wahistorian's Reviews (506)

“There’s a proverb, a maxim, that runs, ‘The dead man is dead; let’s give a hand to the living.’ Now, you say that to a man from the North, and he visualizes the scene of an accident with one dead and one injured man; it’s reasonable to let the dead man be and to set about saving the injured man. But a Sicilian visualizes a murdered man and his murderer, and the living man who’s to be helped is the murderer. What a dead man means to a Sicilian... A dead man is a ridiculous spirit in purgatory, a little worm with human features writhing on a hot brick” (70).

This book was a page-turner; the author even managed to make the privileged group of Oxford friends interesting. Sequestered by a snowstorm in a remote Scottish lodge, the worst traits and secrets of these seven friends come out, with explosive results. It’s a lot of characters to keep track of, but Foley does a good job at slowly building their personalities and the relationships among them. And the ending is surprising without being improbable.

Charles Arrowby retires from a lifetime in the London theatre to a cottage by the sea, intending to write a memoir undisturbed by all the reprobates he once associated with, but has now come to disdain. Who would think such a thoroughly detestable man could be so compelling? The book’s early section—Arrowby’s “Prehistory”—is full of the joys of retirement: his delight in food, his little cottage, and the ever-changing sea, all told in his arch voice. But an unexpected encounter in the village upends his plans for happy solitude, and reawakens an obsession that changes his plans in late life. Murdoch’s writing, in the first person, put the reader behind the eyes of this narcissist—a “tartar,” as he calls himself, used to manipulating everyone around him. He finds, however, that in old age his old tricks don’t work as well and he’s in for a reckoning. ‘The Sea, The Sea’ affirms the human ability to change and learn and the strength of friendship, even if its first person narrative sometimes fails to truly bring to life the suffering Arrowby causes to those around him.

Am ambitious first novel that doesn’t quite succeed, but is definitely worth a read for what it tries to do. ‘Saint X’ is the name of the Caribbean island at the center of this story about the mysterious death of tourist Alison Thomas and its lifetime of effects on her sister Claire and the two hotel workers, Clive and Edwin, briefly implicated in her death. The book explores the reality and unreality of other people’s lives, particularly across cultures. The book lags a bit in the middle third, as Claire obsessively tries to discover the truth behind Alison’s death; novel readers probably already know the White characters, and we’re introduced to many Saint X residents who don’t add much to the story. But the ending is satisfying, and Claire and we better understand the lives of the residents of paradise.

I’d never read ‘Cyrano’ before seeing the National Theatre Live production with James McAvoy in the title role, but the James Crimp version was so compelling and intriguing that I thought I’d give it a try. I cannot say it would have been an easy read without the production in my mind, steeped as it is in a late 19th-century idealization of a 17th-century poet-soldier. But, like Shakespeare’s works, Rostand wrote a history play for his own times, rich with ideas about the body and its needs, the soul and its desires, and how one makes peace with a world that in general cares little for the individual. There’s lots of think about in Cyrano’s unrequited love for Roxane, his friendship with Christian, and his “panache.”

Such a fun read for 17 hours in an airport and Coronavirus isolation! Years ago mystery bookseller Malcolm Kershaw published a blog post listing his candidates for eight unsolvable murders on his bookstore’s web site; now it appears someone is putting his list in action. Kershaw lost his taste for reading mysteries years ago, for reasons that emerge as the story progresses, but he remembers enough to help FBI agent Gwen Mulvey make sense of these crimes. Almost no one is who they seem in this book, and it’s packed with great reading suggestions. Definitely a page turner and a good diversion for times when you need a distraction.

This is really a 3 1/2 star book; the topic is fascinating and the author’s research intensive, even if at times it feels more like a compendium of facts than a *history* of the Little Ice Age that shaped medieval and early modern Europe. Fagan’s command of the facts is almost the problem with his periodization, because he wants to share every warm winter that seems to blunt his ice age thesis. Overall, however, the book is rich with examples of the social effects of climate change: how extended cold ruined the British wine industry; the effects of winter storms on the Spanish Armada; how North Sea storms walked sand across England, ruining hundreds of acres of agricultural land; how sub-par grain crops helped stimulate bread riots and the French Revolution; the 1816 volcanic eruptions that affected life worldwide; and (of course) the Irish dependence on the potato crop and subsequent blight, famine, and mass migration. Fagan concludes with an admonition about global warming: “The Little Ice Age reminds us that climate change is inevitable, unpredictable, and sometimes vicious” (214).

The narrator looks back at a time when he, his brother Andrew, their Mummer and Farther, and an unlikely collection of pilgrims head to the north England coast, to commemorate Easter with their new parish priest. The Loney, a liminal place of unpredictable tides and treacherous weather, had been their annual pilgrimage until their old Father Wilfred died in unexplained circumstances; now they're depending on Father Bernard to lead their spiritual journey to cure Andrew of his autism. Such a strange story, with dead babies and bums, illicit activities, country bullies, and God or his opposite! Is The Loney a place for healing or a place of crisis? Either way, everyone comes away unsettled, and I did, too.

This was the perfect book for fractious times, because it was lyrical and distracting, but it also had a lot to say about humans’ impact on the Earth and our relationship to birds: naming them, specifying them, writing about them, and loving or despising them. Dee has written a peculiarly British essay on gulls (never “seagulls”) and their proximity to humans; the chapter on Alfred Hitchcock and Daphne duMaurier’s versions of ‘The Birds’ alone was worth the price of the book.

Here’s a sample: “All of the world’s 135 or so species [of nightjar] are tailored somewhere between a fast owl and a stuttering moth — long sharp wings, wide-mouthed faces, blackcurrant eyes — and they are silently assembled, as are many night things, from old fabrics woven and reopen, stitched and unstitched, worn, patches, and appliqués. If an owl is a worked bag of leafy air, a nightjar is a dusty carpet that has absorbed into its pattern the thread of that which has been trodden down into it, until it cannot be said what is dirt and what is design.” (207)

This is not your traditional biography and Mallory O’Meara’s idiosyncratic writing style—stuffed with digressions about her research, the #MeToo movement, the state of women in Hollywood, even the author’s own personal life—takes a bit of getting used to. The book is well worth the effort, however, as O’Meara uncovers the work and life of artist, designer, and Hollywood makeup artist Milicent Rossi Patrick, the creator of the iconic Creature from the Black Lagoon. O’Meara is a little in love with Patrick, as a role model and inspiration, and that passion was what was needed to push through the challenging research project she set for herself. This book is not only a biography of Patrick, it also contextualizes the work of any non-celebrity woman associated with movies in the 1940s through the 1960s. Despite her obvious artistic talent, Patrick’s accomplishments were overshadowed by makeup titan Bud Westmore *and* all the men and women in the movie-going public who fixated on her physical beauty. O’Meara’s work points up the hypocrisy in our simultaneous love and jealousy and fear of beautiful successful women, and why they often end up going it alone. Lots of food for thought.