Review of FOSTER by Claire Keegan (New Release)

4 Stars

This novella of less than 100 pages can be read in one sitting, but its impact will last much longer than it takes to read it. 

An unnamed Irish girl is taken by her father to live on a farm with Edna and John Kinsella, relatives of her mother.  Though she knows nothing about them or how long she will stay with them, she thrives in their care because they treat her with kindness and show her true affection. 

The author writes in simple, spare prose that is elegant and evocative.  Every word seems to have been carefully chosen.  Characters are developed with statements that say so much.  For example, the girl’s father is revealed through statements  like “A stalk of rhubarb falls to the floor . . . [Dad] waits for [Edna] to pick it up, to hand it to him” and “He is given to lying about things that would be nice, if they were true” and “he never stays in any place long after he’s eaten” and “Why did he leave without so much as a good-bye, without ever mentioning that he would come back for me?” 

The ending is ambiguous, so the reader can interpret it as s/he wants.  Personally, I opt for a hopeful ending, especially because throughout the book, I kept expecting something sad and traumatic to happen.  Apparently, there’s a film adaptation of the story entitled The Quiet Girl so I’m anxious to see how it interprets the ending. 

I first encountered Claire Keegan earlier this year when I read Small Things Like These (which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize).  I loved that novel (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.com/2022/01/review-of-small-things-like-these-by.html) and I loved Foster.  Anyone looking for a nuanced narrative that is both beautiful and moving need look no further. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of WHEN THE STARS GO DARK by Paula McLain

 3 Stars

This was a book chosen for my book club.  I didn’t find it a tedious read but neither was I wowed by it.

The setting is 1993.  Anna Hart, who specializes in violent crimes against children, has been traumatized by a personal tragedy.  She returns to Mendocino where she lived with beloved foster parents who provided her stability and made her feel secure after a difficult childhood.  She learns about a missing teen, 15-year-old Cameron Curtis, and inserts herself into the case, partnering with Will, the town sheriff and a friend from her past.  Two other girls are reported missing in northern California, so those investigations impact the case.  Is there a connection between the cases?  Will Cameron be found alive?

In many ways this is a standard police procedural.  What is different is Anna’s insistence that they focus less on profiling the unsub and more on the victim and what might have attracted the attention of a perpetrator.  Anna expounds on how early trauma might have impacted the victim to make her especially vulnerable to a perpetrator.  Unfortunately, there is little suspense.  The outcome is predictable; certainly I identified the “bad guy” almost immediately. 

Besides the predictability of the plot, a couple of other things bothered me.  Visions and premonitions advance the investigation?  This seems a too-convenient and unconvincing plot device.  I don’t think police routinely use psychics to solve cases though that is what Anna asserts.  And this particular psychic can predict the future?!

There are some other problematic plot devices.  A perfect dog arrives at the perfect time?  Cricket is used or ignored as needed, not fully integrated into the plot.  The inevitable dangerous confrontation between Anna and the suspect is expected, but she wouldn’t be investigated for her actions that end that encounter?  What happens to Hector?  He is used at a crucial time, but then dismissed without explanation? 

I know I should have felt more empathy for Anna who has experienced unspeakable tragedy.  It’s the way in which that tragedy is and isn’t described that is the issue.  Vague hints are given about what happened, but then nothing is mentioned until the very end.  Anna is the narrator.  Surely, in the 3-week duration of the narrative, she would discuss more specifically what transpired to bring her to Mendocino.  Again, this seems like a cheap narrative trick. 

And I can understand the impulse to run away from problems, but learning about Matthew made me less sympathetic to Anna, especially considering her background of abandonment.  Considering what happened, how does she function at all?  Shouldn’t she be on mandatory leave with mandatory counseling? 

Part of the problem with Anna is that we are given so much information about her past that her personality is almost buried and we don’t get to know her as a person.  I found it difficult to connect with her.  She has a know-it-all attitude that bothers me; she believes she knows better than Will and virtually takes over the case.  She always seems to be preaching.  Then she relies on her gut feelings which usually turn out to be incorrect. 

I finished the novel, not because it was so engaging, but because I wanted to know if I had guessed correctly about the perpetrator.  Overall, it’s an undemanding read that I can only describe as unremarkable.

