Sycamore Row by John Grisham

This book came out last year and I'm only getting around to reading it now.  One of my reasons for pushing it to the top of my TBR (to-be-read) list is my interest in finding out if it would be a good selection for a book group.

I'm now past the two-thirds mark.  I have to say I am really enjoying this book.

One of the qualities Grisham possesses, one which has turned me off in the past, is his intense interest on who stands where in the pecking order.  His interest in how manners, money, dress and comportment dictate your social standing has made me feel painfully self-conscious, and I have not enjoyed it.  It is the business of the novel, in my opinion, to talk about how we live now and certainly, this novel and his other novels do that. I think that one of the things that I particularly like about this novel is that there is so much to say about everything in this long novel that his socioeconomic rankings are less obtrusive than I have found them to be in the past.

Jake Brigance is a small town "street lawyer," in Mississippi in 1984.  He's well-known in his town because he represented Carl Lee Hailey in his trial for murdering the white men who raped his daughter, three years earlier.  Carl Lee was African-American, so Jake is highly regarded in the African-American community.

Jake is struggling financially, however.  He didn't make much money defending Carl Lee and his house was firebombed by racists during the trial.  He's been unable to settle with the insurance company and he, his wife, and his daughter are living in a rental house.

Enter Seth Hubbard, albeit by letter.  Seth is a cantankerous soul, who has made millions in timber and furniture in the previous ten years.  Then Seth learned that he had terminal cancer.

Seth has hung himself, and before doing so, made a new will and writtern Jake a letter in which he asks Jake to defend the new will vigorously.  (Seth chooses Jake because of his local reputation as the defender of Carl Lee Hailey)  Seth knows it will be challenged, because in his new will he cuts out his children.  The new beneficiary is his housekeeper, who is to receive 90% of Hubbard's estate.

Jake is stunned, but he instantly understands that the new will will be contested by the deceased's children and that he, as the estate's lawyer defending the new will, will have an opportunity to have a good, steady income for the first time in years.  When he begins discussing the will with his closest attorney friends, and the local sheriff, they all immediately understand that the fact that Seth Hubbard's housekeeper was black means that there will be a very big fight and that some jurors will feel reluctance to award 90% of a multimillion dollar estate to a black woman.

Grisham mentions Faulkner more than once in this book, and it's clear to me that he shared Faulkner's view that "the past isn't dead, it isn't even passed."  Nevertheless, the book ends on a hopeful note.

Appropos of nothing, I found this reference to dining and shopping in East London in an ad from Phaidon, the publishers.

http://www.phaidon.com/agenda/food/articles/2014/may/19/the-insiders-guide-to-london/

10/24/2017

I read Sycamore Row for  a second time this past spring, for another book group, and I have to say that I enjoyed it even more the second time. I found myself dwelling on details I hadn't noticed the first time around, and I loved the local color - the restaurant and Jake and one of his cronies goes to discuss the trial during a lunch break. It's in the country, and Jake's lunch partner is another lawyer, a really startling intellect. It's so rich in detail and feeling. If only every Grisham outing were this resonant. And this book is resonant.

Parade's End

Back in May, I watched all five episodes of the BBC miniseries, "Parade's End."  This is based on the series of novels by Ford Madox Ford, based in part on his experiences in the First World War.  It seems so odd to me that this year is the 100-year anniversary of the beginning of the war, because we seem to continue to read books and watch movies about the war.

Well, I loved it. The cinematography was wonderful, as was the music.  I thought Adeline Clements was sublime, as were the supporting actors, including Rufus Sewell as the mad vicar.  I recommend it to you for that alone.  It had a wonderful cast:  Janet McTeer, Miranda Richardson, Rupert Everett, Roger Allam, Benedict Cumberbatch and Rebecca Hall.

I know that the screenplay was by Tom Stoppard and having enjoyed his plays very much, I found myself wondering if that was part of why I loved it.  The villain of the piece (Sylvia) was given some absolutely wonderful lines and I found myself thinking it was hard to dislike her entirely when she had such interesting things to say!

I thought Janet McTeer's performance as Sylvia's mother was note-perfect and I enjoyed watching her.  I loved everybody else, too.  Loved it!

