A Prescription for Death - Celina Grace

I've been following Celina Grace's career closely since the appearance of Hushabye, her first police procedural featuring DS Kate Redman, last year. Hushabye is an intelligent, engaging mystery and Kate is a compelling, vulnerable heroine - it's been a great pleasure to see Grace go from strength to strength with her Kate Redman novels. 

Recently, Grace has also begun series of novellas set in Asharton Manor, a grand English country house, at different points in time. A Prescription for Death, her latest, is the second in the series, set in 1947. 

Prescription's heroine is Vivian Holt, a recent widow mourning the death of her soldier husband, Sidney, who moves to the country for a fresh start. Vivian, haunted by her loss, with her reserve and depression, is a very human, engaging character, and Grace portrays her struggle to cope with Sidney's death with a deft, compassionate hand. 

Vivian volunteers at Asharton Manor, which has been turned into a convalescent home for soldiers, where she befriends Norman Winter, a kindly, wry older man who had also fought in World War I. Norman is immediately appealing - Grace develops his character beautifully with just a few masterful strokes. When Norman supposedly commits suicide, Vivian is devastated, but things aren't what they seem (are they ever?).

Prescription is a novella - about 20,000 words - and I was struck by how much story Grace can pack into that short a space. The characters are intriguing and well - though economically! - developed and the plot is twisty and eventful. A lot happens, but nothing feels rushed or short-charged. The devilish mystery, which hangs on some very clever and adroit clueing, is in the very best Christie tradition. 

Grace's writing is sophisticated and clean - she has an ear for language, and her prose reads beautifully. A Prescription for Death is a delight - elegant, smart, engrossing. I loved my time with it. 

 

Deadly Stuff - Joyce Cato

Joyce Cato, alias Faith Martin, alias Maxine Barry, is a highly prolific author. Cato (whose real name is Jacquie Walton) writes traditional mysteries under the Cato name, police procedurals as Martin, and romance and romantic suspense as Barry. Since the first Maxine Barry novel appeared in 1993, she's published forty novels - 21 as Barry, 14 as Martin, and 5 as Cato.

I have not read any of the Maxine Barry novels, but I've been a faithful reader of the Faith Martin procedurals, featuring the redoubtable DI Hillary Martin, and I recently discovered that the Joyce Cato novels, featuring traveling cook Jenny Starling, are just as enjoyable.

In Deadly Stuff, Jenny begins an assignment as a cook at Oxford's St. Bede's College. The annual conference of a taxidermy society, taking place at the college, coincides with her arrival. Soon, the unpopular, womanizing president of the society, Maurice Raines, is murdered. Jenny, who's helped the police catch murderers in four earlier volumes, is roped into the investigation this time, too.

Jenny is a winning heroine. Physically imposing, at 6'1" with a large, big-boned frame, much is made of how striking she is, and also of how attractive - in another novel, this would certainly grate, but Cato gets a pass from me, considering how seldom a big woman is portrayed as beautiful and desirable in fiction. Jenny is also extremely intelligent, with a sharp analytic mind, warm-hearted, and passionate about her work - she adores feeding people. This last is her most endearing quality. Jenny may be just slightly too good to be true - especially considering her tendency to figure things out well ahead of the police - but in a novel as charming and enjoyable as this, it hardly matters. And, anyway, there's something to be said about the value of a female character who ticks all the boxes, so to speak - our fictional landscape is littered with men who are without flaw, and nobody bats an eyelash, but as soon as a woman who's smart, kind, capable, and funny shows up, the dreaded "Mary Sue" epithet will be hurled at her. Jenny is a thoroughly appealing, memorable heroine, and that's the most important thing.

There is no shortage of suspects, and Jenny and the police methodically work through all of their secrets and motives. A reader who's good at tracking movements and alibis may guess the killer - but someone who's just along for the ride, like me, likely won't.

One thing that Cato, both in this novel and in her Faith Martin books, does really well is give brief snapshots of characters that establish their personalities and backgrounds, and hint at their wider lives, beyond just what we see in the novel. Here, Cato gets under the skin of several characters, most memorably the harried assistant bursar of St. Bede's, Art McIntyre, providing a charming cross-section of his life.

