Review: A Prefect's Uncle by P. G. Wodehouse

A Prefect's Uncle is P. G. Wodehouse's second published book. Like his first, The Pothunters, it is set in an English boarding school for boys. Except in the long passages describing cricket matches, it is a charming and funny book that hints at the hilarious style Wodehouse later perfected.

The initial gag about the Prefect's uncle arriving at the school provides the title and is quite funny. But that storyline peters out and the main plot involving a poetry contest is not as clever.

The big weakness of the book is Wodehouse's unrelenting concentration on cricket. He describes cricket matches play by play and devotes pages to cricket strategy and other bits of cricket minutia.

Diehard Wodehouse completists may be willing to skim over the cricket passages to glean the funny bits. But those new to Wodehouse should start with one of his later, more popular books.


OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

A Prefect's Uncle was one of my books for the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour). 

Review: The Gathering by Anne Enright

It is comforting to think of memory as a recording of past events that can be played back anytime. But the brain does not store memories – especially traumatic memories – in such an orderly and retrievable fashion. In The Gathering, Anne Enright grapples with the chaotic, fragmented, and twisted ways we remember the traumas of childhood.

The memories belong to Veronica, one of the nine surviving Hegarty siblings, gathered for the funeral of their brother Liam. Veronica tries to deal with her grief and make sense of her brother's death by piecing together their family history. She uses her imagination and objective clues to give context to distressing images from the time she and Liam lived with their grandmother.

Veronica's struggle is authentically idiosyncratic. Her grief and the secrets she carries drive some kooky behavior and alienate her from her husband, her mother, and her own daughters. She can be an unattractive, if believable, heroine.

Veronica's off-putting conduct and Enright's sometimes too-obtuse prose makes The Gathering a difficult book. But Enright earned her Booker prize for tackling a harrowing subject and concluding with the important lesson that a problem cannot be solved until it is acknowledged.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Gathering is one of the books I read for the MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) and the OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour).

Review: The Gun Seller

 

Hugh Laurie is best known as an actor – the volatile but brilliant Dr. House or Bertie Wooster to Stephen Fry's Jeeves – but he occasionally branches into other creative arts, like jazz music and writing. In 1996 he published a just-this-side-of-spoof espionage thriller called The Gun Seller.

Part Wodehouse, part Robert Ludlum, Laurie's only novel finds ex-soldier Thomas Lang bamboozled into infiltrating a terrorist group in order to short circuit an embassy attack orchestrated by an evil munitions manufacturer as a marketing stunt. The plot is complicated enough to stay interesting and internally consistent enough, just, to stay acceptable.

Best of all, it is funny. It is really funny, which is really hard to do. Laurie definitely channels his inner P. G. Wodehouse, but through a spy thriller filter, so it comes out like a James Bond story written by Mark Steyn.  Pure fun.  Too bad Laurie hasn't come out with a sequel.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I bought this on a whim and finally read it for the TBR challenges I am doing this year:

• MT. TBR CHALLENGE (hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block) 
• OFF THE SHELF CHALLENGE (hosted by Bonnie on Bookish Ardour) 
• TBR PILE CHALLENGE (hosted by Adam on Roof Beam Reader)

Review: The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes explores memory, loss, and lives built around the empty spaces in his Booker-winning novel, The Sense of an Ending. Ostensibly the reminiscence of the recently retired and contentedly divorced Tony Webster, the story deepens to tragedy when Tony reconnects with his college girlfriend and re-examines what he thinks he remembers about his past.

As Tony bit-by-bit abandons his understanding of passed events, he gives up the assumption that “memory equals events plus time” and realizes that “time doesn't act as a fixative, rather as a solvent.”

This scrutiny of memory makes the novel reverberate. Because I try cases on behalf of adults who were abused when they were children, I deal daily with imperfect memories, forgotten details, and re-created stories as my clients and the people we sue patch together their history. I’ve learned that truth – or as close as we can get – is three-dimensional and can be built only collaboratively.