I have not read the novels, but I learned something about them by going to the Wikipedia entry.  There's a scene in which Sylvia throws a plate at Christopher, complaining that he is correcting the Encyclopedia Britannica. She further complains that no jury would convict her if she killed her husband; I can't remember what her specific complaint is, but it seems to be that it is horrible to be married to such a pedantic person. In the novel, I learned from Wikipedia, Christopher reads the Encyclopedia Britannica to restore his lost memory as he recovers from shell shock.

I would say that it reminded me of the Makioka Sisters, the novel by Tanizaki Junichiro, but lately I've been thinking that everything reminds me of the Makioka Sisters, so I'll skip that.  (In the Makioka Sisters, different daughters react differently to the decline in their family's fortunes in the context of Westernization and militarization - here Christopher Tietjens and his elder brother have slightly different takes on responding to the ending of a way of life on landed estates after the First World War.  It seemed to me that the heart of the piece was the tension between Christopher's values and those of the world around him which were rapidly undergoing a huge shift.)

A friend gave me a copy of Parade's End and I've just finished watching it a second time. In my second viewing, Benedict Cumberbatch's performance seemed wonderful.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett

I thought the book started off surprisingly slowly.  I thought it did quickly get rolling and was very suspenseful.

In this classic women's fiction tale of a white woman and two African-American maids, set in 1960s era Jackson, Mississippi, the suspense comes not just from not knowing the outcome of the story but from understanding the very real danger in which these characters are placed by their actions.  I think that's definitely part of the appeal:  it's a social satire, an adventure story, a family story, and a town saga (many characters), all wrapped into one.

The book opens with Aibileen, a black maid, getting ready to start work at a new job.  For three months, she's been grieving the loss of her adult son, and she hasn't been working.

Her son was a physically slight and bookish man, who worked at manual labor.  Aibileen feels that his fatal accident at work occurred because her son was not physically strong enough for the job he had.

She feels bitter, and she feels conflicted about going to work for another white family.

Before he died, he started work on a book about what it was like to work for white people.

Aibileen mentions this to Skeeter, a young woman who has just returned from college (without that "Mrs. Degree").  Coincidentally, Skeeter's applied for a job at a New York publishing house and while she didn't get the job, an editor there advised her that she should write something.  It occurs to Skeeter that she should write about the black maids in her world and their experiences working for white people.

Minny is a friend of Aibileen and she also works as a maid for a white lady.  The daughter of her employer decides that her mother should be moved to a rest home, ending Minny's employment.  Hilarious hijinks ensue.  Actually, this occasions a crisis in Minny's life as she really needs that job.  Minny is a plain-spoken person who has a reputation for speaking her mind regardless of the consequences.

She eventually gets a job with a young white woman who is struggling with several aspects of married life. This aspect of Minny's story has many comic and heart-warming elements.

  

Invisible Woman

I loved this film.  It's based on a book by Clare Tomalin on Charles Dickens (which I haven't read) of the same title.

It's about Dickens' love affair with an actress named Ellen Ternan.  In many ways, it's a quite interesting story.  I was surprised to learn about Dickens' affair because he seemed to me to be such an connoiseur of fine family feeling in his fiction that I imagined that sensibility would be a central part of his own family life.

As shown in the film, he was close friends with Wilkie Collins, who was also living with a woman outside of marriage.  What the film doesn't show is that Collins had two mistresses.

The reason I loved the film, however, was not the interesting biographical facts it contained.  It was the acting, which I thought was sublime.

Ralph Fiennes played Dickens; Felicity Jones played Ellen Ternan; Kirstin Scott Thomas played Ellen Ternan's mother, an actress of some distinction, and Tom Hollander played Collins.

Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

I'm torn about this book.  I know it's a crowd pleaser, not because I know that it was a bestseller and book club favorite (which I do), but as I read the book I felt as though I could glimpse the Great Wizard behind the curtain, pulling the levers.

Is it wrong to please people?  Surely not!  Yet the fantasy aspect of this book made me feel uneasy.  I remember that line from Murder in the Cathedral, "Humankind cannot bear too much reality."  I don't know if I ever knew what that has to do with the death of Becket but I can see how it would make this book very appealing.

