May Book Review Club

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@Barrie Summy

For some reason, I've been thinking about the summers of my youth this week, possibly because spring is so early that it sets me apart from time. Anyway, I was remembering the utter joy of wandering to the bookstore at the end of the street, babysitting money jingling in my pocket, to find that they'd gotten in a Georgette Heyer paperback I'd never read. So I decided that this month's Book Review Club entry would be one of those blissful, now dog-eared early paperbacks.

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The Grand Sophy
By Georgette Heyer

For a long time, many of us who were Georgette Heyer fans kept quiet about it. Her books are, after all, romance novels, even though they rival David McCullough for historical accuracy.

For whatever reason, we’re coming out of the closet in droves these days. Reprints abound, most of them with classy-looking art on the covers that’s a far cry from the cheesy bodice-ripper covers of my youth.

Georgette Heyer wrote more than 50 novels between 1921 and her death in 1974. Some of them were mysteries or historical novels about other eras—her accounts of the battles of Hastings and Waterloo are universally respected. But it was her Regency England novels that won the hearts of generations.

Like Jane Austen’s books about the same era, the plots acknowledge one central truth: In the early 1800s, upper- class women (and men, for that matter) had little choice but to marry well. Sometimes Heyer’s heroines are forthright about their goals, setting out for the London season determined to find a husband who can mend the fortunes of an impecunious family. Sometimes other concerns are paramount: saving a sister’s honor or solving a mystery. But the need for a good match is always at least an undercurrent, and the happy ending always unites man, woman, and bank balance, with a title thrown in sometimes just for kicks.

Some Heyer heroines have beauty on their side, but many don’t. What they all have is intelligence, wit, and heart, and it’s those qualities that win the day for them.

THE GRAND SOPHY was written in 1950, and was my first Heyer novel. (That’s its raggedy self in the photo at right.) I think I bought my paperback edition in high school through the Scholastic book club. Since it was the 1960s, the cover copy describes Sophy as “beautiful, gay, impulsive, [and] shockingly direct,” which is at least one-third horse-pucky. Here’s how Heyer describes her: Sophy would never be a beauty. She was by far too tall: nose and mouth were both too large; and a pair of expressive gray eyes could hardly be held to atone entirely for these defects.

Sophy Stanton-Lacy is an anomaly: Her mother is dead and her father, a British diplomat in the Napoleonic era, has hauled her around Europe all her life, sometimes in the thick of war. She’s been his hostess for years, so she knows her way around a glittering dinner table, but she also rides like a trooper, drives to an inch, and carries a tiny but serviceable pistol in her reticule.

Her father is off to South America, and it’s time for Sophy to make a good match. So she lands at her aunt's house in stuffy London with a Paris wardrobe, a stunning horse, a parrot, a monkey, a wicked sense of humor, and a ruthless talent for meddling in other people’s lives. Watching her set her unwitting relatives’ affairs to rights—while coming to identify the desires of her own heart—is a pleasure unmatched in English literature.

Like Austen, Heyer finds her humor chiefly in secondary characters, a roster of pompous society idiots whom Anne Elliot would recognize in a heartbeat. In THE GRAND SOPHY, there’s a high-bred society prude, a handsome but vapid poet, and a hypochondriacal mama’s boy who drones on and on about his one adventure, a trip to Jamaica.

“Another interesting tree to be found in Jamaica,” said his lordship, “is the balata. We have also the rosewood, the ebony, the lignum vitae—“

“The northern parts of Spain,” said Sophy defiantly, “are more remarkable for the many variety of shrubs which grow there, including what we call the jarales, and the ladanum bush, and—and— Oh, there is Lord Francis! I shall have to put you down, Lord Bromford!” [She’s driving him in the park.]

Heading up the plus side of the ledger are Sophy’s dashing but ill-tempered cousin, Charles, who’s engaged to the prude; his gorgeous and good-hearted sister, Cecelia, who’s engaged to the poet; and the quiet, intelligent gentleman whose marriage offer Cecelia had been ordered to accept before she met the poet.

You pretty much know how all the matches are going to work out well in advance, but you can’t for the life of you imagine how Heyer’s going to make that happen. Never fear: She’d been writing these things for a quarter of a century at this point, and probably came up with intricate plot solutions in her sleep.