All the characters in Deadly Stuff - including Norman, the scene-stealing chameleon - are well-drawn and intriguing, which breathes life into the plot. Cato is very concerned with clues and fair play, and, as I said, the eagle-eyed reader can have a lot of fun puzzling out the mystery here.

What appeals most to me about especially the Joyce Cato novels, though, is the high-spiritedness - the writing is bubbly and cheerful, wry and companionable. These are quintessential comfort reads, and I mean that as a high compliment. The Faith Martin novels (about which I'd like to write about soon, too) have a lot of the same charm, but aren't quite as jaunty - they're sometimes quite dark, and they're engaging and enjoyable in a different way.

Overall, I had a blast reading Deadly Stuff, and I'm sure I'll want to read it again. Cato is a talented writer who definitely deserves to be better-known.

The Ex-Wives - Deborah Moggach

Deborah Moggach has quickly become one of my favorite authors. She's witty and wise, both acerbic and warm. While her writing explores human follies and - sometimes - the way we hurt each other, I ultimately finish her novels feeling happier than I was before I read them.

The Ex-Wives is the story of two protagonists: Russell Buffery, known as Buffy, an aging, forgotten actor who lives in an appallingly ugly and messy London flat with his dog, George; and Celeste, a young girl who recently lost her mother and moved to London from Melton Mowbray. From the moment they meet, Buffy takes - shall we say - an earnest interest in Celeste. Celeste is receptive, to a point, and a friendship blossoms between the two. While Buffy wants the friendship to grow into something more, Celeste keeps him at bay and begins to dig into his colorful past, seeking out the various women who had figured large in Buffy's life - the titular Ex-Wives, though not all are actually wives.

Moggach movingly portrays the various vulnerabilities of Buffy and Celeste. Buffy has to cope with his fading sex appeal and withering career, and a terrible fear of loneliness as old age approaches. Celeste, meanwhile, is all alone in the world after her mother's death. She is young and inexperienced, not to mention slightly provincial, having been cosseted by her parents, but she is not as naïve and gentle as it would appear. Moggach writes:

Her fragile grace and inky eyes gave her the look of an antelope, startled by an intruder, but like all impressions this was partially misleading. In fact she had a stubborn streak, and was very good at maths. Her nimble fingers had made her Cats Cradle Champion at her primary school. She was logical. Columns of figures were to be one of her few reassurances in the tumultuous year that lay ahead. 

As you can perhaps tell from even this brief excerpt, Moggach has a wry, lovely style - her prose is lively, funny, and very genuine.

Celeste and Buffy are both wonderfully realized, human characters, and they are a joy to spend the novel with, but part of the novel's charm lies in the gallery of Buffy's women. There is buttoned-up, capable career woman Penny, with her exasperated fondness for Buffy's disordered ways; neurotic Jacquetta, who left Buffy for a therapist - her therapist; Lorna, a taciturn near-hermit; and several others. These women are marvelously drawn and brimming with life - even when they're less than lovable, they are memorable and portrayed with real warmth.

The Ex-Wives is a lot of fun, but it's also an intelligent, empathetic read - though it may seem like a light, frothy read, there is a lot of substance here, too. This bubbly mixture of humor and humane insight is Moggach's trademark - and it comes very highly recommended.

The Best Man to Die - Ruth Rendell

I was planning on starting this post with an exposition on how Ruth Rendell's early (60s-70s) Wexford novels are so different from her more recent output, but thinking about it, I don't think they are that different, not really. A lot of people who were introduced to Rendell with her newer novels, especially the non-Wexford psychological thrillers or the Barbara Vine novels, often complain that the early Wexfords are formulaic and boring and more focused on plot than character, but I don't agree. There is a lot of typical Rendell-style engaging, psychologically acute characterization here and the novels are generally fast-paced and the furthest thing from boring.

There are two cases at the core of Best Man, one for Wexford and Burden and one (initially) for the uniformed branch. Wexford discovers the body of shady lorry-driver Charlie Hatton, bashed in the head when returning from his best friend's stag party. Meanwhile, in nearby Stowerton, London banker Jerome Fanshawe overturns his car on the highway in a horrible and inexplicable accident. Three bodies, two dead and one living, are found - the survivor is Fanshawe's wife, Dorothy, comatose but expected to have no lasting injuries. Dorothy's sister identifies the two dead bodies as Fanshawe and Jerome and Dorothy's daughter, Nora.