The book has more than one theme and I may not have picked up on them all:  the most important, I think, is about forgiving our parents for the foolish things they do, forgiving ourselves for the foolish things we do, and beginning the process of healing.  It's also about love in all its many forms.  I'm sure this is part of why this book was so popular (as well as its being a coming-of-age novel, which everyone seems to love - why is that?  Adolescence is often a horrible time, for one reason or another).  Race is also a theme.  The novel is set in South Carolina in the 1960's.

This author has a new book out, The Invention of Wings, about the Grimke sisters (famous abolitionists), which deals with the issue of slavery as well as the yin/yang of dependence on those we love and our desire for independence from them.

Since I wrote this post I've learned that the author knew of a house where bees came swimming out of the wall.  I realize that's not necessarily fantastic.  It's almost as if the time that has passed has allowed the novel to settle in my mind and I realize that the themes of forgiveness are very powerful, as is the idea of creating your own religion that permits you to affirm not only your own values but to affirm your value as a human being.

Saving Mr. Banks/Philomena/The Invention of Lying/About Time

I saw all four of these movies this weekend; of course, none of them were new.

I was so interested in Saving Mr. Banks because I loved the Travers books when I was a child and saw them as really wonderfully weird.  Learning that Walt Disney and Travers had a rocky relationship was no surprise then, really.  This film was so beautifully made.  The acting was fantastic (it was a wonderful cast, down to Melanie Paxson and Kathy Banks as secretaries).  I love Emma Thompson and I thought her ability to imitate Travers' speech patterns and accent was sublime.  I thought that there was a real anarchic streak in the Travers books, so I suspect that their relationship was even more rocky than depicted.  And the depiction of Travers' childhood was the experience of many; that could have been my grandmother.

Philomena was another wonderfully crafted movie - great music, good writing, another wonderful cast, wonderful acting from Judi Dench .. although it was a wonderful script, one that permitted Philomena to be a complex person with many feelings, some of them unexpected, I just think the movie would not have worked without Judi Dench's performance.  I read some criticism that argued that the jokes in the movie are made at Philomena's expense.  That's true, and a fair criticism.  Criticizing her perspective was part of the characterization of the character Martin Sixmith, and it added a needed comic element.  I can see how it would make some viewers uncomfortable and seem exploitative and like a cheap shot.

I loved the Invention of Lying, which is more a social satire than a romance.  Jennifer Garner's performance is both charming and deeply disturbing.  The film was shot in Lowell, Massachusetts, and in the film, Lowell is filled with many handsome buildings.

The notion of the film is that there was a time when no one lied, not even to spare each others' feelings.  In the film, we see that all that honesty makes people really scary; there's a wonderful scene in which Rob Lowe's character says of Ricky Gervais's character, "I don't like him because there's something different about him and that challenges me."  Have to love it; that's so much conflict in a nutshell.

Ricky Gervais is set upfor a date with Jennifer Garner and crushed when she tells him that she won't go out with him again because she wants someone more attractive to father her children.  (Actually, he takes it fairly calmly because he's accustomed to being disappointed.)  Then he's fired and faces homelessness - until, in desperation, he discovers lying can at least solve his income problem.

About Time is a Richard Curtis film that stars Rachel McAdams and Domhnall Gleeson; the fact that she starred in another time travel movie, The Time Traveler's Wife, caused me to be surprised to see her here.  Still, the time travel is not really an important part of this film:  it's more of a scaffold on which to lay some sentiment about family love.  I know I read a review of this film that was lukewarm, but I enjoyed it.  I think that I enjoyed having these issues explored again, although they've all been explored many times before.  I also was happy to see Lindsay Duncan, whom I like very much, and who played a part a little different than the others I've seen her in - most recently, Lady Blackwood in "The Last Vow" episode of Sherlock.

And, of course, Bill Nighy.  I love Bill Nighy.  His persona of self-deprecation is so charming:  it seems to make him a natural joke-tossing-off vehicle.  Yes, I never tire of Bill Nighy.

What Would Jane Austen Do? by Laurie Brown

I'm reading this romance novel that was nominated for an award.

The author displays quite an impressive amount of knowledge of Regency Era customs, from marriage mores to dress design to cuisine.  I was quite impressed.