Or, as Tony muses:

[A]s the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been. Even if you have assiduously kept records – in words, sound, pictures – you may find that you have attended to the wrong kind of record-keeping. What was the line Adrian used to quote? “History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation.”

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Sense of an Ending deservedly won the 2011 Booker Prize.  

Review: The Tuesday Club Murders

The Tuesday Club Murders is a collection of 13 short stories by Agatha Christie and was the second published volume in her Miss Marples series. Christie organized the stories around the idea of Miss Marples and a group of her friends taking turns telling about a mystery in which they were personally involved and making the others try to solve it.

Each snappy little story is jammed with clues, but still satisfactorily resolved by Miss Marples after the others kick it around for a while. Jane is at her best – draped in lace shawls, knitting away, and drawing insight from homey village events.

The stories and their set ups are varied enough to keep the reader's attention, right up to the final piece, in which Miss Marples solves a contemporaneous village mystery with the help of Sir Henry Clithering, an ex-commissioner of Scotland Yard and one of the original members of the Tuesday Club.

Like any collection of short mystery stories, The Tuesday Club Murders lacks the heft of a full-length novel. But unlike a novel, these stories can be gobbled down like the stack of yummy Agatha Christy cookies that they are.


OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Tuesday Club Murders was my first book for the 2013 Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block.  The challenge has a "Scattegories" theme this year and this book counts as my "Calendar of Crime" choice.

Review: The Prestige

Why did I assume I would dislike The Prestige? There were several reasons:

• It is about magicians, a class of entertainers I tolerate only slightly better than mimes or clowns.
• It is set during a period of time I am bored with, no matter how enduringly popular in novels – the Civil War through World War I.
• I had already seen the movie, and I dislike reading a book when I already know what the story, especially a story with big secrets like this one.
• I really do not like speculative fiction in any of its broad forms – fantasy, paranormal, or science-fiction.

But I read it anyway because it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and I am working my way diligently through that list. I am so glad I did!

Christopher Priest's novel is the story of two rival magicians at the turn of the 20th Century, vying to outdo each other in an illusion featuring a disappearing man. Both have secrets that follow them to the grave – and beyond – that are only revealed when their grandchildren meet up decades later.

Because Priest is such a first class storyteller, he created a drama that is entirely believable – no matter how scientifically farfetched – and mesmerizing, even for readers who know the secrets from the movie. I was completely entranced.

Even though The Prestige runs contrary to many of my book prejudices, it could end up as my favorite book of 2013 – pretty big words, considering it is only January.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Prestige counts as my second Black winner for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, which runs through January 31, 2013.   I have now finished that challenge.  Whew!

Review: The Honourable Schoolboy

John le Carré’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a long, slow slog through a lexicon of Cold War spy jargon. The sequel, The Honourable Schoolboy, is ten times more enjoyable. For one thing, the plot to atmosphere ratio is weighted to the plot side. Instead of being almost all atmosphere, there is an exciting espionage story involving drug runners, Hong Kong tycoons, glamorous ex-patriots, and the political legerdemain of wrapping up the Vietnam War.

It starts with a long but vivid section describing how the entire British international intelligence network had to be dismantled in the aftermath of routing out the mole in Tinker, Tailor. Then it really picks up and gets delightfully complicated when George Smiley sends a semi-retired operative to Hong Kong to find one Chinese informant buried in the rubble of the earlier undercover operations.

What atmosphere there is is pitch perfect. Le Carré frames the story as one of British Secret Service lore, expressed by the omniscient narrator with an ideal balance of admiration and world-weary cynicism.

OTHER REVIEWS

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy here on Rose City Reader

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy on chaotic compendiums

The Honourable Schoolboy on chaotic compendiums

Smiley's People on chaotic compendiums

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold on chaotic compendiums

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NOTES

The Honourable Schoolboy won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and counts as one of my Black choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version, challenge.  It also counts as one of the books for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges, since it has been on my TBR shelf since 1983.

