Murder on the Orient Express

Wacky manicure.

Author: Agatha Christie

Category: This is the first time I have read this book. I wanted to read a mystery, and Agatha Christie was the best at writing them.

My thoughts: Really good! This book kept me guessing until the end, and the ending definitely surprised me. I have only read one other Agatha Christie novel, And Then There Were None. And I have to say, I like Murder on the Orient Express more.

Murder on the Orient Express takes place on the Stamboul-Calais coach of the Orient Express (Stamboul is an alternate name for Istanbul). When the train is stopped by a snowdrift in Vincovci (which is in what used to be Yugoslavia and what is currently Croatia), a man named Ratchett is killed (every time I read his name, I thought of the slang term). The director of the train, Monsieur Bouc, recruits his detective friend Hercule Poirot, who happens to be on the train, to help solve the mystery of Ratchett's death. The case involves a kidnapping that occurred years earlier and is reminiscent of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. I think it’s difficult to write about a mystery, because one doesn’t want to give away the ending. So this post will be a bit short. But, as I said before, I liked Murder on the Orient Express a lot. Agatha Christie has a lot of dry humor, and the story is very well-written and well-paced. I definitely want to read more Agatha Christie mysteries in the future. I hear Death on the Nile is good.

Great passage: The examination was quickly over. Mrs. Hubbard was travelling with the minimum of luggage—a hat-box, a cheap suitcase, and a well-burdened travelling bag. The contents of all three were simple and straightforward, and the examination would not have taken more than a couple of minutes had not Mrs. Hubbard delayed matters by insisting on due attention being paid to photographs of “my daughter” and of two rather ugly children—“my daughter’s children. Aren’t they cunning?”

Up next: When We Were Colored

Between Shades of Gray

Drink something hot when reading about Siberia!

Author: Ruta Sepetys

Category: I heard about this book about a year ago, when I read something about how people were confusing it with Fifty Shades of Gray. I put it on my list of books to read. A few weeks ago, my thirteen-year-old cousin read it, really liked it, and recommended it to me.

My thoughts: This is a wonderful book! It actually made me cry (more on that later). Between Shades of Gray is narrated by fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas, a Lithuanian budding artist, who is arrested with her mother and younger brother and deported by the Russian secret police, the NKVD, along with other Lithuanians during one of Stalin's purges. They endured a torturous six-week journey to Siberia in cattle cars that reminded me of descriptions of those who were transported on slave ships. When they reach their destination, Lina’s family is forced to participate in collective farming under the watchful and brutal eyes of NKVD officers. Lina tries to send her father, who was also captured, messages through her art. Later in the book, she and her family are transported again, into the freezing depths of Siberia. Here, people around them freeze to death, and diseases like typhoid run rampant.

One of the things I love about being a reader is that it allows me to learn, or begin to learn, a subject about which I knew absolutely nothing before. It allows me to see a glimpse into a very specific world. So I am grateful that I came across this book, because it tells of a story that I was quite unfamiliar with. I remember, in seventh grade, having to name all of the former USSR countries—some with difficult names like Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan—for a map test. Part of me wished the USSR had stayed together a little while longer, so I could just write “USSR” on the map test, instead of remembering and naming over a dozen countries with names that were difficult to spell. I felt a little ashamed thinking about that while reading this book. Those countries like Lithuania, which were absorbed into the USSR, suffered a great deal for decades, and the fact that they eventually became their own nations again is a blessing.

Now, during the course of my life, I’ve read a LOT of books. But I rarely cry at something I’ve read. And, as I said before, his book made me cry. Lina and her family endure so much, and there are some heartbreaking moments in this book. Now, when I look at a map of Europe and see Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, I won’t see some random countries I had to memorize to pass a test. I now realize that these countries once disappeared from the world map, and that it’s special that they are independent nations once again.

Great passage: Images streaked and bled together, contorted by my speed—Ulyushka, grinning with yellow teeth; Ona in the dirt, her one dead eye open; the guard moving toward me, smoke blowing from his pursed lips—Stop it, Lina—Papa’s battered face looking down at me from the hole; dead bodies lying next to the train tracks; the commander reaching for my breast. STOP IT! I couldn’t.

Up next: Murder on the Orient Express

Lazy Sunday

The past two weeks have been super-busy, so I decided to have a lazy Sunday. I made myself some homemade pancakes and read Twilight Sleep. Very nice.

There Are No Children Here

Good book. Comfy blanket. Dorky socks.

Author: Alex Kotlowitz

Category: I had heard about this book in passing over the years, but was intrigued to start reading it after it was mentioned in A Hope in the Unseen.

