LESSONS by Ian McEwan--Book review

 

LESSONS by Ian McEwan

Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan’s 18^th novel, Lessons , is long (over 450 pages), and like many of his other works begins simply and grows more complex as it develops. The opening makes the novel look like a reverse Lolita in which an adult woman is obsessed by her 11 year old boy piano student (and he by her). Their sexual relation lasts for five years and only breaks up when he becomes 16 and she wants to spirit him off to Scotland to marry him. To some extent the lesson of that early experience is still hanging around at the finish, but it is only a fragment of the sad life of Roland Baines, whose given name might encourage some to remember the great French epic by that name.  

This Roland is a man who never seems to put sufficient postage on the letter of life. After he is abused by his piano teacher, we meander through sixty years of lost promise. A gifted classical pianist as a youth, Roland winds up as a tea-time piano player at a London Hotel. He yearns for an artistic life yet finds only idle travel, political futility, and failed liaisons. His other temporary jobs range from tennis coach to writer of incidental puff pieces for small magazines.  All of this is played out against the end of WWII and the historic changes brought about by Thatcher, Reagan, Gorbachev, Suez, Chernobyl, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Covid, and even January 6^th. 

Finally, like Shakespeare’s Prospero, Roland Baines burns his books and settles into an old age fueled by something called The Multiple Worlds Theory.  This concept promotes the idea that “The world divides at every conceivable moment into an infinitude of invisible possibilities.”  Your fate may have been controlled by unconscious choices and it lowers your chance of having any real impact on the affairs of the world at large. You are also left in suspense as to what will come next.  It is better, as you reach your “hinge of life,” to settle back and leave the future to your grandchildren.   

The early publicity for the book asks this question. “How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? ”  If you want a profound illustration of these topics, this may be the book for you. If not, McEwen may not be your cup of tea. 

Jim De Young  8-28-22 

London Bridge is Falling Down by Christopher Fowler

 

“London bridge was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under." An old proverb

This is the 18^th book featuring the exploits of two geriatric detectives named Arthur Bryant and John May.  I have read and enjoyed a number of them. John May goes a bit more by the book and dresses stylishly.  Bryant is the perfect foil as he does almost nothing by the book and is an archetypal curmudgeon who dresses like a walking Salvation Army Store. He wears an old overcoat, a rumpled hat, and wraps himself in a variety of moth- eaten long scarves.  His pockets are full of candy wrappers, paper scraps, fruit drops, and pipe tobacco. The pair are the chief investigators in what is called the Peculiar Crimes Unit and they have a covey of assistants who are also the kind of folks who would not fit easily into a regular Scotland Yard unit.

Let me note first that if complicated plots, a certain amount of looniness, and some degree of  acquaintance with London and its history don’t intrigue you, I would recommend a pass on Fowler. Second, if does intrigue you, I would recommend getting started with a few of his earlier offerings. That way you can get some familiarity with the characters and their bizarre investigations before you approach number 18, which starts out at least as a kind of swan song for the series.  

If you remain committed to start with London Bridge is Falling Down, you will still get enough basic information to enter Bryant and May’s world. You will find that the Peculiar Crimes Unit is finally being closed down after many previous unsuccessful efforts to eliminate it. Arthur Bryant tries one final ploy to keep everyone’s jobs. He finds a cold case and then convinces the upper echelons that there is new information that must be investigated.  Ultimately, the case proves to be not so cold. It turns out to be the tiny tip of a multi-year plot. The strange death of an old woman who once worked with the Bletchley codebreakers explodes into multiple murders and the involvement of the current CIA and MI 5. The key to the mystery resides in the ability to decipher clues which deal with the romantic and real history of London Bridge and a cadre of the offbeat denizens of London.  

London Bridge is Falling is Falling Down will have you laughing out loud at the quirky characters. Witness when someone says to Arthur Bryant “your eyes are red” and asks if he has had enough sleep. Arthur replies, “You should see them from my side.” There will be gems of wisdom along the way like “The older you get the less noticed you become.” You will also be delighted by the descriptions of everything from old churches to the changing aspects of London weather.  You may even be shedding a tear or two when you arrive at the beautifully crafted finish.  I am an Anglophile and love Mr. Fowler's books. I am counting on the fact that you will too, no matter where in the series you start.

