Murder and Mayhem

It's not often that I blog about a murder mystery. After all, I'm an admirer of serious literary fiction. But come on – a country estate in late 18^th century England, a mysterious anatomist, dead bodies, arsenic, riots and mayhem, a mysterious ring, orphaned children - I'm entitled to a little fun every now and then.

Imogen Robertson's Instruments of Darkness had plenty to keep me entertained. In the very first chapter, in bucolic West Sussex, a maid awakens her master to deliver a note sent by his neighbor: I have found a body on my land. His throat has been cut. That's the way to get things started! The scene soon shifts to a London music store where a friendly shop owner is murdered in front of his horrified children. What's the connection?

Robertson swings between these two storylines, as well as to scenes in Massachusetts during the Revolutionary War. The odd couple sifting through the clues are country neighbors – Gabriel Crowther, a scientist with a mysterious past, and Harriet Westerman, the intelligent if somewhat bored wife of a naval commander who is away at sea. Their relationship is initially prickly but they come to respect each other as they examine bodies, interrogate maids and rifle desk drawers, and it is their humor and honesty that keep things entertaining, even as the bodies pile up.

Robertson does occasionally gets a little carried away with her prose: “...he swung from his bed and began to dress, letting the shreds of his too-brief rest scatter about the floorboards of his room”. (Does the maid have to sweep up those shreds?). But if you're looking for an enjoyable historical whodunit (and why) I can recommend this one.

Story of a Marriage

I started reading Jane Smiley with great enthusiasm over twenty years go. I enjoyed her short story collection “The Age of Grief” and her novellas “Ordinary Love and Good Will”, and I really loved “A Thousand Acres”. But then came “Moo” and I began to feel that Jane's time in Ames, Iowa had made her a little more interested in farming and animals than I was, and I moved on to other authors.

But recently she published a new novel called Private Life that sounded intriguing. It follows the life of Margaret Mayfield from her childhood in post-Civil War Missouri, to her marriage to Captain Andrew Jackson Jefferson Early and their married life in northern California at the Mare Island naval station and nearby Vallejo. Woven into the story are many historical events, from the 1906 San Francisco earthquake to the Japanese internment camp at Tanforan Racetrack in 1942.

But when I find an historical novel enjoyable it's not because the history is good; it's because the story is good. (“Half of a Yellow Sun” is a successful recent example of this). And this is the story of a remarkably uninteresting woman and a remarkably unlikeable man, and it didn't work for me. Not that I have anything against unlikeable characters. Sam Pollitt in Christina Stead's powerful “The Man Who Loved Children” (see my blog) was, like Andrew Early, a narcissistic gasbag in love with his own cockeyed theories and delusional ideas, but Stead created family members who clashed with his monstrous ego and then spun off in all directions. But Margaret Early does little more than wring her hands. I'm sure I'm meant to admire her growing self-awareness and independence, but by then she's sixty-four and I've had to endure thirty years of this dysfunctional marriage.

Strangely enough, this story made me think of “Middlemarch”. Remember how Dorothea puts up with that drip Mr. Casaubon for far too long? But she does eventually come to her senses and leave. I wish Margaret had read George Eliot. 

A Piece of French History

Tatiana de Rosnay's historical fiction Sarah's Key has been on the New York Times bestseller for over a year, so I'm sure most of you have either read it or read of it. The book's main character Julia Jarmond, an American journalist living in Paris with her French husband, is researching an historical event called the Vel d'Hiv. On the morning of July 16, 1942, French police swept through Paris and arrested over 13,000 Jews, including children. Initially the prisoners were held in an indoor bicycle stadium called the Velodrome d'Hiver in appalling conditions, and subsequently were transported to Auschwitz. It was especially shocking that it was the collaborating French police themselves, not the Nazis, who organized the raid, and that the non-Jewish Parisians quickly occupied the emptied apartments without asking too many questions.

In the course of her research Julia discovers a connection between her husband's family and Sarah Starzinsky, a ten year-old Jewish girl who was taken to the velodrome with her parents. The novel then alternates between Sarah's story and Julia's. Sarah's story is suspenseful, poignant and emotionally powerful, and de Rosnay does an excellent job of weaving historical events into the tight plot.

But unfortunately the other half of the story is about Julia, and here's where the chick lit clichés spoiled my enjoyment of this book Her husband is an arrogant boor (how very French), her sisters-in-law don't like her, her marriage is on shaky ground. The plot takes a few interesting twists as Julia tries to trace Sarah's path, but will it surprise you to learn that in the process she also finds true love? Or that “Sarah's Key” is soon to be a major motion picture? (It could be worse; at least Julia will be played by Kristin Scott-Thomas and not Julia Roberts).

I was fascinated to learn about Vel d'Hiv, I was riveted by Sarah's suspenseful story, but I'm disappointed that de Rosnay felt it necessary to tell us about yet another plucky gal battling the odds to find true love.

Revolution and Freedom

Dalia Sofer was ten years old when she and her family escaped from Iran into Turkey with the help of smugglers. The family eventually emigrated to New York and began a new life. Two years before they fled Iran Sofer’s father had been imprisoned and accused of being a Zionist spy. Dalia Sofer’s first novel was her way of understanding the horrific experience her father and many other Iranian citizens had suffered in prison. She relied on her memories, dialogs with her father and reading numerous accounts written by other Iranian prisoners. The result of this immense effort is a beautifully written novel that spans one year from September 1981 to September 1982 portraying a Jewish, Iranian family in Tehran shortly after the revolution.

