoided reading it because I thought it would be too intense. So I didn’t read it until about three years ago. This is the second time I’ve read it.

My thoughts: It’s a crying shame that I didn’t read it as a child. It’s a wonderful book. Recently, I was talking to one of our interns at work, who had just read To Kill a Mockingbird. She said that found that it was hard to read, because of what happens to Tom Robinson. I told her not to avoid reading things just because they are difficult. I wish someone had told me that years ago, so I would have read this book…and several others. The “difficult” stories are some of the best and most important ones. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry is set in 1933 in rural Mississippi. The story is narrated by Cassie Logan, a nine-year-old who lives with her parents, grandmother, and three brothers (Stacey, Christopher-John, and Little Man) on their own land. This makes them different from the other black families in the area, most of whom sharecrop. Because it’s 1933 in Mississippi, life is not easy for or kind to the Logans. Cassie and her three brothers walk to school each day because their school has no buses, and they are splashed with dirt and mud by the bus driver who drives the school bus for the white kids, who taunt the Logans from the school bus windows (my stepfather reported something similar happening to him on the way to school in rural Mississippi, some three decades after this story was set). In this environment, men in a neighboring town were burned alive by whites who accused one of flirting with a white woman, and night riders strike terror in the hearts of Cassie and her family. Cassie learns the hard way the deeply ingrained codes of behavior that she must adhere to—for her own safety and survival. However…her family owns four hundred acres of their own land. And this is what gives them pride and self-esteem in the midst of a very harsh reality.

This book has interesting secondary characters. One is Uncle Hammer, Cassie’s outspoken uncle, a World War I veteran who lives in Chicago (no doubt part of the Great Migration, like in The Warmth of Other Suns). Another character is Jeremy Simms, a white boy who wants to be friends with Cassie’s brother Stacey. Jeremy never rides the school bus, preferring to walk with the Logans on their way to school. Also, there is T.J. Avery, Stacey’s trickster, up-to-no-good friend. T.J. is sort of a foil to Stacey—T.J.’s family sharecrops, thus are entrapped in this cruel cycle of debt, and there’s an undercurrent of envy to his relationship with Stacey, whose family is a little better off than T.J’s. Unfortunately, T.J. meets a cruel fate by placing value in the wrong things.

One reason I like this book because it reflects some of the experiences of my family. I remember my mother telling me that at her school books were those that the white schools discarded—like those of Cassie, and all students at her school. I think it took reading this book for me to understand the importance, to a generation of Americans who grew up on farms, of owning one’s own land. My grandfather, after years of first sharecropping, then renting farmland, finally bought his own plot of land in Arkansas in the 1960s. I can only imagine that purchasing that land made him feel (maybe for the first time) part of the American Dream.

And I was right about my first thoughts about Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry—this book is not a lighthearted reading experience. Meredith Taylor does not sugarcoat the harshness and cruelty of Cassie Logan’s world. But, like To Kill a Mockingbird, this is an important story.

P.S. The characters, especially Cassie’s grandmother Big Ma, remind me of Sharecropper by the late, great Elizabeth Catlett.

Image via The Art Institute of Chicago

Great passage (after Uncle Hammer gives Stacey a severe dressing down): Christopher-John, Little Man, and I exchanged apprehensive glances. I don’t know what they were thinking, but I for one was deciding right then and there not to do anything to rub Uncle Hammer the wrong way; I had no intention of ever facing a tongue-lashing like that. Papa’s bottom-warming whippings were quite enough for me, thank you.

Next up: The House of Mirth

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Hello, Francie...

Author: Betty Smith

Category: I first read this book in 2007 (incidentally, about a month after I visited Brooklyn for the first time). This is the third time I’ve reread it.

My thoughts: I absolutely love this book. I wish I had read it earlier, but it was nice reading it after I had actually been to Brooklyn, because the novel mentions neighborhoods that I had just been in (Williamsburg and Greenpoint). Francie Nolan is the main character of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. She and her family live in a tenement in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (now home to scores of hipsters) at the beginning of the 20^th century. They are a poor family, and Francie’s father is an alcoholic. Although this is often thought of as a children’s book, I think it’s a book for adults as well. Betty Smith doesn’t shy away from the reality that Francie and her brother Neeley sometimes go hungry, and that their father is drinking himself to death. But there are great lessons about the importance of survival skills, the rewards of education, and the joy and comfort of family.

One thing I love about this book is the descriptions of food. Francie’s mother, Katie, has to make do with next to nothing, and the family’s sustenance consists mainly of stale bread. Out of this, Katie made bread pudding, among other things. Having meat with a meal was special to this family. To the Nolans, food is precious and nothing is wasted (except coffee— Katie allows Francie to pour her cup of coffee down the sink, because it makes her feel rich to waste at least one thing). By the way, I am really fascinated with dishes that early 20^th century immigrants ate.

Francie is born, her grandmother Mary tells Katie, “In teaching your child, do not forget that suffering is good too. It makes a person rich in character.” This is such an old-school piece of parental advice. It’s easy (or maybe preferable) to forget this, but it’s true. Speaking of which, Katie Nolan is certainly not a helicopter parent. In one of my favorite passages, she sends Francie to negotiate with the hard-bitten butcher. It’s a little terrifying, but it’s the moment when, as a reader, you gain respect and admiration for Francie, who deals with the cursing butcher timidly, but she does what she needs to do. I don’t know if I would be able to do that now, much less as an eleven-year-old. In another moment in the book, Francie goes to the cigar store by herself to get a cigar for her father. This definitely would not happen today!

Another great passage is about the tradition of throwing leftover Christmas trees at people at midnight on Christmas Eve. If one could withstand having a tree thrown at them, they got to keep it. Francie volunteers herself and her brother to have a chance to get the biggest tree. I read an excerpt of this chapter back in 7^th grade, and I remember being a bit apprehensive that two skinny kids are able to withstand having a gigantic Christmas tree thrown at them. But they do—these kids are tough as nails.

I seem to keep coming back to this book. I like stories about tough people, especially tough children. Francie has a rough life, but she knows how to hustle. That’s what I like about her. She’s a fighter. A neighbor tells her, “You won’t die, Francie. You were born to lick this rotten life.” Like I said before, I thought of Francie while reading A Hope in the Unseen. Francie, like Cedric Jennings, has both book smarts and street smarts, and fights to get a good education. I think they are both very American stories that embody the idea that hard work and higher education can lead to success. I also think Francie is similar to Maud Martha. Both Francie and Maud Martha are imaginative and strong, and both have to deal with the hard knocks of life, but don’t let those hard knocks defeat them. They both see beauty where others would not.

By the way, I’ve also read one of Betty Smith’s other novels, Joy in the Morning. Not as majestic as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, but it’s very good.

Great passage: Happy that the meat business was over, Francie bought two cents’ worth of soup greens from the green grocer’s. She got an emasculated carrot, a droopy leaf of celery, a soft tomato and a fresh sprig of parsley. These would be boiled with the bone to make a rich soup with shreds of meat floating in it. Fat, homemade noodles would be added. This, with the seasoned marrow spread on bread, would make a good Sunday dinner.

Up next: I’m rereading another “traditional” children’s book that adults would get a lot out of—Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.