Whether it’s for escapism or the thrill of watching a pro at work, try this Georgette Heyer or any of them. Quick, while we’re out of the closet.

Loggery

Yes. Well. Another month, another set of blogging excuses. Turning over a new leaf I am, that I am, yup.

Speaking of leaves...after several years of hemming and hawing (and not sawing), we have finally committed mass-arbicide. The spruce trees around here are all dying a slow death, partly from age but also because the warmer winters aren't killing off fungi and other pests the way they used to. After the Death of the Green Monster, we revisited our concerns about the two clusters of spruces on the two north corners of the house. Actually, we were less concerned about them falling--a hazard mainly to shingles and windows--and more concerned about them catching fire if the weather got dry (a hazard to pretty much everything).

And so it was that the talented Jon Ellsworth came by with chainsaw and orange wedges, and showed us how it's done. I lost count of how many trees he cut down--fifteen or sixteen, anyway--and all but one of them fell precisely where he intended. The one that got away had been half broken off in the Green Monster Death Storm, and therefore was weighted funny. And even it fell almost where intended.

Here's the before and after:


















Sad, huh? On the more positive side, the garden in the back thinks it's achieved sunshine nirvana.

Having sweated through many tree-cutting adventures on our own, Rob and I were fascinated to see how precision logging works--especially on the trees closest to the house, which had disturbed even Jon's sleep the night before. (The process might not be quite so fascinating if you haven't come this close to offing your deck and smashing a kitchen window. Bear with me here, OK?)

First, the familiar: Jon (left) and Rob set up a safety rope with a come-along to coax the tree in the right direction in case of emergency. We've done this before on big trees, and it does relax the nerves.



Jon makes the first cut, facing where he wants the tree to drop. I was taking this picture standing on the deck, to give you an idea of the stakes here.

Then he makes another cut on the opposite side and hammers in wedges. Sometimes, hammering in the wedges was enough to force the tree over.



The final cut ...



... and, seconds later, TIMBERRRR--away from the house, and right between the garden and the baby pine we were hoping to save. (Which would have gotten flattened if we'd done this ourselves, I guarantee.)


It was a pretty slick operation. Jon would drop a tree, the wade in and slice off all the branches. Rob and I would haul the brush out of the way on one side of the house while Jon got busy cutting down another tree on the other side. Jon was on hand for a total of six hours, which I think works out to dropping a tree every 22 minutes. You should see how long it takes us to do one on our own.

We are now the proud owners of many piles of logs and a brush pile the size of a school bus. Rob, being certifiable, has decided to use some of the logs to build an Adirondack shelter that will function as a tool shed. That meant peeling the bark off the logs, a chore we've managed to avoid in the 25 years since we abandoned our initial plan of moving to Maine and building a log cabin. (We were going to live in a tent while building. And may I just say... hah. Hah-hah. Hah-hah-hah. Thank you.)

Turns out if the tree is old and newly felled, peeling the bark is a piece of cake. (I speak as one who in childhood always peeled off chocolate frosting and ate it first.) Here's Rob at work: Starting the peel with a draw-knife at left, then peeling.

You will note that my participation in this phase was limited to taking pictures. I've learned something in 25 years.

I Can Haz Flawwer?

It's not the best exposure in the world, but it would be proof in a court of law.

All spring, The McGonagall Cat and I have waged the Battle of the Cyclamen. The minute one of them blooms (see the little splotch of pink on the left-hand plant?), M-cat sneaks into my office, tears the flower off, and spits it on the floor. Cyclamen blossoms are poisonous, supposedly, so I'm glad she's not eating them. But still...

I've tried barricading the most recent blossom. The result may be a whole new level of destruction. Why she's so obsessed with the cyclamens this year I can't tell you--last year they were in a more accessible place and she ignored them.

It's the challenge of the thing, I guess. Or some deep-seated psychological trauma involving squirrels. They mock her. I suppose I'd eat poison, too, if it were me.

IN OTHER NEWS: In case you're wondering how Our Little Town is faring after the Selectmen-Imitate-Lemmings event, we seem to be surviving. Turns out the situation is a) unprecedented and b) impossible, since selectmen can only resign to other selectmen. The first two resigned to the third, but he's stuck in place until we elect somebody for him to resign to. It may be that all three of them are still selectmen, since nobody ever accepted their resignations.