Review of THE SINGULARITIES by John Banville (New Release)

 3 Stars

I am not very familiar with John Banville’s books so this one, which supposedly references many of his previous novels, left me puzzled.  I don’t think I was the intended audience. 

Freddie Montgomery is released from prison.  He decides to adopt a different name, Felix Mordaunt, before he returns to visit the family estate where he grew up, but everything feels slightly askew.  The estate has a different name, for instance, and there seems no evidence of his family having lived there.  The Godleys are the family now in residence.  They have been joined by a Professor Jaybey who is writing the biography of Adam Godley, father of the current Mr. Godley, whose Brahma Theory threw the world into chaos.

The Brahma Theory is never clearly explained, but from what I could gather, it proved the existence of parallel universes, an infinite number of possible universes.  The theory was so revolutionary that there was a “sharp rise in suicides throughout the world in the years following the general acceptance of the Brahma theory and its consequences.”  Reference is made to the Hadron Collider being shut down and “fast, bright, gleaming communication devices” being replaced with “clumsy and defective artefacts [like telegrams].”  Perhaps the author reprised characters and placed them in an alternate universe to examine how they would react?

There is also the presence of a narrator who identifies himself as a “little god” who wears a “winged helm” and has “ankle wings.”  This brings to mind Hermes, the trickster god.  He seems to take pleasure in manipulating events, “For we couldn’t have let them leave well enough alone, now could we.”  He admits, “Unseen, I usher them forward, though they imagine they go under their own steam.”  So the characters are at the mercy of a “mischievous godlet”?  In fact, allusions to Greek mythology abound.  It seems that Helen of Troy in one universe is Helen Godley in another universe.

I had difficulty engaging with the book because I found the characters unlikeable and, worse, tiresome.  Their motivations are not explained.  Why would Helen, who suspects that Felix is a murderer, welcome him into her home?  Why would Jaybey give up a prestigious position in a university to write the biography of a man for whom he has only scorn?

The portrayal of women is problematic.  They are all two-dimensional and important only in terms of their relationships (usually sexual) with men.  A woman will often remind a man of a former lover.   If they are not faithless, they are mistreated by faithless men.   The old man/young woman trope is repeated.

The main attraction for me was the writing style.  Lengthy sentences are common:  “I feel like one of those effete, incurably melancholy, slightly hysterical young-old boobies to be encountered in the Russian drama of the nineteenth century, in exile on a vast estate a thousand versts from the nearest centre of supposed civilization, tinkering with a never-to-be-completed treatise on land reform, or the serf question, or the use and misuse of the subjunctive in the works of Lermontov, while all the time pining in secret for the dim-witted landowner’s young, feyly lovely, heartlessly provocative and utterly unattainable wife.”

Besides mythological references, literary allusions abound:  “his behaviour reminiscent of that of a character out of Plautus or of Aristophanes” and “Iagoesque mischief-making” and “as if Ophelia were to rise up from the glassy waters.”   One character refers to “a stew pot of metaphors” and Banville certainly excels at those and similes:  “I approached cautiously, crabwise, in the wincing manner, apprehensive yet agog, of a traveller on a lonely road late at night coming upon the still-smoking scene of a glorious smash-up involving multiple vehicles and countless casualties” and “Her memory was like a crate of Meissen figurines that a clumsy porter had dropped on to a marble floor” and “garments on a laundry line kicked up their heels in the wind, as full of themselves as corseted chorus-girls.” 

I loved the touches of humour:  “there are no great men; ask any woman” and “the much-dithyrambed daffodil, the blossoms of which, as everyone knows but is too embarrassed to admit, are not golden at all, as is pretended, but in plain fact an acid shade of greenish-yellow, the colour of an absinthe-drinker’s bile.”

And who cannot marvel at Banville’s vocabulary.  Words like brumous, haecceity, matutinal, nugatory, instauration, catamite, caducously, melodeonist, cloacal, phthisic, lemniscate, perihelium, aphelion,  mephitic, diorachic, auscultate, and quondam make an appearance.

For me, it was this style that kept me reading.  Perhaps if I were more familiar with Banville’s other novels and characters, I might have appreciated the novel’s other layers.  It is to fans of this author that I would recommend this novel. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of CASE STUDY by Graeme Macrae Burnet

 3.5 Stars

Having read and enjoyed the author’s His Bloody Project, I was interested in reading his latest, Case Study, which was longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. 

