I grew up admiring Edgar Degas' stauette Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. My father frequently took me to Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, where a bronze casting of this work was located in the Impressionist galleries, one of my favorite parts of the museum. The subject was a girl like me, and the ribbon tying her hair was real. It was enough to make me wonder what her life was like.
Cathy Marie Buchanan was similarly struck by theframed Degas pieces in the ballet studio where she took lessons growing up, but she has turned her admiration into the novel The Painted Girls (#267). Her book is based loosely on the lives of Marie van Goethem, the model for Little Dancer Aged Fourteen, and those of her sisters Antoinette and Charlotte, all of whom danced at one time or another in the Paris Opera Ballet.
If you're expecting a prettified and romantic version of what life was like for these "petit rats" in the Opera Ballet school, prepare to be disappointed. If you want to know what life was really like for these girls and women in late nineteenth century Paris, you'll get a faint glimmering from a contemporary review of Little Dancer Aged Fourteen quoted in Ms. Buchanan's novel: "The vicious muzzle of the young, scarcely adolescent girl, this little flower of the gutter, imprints her face with the detestable promise of every vice." With the paltry wages paid to those lucky enough to make the corps de ballet, the endless struggle to pay the rent, find enough food and keep themselves in practice clothes for the hours and hours of rehearsal required, often meant these "petit rats" had no choice but to seek out one of the wealthy patrons who frequented the theater. Such a protector could mean an adequate diet and advancement up the ranks of the ballet through their favor.
Just how Marie, Antoinette and the youngest, Charlotte, try to maintain themselves as a family while supporting a mother addicted to absinthe is tragic, heroic and heartbreaking. While sticking to the facts known about the van Goethem girls' lives, Ms. Buchanan manages to weave in the story of a notorious pair of murderers which drive the story along to what you think will be the inevitable conclusion...
A gripping read, and one of the best historical fiction novels I have read in a long time.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Albert of Adelaide
I initially read about Albert of Adelaide (#266) by Howard L. Anderson on the GoodReads site, and I knew I wanted to read it; a platypus goes walkabout in search of the way Australia used to be. And that's pretty much it.
Except that Albert has only one memory of his life before he wound up in the Adelaide Zoo and it's a traumatic one. He remembers his mother being killed by a dog just before he himself is netted and captured as a zoo exhibit. He has no companions there at the zoo, but he does hear rumors of a place where life is the way it used to be in Old Australia, and he's determined to find it one day. Albert seizes his opportunity when someone neglects to check the latch on his enclosure. Sometime later, the train, which divides the Australia continent roughly in half from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north, dumps Albert off in the desert north of Alice Springs with only an old soda bottle in his possession. And so his adventures begin...
It's a simple story on one level, but as Albert searches for the place he is sure he is meant to be, he encounters kindness and cruelty, friends and enemies and lessons he never expected to learn along the way. His memory of life in captivity in Adelaide is one he is glad to firmly shut the door on, but is life really any better out amongst the other creatures he encounters? And how could he not have minded spending his life up until now naked?!
Life in Old Australia isn't so very different from that of the old American Wild West, but imagine it peopled (!) with wombats, bandicoots, wallabies and kangaroos, snakes and dingoes, and of course, a mysterious Tasmanian devil. Not your usual cast of characters, especially when they come armed to the teeth with guns, clubs and rockets and notions of frontier justice. Have I whetted your curiosity yet?
On a personal note, one of the reasons that drew me to this book was the Australian setting. When my husband and I were hiking in Cradle Mountain National Park on Tasmania in the fall of 2011, we encountered wombat trails. They were easy to tell because wombats are very territorial, and they mark their boundaries with feces. Somewhere along the way, young wombats learn to poop in cubes. So much handier to pile them up like blocks when marking their trails, and they won't roll off sloping rocks or logs. And yes, we do have pictures. How could you not be fascinated by a place with such diversity?
Anyway, it won't take very long to read Mr. Anderson's novel Albert of Adelaide, but you'll be entertained by the adventures, and have much to ponder after you the close the covers. What could be more satisfactory?