As it turns out, two of the if-not-now-soon-to-be-ex selectmen went in to the town office Tuesday and signed the warrant so the town can pay its bills. They also have signed or will sign a warrant for a quickie election. Three fine people have come forward to run for office. One of them is Stalwart Moderator George Eaton, who was instrumental over the past week in helping to sort things out. Obviously, we need him. Yay George.

IN STILL OTHER NEWS: We went to a local production of The Threepenny Opera last night, put on by the New Surry Theatre. I can't express how mind-boggling it is when someone you've known for 25 years turns out to be a chameleon onstage, and a singing chameleon to boot. Such a person is Annie Poole, mild-mannered painter and waitress the rest of the time. She played Mrs. Peacham, and she was chilling and funny and tuneful. The production itself was fun and inventive and classy. But Annie stopped existing for a while and Mrs. Peacham took her place, and that's just incredible.

April Book Review Club

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@Barrie Summy

Look at me! Three posts in six days! Don't get used to it--life is bound to intrude at some point. Anyway, it's April, and our thoughts are outside, so we need an especially compelling reason to settle down with a good book. This is it. Go get it.

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A Conspiracy of Kings
By Megan Whelan Turner
Greenwillow, April 2010

I’ll have to be careful reviewing this book, the fourth in the Queen’s Thief series that debuted with 1997 Newbery honoree THE THIEF. If you haven’t read the earlier books—which you should, right now—I’d hate to spoil any surprises. Surprises are all Turner has going for her—apart from spectacular writing, deeply compelling characters, thoroughly imagined setting, and fearless plotting,.

The books follow the fortunes of Gen, the eponymous thief, in three neighboring kingdoms whose shared culture is ancient Greece with guns. Their rulers—two queens and a king, who assume a kingdom’s name upon ascending the throne—have spent the series jockeying for position and strategizing to keep larger empires from gobbling them up. The gods sometimes interfere, surprising the disbelievers.

This fourth book reunites us with Sophos, whom we met in THE THIEF as a student and heir to the throne of the kingdom of Sounis. Like the other high-born characters in the book, he must thread his way through a treacherous world, attempting to resolve the conflict between his dreams and desires and those of a leader. It’s a deeply personal coming-of-age story, but it’s painted on a broad canvas with bold, rich color.

As usual, Turner is a point-of-view trickster. We shift from third person to first person and back again, occasionally dropping into second person, gods help us. What makes this especially impressive is Turner’s ability to make us think we share a person’s every thought and then whack us with a plot twist or character revelation that we probably should have seen coming. Why didn’t we? The woman’s evil, that’s why.

She’s also gutsy. She introduces a mystery and doesn’t much worry about whether she’s confused us. There’s so much going on that we’re content to move along, confident that we’ll figure it all out eventually.

There’s romance, there’s humor… but all with an undercurrent of utter tragedy, constant, almost overwhelming. You sense that, in the end, all this maneuvering will come to nothing—or maybe the gods have some steely-eyed plan that discounts human happiness. The characters sense this, too. And then we all have a good laugh together.

I’m not sure whether these are middle-grade or young-adult fantasy. The Newbery folks obviously thought THE THIEF was for kids rather than teens, and Amazon has them at ages 9-12. Almost everyone else seems to assume they’re young adult. There is a bit of swearing here and there, but although the romance is pretty intense in places there’s no overt sex. Reading comprehension would have to be pretty good.

Regardless of the reader’s age, though, I can’t recommend these books enough.

OK, Now This Is Really Nuts

It's April 5, for cripe's sakes. We're supposed to be up to our knees in mud and freezing off our tushies for another three weeks at least.

Instead, the Tiger's Bane is about to bloom in the flower garden (at left). The day lilies (below) are tall enough to be nibbled by deer. (Handy tip: Sprinkle used -- and, er, sifted -- kitty litter around the garden to make it smell like a predator. I wasn't expecting to do this for another month, but yesterday there I was in the cellar, raiding the cat box.)

The buds on the maples are sprouting fringe a month early. We have the screens up on most of the windows. I am barely restraining myself from putting up the screen doors.