A writer, GMB, had written about Collins Braithwaite, a 1960s psychotherapist and member of the anti-psychiatry movement.  He has been toying with the idea of writing Braithwaite’s biography when he is contacted by Martin Grey offering him six notebooks written by his cousin who was once Braithwaite’s patient. 

The novel alternates between a notebook and biographical information about Braithwaite.  The notebooks are a first person account written by an unnamed young woman whose older sister Veronica recently committed suicide.  Under the pseudonym of Rebecca Smyth, she visits Braithwaite believing he bears responsibility for Veronica’s death.  As the notebooks progress, the narrator sinks into depression and becomes confused about her own identity:  she begins to see Rebecca as a separate person.  She loses sight of her initial objective in seeing the psychotherapist and becomes invested in his “therapy.”

Braithwaite is an imposter with no real training as a psychotherapist.  He himself admits that his talent is in listening:  “’time and again, I was told of my perceptiveness, of how I understood.  All I did was listen.  When a visitor arrives believing you are some kind of guru, your thoughts are already invested with profundity.’”  He is very egotistical and manipulative.  I found him repugnant.

The unnamed narrator I found much more interesting.  She is, to say the least, odd.  For instance, “He took my bag from the floor.  I was terrified for a moment that he was going to find the dead mouse wrapped in tissue paper” and “I hand replaced the [telephone] receiver and wiped it clean of my fingerprints” and an optimistic period in her life she describes as an “embarrassing interlude.”  The persona she adopts to visit Braithwaite she comes to see as an individual separate from her.  Some of her comments suggest she suffers from dissociative identity disorder:  “I sometimes wonder whether I shouldn’t let her take over completely.”

Readers come to realize that this narrator is not reliable.  She claims, “I have no talent for dissembling,” but she is good at pretending and lying in her therapy sessions.  Her ease at adopting a false persona should inspire one to ask what other truths she is hiding.  Should her notebooks be accepted as the truth or a version of it? 

The novel examines the nature of self and suggests that we all wear masks or adopt identities depending on the situation; perhaps we should “embrace the idea that a person is not a single self, but a bundle of personae.”  We are all, like the song that Rebecca hears, great pretenders, or as Braithwaite says, “’phoneys. . . . You’d be a lot happier if you accepted it.’”  Maybe we all have multiple personalities and that in itself is not a disorder. 

The book offers interesting ideas for the reader to consider; I did not, however, find the novel as entertaining as His Bloody Project. 

Review of HAVEN by Emma Donoghue

 3.5 Stars

The setting is 7^th century Ireland.  A priest named Artt has a dream telling him to take two monks, young Trian and old Cormac, to found a monastery away from the sinful world.  They find a bare, rocky island with one lone tree and hundreds of birds.  Will they survive and succeed in their mission?

The three men are very different.  Cormac, the eldest of the three, is a very practical man.  He is always thinking of things that need to be done to ensure their survival.  He is resourceful as well:  he manages to grow a garden on the little soil that covers the island.  He has faith in God, but believes that man should use intelligence and hard work to help himself.  He also questions some of Artt’s orders; he sees no harm in eating shellfish, for example.  He is protective of the younger Trian.  Cormac is also an entertaining storyteller.  I found him extremely likeable. 

Trian, the youngest of the trio, is innocent and eager.  Though he tends to be dreamy, he is also a hard worker.  He becomes a major food provider, going fishing on a regular basis.  He is filled with wonder at nature:  “It seems to him that nature is God’s holiest language. . . . Trian wonders whether these birds wheeling overhead, even these rocks, might be his sisters and brothers.”  He is upset when Artt orders the slaughter of puffins, seeing them only as a source of fuel.  Trian, like Cormac, is compassionate. 

Trian has a secret which is revealed at the end.  There are sufficient hints so I guessed his secret.  Of course, I also recently finished reading Fayne by Ann-Marie MacDonald so I was on that wavelength. 