Wexford interviews the main figures in Charlie's life, including his wife and his best friend. Lilian Hatton is fairly likable and one of Rendell's milder portrayals of that type - a Victorian wife, completely wrapped up in her husband. It is clear, however, that the far more important person is Charlie's friend Jack. Rendell writes that Charlie and Jack "had found in each other an all-encompassing spiritual compatibility... without each other their lives would be incomplete, lacking, as it were, the essence and the fuse." Rendell explores this friendship largely through the reactions of others to it. Burden, ever the prissy reactionary, is revolted by Jack's "womanish" display of grief at the news of Charlie's death, but Wexford is sympathetic (also refer to the ending of From Doon With Death).

Jack and Charlie aren't gay. Well, they probably aren't gay? It's never quite so cut and dry with relationships as intense and intimate as Jack and Charlie's, and Rendell understand that. Their closeness is not lessened by the fact that they aren't lovers, don't see each other romantically at all - in fact, perhaps it enriches it, making it some kind of a Platonic ideal - but Rendell does hint that, in another time (this is only 1970, after all), Jack and Charlie might have been lovers. Certainly, this powerful all-consuming symbiotic kind of friendship is not exactly common, and even Jack and Charlie are quite baffled by their feelings. Jack fantasizes about a time where he and Charlie and their wives will be sitting on a shaded porch, sipping drinks. There's a lot to be read into their relationship, and Rendell leaves it open to interpretation - it's a very thoughtful portrayal, all the same, and it's not exactly common to see a fictional friendship between two men that is so... un-gruff. Even (arguably) heterosexual men have feelings, too, after all.

Oh, and Charlie is also a total crook and the money he throws around is ill-begotten, but that's par for the course.

Meanwhile, Dorothy Fanshawe regains consciousness and maintains that her daughter was never in the car with her and her husband - that nobody but the two of them was in the car - and that Nora Fanshawe is safely in Germany. Dorothy, in her way, is a really engaging character. She's quite stupid, materialistic, narrow-minded, a horrible snob - yet, Rendell is unusually easy on her, and for all her faults, Dorothy has her redeeming qualities. She's not really an unkind woman, but what's most moving is her love for her daughter, Nora. The relationship between Dorothy and Nora is nuanced and extremely well-done, one of my favorites in Rendell. I'd say more, but since for a good portion of the novel it's unclear whether Nora is alive or dead, I won't spoil it.

The actual mystery is clever, and adroitly clued, Christie-style (I managed to guess who the killer was, and how the cases were connected), but definitely secondary to the characterization here.

Also, it seems to me that this is perhaps the point where Rendell decided that Wexford was in it for the long haul. Wexford's wife and daughters are mentioned in the previous novel (Wolf to the Slaughter, the third, which I believe is the first of the really great Wexford novels), but this is the first where his home life is a major part of the novel, and there's a charming and unusually light (even cozy) subplot about a dog named Clytemnestra who looks as though she was knitted. The lovable and infuriating Sheila, Wexford's favorite daughter, makes her first real appearance here, while poor Sylvia wouldn't even be named (the Wexfords' older daughter is briefly alluded to in Best Man) until four books later in Shake Hands Forever.

On the whole, this is one of the lighter, less psychologically harrowing Rendells - I wouldn't dare to call it a romp, but the atmosphere all around is significantly more light-hearted than usual - but it's a solid story with some very engaging characters, and it's really in no way worse or less worth reading than Rendell's later darker, more complex and psychological novels.

The Seven Sisters - Margaret Drabble

I never know what people expect when they ask me what a book I'm reading is about. Certainly, if I was reading The Abridged History of Asparagus, or something, I could just say "It's about asparagus", but most books are too complex to be reduced to being about something.

What is Margaret Drabble's novel The Seven Sisters about? Well, it's about feminism, particularly about women old enough for feminism to pass them by, and young enough to live to regret it; it's about living in the present when you feel you belong in the past; it's about being thrust into a strange world you can't fit into or understand; it's about loneliness, and isolation, and finding yourself unloved.

All of this sounds massively depressing, but it's the furthest thing from it. In fact, it's kind of magical. More on that later.