My thoughts: This book was very good, but hard to read. I probably would have finished it earlier, but I couldn’t read too much at once because it was just so depressing. It raises a lot of questions with no solutions. There Are No Children Here is set in the Henry Horner Homes, brutal housing projects in Chicago, in the late 1980s. The story follows two young brothers, Lafeyette and Pharoah Rivers (that’s actually how their names are spelled—autocorrect does not approve) as they navigate this cruel world where drugs are sold, gangs run rampant, and murder is the norm. Their mother, LaJoe, has seven children in all at the age of thirty-five.

Reading this book, I was reminded of The Warmth of Other Suns. The occurrences in There Are No Children Here reveal the ugly underbelly of the Great Migration’s successors. Blacks who migrated to Chicago were forced to live in slummy sections of the city. Low-income housing (the projects) was built in the middle of the 20th Century ostensibly to provide shelter for the urban poor. But what was meant to be a solution created a much bigger problem. I was also reminded of the 1970s sitcom Good Times , which was set in Chicago, while reading this book. During the opening and closing credits of Good Times, the Cabrini-Green housing projects were featured. My mom said she never cared much for Good Times because nothing good ever happened to the Evans family until the very last episode. Reading this book, I see that this is how things are—in that way, the series reflected real life (that is, until that miraculous last episode when the stars suddenly and perfectly aligned for the Evans family). There are small victories for the Rivers family (Pharoah, who is more sensitive than his brother, gets second place in the spelling bee), but there is not a Deus ex machina that pulls the Rivers family out of poverty. There Are No Children Here reveals how people get trapped in this cycle of poverty, and it is very hard to break that cycle.

The book takes its name from a quote from Lafeyette and Pharoah’s mom, LaJoe: “But you know, there are no children here. They’ve seen too much to be children.” It’s really hard to read about these children who have witnessed so much horror and despair in their young lives. Lafeyette in particular is afraid to get close to people because he doesn’t know if they will either be a bad influence or end up getting killed. And, unfortunately, a quick Google search reveals that Lafeyette and Pharoah do not have real-life fairy tale endings. It’s also unfortunate that this cycle of violence is still going on in Chicago. And there seems to be no end in sight. There have been so many young lives snuffed out. Then I think about Cedric Jennings from A Hope in the Unseen, and if there are any differences between his situation and that of the Rivers family. What separated Cedric from Lafeyette and Pharoah was that he, Cedric, had a really strong, driven mother, a much better support system and way more stubbornness and drive. I think the key to getting out of poverty is access to a good education. However, that in itself is not exactly easy.

Great passage: For the first time, Pharoah, now ten, began to wonder aloud about being black. “Do all black people live in projects?” he asked his mother. “Do all black people be poor?” He was upset that Michael Dukakis hadn’t chosen Jesse Jackson at his running mate. “He might of won then,” he thought aloud. “Why don’t people elect black people?”

P.S. Even though Good Times was, at times, depressing, it was still funny.

Up next: Twilight Sleep, by my beloved Edith Wharton

Off Topic: Now, Voyager

Now, Voyager (1942)

Category: I first came across Now, Voyager during my old movie phase as a teenager.

My thoughts: I love this movie, but it’s a bit melodramatic, especially toward the end. Now, Voyager has several elements: mother/daughter conflict, star-crossed lovers, and a glimpse into psychiatry in the early 1940s. This movie is the story of Charlotte Vale (played by Bette Davis), whose crotchety mother is domineering to the point of tyranny. As a result, Charlotte is incredibly repressed and on the verge of a breakdown. A kind psychiatrist, Dr. Jaquith (played by Claude Rains), intervenes, sends Charlotte to a sanitarium. She then gets a makeover (the kind always featured in those preteen novels I used to read, when an awkward girl returned to school in the fall with a completely new look) and goes on a cruise. There, she meets and falls in love with Jerry, played by Paul Henreid. But, you know, the course of true love never did run smooth.

The moment Charlotte comes back from her cruise and moves in with her mother again, it’s business as usual as far as her mother is concerned. Her mother refuses to acknowledge that Charlotte has grown. It’s a reminder that when you’ve experienced positive changes in life, it does not mean that the people around you have done the same or even appreciate that you’ve changed. People tend to relapse into the same roles, especially adults and their children. This film features a cute and famous moment where Jerry lights two cigarettes and then gives one to Charlotte. Well, I’m sure it was cute in 1942—nowadays, the Surgeon General and every anti-smoking organization in America would be after those two.

When I first saw this movie, it was a bit odd seeing Bette Davis play such a milquetoast after seeing her be something of a hellraiser in All About Eve. And those infamous Bette Davis eyes convey Charlotte’s sense of sadness, just as they blazed with fury in All About Eve—really, Bette Davis was a phenomenal actress. It was also unusual for me to see Claude Rains in such a kind role after seeing him play shady characters in Notorious, Casablanca, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. And I usually think of Paul Henreid as Victor Lazlo from Casablanca. The movie is based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty, who also wrote Stella Dallas, which was also made into a movie, but I’ve never seen it. The novel takes its name from a line in a Walt Whitman poem: “Now, voyager, sail thou forth, to seek and find.” This actually reminds me of Tennyson’s "Ulysses." This is a good movie for a lazy weekend, when you just want to curl up in a blanket and watch a good black and white movie.