Review: The Book and the Brotherhood

Iris Murdoch’s 1987 novel, The Book and the Brotherhood, is subtitled “A Story about Love and Friendship and Marxism,” which pretty much sums up the themes of her 23rd novel but only hints at the scope and complexity of the story.

The book begins when a group of longtime friends meet at an Oxford ball only to have their sentimental reunion jarred by the reappearance of their charismatic former leader, David Crimond. Years earlier, as young, liberal university students, the group had agreed to fund Crimond's writing of a book on their political philosophy. The book never materialized and the brotherhood never came to much. Now Crimond is back and bent on rekindling his affair with one of the women.

The story swirls around this original group of friends, pulling in siblings and other relatives, lovers, and hangers on. Lots of things happen with these people, from ice skating parties to suicide pacts, in between which they ponder and discuss the moral vacuum of Marxism, the possibility of religion without a personal God, the Platonic ideal, abortion, real estate, marriage, and parrots.

Murdoch is at the top of her game with this novel. She is droll in the telling, but forgiving with her characters, never sarcastic, and comfortable with moral ambiguity as she tells their stories without drawing conclusions or passing judgment. There is no pat ending and the various storylines demand further contemplation long after the cover closes.

OTHER REVIEWS

The Book and the Brotherhood on Hannah Stoneham's Book Blog
The Book and the Brotherhood on Musings
The Sea, the Sea on Rose City Reader

If you would like your review of this or any other iris Murdoch book listed here, please leave a comment with a link and I will add it. 

NOTES

The Book and the Brotherhood was 602 pages long, so counts as one of my 551 - 750 page books for the Chunkster Challenge. It also counts for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf challenges.

Review: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

When a venerable member of the Bellona Club is found dead in a wingback chair, Bellona member, Lord Peter Wimsey, is called in to make some discreet inquiries into the time of his death. The inheritance of a large fortune depends on just when the old fellow shuffled off.

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club finds Lord Peter at the top of his game, always urbane and witty as he unravels a series of knotty clues and evaluates myriad suspects. There are many moving parts to the puzzle, but Lord Peter and his technologically savvy butler Bunter never lose their cool, right up to the surprisingly dark ending.

OTHER REVIEWS

My review of Clouds of Witness is here.

If you would like your review of this or any other of Dorothy L. Sayers book listed here, please leave a comment with a link.

NOTES

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, first published in 1928, is Dorothy L. Sayers' fourth book in the Lord Peter Wimsey series. It was one of my Golden Age Girls choices for the Vintage Mystery Challenge, hosted by Bev at My Reader's Block.

Review: Paradise Postponed

When it comes to humorous literature, I see a continuum from books that are almost purely funny, with only a fragile plot for framework, to serious literature written by a witty author able to leaven a heavy story with a little comedy. I personally put P. G. Wodehouse at the one end and Jim Harrison at the other, with Christopher Buckley, Nick Hornby, Kingsley Amis, David Lodge, and Kate Atkinson in the middle, more or less in that order subject to aberration for particular books.

With that in mind, I can't say that I was disappointed with Paradise Postponed, the first book I've read by John Mortimer, an English author noted for his humorous books (including his popular Rumpole series), but I was thrown off. Without rational basis, I had it in my head that his books were going to be closer to the Wodehouse end of the scale and Paradise Postponed was much closer to the Harrison end – somewhere between Lodge and Atkinson. It took a while for me to enjoy the story while my expectations readjusted.

I ended up enjoying Paradise Postponed well enough, even if I didn't love it. It is my favorite kind of comic story about English village life with the requisite nutty vicar, illicit lovers, country doctor, and mix of difficult and lovable family members, all involved in a series of funny adventures. The story moves between the present in the 1980s back to post WWII days, as two middle-aged brothers try to figure out why their father, a communist clergyman, left his estate to a Conservative cabinet minister.