No good can come of this. It's too pleasant. This is New England. We will pay.


IN OTHER NEWS: Being a sinful woman who doesn't deserve an early spring, I utterly neglected to link to a nice interview by Kate Narita on her blog, "Classroom Book of the Week." The questions were fun to answer, and I feel terrible that my brain went on the fritz. Anyway, here's the interview, and here's her feature on THE UNNAMEABLES. And here's her blog's main page, so you get the full flavor of what she's about.

Democracy in...Wait, Did Somebody Say "Action"?

I took my camera to Brooklin town meeting this morning, figuring I'd blog about this most basic exercise in democracy and small-town camaraderie. Before I'd even unpacked the camera, the exercise turned into an episode of "Survivor: Maine."

The meeting started at 9 a.m. By 9:05, all three selectmen had resigned and walked out of the school gymnasium. Then the tax collector resigned and sat down in the audience. (At right, the last selectman standing, Richard Freethey, reads his resignation letter. Our stalwart town meeting moderator, George Eaton, is pondering what the hell he's going to do next and Town Clerk Gigi Hardy is pretending she's someplace else entirely.)

I've been a close watcher of town politics in Maine for 25 years and I've never seen this happen before. As I write this, we don't have a clear idea of how much trouble we're in. At the very least, we can't pay our bills without selectmen to sign the warrant that authorizes the payment.

There may have been two or three people in the audience who saw this coming, but no more than that, I bet. Maybe we should have been more insightful, considering that at the town election polls yesterday voters were handed a bunch of letters from town officials criticizing each other. It seemed to be the selectmen vs. the elected town office staff, the town clerk, treasurer and tax collector.

We also received a written report from a committee appointed to study how the town office operates. The selectmen had appointed the committee last spring, part of its charge being to investigate the possibility of replacing the elected town office staff with an appointed administrative assistant. The elected staff didn't think much of this idea, and a low-pressure system settled on the town office that has stayed there until today.

As it turned out, the report did not recommend replacing anyone with anyone else, but instead suggested things everyone--especially the selectmen--could do to steamline operations. Apparently, this did nothing to improve the weather. By last week, when I was hanging out in the town office registering my new car, the gale warnings were up, I'm not exactly sure why or from whom or to whom. All I know is that the air was crackling.

The three resigning selectmen said, basically, that they were sick of being disrespected. Sounded like the letters handed out at the polls were the last straw.

Thanks to the stalwart George Eaton, we went through the town meeting anyway--passed town and school budget items, approved a veterans' memorial, set a few routine policies, honored a couple of firefighters for exemplary service. Some warrant articles had to be "passed over" because we needed an explanation from the absent selectmen. At the end of the meeting, the tax collector bowed to pressure and rescinded her resignation. The town clerk said she would call the secretary of state on Monday and find out what we do next. Most likely, the state will appoint some sort of babysitter to take care of us until we can elect new selectmen.

It was all very weird and--although no one would admit it out loud--very thrilling.

Usually, town meeting has the same atmosphere as an extended rainy spell after a drought--a great big bore, but we know it's necessary and we feel a sense of solidarity and accomplishment just going through it together.

This town meeting was more like northeast gale, which you thoroughly enjoy even as it drops a tree on your car. (I don't seem to be letting go of that, do I?) I felt bad about the selectmen and we all griped about how terrible it was, but in reality it was the most fun we'd had in ages. People went around in the breaks suggesting each other run for selectmen and saying no, no, not me, not in a million years. (A possible worthy exception might be Lori Gallo, above at left, who would make a crackerjack selectman. She might have said "maybe." She and the woman next to her, Lauren Allen , were on the committee that studied town office operations. )

And we did a lot of the regular town meeting things, such as:

Voting by paper ballot for the school budget in the school library. We vote the individual line items by voice vote, but for inscrutable reasons the state insists that the final, comprehensive warrant article pass by paper ballot. We just write "yes" or "no" on a piece of paper and hand it in. Then, next Friday, we have to go to the polls and vote on it AGAIN. Inscrutable ain't the half of it.

That's former town clerk June Eaton voting in the photo at right. I bet she's glad Gigi's in the hot seat now, and not her.