The story has a few paranormal elements:  there are a couple of charming ghosts, some time travel, and a good-looking rake! who turns out to be a spymaster in the Napoleonic wars.  There's some steamy sex.

As is pointed out in the novel, in 1814 Britain was at war with both France and America.

And, to the delight, I am sure, of Jane Austen fans everywhere, Jane Austen makes an appearance in the novel (accompanied by her sister, Cassandra).

And, perhaps more important than any of these things, if you're a big Jane Austen fan, the climax of the novel does turn on the advice (what Jane Austen would do) Jane Austen gives our heroine regarding her perplexing love life.

Well Read and Dead by Catherine O'Connell

What a cute book, set in Chicago and published in 2009.  This book is a cozy mystery, and just barely a mystery in the classic sense:  the body doesn't appear until the last quarter of the book and I'd say the sleuthing doesn't begin until the last third of the book.

Before that, we get a very tongue-in-cheek portrait of the rich on Chicago's North Side.

I read this with a book group (they all loved it) and while my overall impression of the book was that it was an entertaining romp, the others disagreed about whether the heroine, Pauline, was overly materialistic. Some thought she was; others thought that a girl should get, and have, her own.  Some defended her by saying that she came from money:  they seemed to believe that it was natural to think that money was important if you'd grown up with it.

The others enjoyed the settings:  Chicago, Cambodia, Thailand and Aspen.  They approved of Pauline's loyalty to her missing cat, Fleur; Pauline's quest to find Fleur drives much of the plot.

O'Connell's first book was Well Bred and Dead, and apparently, Well Wed and Dead, is planned.

The most important part of the book, to me, was that the two main characters actually recited poetry to each other.  I don't believe anyone has fallen in love over poetry, in fiction, since Captain Benwick and Louisa Musgrove (in Jane Austen's Persuasion). Marvell was quoted, Milton too (!) and Sonnet 73, "Thou Mayst in Me Behold," also made an appearance.  Further, O'Connell gave all of her chapters the titles of famous novels, such as Pride and Prejudice.  I loved this, and I wonder if some other book-loving readers would alos enjoy this.

This author has a website (www.catherineoconnell.net), and if you take a look you can see that she is really part of the world that she depicts in her book, and, that she is not Catherine O'Connell, the Irish-American singer and Chicagoan.

There's quite a bit of romance, and quite a bit of comedy.  I objected to the denouement of the plot; the others expressed surprise.  If you like to be surprised by the ending, I recommend Well Read and Dead to you.  

In the Land of the Young by Lisa Carey

I checked this book out accidentally, or perhaps, saw it and couldn't resist it when I was looking for a children's book on St. Patrick.  I thought I remembered that the Land of the Young is the translation for Tir Na Nog.

I read the first chapter, and it broke my heart.  I assure you, if you read the first page you will be compelled to read the entire first chapter.  It's about a shipwreck of Irish immigrants off the coast of Maine in 1848, and how the fishermen ran to their boats when they saw a ship in distress, and how they tried to save everyone, and how a man lost his life saving a child, and how she passed, anyway.   After I read the first chapter, I said to myself, "I can't read this book; it's just so sad."

But later on, I found myself feeling curious about the book I wouldn't read, and I picked it up and started reading it in the middle or perhaps farther on, and I found that it seemed to be a domestic drama about a man caring for a girl .. but was caused me to read on, and on, was the prose.  I don't know if it was sparkling, but it was good.  It was plain and poetic and it made you want to know more.

I don't know if I will ever find time to read this book; I hope I do.  The jacket flap tipped me off to the fact that it's a ghost story, and I bet it has more sorrow to dish out than that I've already encountered.  I'm sure it's all about loss and how it haunts us and how the past gives us rich gifts and cripples us at the same time. And there are a lot of books about that subject.  But I think, based on what little I've read, that Lisa Carey is a wonderful prose stylist and her book is one well worth reading.

One Plus One by JoJo Moyes

I got an "advance review copy (ARC)" of this novel, which is not due to be published until July.

I have to say that I just loved it.  It's partly that it's a very well-structed romantic comedy.

But very much more than that, it's the authorial voice which is thoughtful, not glib, not too highfalutin and to me, terribly witty.  To me, there's something so satisfying about that witty voice.