None of the characters were very likeable, and snarky jibes at Thatcherism have lost their bite after twenty-some years, but the story pulled me in and there were plenty of funny bits. I'm up for the sequel, Titmuss Regained, and will give barrister Rumpole a try.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This counted as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

Review: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

 

Robert Louis Stevenson's famous novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, is the classic tale of split personality, examining how the forces of good and evil develop within the same psyche. Everyone knows the basic plot by now, so the book doesn't have the shocking surprise ending it had for its original 1886 audience.

It is still worth reading, or even re-reading, because Stevenson could spin a yarn with the best of them. The story rips right along, with plenty of suspense and drama, and even some humor. Stevenson can be very droll, with lines like this, describing the fusty narrator, Mr. Utterson: "his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object."

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde should be on everyone's Must Read list.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This was my "re-read" choice for the Back to the Classics Challenge hosted by Sarah at Sarah Reads Too Much.   It also counts as one of my books for the Audio Book Challenge hosted by Teresa at Teresa's Reading Corner.

Review: Glittering Images

 

Glittering Images is the first book in Susan Howatch's Starbridge Series, a fictional account of the Church of England in the 20th Century set in the Salisbury–like diocese of Starbridge. Glittering Images takes place in the 1930s, during the Anglican Church's debate over modernizing English divorce laws.

The Reverend Dr. Charles Ashworth is a polished Cambridge academic who prefers writing about medieval Christian theological disputes to active ministry. His mentor, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sends him to secretly investigate the Archbishop's rival, the charismatic Bishop of Starbridge, to determine if the Bishop's alternative household arrangements are as innocent as they appear or a sleazy ménage à trois sure to bring scandal on the Church.

Ashworth's integration into the Bishop's household culminates in his own traumatic breakdown – a major plot transition Howatch handles masterfully, gradually turning the story inside out. Only when Ashworth (with guiding counsel from an astute Anglican monk) untangles his own psycho-spiritual mess is he able to solve the mystery of Starbridge.

Howatch turned to the religious themes explored in Glittering Images after experiencing her own spiritual epiphany. The book is certainly Christian in outlook and subject matter, but in execution bears all the marks of Howatch's earlier pop-fiction family sagas. The fast-turning pages are full of gothic suspense, moody imagery, sex, scandal, and drama. May the rest of the Starbridge Series be this good.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This counts as one of my two 450 to 500 page books for the Chunkster Challenge, as well as one of my choices for the Mt. TBR and Off the Shelf Challenges.

Review: Home Truths

"Home truth" is an expression we don't use much in America, but it is a good one, meaning, according to the OED, "a wounding mention of a person's weakness."  David Lodge examines the concept in the context of creativity and success in his novella Home Truths.

The compact story centers on Adrian Ludlow, a former novelist turned anthology editor who lives with his wife in "a little pocket of slightly scruffy agricultural land" in Sussex – closer to Gatwick airport than the South Downs.  Their longtime friend, television screenwriter Sam Sharp, drops in on his way to Los Angeles, fuming over a hatchet-job profile of him in that morning's paper.   Adrian and Sam plot to turn the tables on the journalist, who walks right into their trap.

Lodge based the novella on his play of the same name, with a few tweaks and some added material.  It is easy to see the skeleton of the play in the book because the story is almost all set in the Ludlows' living room, is told mostly in dialog, and is highly choreographed, with characters conveniently moving in and out of the living room to give others opportunity for one on one conversations.  This structure adds to the story by giving it an immediacy not found in longer, more narrated novels.

As the plot unfolds, each of the characters has to face some home truths about their careers and personal lives.  Like with a good play, lines and scenes draw laughs, but the bigger ideas will linger long after this quick read is finished.

Review: A Time of Hope

A Time of Hope is the third book in C. P. Snow's 11-volume Strangers and Brothers series. In it, narrator Lewis Eliot recounts his formative years, from his father's bankruptcy and his mother's death, through his school days, training to be a barrister, and early career, to his star-crossed marriage to the neurotic Sheila Knight.