Issac Amin an Iranian Jewish, gem dealer is arrested one afternoon as he was leaving his office to have lunch with his wife. He is accused of being a spy for Israel because of his frequent business trips there. The novel is written with alternating chapters narrated by each of the Amin family members. Isaac is arrested, imprisoned and tortured . During this time he finds that he is in the “care” of one guard and Isaac eventually learns he can rely on this man. Isaac’s wife, Farnaz, is left to deal with their home, their children and trying to find out where her husband has been taken. Both Isaac and Farnaz find themselves contemplating their life, their relationship and what they have become in life. Their son, Parviz, is in New York studying architecture. Having been the son of wealthy parents he now finds himself with not enough money to pay his rent or feed himself. Even the nine year old daughter, Shirin finds herself lost. She attempts to help her father by stealing files from a friend’s home whose father works for the revolutionaries.

Sofer deftly illustrates the ironies that define the lives of this family. Under the Shah’s regime they experienced privilege and wealth but that is essentially the reason Isaac has been imprisoned. Isaac was a non practicing Jew but he is accused of being a Zionist spy. Farnaz defined herself by her material possessions, all of which must eventually be left behind. Parviz falls in love with the daughter of an Hassidic Jew in New York but he is deemed unworthy of her because he is not a truly religious Jew.

Dalia Sofer has written a descriptive, moving novel that beautifully illustrates how each member of the Amin family arrives at new understanding of what is most important to them, to their family and to their survival. The author has taken her family’s amazing, terrifying history and created a story that explains to the world what happened to many Iranians in the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. For the Amin family it was a treacherous journey on many levels. Let’s hope Dalia Sofer continues to tell the world of the journey her family and fellow Iranians have taken as they live out their tumultuous history.

Away

I recently overheard two women in a bookstore extolling the book Away by Amy Bloom, so of course I added it to my selections. Lillian Leyb is Russian Jew who escapes after the bloody slaughter of her family and arrives in New York's Lower East Side in 1924. It begins as a classic tale of immigrant experience as she toils in a sewing factory and catches the eye of the owners, both father and son. She becomes their mistress without either man knowing about the other one. In a sly and humorous way we see her struggle with her nightmares, learn English, observe carefully in order to try to understand these men and improve her opportunities. A Russian cousin joins her and informs her that her little daughter Sophie is alive and living with former neighbors in Russia. She immediately follows her heart and becomes determined to return to Siberia to reunite with Sophie. Traveling by train, with seven dollars, she is attacked and robbed and spends a very unusual period in Seattle with a prostitute who saves her life. Lillian becomes entangled in strange doings there, escapes and proceeds on foot, through the brutal lonely wilderness of Alaska en route to the Bering Strait as the only way to get to her destination. The people she meets, mostly men, provide moving characters, windows into human need, and a story that propels you forward. Lillian's will to survive, need to carefully observe in order to learn, to get to Sophie, all create a strong and compelling character. The novel is an artful blend of fiction and fantasy that seems like it could have certainly been at least partially based on a true account. The author states that it is a work of pure fiction. It's a short novel containing strong character development and an emotionally evocative story.

Alchemy and History

What are the odds? Dorothea's last blog was about a book called The Alchemist and my blog also deals with alchemy. And I admit it – I know practically nothing about alchemy. Changing lead into gold, the philosopher's stone - that's the extent of my knowledge. So I was intrigued by the premise of Rebecca Stott's mystery novel Ghostwalk. A Cambridge historian named Elizabeth Vogelsang dies mysteriously just as she is completing a book about Sir Isaac Newton's involvement with alchemy at Trinity College, Cambridge in the seventeenth century. This involvement is historically accurate. Although many biographers minimize this aspect of Newton's career, he wrote extensively on the subject. Vogelsang's son Cameron, a successful research scientist, persuades Lydia Brooke, a freelance writer and his former lover, to complete his mother's work.

Lydia soon realizes that the unfinished book explored the possibility that Newton was involved in a series of five murders at Cambridge. At the same time she becomes aware of a series of ritual murders of animals attibuted to a radical animal rights group opposed to animal experimentation. She rekindles her affair with Cameron, but becomes increasingly disturbed as unexplainable phenomena begin to occur in Elizabeth's riverside studio where she is working. Is there a connection between the seventeenth century murders and the current violence?

And here's where it all breaks down for me. I've written before about my unwillingness to suspend disbelief unless there's a very good reason. To truly enjoy and become engrossed in this book, you need to accept the possibility that spirits from the seventeenth century are communicating with the present, perhaps even influencing events. I kept hoping that at the end it would turn out that the strange visions could be explained by a carbon monoxide leak in the studio or an hallucinogen slipped into Lydia's tea. No such luck. I know, I know...it's fiction. It's just a question of personal taste.

Stott does a terrific job explaining the influence of alchemy on seventeenth century scientists, and her description of Cambridge, both in Newton's time and today, are vivid. She weaves together the romance of Lydia with the inconveniently married Cameron and the mysterious murders of both the past and the present. It's an entertaining read, but I'd recommend only to those who are prepared to believe in ghosts.