Artt, who becomes the Prior, is a zealot who believes that God will provide everything that they need.  His faith seems to exclude reason; he begins by insisting that they discard much of the cargo that Cormac and Trian packed for their trip.  When Cormac suggests building a shelter in preparation for winter, Artt prioritizes the building of a church.  Rather than securing food, Trian is tasked with copying religious manuscripts.  Artt himself does little of the hard work; he instructs the men what to do and supervises.  From the two monks, he expects absolute obedience and is severe in his punishments when he perceives any of their actions as signs of impulsiveness or insubordination.  He is overly concerned with his legacy; his ultimate goal is sainthood. 

From the beginning, I had misgivings about Artt.  He is narrow-minded, inflexible, and arrogant and some of his choices can only be described as irrational.  He dismisses Cormac’s preoccupation with practical survival measures, and unlike Trian who tries to think how man fits into nature, sees everything on the island only in terms of its use to humans:  “’This whole island’s like one great banquet table that God’s spread for us.’”  It is inevitable that their different ideas of faith and their priorities are going to cause tensions and conflicts. 

The book is really a cautionary tale about religious fanaticism and blind obedience.

This is not my favourite novel by this author, but I enjoyed it. 

Review of THE SHADOW SISTER by Lucinda Riley

 3 Stars 

As I indicated in my review of the previous book in The Seven Sisters series, these books have become my audiobook guilty pleasures:  pure escapism that allows my easily distracted mind to wander.

Six girls were adopted by Pa Salt, an ultra-wealthy man.  After he dies, each daughter is given a letter and a clue to her true heritage.   Each daughter’s journey is the subject of a novel.  The Shadow Sister is the story of the third daughter Star. 

Her search leads her to an antiquarian bookshop in London owned by Orlando Forbes where she eventually takes a job.  He and his brother Mouse are in possession of the journals of Flora MacNichol who lived in the Lake District, next door to Beatrix Potter.  Flora is brought to London by Alice Keppel, a socialite and mistress of King Edward VII.  As Star looks into her connection to Flora, she also connects with the Forbes family. 

This third book follows a similar pattern to the previous two.  We are given the story of people from the past who have a link with at least one well-known historical figure; the past is usually revealed through old letters or journals.  There is romance both in the past and present, usually employing the love-at-first-sight trope.  The characters may not be aware of the attraction, but the reader will know as soon as characters are brought together that a romantic relationship will develop.  I guess the author should be given credit for including bisexual and lesbian characters, though they are not developed to any real extent. 

As with the previous books, the historical narrative often overshadows the present storyline.  The author must be applauded for her research.  I certainly knew about Beatrix Potter but I wasn’t familiar with Alice Keppel.  I did some further reading and discovered that through her younger daughter, Alice Keppel is the great-grandmother of Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, the former mistress and second wife of King Edward VII's great-great-grandson King Charles III.

What the book does lack is character development of the protagonist.  From the first two books, the reader knows that Star is quiet and has lived in the shadow of her sister CeCe.  They even developed a form of sign language to communicate, and it is obvious the two have a co-dependent relationship.  Not much new is learned about Star in this book, except that she is a good cook.  She supposedly wants to be a writer, but she never writes and, in fact, never reads. 

The reader is supposed to see growth in Star as she gains confidence and breaks away from CeCe, but the extent of her personal growth is questionable.  Her behaviour towards her sister, never actually discussing her wishes with CeCe, makes her seem selfish.  And her great reveal to Mouse is laughable.  She is living in the 21^st century, isn’t she?  I had thought that I’d like this sister the most, but that wasn’t the case. 

As I stated at the beginning, I’m listening to these books.  What I really disliked about the narration in this one is the accent given to Star.  It is so annoying that I was grateful that Star speaks so little.  And the voice given to CeCe is equally grating.  I’ve just downloaded the next book, The Pearl Sister, which is CeCe’s story.  I hope a different narrator is used.

Great literature this is not, but if I shut off my analytical and critical brain, I can be entertained.

Review of FAYNE by Ann-Marie MacDonald (New Release)

3.5 Stars

I loved Ann-Marie MacDonald’s previous novels, particularly Fall on Your Knees and The Way the Crow Flies.  This one didn’t wow me as much, though I’m willing to admit that this is my second consecutive 700+page book so I might be fatigued.