Although this was the third novel of the series to be published, it is considered the first of the series chronologically. That is technically correct because it does begin with Eliot's childhood, but most of the story parallels the timeframe of the first-published volume, George Passant (reviewed here).

Eliot does a lot of soul searching and armchair analysis of his friends and professional colleagues – the kind of stuff that can make a novel enduringly interesting, or interminably dull. No doubt the series remains popular because Snow is a great storyteller who can wring a lot of insight out of a character without turning the plot to sludge. The characters are as realistic and absorbing today as when the book was first published in 1949.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTE

A Time of Hope dovetails with George Passant, telling Eliot's story instead of Passant's, but involving many of the same events, including Passant's criminal trial for fraud and conspiracy. Because A Time of Hope gives a condensed version of the trial, including its outcome, to read it first would spoil the story of George Passant.

Review: The Finkler Question

Howard Jacobson won the Booker Prize for The Finkler Question, his hilarious, pitch perfect story of Jewish sensibilities in contemporary London.

In what reads like a Woody Allen adaptation of a Saul Bellow novel, two old school friends, Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler, maintain their rivalrous camaraderie mostly through a shared affection for their former professor, Libor Sevcik. Both Libor and Sam are recent widowers, struggling in different ways through the loss of their wives. Julian is a never-married father of two grown boys who, in a fumbling search for meaning and purpose in his life, becomes fascinated by Jewish culture.

The story loops around through a tangle of family ties, Jewish holidays, Holocaust deniers, Gaza politics, marriage, adultery, fatherhood, hate crimes against Jews, racial crimes by Jews, Finkler's popular philosophy books, Julian's failed career, classical music, and avant-garde theater.

While it gets a little shaggy and the ending is confusingly ambivalent, The Finkler Question is sparklingly witty, heartwarming in important ways, and will leave you pondering.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES 

The audio version is particularly entertaining because the reader, Steven Crossley, is excellent. It counts as one of my books for the Audio-Book Challenge.

This was one of my Booker choices for the 2012 Battle of the Prizes, British Version. 

Review: Doctor Thorne

Frank Gresham must marry money. His father has already sold off part of Gresham Park and the rest is mortgaged to the hilt. His mother wants to keep – and use – the London house. His five sisters need dowries. And no one wants to lose face with their rich De Courcy relatives. So now that Frank is twenty-one, all agree that he must marry money.

All except Frank, that is. He’s in love with Mary Thorne, the bastard niece of a country doctor. Anthony Trollope recounts the trials and tribulations of these unlucky lovers in his 1858 novel, Doctor Thorne, the third book in his Chronicles of Barsetshire.

Like the first two in the series, The Warden and Barchester Towers, Doctor Thorne is lively, witty, occasionally snarky, and thoroughly engrossing. It feels even more contemporary, perhaps because of the racy matter of illegitimacy, or because it gets away from the ecclesiastical themes of the first two in favor of more secular topics.  Side stories dealing with product recognition and election financing feel particularly current.

There are a couple of potboiler parts where the story gets repetitive and the whole thing drags on just a bit too long, but overall Doctor Thorne is a terrific read, either as part of the Chronicles or as a stand-alone.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

I listened to the audiobook available for instant download at my library, so this was one of my books for the AudioBook Challenge.  There is also a free kindle edition on amazon.

Review: The Black Book

 

The Black Book is the fourth novel in Ian Rankin's Edinburgh-based series featuring hard-bitten police detective John Rebus. This one finds Rebus poking into a five-year old mystery involving an unidentified body burned up in a hotel fire.

The series really hits its stride in this book. The first one, Knots and Crosses, is a good story in itself, but the mystery is too personal to Rebus to be a proper kick off for a series – it's a sprint, not the start of a marathon. Hide and Seek is better, but still a little thin. The third one, Tooth and Nail, finds Rebus seconded to Scotland Yard to find a screamingly improbable serial killer. It has the markings of an early manuscript dusted off to appease an eager publisher.