Review: The Dictionary of Lost Words

 

Pip Williams, The Dictionary of Lost Words  2020

This fascinating book by the Australian novelist, Pip Williams, is a tour de force in the sense that she has managed to write an entire book about creating a dictionary without once becoming a pedantic bore.  It is a feminist tract without question. On the other hand, it is surrounded by a compelling and imaginative story of a woman who has become conscious in the late 19^th century that dictionaries have always been written by men and as a result many of the words used by or about women have been relegated to the dustbin or given negative meanings.

Esme, the heroine, has grown up in the Scriptorium, a drafty potting shed,  where a corps of scholars are assembling  The OED or (The Oxford Dictionary of the English Language.)  Initially, she is a child whose mother has died, crawling about beneath a sorting table and beginning to collect stray slips carrying words or definitions that have been discarded or carelessly dropped. As she matures, she becomes one of the few female employees working on the dictionary and a conscious collector of words dealing with women. Her maturation then encapsulates the thematic issues by integrating her story into the decline of the servant class and the rise of suffrage in England. 

Esme literally worship words-- their meanings, their derivations, and discussions of why certain words survive in print and others do not. She says: “Words are our tools of resurrections.”  It’s how you bring things back.   We won’t stop speaking them if they aren’t in the dictionary.”

The deep hurt and longing experienced by women of all classes is one of the stronger features of the book and it is nowhere communicated  so poignantly as when Esme’s life-long servant, Lizzie, says:  “I guess I like to keep my hands busy. . . . it proves I exist. . . .” I clean, I help with the cooking, I set the fires. Everything I do gets eaten or dirtied or burned—at the end of the day there’s no proof I’ve been here at all.”

Esme and Lizzie are afforded plenty of pragmatic experiences that highlight the task before them. Some of them are triumphant and some sad, but in total it makes one last quote from the book stand out to me. “We can’t always make the choices we’d like, but we can try to make the best of what we must settle for.”

Read this for its message, its inventive story, for the people it brings alive, or for your love of language, but do put it on your reading list.   

Jim De Young,  July, 2022

 

 

A Banquet of Consequences

 

A Banquet of Consequences by Elizabeth George  

 

Ms. George,  in this once again far too long novel, sets up a tragic family situation in which a young man’s suicide triggers a series of sordid, unimaginable horrors from the past. One problem is that the characters in this family from hell seem so perverted, twisted, unsavory, and sex driven that I could not help thinking that the world would be a better place if they were all eliminated instead of just one of them.

Even though this is billed as a Lynley novel, Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley is stuck  with doing minor London legwork and dealing with the always impatient upper echelon as represented by Detective Superintendent Isabelle Ardery.  The real main characters are DS Barbara Havers and DS Winston Ngata who move and shake the plot  in the Dorset countryside where most of the real action occurs. Both of them are as different from Lynley as night and day, but his absence as a driving force may disappoint some readers.

The plot is, as usual in detective novels, complex, is full of twists right down to the last pages. Ms. George has done her research on poison and Agatha Christie would be proud of her. What excites me less is that there are a few too many coincidences driving the story. This starts with Barbara Havers accidental contact in London with the murder victim and her entourage and then the assignment of the case to Lynley's team. The discovery of records hidden in the boot of the murdered woman’s car, that surely would have been searched long before Barbara finds them, is another example.  She also finds them because of some strange procedural decisions.  Why are Barbara and Winston staying in the murder victim's home for instance?  And how could it be reasonable for Barbara to use the victim’s car to go to an interview?  To top it off she then finds a valuable document trove in the boot when the car has a convenient flat tire.  In another lucky discovery, she finds a third tract on a tape recorder by accidently pressing a button rather than through knowledgeable detection.  

Although by the ending all the characters appear to have reaped their full “Banquet of Consequences,”  there is a kind of sordidness about the whole affair.  “You’re only as sick as your secrets,” says one character and this family is clearly right at death’s door.  