Charlotte Bell lives on the large estate known as Fayne on the English/Scottish border.  Her childhood has been without friends her own age; she has been kept isolated by her father, Lord Henry, because she has a mysterious illness which she has been told leaves her “morbidly susceptible to germs.”  Her mother died giving birth to Charlotte, and her older brother Charles, who would have been the heir to the estate and the title, died at the age of two.  Charlotte loves the bogs and moors and spends a great deal of time with Byrn, an old hired man who teaches her about the fen.  She also educates herself by reading through her father’s library, but for her twelfth birthday, her father gifts her a tutor.

The arrival of that tutor changes her life.  She decides she wants to attend university, though that is not really an option for women in the late 19^th century.  Her father takes her to Edinburgh for an examination which she assumes is the first step towards admission, but it turns out to be entirely different from what she foresees.  The treatment for her ailment is also something she never imagined.  Thus begins the unravelling of deep and dark family secrets.

Charlotte is a very intelligent girl who knows “Latin, Logic, Rhetoric, and . . . a tolerable grasp of Greek,” but she is also naive; because she has been so sheltered, she misunderstands so much.  For instance, when she visits an area in Edinburgh known for its fallen women, she “scanned the street for a fallen woman, but all were upright.”  There are also topics which are never discussed with her, so she has little understanding of her body and sexuality.  I did find myself at times wondering if such a perceptive and curious girl would not realize sooner what is really happening to her and around her. 

The novel has dual time lines.  Charlotte’s story is interspersed with that of her mother.  Via flashbacks, we meet Lady Marie when she first meets Lord Henry who has been given strict instructions by his sister Clarissa to find a wife and produce an heir.  Unfortunately, this approach results in some repetition:  the same event is repeated, though from the perspective of a different character. 

There are a lot of plot twists, so readers shouldn’t read too many reviews of the book beforehand; some reviewers tend to divulge events and thereby lessen their impact on readers.  Some of the twists revolve around connections between characters which seem rather coincidental.  For instance, the mothers of two characters are revealed to be characters previously featured in the book.  Key discoveries are made so conveniently just in time. 

Characters are developed in great detail and very realistically.  As I continued to read, my feelings about characters changed, as more and more was revealed.  A positive impression might not remain so and the same is true for characters who give a poor impression initially.  For both Lord Henry and Lady Marie, in particular, I felt various emotions.  Even for a villain, I could not but feel some sympathy because the reader is made privy to thoughts not openly expressed.  Given the time period, women were not able pursue dreams, and a life lived in a secondary role may cause bitterness.

There are elements of magic realism which I didn’t appeal to me.  Likewise, the philosophical musings at the end of the book seem superfluous.  At 700+ pages, the book could use some trimming, and I don’t think the magic realism is needed to develop theme.     

The book has a number of themes:  role of women, gender and identity, and even humanity’s abuse of the earth.  The novel, therefore, is very relevant, despite its setting.  The main message for me is that we should accept and appreciate all of nature and nature’s creations.  One man says, “’Nature doesnae deal in mistakes so much as differences.’”  The bird that Charlotte and her father create from bits and pieces of other birds serves as a symbol of our unwillingness to accept differences.  Lord Henry says, “’It is a chimera. . . . other birds would peck it to death’” and Charlotte feels “a pang of pathos at how the creature was innocent of its own monstrosity.” 

There is a great deal in this book to analyze and applaud.  Its examination of dualities alone is worthy of an essay.  Unfortunately, the book just felt too long for me.  As I stated at the beginning, I may have been suffering reader fatigue.  I certainly recommend the book to those who have enjoyed Ann-Marie MacDonald’s previous novels.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Review of NIGHTS OF PLAGUE by Orhan Pamuk (New Release)

 3 Stars

This is my first book by this Turkish, Nobel Prize-winning writer, so I don’t know if it’s representative of his work, but I found it somewhat tedious.

The setting is 1901 on the fictional Eastern Mediterranean island of Mingheria which is part of the Ottoman Empire.  A plague has broken out so a quarantine expert, Bonkowski Pasha, is sent to bring the outbreak to an end.  He is murdered shortly after arrival, so the Sultan sends his niece, Princess Pakize, daughter of the brother he deposed, and her husband, Dr. Nuri, to control the spread of the plague and to discover the identity of Bonkowski Pasha’s murderer.  What follows is a detailed description of attempts to stop the plague and the social and political upheaval resulting from those attempts.

