Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter

I really can't remember whether I read this book when it first came out some 40-odd years ago, but I had been thinking about reading it when it showed up in a small bookstore in Apalachicola, Florida.  I just felt it was waiting for me to buy it, and read it.

I found the first 100 pages or so quite interesting, but then it became a chore, perhaps because it was such a static sort of setting, many of the characters were indistinguishable from one another in name, circumstance, bias, whatever, and I began to see everything in a sort of grey/black/white: no colour, no accent to the situations. Even the zarzuela dancers seemed colourless, although they were actually quite dramatic characters in the story.

I understood that this was a voyage of life itself, and that the various characters represented all that is both good and bad in all of us, but I just couldn't eat it up like I expected I would. I began skimming, and once I even put it aside, but somehow I picked it up again and started where I'd left off.  This happened yet again near the end, when by this time I really didn't care what happened to these people.

Maybe it would have made a better play- I'll try to see the movie and decide again. In summing everything up, I  am glad I perservered through to the end, but I won't miss it!

CASE HISTORIES by Kate Atkinson

Atkinson has probably been my favorite author this winter. I name her, even though I loved David Wroblewski's Story of Edgar Sawtelle, because this is the third of her books that I've read, and I still have her very first one to read.

Case Histories is the first of three novels involving the retired police inspector, and now investigator Jackson Brodie, and what a piece of work he is!  He's very attractive to women- in this one we meet Binky Rains, the old woman who left him 2 million pounds ( and Jackson was wondering why her only nephew, Quintus, was trying to kill him..) His ex-wife hates him, he is about to get involved with Julia in this book- we meet her again in one of the later stories. He's having trouble with his teeth in this book, requiring several emergency visits to his dentist, his house is burned down at one point, he's beaten up and put in hospital, yet he befriends a poor homeless woman, Lily-Rose.

Atkinson is a master at creating separate stories, then slowly intertwining them, with Jackson, often unwittingly, as the axis upon which they all eventually coincide. For example, Binky Rains' home backs onto the home where Olivia disappeared. Also, Shirley Morrison, the sister of Michelle, is a nurse at the hospital where Jackson is taken when he's beaten up.

There are three cases:  Olivia, the beloved younger sister of three older girls, who is taken from a tent at night and never found; Laura Wyre, who is struck down by a knife-wielding stranger in her father's office, and Michelle, who struck her husband down with an axe.All three of these took place some 30 years earlier, but all of them contact Jackson to try and find some sense of closure: except for the third case: he ends up in bed with the murderer's sister, then finds out she's married.

The best thing about Atkinson's books is her sense of humor- there's a wryness there which is completely engaging: not the charm of Alexander McCall Smith, but a detached , bemused tolerance of all her characters, unlovely and unloveable as many of them may be. She sees, and writes convincingly about, the humor and the sadness in each of these situations. Theo, the overly obese father of Laura, who was absolutely besotted with his daughter; Amelia, whose dress and appearance show her complete lack of fashion sense, Binky Rains, with her "high society" accents : "bleck" for black- you can almost hear her saying it.

I wonder if these novels would ever be made into TV shows or movies by the BBC.  They'd be wonderful!

FOUR SHORT STORIES - Somerset Maugham

I wanted to read something by Maugham, and I found this small volume ( only 67 pages long) at the library, and I read the whole thing in an hour.  This particular volume was a Hallmark publication, and the drawings in it are by Henri Matisse!

1. The Ant and the Caterpillar - a version of the Aesop fable, where a businessman, George Ramsay, has a ne'er-do-well brother who is constantly asking his brother for money.  Sure enough, it's the ne'er-do-well who finds a rich widow.

2.The Verger - is fired by the church's new vicar because he can't read.  He then starts a tobacco store which grows into a successful enterprise.

3.Mr. Know-All is a passenger on a ship who annoys everyone because he is an authority on every subject.  When the subject turns to pearls, he makes an error on purpose.

4. The Colonel's Lady - A colourless wife of a cheating husband publishes a book of poems that portrays a passionate affair, much to the consternation of her husband, who can't figure out what anyone could see in her to begin with!

I enjoyed these.  Must find some more.  These are the kinds of short stories I enjoy.  The best volume of short stories I think I ever read was I, Richard, by Elizabeth George. 

