Review: Snobs by Julian Fellows

I picked up a copy of Snobs by Julian Fellows because the cover told me that he wrote the movie Gosford Park and it looks like it might be some kind of high society farce that would be fun for a weekend read. It was high society, but definitely not farce. It has an elegant substance to it -- much more an intelligent novel of manners than slapstick comedy.

Fellows tells a subtle and complicated story about family and class loyalties and the intuition needed to move through them. Narrated by an actor whose own blue blood allows him to navigate the rocky social shoals between wealthy up-and-comers and genteel nobility, we learn the story of lovely but middle-class Edith Lavery’s marriage to Charles, Earl of Broughton. Edith seems to regret her choice before the end of her first hunt season at the family’s drafty Sussex estate. But what are her alternatives?

What I didn’t realize until I finished the book was that Fellows is the main writer for Downton Abbey. He published Snobs five years before the first episode of Downton Abbey aired, and it takes place in the late 1990s, but many of the themes and ideas are similar.

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NOTES

Julian Fellows is in actor as well as a writer. He played Lord Kilwillie in one of my favorite shows, Monarch of the Glen.

Review: A Pillar of Iron

A goal accomplished always makes me happy. Reading A Pillar of Iron, Taylor Caldwell's fictional biography of Marcus Tullius Cicero, was not a goal of mine. But once started, it was a battle between me and the book and I was determined to finish it!

It's actually a great book. Cicero was a contemporary of Julius Caesar, a lawyer, philosopher, and statesman of Rome. The story is fascinating; Caldwell delves heavily into original materials like Cicero's letters, books, and speeches; and her descriptions make ancient Rome lifelike. But it is dense! And long -- 700 pages.

I'd like to amend my law school transcript to get extra credit in Constitutional Law.


OTHER REVIEWS

UNRV History

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NOTES

A Pillar of Iron counts as one of my books for the Chunkster Challenge, as well as knocking another one off my TBR challenges list.

Review: The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry

The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris

at the World's Most Famous Cooking School by Kathleen Flinn.  

An unexpected career crisis leads a former corporate exec to the legendary Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, while her perfect boyfriend puts his career on hold to hang out with her.  

If The Sharper Your Knife were a novel instead of a memoir, it would verge on too adorable to tolerate.  Not quite Eat, Pray, Love, but getting there.  Yes, Flinn has plenty of anxious moments in the classroom and out.  These range from the enviable (the crisis of having to buy a wedding dress off the rack in Paris) to the seriously sympathetic (her new husband suffers a life-threatening accident).  But mostly she shares the joy and excitement of veering off a chosen career track to live in a magical place, fulfilling a life dream.

The whole American in Paris/cooking school/Julia Child redux schtick works because it hits many notes on everyone's fantasy scale. Best to simply indulge.

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NOTES

The Sharper Your Knife counts as my first book for the 2014 Foodies Read challenge.  It is also going on my French Connections list.

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Review: The Difficult Sister by Judy Nedry

The Difficult Sister is not the cozy you might suspect, given that it involves two fifty-something women on a road trip to the Oregon Coast. This second mystery by Judy Nedry is darker and edgier than its description suggests.

Emma Golden is a freelance writer with a penchant for adventure. After stumbling into a wine country murder in An Unholy Alliance, Emma is back in Portland and back on the wagon, ready to snuggle in for a quiet winter. But when her best friend comes to her, distraught over not hearing from her sister Aurora in weeks, Emma is game to leave a cold and soggy Portland, jump into Melody’s Mini Cooper, and head to the beach.

What they find is a coastal community divided between rich part-time residents and tourists and the year-round locals struggling to make a living or dropping off the grid. They soon realized that Aurora’s disappearance can’t be attributed to whim or her restless spirit. Something much more terrifying is going on and Aurora isn’t the only woman missing from her sleepy little beach town.

OTHER REVIEWS AND POSTS 

The New Book Journal reviews The Difficult Sister
The Hartford Books Examiner interviews Judy Nedry
Don't Need a Diagram interviews Judy Nedry

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NOTES

Judy Nedry is the author of two nonfiction books about Northwest wine and co-founded Northwest Palate magazine. The Emma Golden books are her first works of fiction.

Review: Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy

Maeve Binchy’s novels appeal to some deep need for tidiness. The stories are all different, but they have the same structure: a lot of characters facing various problems share some connection; one of the characters sorts all the mess and solves the problems; the characters and the reader go away happy. These books provide the same satisfaction as the vacuum cleaner ads where the salesman dumps a huge pile of dirt and debris on the lady’s carpet and then vacuums it all up, leaving the carpet pristine.

Nights of Rain and Stars follows the same pattern, but is not nearly as satisfying as her other novels. The story involves four travelers visiting a Greek island who are drawn together when they witness a tragic accident. They all have problems and the problems all get sorted. But the book doesn’t live up to the Binchy model because nearly all the characters (three of the visitors and two of the locals) have the same kind of problem – a broken relationship between a parent and child. Because the problems are the same, the discussions are the same, and the solutions are the same. It makes the book repetitive and boring.

The only character who does not have a parent/child problem is the German television reporter conflicted over her sexual relationship with her boss. But that conflict is so muddled, it is difficult to tell what the problem is or what she wants. That plot line adds too little to shore up the rest of the story.

The romantic setting and solid storytelling are probably enough to satisfy diehard Binchy fans, but Nights of Rain and Stars is not her best, by a long shot.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

Nights of Rain and Stars counts as one of my books for my personal 2014 TBR challenge, the Mt. TBR Challenge, and the European Reading Challenge.