Except that Albert has only one memory of his life before he wound up in the Adelaide Zoo and it's a traumatic one. He remembers his mother being killed by a dog just before he himself is netted and captured as a zoo exhibit. He has no companions there at the zoo, but he does hear rumors of a place where life is the way it used to be in Old Australia, and he's determined to find it one day. Albert seizes his opportunity when someone neglects to check the latch on his enclosure. Sometime later, the train, which divides the Australia continent roughly in half from Adelaide in the south to Darwin in the north, dumps Albert off in the desert north of Alice Springs with only an old soda bottle in his possession. And so his adventures begin...
It's a simple story on one level, but as Albert searches for the place he is sure he is meant to be, he encounters kindness and cruelty, friends and enemies and lessons he never expected to learn along the way. His memory of life in captivity in Adelaide is one he is glad to firmly shut the door on, but is life really any better out amongst the other creatures he encounters? And how could he not have minded spending his life up until now naked?!
Life in Old Australia isn't so very different from that of the old American Wild West, but imagine it peopled (!) with wombats, bandicoots, wallabies and kangaroos, snakes and dingoes, and of course, a mysterious Tasmanian devil. Not your usual cast of characters, especially when they come armed to the teeth with guns, clubs and rockets and notions of frontier justice. Have I whetted your curiosity yet?
On a personal note, one of the reasons that drew me to this book was the Australian setting. When my husband and I were hiking in Cradle Mountain National Park on Tasmania in the fall of 2011, we encountered wombat trails. They were easy to tell because wombats are very territorial, and they mark their boundaries with feces. Somewhere along the way, young wombats learn to poop in cubes. So much handier to pile them up like blocks when marking their trails, and they won't roll off sloping rocks or logs. And yes, we do have pictures. How could you not be fascinated by a place with such diversity?
Anyway, it won't take very long to read Mr. Anderson's novel Albert of Adelaide, but you'll be entertained by the adventures, and have much to ponder after you the close the covers. What could be more satisfactory?
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
The Riptide Ultra-Glide
Tim Dorsey's latest The Riptide Ultra-Glide (#265) should be a salutary lesson on taking prudent precautions when booking hotels on the internet. I'm sure Wisconsin couple Pat and Barbara McDougall wish they hadn't relied solely on the picture when they choose their Fort Lauderdale hotel for a much needed vacation.
Bad goes to worse when they find themselves in the middle of a turf war between competing drug dealers over the control of pain clinic prescriptions and Oxycontin. They're nowhere near the beach, the activity around their motel room is disturbing, to say the least, and their luggage has been taking a cross-country tour courtesy of the airline. When it finally does arrive, they manage to grab the wrong bag off the baggage carousel, and I do mean the wrong bag! The crowning touch of their stay comes when serial killer with a conscience Serge A. Storms (with the help of his sidekick Coleman) decides to feature the McDougalls in his own Florida-based reality series. If they want to cooperate, great, Serge will expose them to Florida history that most tourists and snow birds never see. If they don't, well - Serge has already taken care of a few problem people littering the landscape on this go round - what's two more? Funny how we always sympathize with Serge Storm when he chooses his victims... Meanwhile, Coleman is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, and the adulation of the crowds who recognize him where ever they go. Who knew he would ever take his role as a mentor so seriously?
Tim Dorsey's description of how the pain mill clinics work with the connivance of venal doctors, sometimes in conjunction with faked car accident insurance claims for pain and suffering sound too fantastic to be true. Trust me, it's like reading the daily paper here in south Florida. Since he's a journalist, Dorsey doesn't have to go very far to get this material. He does give a nod in The Riptide Ultra-Glide to one of our favorite cable TV series, The Glades. Worth watching for the quirky Florida atmosphere, and a nice adjunct to Mr. Dorsey's books.