THE FALLS by Joyce Carol Oates

I've recognized Oates' name for some years now, but this is the first of her novels that I've read.  I chose this one because it's on Book Browse's site, which I consider to be a pretty good recommendation. Also, I'm discovering through my reading this winter that I am most completely satisfied by a longer book: one where I can revel in the characters or the plot, see it unfold over time.  In going through Book Browse's list of books over 500 pages ( the list is called Doorstoppers), several of my all-time favorites showed up there : A Fine Balance, Where The Crow Flies,The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, plus Elizabeth George's novels.

The Falls is set in the area of Niagara Falls, on the American side.  A young man, married earlier that day, climbs over the railing and plunges into the Falls.  His widow, Ariah, spends seven days beside the Falls, waiting for her husband's body to be found.  Dirk Burnaby, a young lawyer and well-known in the community, comes to counsel her and ends up falling in love with her.  They marry, and raise a family; he is a very successful litigation lawyer, she teaches piano at home. 

Dirk becomes involved with the community group seeking charges against the developers of the  Love Canal, ends up being vilified by the very men he worked with before: all pillars of the community, like himself, and is eventually murdered: his car ends up in the Niagara River and his body is never found.  By this time, his marriage to Ariah is over, because of his overwhelming dedication to seeking damages for residents and children affected by the radioactive waste, and with his death, Ariah tries to wipe out their children's memories of him as well.

Then the children grow up, and we see how Ariah's obsession with them, plus their unfolding awareness of the scandal surrounding  radioactive waste, leads them to uncover , pretty well individually, the mystery of their father's life and death.

The Falls is a revealing story of the American family in crisis, plus the greed and corruption of American industrial expansion and how it affects those same families.  There is some redemption in the end, as Chandler, Royall, and Juliet find some personal happiness, and escape the damaging clutches of their mother, whose whole life has been affected by that first tragedy the day of her marriage.

I'm reminded in some ways of Taylor Caldwell's novels, which I read all through my teens.  One review I read likened Oates to Theodore Dreiser, whose name I always associated with An American Tragedy.  This type of fiction, which I guess could be labelled as historical fiction, is much more substantial than books like Beneath A Marble Sky, which almost seems gratuitous in comparison!

This is book number 18 that I've read since coming to PCB this year!

REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier

I was between-books on reserve at the library, so in scanning the shelves, I came across an old favorite: I can't even remember how long ago I read it- I was probably a teenager.  So I lost myself once again in the beauty, atmosphere, and romance of Manderley, Max De Winter, Mrs. Danvers, and of course Rebecca.

What I love about this novel is the author's craft: she's a master of the mystery novel.  The title of the book is Rebecca, and the story is about her, of course, but she is dead at the time of the novel.  Also the narrator, Max's second wife, never names herself: we only know her as Mrs. De Winter.  Manderley itself is a major [presence in the novel, and it is interesting that the inquest into Rebecca's death, to all intents and purposes, is held at Manderley, not the small court which made the decisions. No wonder this has been named one of the best 100 books of all time!

BRIDGE OF SIGHS by Richard Russo

Here's another really good story: four families in a small town, Thomaston, New York: the Lynchs, Marconis, Bergs, and the Beverleys. Louis ( known as Lucy) is now 60 years old, and he and his wife Sarah (Berg) are about to visit an old friend in Italy.  Lucy, whose story is told in first-person narrative, tells the story of his growing up, while the others, most notably Bobby Marconi and Sarah Berg, tell their story in third person.  We see how the four families are connected, then finally converge, but the interesting thing about the book is the fact that the town itself and the store the Lynch family runs, called Ikey Lubins, are as much characters as the family members;amidst all this is a river spewing forth waste which affects the health of many of the people.  It's a nostalgic look back, to be sure, and not so pleasant at times, but there's a depth and richness to the story that had me reading late at night. There are some weaknesses: Nan is just a bit of fluff, I'm not sure why new characters appeared near the end of the story, and I really think the novel could have been a good 100 pages shorter.  Maybe I was getting restive about the ending, but I felt a definite let-down about 100 pages from the end.  This is the third of Russo's novels that I've read: the others are Nobody's Fool, which was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, and Empire Falls, both of these stories about small-town America .