But The Black Book has none of these flaws. Rebus has filled out as a character, as has his supporting cast, and there are about 50 more pages, which gives Rankin the space to develop the main and side stories. Edinburgh's history and environs shape the story and provide plenty of color.

Completists should start the series at the beginning, but for those just looking for a great mystery, jump right in with The Black Book.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This counts as one of my books for the TBR challenges I am doing this year.

Review: World Without End

World Without End is the sequel to Ken Follett's spectacular Pillars of the Earth. Pillars takes place in the 1100s, during the construction of the fictional Kingsbridge cathedral; World takes place 200 years later, also in Kingsbridge, but lacks a single event as a unifying focus.

It is the lack of focus that makes World disappointing. It is entertaining, but a pale shadow of Pillars. The story starts with the need to build a new bridge for Kingsbridge. Roughly the last third of the story is about the plague coming to England. There are ongoing storylines about the conflicts between the honest and hardworking heroes and heroines and the greedy, corrupt, or violent villains.

But it often feels like Book Without End, as the storylines drag on and repetitively on for over 1,000 pages. Pillars was long too, and had plenty of soap opera-like side stories, but was grander in scope and it provided loads of interesting historical information along with an exciting tale. World, on the other hand, feels like a modern story involving characters with very modern sensibilities crammed into a Medieval setting.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

World Without End counts as my first book for the Tea & Books Challenge (books over 750 pages), as well as one of by books for the following challenges: TBR Pile, Mt. TBR, Off the Shelf, and Chunkster.

Review: The Black Tower

P. D. James's mysteries are book yoga for me. They follow an anticipated sequence, starting with a gentle warm up to the story, moving on to stretch the plot, progressing through a series of moves and poses, with variations and repetitions to accommodate all the characters and clues, culminating in increasingly difficult moves, and winding down to a contemplative final end. Namaste.

The Black Tower follows the same pattern and is just as satisfying as the first four Adam Dalgliesh novels. Like the others, it involves mysterious deaths in a closed society, this time a private seaside hospital for disabled adults. Dalgliesh, recovering from a serious illness, incorporates a visit to an old family friend into his convalescence, only to arrive at Hope Cottage to learn that his friend had died. He stays around, reluctantly drawn in to solve the mystery.

Inspector Dalgliesh is one of my very favorite sleuths because he is a complicated, fully-formed character. He is world-weary, but not callous. He reads books and writes poetry. He is patient with the weak, but does not suffer fools. Most importantly, he is interesting but does not dominate the stories – he is a foil for the varied personalities of the suspects, victims, and villains.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

This counted as one of the audio books I read with my ears for the Audio-Book Challenge. 

Review: The Pothunters

The Pothunters is P. G. Wodehouse's first book, originally published in 1902. It's a schoolboy story set in an English boarding school, with a plot involving stolen trophies and much emphasis on school sporting events.

There are some lively moments, humorous scenes, and witty lines, but The Pothunters only hints at what Wodehouse would go on to achieve. There is far too much straightforward story without the extraordinary shenanigans of the later works.

For example, the theft of the trophies – "pots" in schoolboy jargon – is a simple smash and grab, nothing like the hilarious farce of the theft of the silver cow creamer. And the direct descriptions of the schools boxing tournament and field day races are like small town newspaper accounts of real events. They hold no comparison to Wodehouse's riotously funny satire of sporting events, such as The Great Sermon Handicap or some of the games the Drones come up with.

Wodehouse completists will want to read The Pothunters, but initiates should start with one of his later works to avoid wondering what the fuss is about.

OTHER REVIEWS

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NOTES

The Pothunters is available in one of the cool new Collector's Editions by Overlook Press.

It is also available as a free kindle download on amazon.  It is the first ebook I read and I have to say I didn't care much for the experience.  I read it on my iPhone, using the kindle app.  I didn't care for the experience and it took me forever to finish as a result.