In a preface, the supposed author claims that she is writing “both a historical novel and a history written in the form of a novel.”  She has access to letters written by Princess Pakize during her time on Mingheria, but, though the novel gives the princess’s perspective of events, that of other characters is also given:  the governor of the island, Sami Pasha; Bonkowski Pasha; Dr. Nuri; the leader of her security detail, Major Kâmil; and Sheikh Hamdullah, among others.

What is noteworthy is the world-building.  Readers cannot but be convinced that Mingheria exists because we are told about its history, geography, economics, and politics.  The island’s ethnic (Greek, Turkish, Mingherian) and religious (Muslim, Orthodox Christian) groups are detailed.  Businesses, buildings, and streets in the capital of Arkaz are described.

The effects of the plague on the island’s residents are detailed but so are the measures taken to control its spread.  What I found especially interesting is that many of those measures are identical to those we recently faced with our own pandemic:  distancing, isolation, quarantine, alcohol-based disinfectants, closing businesses, suspending religious gatherings, restricting the size of gatherings, ventilation, curfews, and masking.  Dr. Nuri admits “how frighteningly vague the medical community’s understanding of the plague was.”

The concerns expressed read like those we heard during Covid:  “There were also people who were exposed to the microbe that didn’t fall ill or even realize they had it” and “the hospitals will run out of beds, and there won’t be enough doctors to deal with the sick” and shops “stationed someone at their door to spray disinfectant” and “plague victims might cough in your face at any moment and infect you too” and ever-changing “new measures were added every day” and “’Do you think the plague can be passed through food?’ and “the fear of the disease meant that nobody was really greeting and embracing each other” and “many other diseases had similar symptoms” and “Personal bonds had weakened, friendships had suffered” and “need to disinfect or sanitize things like paper, letters, and books” and whether the disease will disappear with the arrival of a new season.

The reactions of the people to the measures are also identical to those seen in the last couple of years.  Some worry about the effect of closures on their businesses, “complaining that quarantine was damaging their profits”; some “mothers and fathers could not stay at home to look after [children]”; and “some shopkeepers and bakers had taken to stockpiling goods, while others were hiking up their prices.”  Some people follow the rules, “never left their homes anymore, and wouldn’t come in for work,” while others are plague deniers who continue to live as normal.  Some flout the rules.  Some believe they will be immune if they carry prayer sheets or wear amulets or perform certain rituals.  There are rumours and conspiracy theories about the origins of the plague; the doctors who come to the island to help are accused of bringing the plague with them.  Politicians, medical professionals, and citizens disagree about what measures need to be taken, and protests against plague measures are held.  People who flee the city to a rural region “were quickly driven away by locals who accused them of having the plague.”  Human nature seems not to have changed, and we seem not to have learned from history.

At 700+ pages, this is a lengthy book.  Its slow pace meant I often struggled to maintain interest.  There is a great deal of telling, as opposed to showing, and many digressions.  More than once the author makes comments like “Our readers must not think that we are straying too far from our story if we too take a moment now to examine . . .” and has characters deliver “a needlessly elaborate disquisition.”  Irrelevant information is included.  For instance, when the governor’s armoured landau is first described, do we really need to know that “he had commissioned Bald Kudret, Arkaz’s most famous blacksmith to make the required sheets of armor”?  Do we have to be told about a bee that flies into the landau on one trip?  What is the purpose of being told about the ships that blockade the harbour:  “the French Amiral Baudin, launched in 1883, was one hundred meters long; the British HMS Prince George, launched in 1895, was excellent in artillery”?  Do we have to know that a judge “had long, slender fingers, and delicate handwriting”?  There is such a thing as too much information!

There is a lot of needless repetition.  Almost every time Dr. Nuri appears, his complete title is given:  Prince Consort Doctor Nuri.  Another character’s felt hat is mentioned 25 times.  Sentences are sometimes overly long:  “The judge (and former kadı) who would have ordinarily conducted the trial was Muzaffer Effendi, sent from Istanbul to handle important cases involving murder, serious injury, the abduction of young women for marriage, and blood feuds, without these having to be referred to the courts in the Empire’s capital, but Muzaffer Effendi was currently in the Maiden’s Tower, having been sent there by rowboat in the middle of the night along with the insufficiently revolutionary mayor of Teselli, Rahmetullah Effendi, so instead Sami Pasha had the elderly Christofi Effendi of the rich Yannisgiorgis family, whom he knew through the French consul, and who happened to be the only person on the island who’d studied law in Europe (specifically in Paris), brought to the former State Hall and current Ministerial Headquarters in his armored landau, instructing him upon his arrival to kindly produce a judgment ‘in the European style.’”  I count 148 words in that one sentence.

