I really think some stories are seasonal. Autumn stories get us to think about life and its priorities; generation-spanning epics are good for those long, winter nights and spring stories are about inspiration. Summer stories live in another world, one of twilight and green shade and flirting. Summer novels are meant to be read with pink lemonade on a porch swing or on a chaise in the shade. These are the tales of romance and fun, even the ones that don’t contain conventional love stories. Summer is the frothiest part of the reading year and Peter Mayle writes summer stories like no one else. His novel, A Good Year, suggests the summer can do more than help you through a domestic crisis; it can lead you to the best part of your life. This tale goes well with lemonade.. If Summer is the season for self-awareness, then Max Skinner is neglecting the calendar as well as his personal life. While others are living their London lives, Max has bartered his for a high-stress job and a possible bonus. A self-serving boss robs him of both just as Max learns the uncle who raised him died. Max may be out of…
Full Disclosure: I carry the “clutter” gene in my DNA. While my mother’s clan of military migrants moved their Spartan households around the map, my Dad’s family decided there wasn’t an empty bottle or old magazine on earth that shouldn’t be saved. And while half of my chromosomes are Clutter Monkey, my husband got the gene from both sides. Given this, you can probably imagine what our house has looked like in the past. You can imagine it, but you’ll be happier if you don’t try. By March of this year the flotsam and jetsam of life were threatening to swallow us whole. I’ve done a bit to beat back the tide but I’m getting a lot of help from a book my sister sent me. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo has done more than help clean up my house. It’s brought some needed perspective to my life. Most “how-to” books are filled with lists of steps. Marie Kondo teaches tidying by concept. One of her big ideas for recognizing the extras is to spread out everything you have of some category. Then pick up each item, one at a time, and see if it gives you…
As a rule, we don’t question many things we are taught. If your Mom said stuffing should be cooked separately from the turkey and your Dad decreed all Fords are junk, chances are you accepted those statements, at least until you reached adolescence. If your favorite teacher taught a specific subject, then you probably learned to like the same field. Maybe you adopted some of the professor’s opinions. All of that is well and good until those beliefs become accepted history. As somebody said (Orwell? Napoleon? Churchill?) history is written by the winners which means some accepted historical accounts are nothing more than preserved propaganda and lies. You know this if you’ve read Caroline Alexander’s book, The Bounty. Or do you still loath and fear Captain Bligh? When I was a kid, my cousin used Captain Bligh’s name whenever we pretended we were pirates. According to my cousin, no buccaneer or sailor on the Seven Seas was meaner or sneakier than this terrible man. Of course, he got his ideas from watching Charles Laughton in “Mutiny on the Bounty”, a wonderful old black-and-white picture that contrasts Clark Gable’s bare-chested nobility with Laughton’s debased and evil Captain Bligh. The picture and source made…
Biographies can be such intrusive things. Say an individual manages, through talent, work and luck, to make something good, something worth remembering. Now, that’s a difficult, desirable achievement but the is the world satisfied with it? No. When something wonderful is created, some Nosy Parker of a biographer will follow behind, trying to uncover the life and soul of the creator. On the other hand, a good biography, like Judy Oppenheimer’s Private Demons, can answer questions and provide context to that person’s accomplishments. The subject here is Shirley Jackson and Ms. Oppenheimer’s tale illuminates a few corners of this complicated, compelling, and private writer. To enjoy Shirley Jackson’s work you must be comfortable with complexity. In the middle of the twentieth century, she became an acclaimed writer in two genres that seemed mutually exclusive. The best known samples of her work are psychologically disturbing stories of alienation and evil. However, she also published popular stories of domestic recounted in a well-humored, dry and ironic voice. In a culture that likes to pigeon-hole the work of its creative artists, Shirley defied easy categorization to the consternation of some of her fans. Could the same person write stories in turn that made…
It’s funny how some writers go in and out of style. Some storytellers are flaming hot properties in one decade, and out of print in the next. You never can tell who will outlast their lifetimes. Taylor Caldwell, Edna Ferber and Thomas Chastain were royalty on the mid-century best-seller list, but I doubt if they’re remembered at all today beyond Ferber’s writing the source novel for Showboat. Daphne du Maurier fares a little better because of Rebecca and because a biography suggesting she was a lesbian but beyond that and a couple of short stories that were adapted into films, her name doesn’t ring many bells. That’s a shame because she was a prolific writer with more than thirty books to her credit and no one else created “mood” with words as well as she did. If you think I’m thinking of Rebecca again, I’m not. Her greatest “atmospheric” novel is, for me, My Cousin, Rachel. Rachel is a novel about the damage caused by doubt. In the beginning, Ambrose Ashley and his nephew Philip are completely sure of their spots in the world. Ambrose is the master of a Cornish estate and the guardian of Philip, his heir. Their lives are bound by the…