Bad goes to worse when they find themselves in the middle of a turf war between competing drug dealers over the control of pain clinic prescriptions and Oxycontin. They're nowhere near the beach, the activity around their motel room is disturbing, to say the least, and their luggage has been taking a cross-country tour courtesy of the airline. When it finally does arrive, they manage to grab the wrong bag off the baggage carousel, and I do mean the wrong bag! The crowning touch of their stay comes when serial killer with a conscience Serge A. Storms (with the help of his sidekick Coleman) decides to feature the McDougalls in his own Florida-based reality series. If they want to cooperate, great, Serge will expose them to Florida history that most tourists and snow birds never see. If they don't, well - Serge has already taken care of a few problem people littering the landscape on this go round - what's two more? Funny how we always sympathize with Serge Storm when he chooses his victims... Meanwhile, Coleman is enjoying his fifteen minutes of fame, and the adulation of the crowds who recognize him where ever they go. Who knew he would ever take his role as a mentor so seriously?
Tim Dorsey's description of how the pain mill clinics work with the connivance of venal doctors, sometimes in conjunction with faked car accident insurance claims for pain and suffering sound too fantastic to be true. Trust me, it's like reading the daily paper here in south Florida. Since he's a journalist, Dorsey doesn't have to go very far to get this material. He does give a nod in The Riptide Ultra-Glide to one of our favorite cable TV series, The Glades. Worth watching for the quirky Florida atmosphere, and a nice adjunct to Mr. Dorsey's books.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Speaking From Among the Bones
I love Flavia de Luce. If you haven't heard of Alan Bradley's frighteningly chemically knowledgeable young heroine with a penchant for stumbling across bodies in post WWII rural England (well, not actually stumbling - she does go out of her way to find the odd dead thing for her experiments, and if they happen to be human, she'll be the one to find our who did it, thank you very much!) you owe it to yourself to meet her. Did I mention that Flavia is only eleven? Speaking From Among the Bones (#264) is the fifth book in this endearing series, and it's Alan Bradley at the top of his game.
The five hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Tancred, buried in the local church at Bishop's Lacey, will be marked by the exhumation and examination of the saint's bones from the crypt, and Flavia is determined to be there. When the crypt is opened, however, and Flavia is the only one small enough to crawl through the opening to scout the lay out, she finds that the tomb is occupied by a rather more recent body - that of the missing parish organist. How did it wind up in the sealed tomb, and who would want to kill him anyway? Of course, this isn't the only mystery revealed in Speaking From the Bones as family secrets are just tantalizingly out of Flavia's reach. Finances are going from bad to worse at Buckshaw, her family's ancestral home, and it may mean the end of an era if the de Luces are forced to sell. Flavia can't understand some of the emotional changes she's going through herself as she faces this reality. She also accidentally uncovers secrets about her mother Harriet who disappeared while hiking in Tibet when Flavia was just an infant, as well as those of two other families connected with hers in the course of her investigation. Some things are just never spoken about in an English village. And just when Flavia thinks things might be looking up for her family, there's a shocking development that could change everything...
I stopped everything else I was doing to sit and read this book, and the hook at the end guarantees that I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next volume in this series to come out. Curses on you, Alan Bradley!
However, if you're new to Flavia de Luce, do yourself a favor and start back with the first book in this series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie or you'll miss a lot of the back story, and how far Flavia's come already. (See also my posts of 3/13/11 & 11/26/11.) It might also make you think differently about just how far sibling rivalry can go even in the best of families.
The five hundredth anniversary of the death of St. Tancred, buried in the local church at Bishop's Lacey, will be marked by the exhumation and examination of the saint's bones from the crypt, and Flavia is determined to be there. When the crypt is opened, however, and Flavia is the only one small enough to crawl through the opening to scout the lay out, she finds that the tomb is occupied by a rather more recent body - that of the missing parish organist. How did it wind up in the sealed tomb, and who would want to kill him anyway? Of course, this isn't the only mystery revealed in Speaking From the Bones as family secrets are just tantalizingly out of Flavia's reach. Finances are going from bad to worse at Buckshaw, her family's ancestral home, and it may mean the end of an era if the de Luces are forced to sell. Flavia can't understand some of the emotional changes she's going through herself as she faces this reality. She also accidentally uncovers secrets about her mother Harriet who disappeared while hiking in Tibet when Flavia was just an infant, as well as those of two other families connected with hers in the course of her investigation. Some things are just never spoken about in an English village. And just when Flavia thinks things might be looking up for her family, there's a shocking development that could change everything...