JoJo Moyes is also the author of Me Before You and the Girl You Left Behind, which were very popular in 2013.  I haven't read either of them - there are so many things I want to read.  But having this ARC copy made it convenient and it's almost true that once I started I couldn't put it down.  I didn't really care about the characters until chapter three.  But then, I felt, as one does - that I just HAD TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS TO THEM IN THE END.

Jess is a cleaner.  Actually she has two jobs.  One is being a bartender in a pub, and the other is cleaning houses.

She married her high school boyfriend when she got pregnant at 17.  A few years later, she learned that he had already fathered another child with another woman at the time of their marriage.  She learned this because her husband, fearful of the child's mother's addiction, asked to take this child into their home.

They struggled greatly to make ends meet.  Her husband's get rich quick - or get rich slowly - schemes not only did not succeed, but backfired so that they were never able to secure any financial security and he became depressed.  He stopped working, took to his bed, and eventually moved back in with his mother.

Jess works a lot of hours at her two jobs.  Her elder child, Nicky, is regularly beat up because he's different; her younger child, Tanzie (short for Costanza) is a gifted child who loves mathematics.  She wants to protect her son and doesn't know how and she wants to provide academic opporunities for her daughter and she has no idea how to do that, either.

She's desperate, it's true, but she's also someone with an almost unbeatable case of optimism who's so fond of reassuring her children that they think it's funny that she always says that everything will be all right although it never has been to date.

How Paris Became Paris by Joan DeJean

I wasn't able to finish this book because I simply didn't have time; it had to go back to the library because, not surprisingly, someone else wanted to read it.

Therefore, I can only talk about the author's main contention and the first three chapters.  The book begins with a 20-page introduction in which the author explains that the Paris we know today, and the idea of Paris as the ultimate tourist destination, the city of light, the city of romance, all start with Henri IV's desire to use a building program to restore Paris after it was greatly damaged by decades of religious war in the 16th century.

I should note that when I first had a desire to read this book I assumed it was about Baron Hausmann's work in the 19th century.  In her introduction, DeJean explains that it is an erroneous view held by many that Baron Hausmann's transformed Paris from its medieval version but it is the work of the 17th century kings, financiers, and engineering boy wonders that transformed Paris and gave us the Pont Neuf, the Place des Vosges (then the Place Royale), and the Ile Saint Louis (then the Ile Notre Dame, named for its proximity to the Notre Dame on the Ile de la Cite).

Henri IV's work began with his decision, around the turn of the 17th century, to build the Pont Neuf.  He was, among other things, concerned about creating infrastructure capable of holding the weight of carriages, the coming fashion in transportation.  The new bridge was completed in 1609, and it was different from the other bridges then being used for many reasons.  It was not lined with buildings as London Bridge and many other bridges were.  Henri IV financed it not with rents from these buildings but from a tax on wine coming into the city.  This bridge had broad, raised sidewalks for pedestrians, making crossing the bridge safer for them as carriages became more popular.  The bridge was unusually wide, 75 feet, which made it possible for merchants, performers, and gossipers to congregate on the bridge which made quickly made it most important gathering place to pick up news.

The Place des Vosges began as a silk workshop.  I loved learning about this.  Henri IV inherited an economically depressed city in which aristocrats were buying Italian silk for their dress, an expensive practice which did nothing for France's economy.  He resolved to create a silk industry in France and set up a workshop, with houses for the workers, on the old site of the Palace des Tournelles (which had been pulled down by Catherine de Medici after Henri III had been fatally injured in a joust there).  He decreed that the houses should have regular fronts, and the square was originally built with housing on three sides and a silk workshop on the fourth.  After Henri IV's death, his son did not pursue the project, which ended.  The silk workshop became (I don't know if it was converted or pulled down) the fourth wall of housing facing the square.  After some decades, the tradesmen who had lived there were replaced by aristocrats.  Eventually, the Place des Vosges became the centerpiece of an affluent, desirable neighborhood called The Marais ("the marshes").  As its name suggests, much of this area, and much of the area on the right bank, was not developed at the beginning of the seventeenth century.