The book is critical of politicians of every stripe.  The governor pays for his landau “with money taken from the municipality’s eternally underfunded coffers”; another leader, rather than focusing on the plague, is concerned “to see this own likeness and the landscapes of Mingheria reproduced on these postage stamps” and “fantasizing about all the new names he was going to give these places”; and another “spent more time discussing [a predecessor’s] funeral arrangements, the future of the Halifiye sect and lodge, and the emblems of the Queen.”  There is certainly a criticism of modern Turkey:  “We should also note that the custom of gunning journalists and writers down on the street with the tacit backing of the state – a tradition that has now persisted for more than a hundred years – was first born under the new regime of ‘freedom.’”  (There is no doubt that the plague also serves as a metaphor for the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.)

The book has 79 chapters and an overlong epilogue.  (I found it rather ironic that in Chapter 56, only two-thirds of the way through the book, the author states, “as we approach the end of our novel-cum-history, I suppose I should finally reveal . . . “)  I finished it only because I felt obligated to do so since I received a galley from the publisher in return for a review.  It is too long and dense and perhaps, for me, too much a reminder of the Covid pandemic which has not yet ended.

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

 

Review of HESTER by Laurie Lico Albanese (New Release)

 3 Stars

In this novel, the author imagines that Hester Prynne, the protagonist of The Scarlet Letter, was inspired by a woman Nathaniel Hawthorne actually encountered.    

Isobel MacAllister experiences synesthesia so letters and sounds are associated with colours.  Her mother warns her to keep her experiences of colours a secret for fear of being accused of witchcraft.  She marries Edward Gamble, and circumstances cause them to sail to Salem, Massachusetts, in 1829, to begin a new life.  When Edward leaves her there alone and virtually penniless while he sets off to become rich, Isobel uses her skills as an embroiderer and seamstress to support herself.  Nineteen-year-old Isobel meets 24-year-old Nat Hathorne, and the two are immediately attracted to each other. 

I liked the premise of the novel but I was not overly impressed with the execution.  I found the book unnecessarily long; its pace can only be described as glacial.  The constant references to Isobel’s synesthetic experiences become tedious.  The focus also seems scattered.  It’s supposed to be about the inspiration for Hester Prynne, but there are distracting side stories.  For example, the detailing of the Underground Railroad in New England seems tagged on at the end.  The flashbacks to Isobel’s ancestor who was accused of being a witch are supposed to suggest that Isobel is in danger 167 years later?  I’ve never read about synesthesia being connected to witchcraft.  Because the book dragged, I kept checking how many more pages I had to read to reach the end. 

Isobel is supposed to be a strong female protagonist and she does possess admirable traits.  She is skilled, resourceful, and determined.  It must be noted, however, that she is rescued by others on more than one occasion.  What bothered me is her poor judgment of men.  Even after being abandoned and betrayed by her husband, she abandons all caution and easily trusts Nat?  We are supposed to accept that she is attracted to him because she senses a kindred soul:  “Here is a man who is at war within himself as I am with my colors”?

The romance between Isobel and Nat I found inexplicable.  Why is she so attracted to a man who is obsessed with his family’s involvement with the Salem Witch Trials 137 years earlier?  Even after their conversation about slaves, a conversation that certainly does not show Nat in a positive light, she continues to be enamored with him?

There are several minor characters who remain undifferentiated and seem to be used merely as plot devices.  Women such as Widow Higgins, Nell, Abigail, and Eveline appear conveniently to advance the plot and then disappear and are never mentioned again unless needed for plot purposes.  Using these female characters in this way seems dismissive when the author is obviously intending to emphasize the strength of women. 

I enjoyed the examination of life for women in the early nineteenth century, though there is no new information.  Men could stray but women could not.  It was important that women behave in a “normal” way:  living by society’s norms (like attending church) and not drawing attention to themselves in any way. 

I did not find this an immersive read.   The book will undoubtedly appeal to many readers, but it just fell and felt flat. 

Note:  I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.