I stopped everything else I was doing to sit and read this book, and the hook at the end guarantees that I'll be waiting with bated breath for the next volume in this series to come out. Curses on you, Alan Bradley!
However, if you're new to Flavia de Luce, do yourself a favor and start back with the first book in this series, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie or you'll miss a lot of the back story, and how far Flavia's come already. (See also my posts of 3/13/11 & 11/26/11.) It might also make you think differently about just how far sibling rivalry can go even in the best of families.
Friday, February 8, 2013
The Slaves' Gamble; Choosing Sides in the War of 1812
Just in time for Black History month comes this interesting volume by Gene Allen Smith: The Slaves' Gamble; Choosing Sides in the War of 1812 (#262). I probably would never have picked up this book to read if the author hadn't been one of the speakers at our library system's annual author event BookMania!, but I actually had a chance to chat with the author between panel discussions.
As I read the cover flap for this book, I realized that the novel Someone Knows My Name (See my post of 11/30/12.) which I read not long ago, dealt with some of the very issues that Dr. Smith presents, so I was familiar with, and intrigued by the information he presented. Essentially, he explores some of the issues and history behind the reasoning of American slaves when deciding to stay enslaved and fight with, or at their masters' bidding, or whether to take a chance and flee in hopes of gaining their freedom. Since these were the days before the Underground Railroad was established, they could hope to make it to the British lines and freedom, or make for Florida, where the Spanish welcomed them as a buffer against the Americans who wanted to expand their slave-holding territory. Neither choice was ideal, nor was the outcome guaranteed as territory changed hands. It was also the first I had ever heard of the Patriot War, fought in Florida during the War of 1812. I was anxious to know more about that now that I live here.
The Slaves' Gamble is not a very large book, but it is organized and presented in a way which makes it very accessible to the casual reader. If you want to know more about a largely unexplored topic which had a profound influence on the United States during the critical War of 1812, this is the perfect book.
As I read the cover flap for this book, I realized that the novel Someone Knows My Name (See my post of 11/30/12.) which I read not long ago, dealt with some of the very issues that Dr. Smith presents, so I was familiar with, and intrigued by the information he presented. Essentially, he explores some of the issues and history behind the reasoning of American slaves when deciding to stay enslaved and fight with, or at their masters' bidding, or whether to take a chance and flee in hopes of gaining their freedom. Since these were the days before the Underground Railroad was established, they could hope to make it to the British lines and freedom, or make for Florida, where the Spanish welcomed them as a buffer against the Americans who wanted to expand their slave-holding territory. Neither choice was ideal, nor was the outcome guaranteed as territory changed hands. It was also the first I had ever heard of the Patriot War, fought in Florida during the War of 1812. I was anxious to know more about that now that I live here.
The Slaves' Gamble is not a very large book, but it is organized and presented in a way which makes it very accessible to the casual reader. If you want to know more about a largely unexplored topic which had a profound influence on the United States during the critical War of 1812, this is the perfect book.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You
How to Tell if Your Cat Is Plotting to Kill You (#263) by The Oatmeal (aka Matthew Inman) is a first for me: a graphic novel. I put a hold on it at my library simply because of the title. If you've ever owned a cat yourself, you'll understand.
Although many of the situations in these pages ring true and provoke a smile, I personally found it rather crude. The illustrations are so rudimentary I felt even I, the non-artistic type, could have done just as well, if not better. Frat boys and adolescents will undoubtedly find this book hilarious. It didn't take me very long to read it, and I'm glad I don't have to find room for it in one of my piles of books at home.
My advice? If you happen to see it at a bookstore, flip through it. If you're male, you might add it to your basket. If not, you'll have seen enough.
