wahistorian's Reviews (506)

This book feels somewhat irrelevant now—thank goodness—but throw it into the hopper of “how could this happen” books, despite the fact that there is no really satisfactory explanation for four years of chaos and almost 250,000 dead from what was arguably an avoidable pandemic. Donald Trump’s niece Mary Trump has written a candid account of her family and her relationship to Trump. She observed the pain and suffering that her grandfather, Fred Trump, inflicted on all his children, especially her own father, and she has the strength of character to admit that Donald suffered and still suffers from his tyranny. What Donald *never* did was find outside influences that might have served as examples for how a human being overcomes dysfunction. Instead he doubled down on the bullying, scorn, intolerance, rudeness, and shaming he’d observed at home and inflicted it on the reals estate world and ultimately all the rest of us. One observation seemed particularly apropos of his post-election conduct: “Donald’s problems are accumulating because the maneuvering required to solve them, or pretend they Donny exist, has become more complicated, requiring many more people to execute the cover-ups. Donald is completely unprepared to solve his own problems or adequately cover his tracks” (199). All that’s almost over.

I haven’t read a book of short stories in a long time, but this one was perfect for long autumn nights. I picked it up at the Goodwill store after hearing it discussed on the ‘Backlisted’ podcast. These are gentle ghost stories: no threats or terror, just a feeling of dread or confusion about a letter with recognizable handwriting or an empty house that should be bustling with energy. These stories are set in country estates or city townhouses, peopled with quirky servants and upper middle class families. Well worth a read, at Halloween or any time.

New Yorkers LOVE New York. They love it as the backdrop for stories about cheating spouses and subway disasters and restaurant tours. They love it as a place where actor-law assistants and artist-carpenters can live out their fantasies of being bohemians *and* family men. The plot device—going back and forth in time as these two men move inexorably toward some sort of disaster—keeps this novel chugging forward, allowing you to forget whether you even like any of these four characters or care about their fate. Maybe you care about the fate of New York.

Peter Strzok lost a distinguished 20+ career in counterintelligence with the FBI because he had the misfortune of serving during the Trump administration. Strzok’s book is yet more evidence of the extraordinary self-interest, greed, lack of patriotism, stupidity, and downright smallness of this president and the ways in which it has corrupted a system of government we depend upon. Strzok outlines his early career, but spends the bulk of the narrative describing the two diametrically opposed investigations that would bring him down: Midyear Exams, the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s careless handling of official email, and Crossfire Hurricane, the investigation into the many Trump campaign workers who involved themselves with Russians in ways calculated to help his campaign. These stories are familiar and Strzok does not add much new, except for insights into the fastidious and dogged men and women working on these cases. I walked about with a new respect for the care and seriousness the FBI takes his mission, in spite of all attempts—mainly from the Chief Executive—to distract them from finding facts. The outrageousness of behavior at the top would be shocking if it was not by now so familiar, and it’s that weariness that, after four years, began to erode the very institutions we depend on. Why write the book? Strzok asks in the end; because the Russians are coming for your democracy and mine relentlessly, and this week’s headlines about hacks into numerous government agencies underline the terrifying seriousness of this. We cannot ever again allow one unhinged executive to open the door for them.

John LeCarre’s third book has been much discussed by now and for good reason. Alec Leamas is a character unlike any other: morally ambiguous but still clinging to some shreds of ethics. When we meet him is on his way down: alcoholic, jobless, and eventually headed to prison. But it’s a rock bottom with a purpose, orchestrated by the nameless, faceless Control, the spymaster who runs him in a Cold War Europe. Will Control protect him as Leamas heads behind the Iron Curtain? Or will he be sacrificed for the greater good of the British people, democracy, and western freedoms? Leamas appears willing to be sacrificed on his own terms, but unwilling to allow the mousy-but-loving Liz Gold to be used unwittingly. The alliance between Leamas and Gold serves to define the limits of duty to country and ideology—how much should one be asked to give up for one’s beliefs? And at what point does that sacrifice make beliefs meaningless?

This lost novel is a little gem from the golden age of British detection. The novel is unusual in many ways. It’s not a whodunnit, because we’re there when the murder takes place in a British country house on Christmas Eve. Once the crime occurs, there’s no clever detective to follow; instead, Meredith skillfully outlines for the reader the many interactions among the dysfunctional Gray family that unravel the perpetrator’s cover-up and exonerate the innocent accused (for whom anti-semitism makes the accusation possible). The book breaks many conventions of the detective novel and yet it works as a set of chilling insights into the twisted ways in which families keep secrets and conspire to favor some members over others.

Group biographies are difficult, with so many threads of life stories to manage while drawing out of them common themes. So when they are done well, they are all the more admirable. The self-named Mutual Admiration Society was a group of 5-8 young women students at Somerville College, Oxford in the early days of women’s education at Oxford, before women were even allowed to pursue degrees. Author Mo Moulton traces their lives from Somerville on, and the women become objects lessons about how wrong academics were to think that education was wasted on young women. Not only were these women lifelong feminists and friends and supports to one another, they contributed to women’s access to birth control and maternal care, theater, philosophy of religion, Tudor history, and detective fiction. The most well-known MAS member was Dorothy L. Sayers, creator of fictional sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey and his cohort Harriet Vane, but the other women of accomplishment do not get short shrift. “The work of the MAS forms a profoundly optimistic project,” Moulton writes. This project “insists that our birthright, as human beings, encompasses the full range of culture, and that even our most quixotic or futile efforts are ennobled, so long as they are defined by that integrity that links head and heart” (295). These women deserved this serious treatment and their work reminds us that all our efforts make a difference in the lives of someone.

This unusual Dorothy Hughes novel puts a group of Hollywood scorpions in a bottle in the form of a train hurtling between Los Angeles and New York City. Producer Vivien Spender has orchestrated this trip for a premiere with his long-suffering assistant Mike Dana, Kitten Agnew, the star he has made, and the star-waiting-in-the-wings, Gratia Shaw. Spender’s lifelong dream is to bring Thomas Mann’s ‘The Magic Mountain’ to film, but he has never been able to settle on a leading lady; each actress he sets out to cultivate inevitably disappoints and he moves on to another. On this trip, he is done with Kitten and ready to replace her with Gratia—in his work and in the public eye—and he will stop at nothing to get rid of Kitten. To Spender every woman is disposable once she has served her purpose. Kitten has figured Spender out, however, and her trip is a series of attempts to enlist other movie hangers-on to protect her from Viv’s plans. Will Viv Spender be able to switch one woman for another younger, more innocent one? And if he can, what are the consequences? Spenser’s ambition and ruthlessness are shocking even now, post-Me Too Movement, and it’s not hard to put Harvey Weinstein’s face on the character. Thank goodness the character of Pullman porter James Cobbett centers the book and provides humanity and perspective. A fascinating postwar perspective on art, ambition, and whether women’s lives have value.

Somehow I always have difficulty with Ruth Ware’s plotting—her novels never use a traditional mystery story arc and I get impatient waiting for the narrative to develop. The secret that the four protagonists—friends thrown together at the Salten School 17 years—are covering up doesn’t even emerge until almost halfway through the book. While the characters are engaging, their “lying game” also isn’t strongly defined. The ending is spectacular, however, even if there are some holes in the resolution of the mystery, but still it’s hard to forget that I struggled with putting the book down for the entire first half.