Our heroine is one Candida Wilton, living as a sort of hermit in a squalid London flat. Her husband, a handsome and charismatic headmaster of a school in the country, has left her for another woman, and her three adult daughters have all taken their father's side (or so Candida sees it). She hasn't been to university, and has never worked a real job - being a headmaster's wife was her full-time one - and so she is left, alone and unemployable with nothing to fill her life. She moves to London to escape the pity of her acquaintances, and starts over.

The first part of the novel is the diary of Candida's sojourn. I'm finding it difficult to describe it, because Candida really is a remarkably distinct narrator. Here's a small sample:

We were a happy couple when we were young. People probably thought I was lucky to catch him, though I too was pretty enough when I was a girl. I thought I was lucky, but that's because I was lacking in self-esteem. Also, in those days I loved him, and one tends to overestimate the value of a loved object.

That's the sort of detachment I mean. She's analytic and dispassionate, like a scientist, as she picks at the seams and deconstructs her past and her present without melodrama or emotional fanfare. She's also kind of bitchy. She's prickly and a little snide, for example constantly restating how fat her friend Sally is. When relaying how her youngest daughter, Martha, had found the body of her best friend when she was only twelve or thirteen, Candida remarks that after the initial shock, Martha must have enjoyed all the drama and the attention.

Yet, even though she's cold and not always all that nice, you like Candida - well, I did, anyway. There's something moving and poignant about her efforts to shape a new life for herself - she joins a Virgil class because she's charmed by its anachronistic nature, but also because she simply wants to make friends - the kind of friends, she writes, that she would not have met in her former life. She's vulnerable, and honest enough to admit it. Her quiet way of being gratified by small things, like a visit from her exotic friend Anaïs, is quite touching. She's also - and I hate this cliche as much as the next person, truly, but I think it fits here - a survivor. The anachronistic Virgil class ends, and is replaced by a thoroughly modern health club. Candida is offered a discounted membership, and she not only accepts it but actually uses it. She's plucky and in her muted, self-effacing way she's determined to make something of this life that could, so easily, have defeated her.

And make something of it she does. I won't reveal much, but Candida does manage to organize something quite exciting for herself and a group of rapidly-acquired new friends (and some old ones) and what follows is exhilarating. The Seven Sisters is about all the things I said it was, but I didn't mention perhaps the most important one - it's also about learning to love your life again, about having your lust for living and all sorts of other feelings stirred out of dormancy. I found many things to love here, but what I loved most was seeing happiness and passion reawaken in Candida.

I couldn't have loved this more, really; it's been a few months since I read it, and writing about it has reminded me just how much it resonated with me. Strongly recommended.

Why I blog

I have started and abandoned several blogs over the course of the past several years. I've never had the wherewithal to stick with it, just like I never could keep a journal, but I'm giving it another go. I've always wanted a proper book blog.

Why? Well, I don't know if you know this, but I read quite a few book blogs and the writers of the really popular ones? Get free books. Yes, they have books sent in by publishers, just like real reviewers. FREE BOOKS. I'm nothing if not avaricious, and I live for free books, so obviously, my goal is to built this puny little blog to superstar status. I didn't come here to make friends.

More importantly (maybe), though, I've always to write a book blog because it's important to talk about books. Literature is not doing well. Reading for pleasure is about as common among people my age (I'm a freshman in college) as the Charleston, and God only knows what today's teenagers are doing. I'm sure the closest thing to a novel many of them know is a text message with punctuation in it. It's sad and a little scary. We are so much poorer without books, without great stories to get lost in and beautiful language to admire. I don't want my generation to lose that, but I'm afraid the process is already on its way.

So I think of this blog as a small candle thrust out into the darkness of an age where books are fading away; and also as a ploy to get free books. Mostly as a ploy to get free books, to be honest.

A quick note on what I'll be writing about: I read all sorts of things. I'd like to write about a good mix of contemporary and classic, literary and popular, and famous and little-known fiction. I tend to read more women writers, and largely European writers - I'm particularly something of an Anglophile. I don't read a great deal of current bestsellers, and while I love gratuitous sex and foul language, I'm squeamish about graphic violence, so probably not many action-packed thrillers or bleak dystopian fiction, either. Everything else is fair game.