Although many of the situations in these pages ring true and provoke a smile, I personally found it rather crude. The illustrations are so rudimentary I felt even I, the non-artistic type, could have done just as well, if not better. Frat boys and adolescents will undoubtedly find this book hilarious. It didn't take me very long to read it, and I'm glad I don't have to find room for it in one of my piles of books at home.
My advice? If you happen to see it at a bookstore, flip through it. If you're male, you might add it to your basket. If not, you'll have seen enough.
Monday, February 4, 2013
That Woman
I was so looking forward to reading That Woman (#261), Anne Sebba's recent biography of Wallis Warfield Simpson, the late Duchess of Windsor , based on a cover blurb which claims it "rescues her from the vilification she endured in her own lifetime." I am neither an admirer nor a detractor of Wallis Simpson, but I do find her story intriguing. I was hoping for some new insight into what made her tick, but for me, this is not the book.
When I first pick up a biography with illustrations, I usually look at the pictures first thing to help put a mental picture in my mind of the people discussed in the book, or the places they have lived, or with which they were familiar. My first clue that this might not be a reliable biography came as I was browsing through the picture captions, and as a casual American reader, noting the incorrect attributions. What else might be wrong in this volume? The second thing that put me off That Woman was the author's introduction to the book by recounting her weekend spent at an Austrian schloss where she was invited by a minor Austrian "princeling" as a twenty one year old Reuters correspondent. Although it meant turning down a lifetime spent in such a rarefied atmosphere of wealth and influence, she says she never saw her "Prince Charming" again. The implication was that she was nobler than Wallis Simpson for turning down these worldly temptations. Of course, the reader is left to question whether, in fact, the choice was hers. But from this anecdote, it became clear that Ms. Sebba looks down on her subject, because Wallis succumbed to the lure of money.
Portraying Wallis as from a poor and obscure American background while simultaneously trying to prove that she was from American "aristocracy" only heightens that basic element of snobbery throughout the biography. I doubt too many Americans would consider someone "poor and obscure" if she attended the most expensive and exclusive girls' boarding school in Maryland, or was presented at a debutant ball with one of Baltimore's most important society weddings of the year to follow.
Yes, Wallis Simpson did what she could to improve her own lot after a financially insecure childhood, but an abusive alcoholic husband could hardly be considered a matrimonial prize. It seems from reading That Woman that her second marriage to Ernest Simpson was probably her happiest. In modern terms, I believe Edward VIII would have been considered a stalker. His own contemporaries thought he might have been mentally ill and called him "little man". Even his own father thought that he would never rule after him, that he would abdicate. Which does beg the question, why didn't George V do more to prepare his younger son Bertie to take over the reins in case that happened? Wouldn't it have been better for England if he had done so? And one has to wonder at the hypocrisy of a government and church hellbent on keeping Edward VIII in power and separating him from Mrs. Simpson when they were so afraid of where his political leanings might lead the Empire. Frankly, I think they should have awarded Wallis Simpson a medal and a generous income for taking him off the world stage at a critical point instead of denying her the title "Her Royal Highness". That just seemed like spite on the part of the British.
That's not to say that she didn't have her own mean and vindictive side, but it seems apparent that both the King and the government put Wallis into such an untenable position that she was forced to go through with the divorce from Ernest Simpson and marry the King instead. (Shades of Henry VIII!) In the end, I think she did what she had to do and lived with the consequences when the life she loved basically evaporated because of their circumstances.
Although Ms. Sebba spent much time on Wallis' early years, and details the objections to the marriage of the Windsors, once World War II ends, she gives very short shrift to the rest of the Windsor's lives. She basically portrays them as rich and aimless, but when the Duke was denied any meaningful duties by his family and the British government, I hardly find this surprising. But I would have liked to know a little more about them than the very meager information about the few dinners they gave (but didn't eat!) and the time they spent in the decades before they both died. Oh, well.