Jim De Young  7/9/22

Wildlife Out In Force This AM

A pleasant sunny morning was amenable to see one of our deer and the big old turkey from our balcony at Grant Living at Indian Creek. 

 

Globe Theatre Burns Down on June 29, 1613

 

In honor of Garrison Keillor and the Writer’s Almanac, I post this quote from one of his column reruns that are now appearing daily. As a theatre historian and play director in a previous working life, I was privileged to have directed five of Shakespeare’s marvelous plays and have published a book titled London Theatre Walks, which features some material on the reconstruction of the building.  

“On this day (June 29^th) in 1613, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre burned to the ground. The thatched roof caught on fire after a theatrical cannon misfired during a production of Henry VIII. Only one man was hurt; his breeches caught on fire, but the quick-thinking fellow put them out with a bottle of ale.

The Globe had been the home of Shakespeare’s company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, since 1599; previously, his plays had been performed in a house known simply as The Theatre, but their lease expired in 1598. The troupe found a loophole: the lease was for the land only, and the company owned the building, so the Lord Chamberlain’s Men dismantled the old theater while the landlord was away for Christmas and brought it with them across the Thames from Shoreditch to Southwark. They used its timbers to build the framework of the Globe, which was also unique in being the first theater built to house a specific theatrical company, and to be paid for by the company itself.

After the fire, the Globe was rebuilt in 1614, and it was in use until 1642, when the Puritans closed all the theaters in London. The building was pulled down two years later to make room for tenements. It was rebuilt in the 1990s, and except for concessions made for fire safety, it is as close to the original Globe as scholars and architects were able to make it.”

The Globe was re-constructed on the banks of the Thames in London not far from its original site and I took this photo from the Tate Modern Art Gallery some years ago

                                                    

                                                

You can still subscribe to the Writer’s Almanac re-runs at thewritersalmanac@substack.com

 

 

A GREAT DELIVERANCE by Elizabeth George

 

Having recently read and reviewed Elizabeth George’s latest book (SOMETHING TO HIDE) and finding it wanting in clarity and far too long, I thought a trip to the past was called for. I was lucky to find a copy of A GREAT DELIVERANCE in our Grand Living Library. This was Ms. George’s breakthrough first Lynley novel and was published in 1988. You will be pleased to note that it is everything the most recent outing is not.  

The title comes from the story of Joseph in the Old Testament. He says to his brothers that he is not there to punish them for selling him, but to “save your lives by a great deliverance.” It is half the length, tightly plotted, and full of spot-on description. We meet the upper-crust Lynley for the first time and he finds that he has been assigned to mentor a struggling working class Sergeant Barbara Havers. She had been demoted to street cop and is now given a final chance to keep her detective’s stripes. As you might expect, Linley and Havers mix as well as oil and water, and this sets up a relationship that will continue to provide contrast for the next thirty years.  As the pair investigate an ax murder in the bucolic Yorkshire countryside, we get a full treatment of Lynley’s previous love affairs and Haver’s own dark family past. The breathtaking climax makes the history behind the brutal killing even more terrible than the crime itself while taking both detectives to the edge of despair.

The descriptions in the early book are tight, colorful, tactile, and often extended by literary references. Take this phrase, “This was no grappling in an Elsinore grave” or this view of Linley. “He examined himself in the mirror at her words, his cigarette dangling from his lips, his eyes narrowed against the smoke, part Sam Spade part Algernon Moncrieff.” 

A humorous touch is added with the introduction of the funniest “Ugly American” you may ever see.  Hank Watson, an American dentist and his wife are visiting Britain for a tax write-off dental convention. They clash resoundingly with English society when, at a formal dinner, Hank tries to explain the “queers” in Laguna Beach to Mr. St. James--Linley’s good friend. And witness this description.  Hank’s hand was “fat, slightly sweaty” and “like shaking hands with a warm, uncooked fish.”  You might also appreciate the picture of Barbara Haver’s frumpiness when she puts on a dress. According to George, she resembled a white garbed barrel with legs.”

All in all, if you love Ms. George’s books as much as I do, you might better re-read some of the earlier ones while you await her discovery that bigger is not necessarily better.