Great lines:
Dr. Jaquith: “My dear Mrs. Vale, if you had deliberately and maliciously planned to destroy your daughter’s life, you couldn’t have done it more completely.”
Charlotte’s mom: “How? By having exercised a mother’s rights?”
Dr. Jaquith: “A mother’s rights, twaddle. A child has rights, a person has rights, to discover her own mistakes, to make her own way, to grow and blossom in her own particular soil.”

Atonement, Part 2

My thoughts: Finished it! I think this book is phenomenal, and it’s one of those books that I found myself thinking about a lot when I wasn’t reading it and after I finished. The second part of Atonement finds Robbie fighting for survival in France in 1940 during World War II. Briony’s accusation sends Robbie to prison, but gets to leave prison early on the condition that he join the British army. He was part of the British forces that were trapped by the Germans in Dunkirk at the beginning of the war. We all know who the eventual victors of World War II were, but it must have been terrifying for the British to face this early German victory, not knowing how things would turn out. The events in Dunkirk play a large part in the story, which was intriguing to me because I really don’t remember being taught a lot about it—it was little more than a paragraph in my history books. Granted, most discussions of World War II in my history classes were American-centric, but even in Western Civilization, there wasn’t much discussion of Dunkirk. I guess I’m saying that because it took this book for me to realize the horror of what happened there. In Atonement, the Dunkirk section is almost 100 pages, and lays bare the brutality and horror of the march to Dunkirk. Dead soldiers and civilians line the roads, and the British soldiers are under constant threat of attack. And Robbie Turner experiences this all. And we are reminded that he sees this because a weird little girl told a lie that sent him to prison.

Speaking of Briony, in the last half of the book, she realizes the effects of what she has done. In 1940, an eighteen-year-old Briony is training to be a nurse, having given up a place at Cambridge. After reading about Robbie’s experiences at Dunkirk, I was filled with hatred for Briony. But reading the section about her experiences made me dislike her less, even if it didn’t exactly fill me with sympathy for her. McEwan writes, “Her secret torment and the public upheaval of war had always seemed separate worlds, but now she understood how the war might compound her crime.” She really tries to be helpful and to be of use, especially when the wounded British soldiers arrive from Dunkirk. And she feels guilty about what she’s done. However, I’ll save my sympathy for the man she sent to prison.

Reading Atonement made me thing about thirteen-year-olds and maturity. I was talking to my mother about this a few weeks ago. Some thirteen-year-olds are more mature than others. It’s a fine line, though—you want them to be mature, because they’re growing up, but you don’t want them to act too grown. Briony, maturity-wise, was at about an eight or nine-years old level when she was thirteen. She had a lot of growing up to do. And when we meet the eighteen-year-old Briony, we see that she has grown up. But, on the other hand, plenty of thirteen-year-olds are underdeveloped, but that doesn’t make it OK to falsely accuse someone of rape.

One of the main themes of Atonement is that actions have consequences. Sometimes they are immediate, and sometimes the effects last for years. This book gave me a lot to think about. I like to read it again someday, and I need to rewatch the movie. If there is a tiny flaw in this book, in my opinion, it is that there needed to be more about Cecilia. She seemed like the character that had the most sense.

Great passage (where one gets a very palpable feeling of Briony’s experiences as a nurse): At many beds, nurses were removing dirty dressings. Always a decision, to be gentle and slow, or firm and quick and have it over with in one moment of pain. This ward favored the latter, which accounted for some of the shouts. Everywhere, a soup of smells—the sticky sour odor of fresh blood, and also filthy clothes, sweat, oil, disinfectant, medical alcohol, and drifting above it all, the stink of gangrene.

Up next: Not sure…

Isabel Wilkerson!

There she is...from a slightly blurry distance.

Tonight, I saw Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns, give a lecture at the University of Memphis. This was neat for me because a lot of the authors of my favorite books are dead (Edith Wharton, for example), and it was nice actually seeing someone in person whose book I adored. She is an amazing speaker (I got a little teary) and hearing her talk reminded me of how phenomenal The Warmth of Other Suns is. She spoke of how the Great Migration was a "leaderless revolution"--the migrators decided within themselves to take a leap of faith and step into an unknown world for the chance at something better. She said that each of us has a similar power within us to create change. I sincerely hope that in the midst of this book tour, she is either working on or thinking about her next book.

P.S. If you haven't read  The Warmth of Other Suns, do it do it do it now!