I do think the author did quite a bit of her own vilifying of Wallis Simpson by making her dislike of Americans in general so obvious, and particularly by poking fun of her accent. Notes from Society members' private papers and memoirs made that part easy. All she had to do was quote them. But it did go far to explaining a cultural bias when I discovered that all the glowing cover blurbs were written solely by British authors. I did find the author's cover flap portrait ironic in terms of her emphasis on Wallis' obsession with her image. Hmm. Not a whole lot new, but if you decide to read That Woman don't expect an even handed treatment of Wallis' story here.
When I first pick up a biography with illustrations, I usually look at the pictures first thing to help put a mental picture in my mind of the people discussed in the book, or the places they have lived, or with which they were familiar. My first clue that this might not be a reliable biography came as I was browsing through the picture captions, and as a casual American reader, noting the incorrect attributions. What else might be wrong in this volume? The second thing that put me off That Woman was the author's introduction to the book by recounting her weekend spent at an Austrian schloss where she was invited by a minor Austrian "princeling" as a twenty one year old Reuters correspondent. Although it meant turning down a lifetime spent in such a rarefied atmosphere of wealth and influence, she says she never saw her "Prince Charming" again. The implication was that she was nobler than Wallis Simpson for turning down these worldly temptations. Of course, the reader is left to question whether, in fact, the choice was hers. But from this anecdote, it became clear that Ms. Sebba looks down on her subject, because Wallis succumbed to the lure of money.
Portraying Wallis as from a poor and obscure American background while simultaneously trying to prove that she was from American "aristocracy" only heightens that basic element of snobbery throughout the biography. I doubt too many Americans would consider someone "poor and obscure" if she attended the most expensive and exclusive girls' boarding school in Maryland, or was presented at a debutant ball with one of Baltimore's most important society weddings of the year to follow.
Yes, Wallis Simpson did what she could to improve her own lot after a financially insecure childhood, but an abusive alcoholic husband could hardly be considered a matrimonial prize. It seems from reading That Woman that her second marriage to Ernest Simpson was probably her happiest. In modern terms, I believe Edward VIII would have been considered a stalker. His own contemporaries thought he might have been mentally ill and called him "little man". Even his own father thought that he would never rule after him, that he would abdicate. Which does beg the question, why didn't George V do more to prepare his younger son Bertie to take over the reins in case that happened? Wouldn't it have been better for England if he had done so? And one has to wonder at the hypocrisy of a government and church hellbent on keeping Edward VIII in power and separating him from Mrs. Simpson when they were so afraid of where his political leanings might lead the Empire. Frankly, I think they should have awarded Wallis Simpson a medal and a generous income for taking him off the world stage at a critical point instead of denying her the title "Her Royal Highness". That just seemed like spite on the part of the British.
That's not to say that she didn't have her own mean and vindictive side, but it seems apparent that both the King and the government put Wallis into such an untenable position that she was forced to go through with the divorce from Ernest Simpson and marry the King instead. (Shades of Henry VIII!) In the end, I think she did what she had to do and lived with the consequences when the life she loved basically evaporated because of their circumstances.
Although Ms. Sebba spent much time on Wallis' early years, and details the objections to the marriage of the Windsors, once World War II ends, she gives very short shrift to the rest of the Windsor's lives. She basically portrays them as rich and aimless, but when the Duke was denied any meaningful duties by his family and the British government, I hardly find this surprising. But I would have liked to know a little more about them than the very meager information about the few dinners they gave (but didn't eat!) and the time they spent in the decades before they both died. Oh, well.
I do think the author did quite a bit of her own vilifying of Wallis Simpson by making her dislike of Americans in general so obvious, and particularly by poking fun of her accent. Notes from Society members' private papers and memoirs made that part easy. All she had to do was quote them. But it did go far to explaining a cultural bias when I discovered that all the glowing cover blurbs were written solely by British authors. I did find the author's cover flap portrait ironic in terms of her emphasis on Wallis' obsession with her image. Hmm. Not a whole lot new, but if you decide to read That Woman don't expect an even handed treatment of Wallis' story here.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)