I can't remember why the Ile St. Louis was undertaken, but it was created from two other islands that already stood in the Seine:  the Isle de Juifs and Isle de Vaches.  Both islands were uninhabited and primarily used for grazing.  An engineer named Marie, for whom one of the adjoining bridges is named, transformed the two islands into one.  The island was buttressed with embankments.  Innovatively, the street pattern was laid out in a grid.  DeJean writes that the architecture of the houses built on the Ile Saint Louis influenced French architecture in and outside of Paris.  Two great mansions were built on one end of the island; Baron Hausmann pulled the largest, the Hotel de Bretonvilliers, down to build the Pont Sully.  There is an arch left which I think gives an indication of the beauty of the the building, which I suppose was really more like a complex.  This is the style, smooth cut stone construction, which became our very idea of what is French architecture.

Let me go back to the Pont Neuf for a moment.  The bridge was built with observation platforms; DeJean said that this was a new innovation (and it has continued since I saw a couple of observation platforms on Blackfriars Bridge the other day).  De Jean says that this was the beginning of the mystique of Paris; people enjoyed stopping to view the Seine from the unique vantage point provided by the bridge and thus began an interest in urban views.  She points out that the Pont Neuf was the first piece of urban infrastructure that was neither a palace, fortress or monument that attracted tourists.   She sees it as the beginning of modern urban design, in which infrastructure itself may become a tourist attraction.

I know that later chapters of the book deal with other 17th century residential squares, the the design of the Tuileries and the Champs d'Elysee, and the civil unrest that took place in the middle of the 17th century.

It is especially interesting to me to read a consideration of the "beginning" of the romanticization of Paris as, coincidentally, just before I started this book I learned of "Paris Syndrome" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome) which is thought to be similar to Stendhal, or Florence, Syndrome.  Fortunately, Joan deJean's elucidation of the history of Paris is not going to cause anyone to experience Paris Syndrome.

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

Loved this book.

It reads like the novelization of your favorite romantic comedy.

It's a cross between The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime and The Accidental Tourist.

I understand that it has already been optioned as a film, and that it began its life as a screenplay.

I just read the New York Times review today and the NYT reviewer compared it unfavorably to The Curious Incident; there, the reviewer opined, one was not dependent on observations made by the protagonist but could infer social cues and other information not provided by the protagonist by reading the dialogue.  It's a been a few years since I read Mark Haddon's book; my recollection was that as the book wore on, especially as it came to its conclusion, it became more and more contrived.  Nevertheless, that "shapeliness" is probably part of why it was so popular.

It's probably also a little slighter than The Accidental Tourist, if only because the latter book deals with grief and loss, and there, the love object lady was more problematic, and so, probably more interesting:  not the same class as Mason, the writer of the Accidental Tourist series, not educated, with the unfortunate name "Miriam," and an equally unfortunate dress sense, and a child who was struggling.  Anne Tyler is a resolutely hopeful writer and she manages to talk about dreadful disappointments in a poetic way and makes you believe that a happy ending is possible.

My to be read list

I currently own or have checked out the following books on my "to be read list":



The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion

I see the similarity with the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime.  Not just that the protagonists exist on the autism spectrum, but that the constant interpretation of behavior lends everything an air of mystery and uncertainty.  It engages you early on and has good pacing - the exposition is brief.  I can see why it's been a popular book.

While Beauty Slept by Elizabeth Blackwell

How Paris Became Paris by Joan De Jean


I've begun "How Paris" and I like it .. easy to read, good flow, interesting, not too many details.  It's primarily a book about the 17th century, not the 19th century as I expected.

4/22/14

I've started One Plus One by JoJo Moyes.  I'm only a few pages in but I can also imagine this as a movie .. it reminds me of that movie, Sunshine Cleaning, with Amy Adams and Emily Blount .. I just saw American Hustle the weekend before last, in which Adams was reunited with Alessandro di Novala from June Bug and whose performance in Mansfield Park I remember with fondness.

4/27/2014

Have begun an ARC copy of Natchez Burning by Greg Iles.. I've really only just begun, but I think I'm going to like this book very much.  I must also say I really like the cover.  It has a legal theme, and it reminds me of John Grisham and Scott Turow.  Like Grisham's Sycamore Row, it's set in Mississippi.