Checking out the future. Below, Rob and several fellow curmudgeons examine the plans for a parking lot rehab (which was "passed over.") Rob and his fellow firefighters are in dress uniform, which he hates because he says it makes him feel like a Brown Shirt. The guy second from right is Ed Holden, who just got honored for 40 years of firefighting. In the photo below right, Fire Chief Sam Friend gives the Firefighter of the Year award to Scott Tierney, a relatively new firefighter who has been exceptionally active. (Another entertaining aspect of small town life: Years ago, Sam was a member of the elementary school Odyssey of the Mind team Rob coached. To this day, I have the power to embarrass Sam simply by saying the word "toga.")

Eating. The eighth-grade class always serves lunch at town meeting to raise funds for its class trip. It's a tricky business, because once in a while the meeting ends early and the moderator has to beg everyone to stay for lunch.

Today we finished all our business at the perfect time to eat, and then regathered in the gym to so that stalwart moderator George could exhort us all to "get with the program" and stop fighting with each other.

Hear, hear, George.

Bad Blogger, Good Consumer

Hello. I can't even remember when I blogged last, but I have excellent excuses.

Excuse Number One: I have been buying a car to replace the late lamented Green Monster Impreza. For me, this is similar to stalking a tiger while reading up on the quality of his teeth and claws and transferring tiger bait from bank to bank all over the trackless jungle.

When Rob needs a car, he gets up one morning, yawns, scratches himself, decides to visit the dealer, drives a car, then pays his money and comes home with it that night. I am not like that. I consult Consumer Reports, Edmunds.com, the Kelley Bluebook, Cars.com, and 450,000 dealer web sites, plus everyone I know who has ever owned a car plus tea leaves and the innards of snakes.

I then test drive and dither and fret: Hybrid, or manual transmission? Hybrid, or All Wheel Drive? What about AWD but automatic transmission? Manual but front wheel drive with studded tires? If I buy a Prius, can I drive down a back-woods road without scraping hell out of the undercarriage? Do I HAVE to buy another Subaru Impreza, or would a Forester be OK?

The situation was exascerbated by the fact that, once I finally decided that I wouldn't be comfortable slinging a kayak on top of a Prius and driving it through the woods, it turned out that used Imprezas no longer exist, at least not hatchbacks with manual transmission and fewer than 50,000 miles on the odometer. I briefly considered ordering a new one and waiting three months while poking my depleted bank account to see if it was dead. But at last I decided on a 2006 Impreza Outback Sport with everything I wanted but too many miles on it. (The documented maintenance is beyond exemplary, so it could be worse.)

I bought the car yesterday. I am still hyperventilating. Fortunately, we have already tracked wood ashes into the interior (we've been burning all the trees that fell down and smashed perfectly innocent Green Monsters), so I am not subject to the usual waiting-for-the-first-ding-on-the-new-car terrors.

Excuse Number Two: I've been dealing with copy-edits on SMALL PERSONS WITH WINGS. I don't even want to talk about this. I roped in my writer's group and my high school friend Shelly (copy editor to the stars) to help me make sure all was well. They are still speaking to me. I am grateful.

IN OTHER NEWS: The entire town of Brooklin is obsessed with Battlestar Gallactica. Yup, I know, old news to the rest of the world. But we don't get cable here, and many of us wouldn't buy it anyway and therefore do not have satellite dishes either. So when the library got the complete DVD set, the jostling began.

We're next on the list for discs 13 and 14. Today, Librarian Tracey called.

TRACEY: Disc 14 came in, but Disc 13 is still out. Shall I hold Disc 14 until Disc 13 comes in?

ELLEN: What if the guy who has 13 wants 14?

TRACEY: Maybe he's the one who watched them out of order, lemme check. Nope, he hasn't seen 14. But what if I take your name off it and somebody ELSE takes out 14?

ELLEN: Oh god. I don't know. *ponders for a minute.* OK, listen, just keep our names on 13 and we'll take our chances on 14. That's only fair.

TRACEY: I'll take your name off of 14 but I'll keep it here at the desk for a day or two.

Tracey and I have conversations like this a lot, because she's the Brooklin Interlibrary Loan guru. Over the past year she has helped me score books on the Cape Verde Islands, West African animism, and literacy in Elizabethan and Stuart England. She stalks books like tigers in a jungle. We get along very well.