One more Retro Hugo nominee! The Changeling is a 1944 novella by A.E. van Vogt, a well-regarded Golden Age SF author, which is currently a nominee forOne more Retro Hugo nominee! The Changeling is a 1944 novella by A.E. van Vogt, a well-regarded Golden Age SF author, which is currently a nominee for the 2020 Retro Hugo award. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (along with a link to Internet Archive, if you're interested in checking this out):
The Changeling begins in a fairly promising way: The comfortable life of Lesley Craig, a well-to-do business executive, is upended when his boss comments on how well the firm has done since Craig joined it four years ago. Craig is confused: he knows he’s been with the Nesbitt Co. for (pause while he counts) thirty-four years. Which makes Craig fifty years old and — now he’s getting concerned — he looks and feels like he’s in his mid-thirties, and his memory of most of these years is pretty hazy.
When Craig sets off to confront his wife, he’s taken prisoner by (cue wincing here) a group of tough women who have taken an “equalizing” drug that makes them physically … and presumably mentally and emotionally … as strong and capable as men. Equality of the sexes, 1940’s-style! These “equalized” women haul Craig before the president of the U.S., Jefferson Dayles. President Dayles favors Craig with some “As you know, Bob” info-dumping about their troubled times in 1973, threatens him, takes a sample of Craig’s blood, and then sends him on his way.
Everyone around Craig — his wife Anrella, his boss, the president and others — seems to have competing ideas about what Craig should do, but none of their ideas involve informing Craig about what is really going on with his entire life. Craig is a confused man, and as he stumbles from one crisis and plot complication to the next, the reader is equally confused. Far-fetched explanations are eventually forthcoming, but the plot is a severely disjointed one, with a few odd jumps in time, and a murky ending that did nothing to redeem the story. Add to that the really cringe-worthy treatment of gender issues; even for the 40s, this seems like awful stuff. The Changeling is pretty much a hot mess, with a lot of wasted potential....more
This review is only for Intruders from the Stars, a 1944 novella that's currently a Retro Hugo nominee. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature, aloThis review is only for Intruders from the Stars, a 1944 novella that's currently a Retro Hugo nominee. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature, along with a link to Internet Archive if you really want to read it. But I can't recommend it!
I have never seen a published work with so many exclamation points. There are dozens of them — on Every! Single! Page! This is one seriously overwrought novella, with tons of purple prose. It stars Bess-Istra, a gorgeous (of course) and megalomaniacal Queen of All She Surveys, who loses a battle against rebels on her home planet and takes off in a spaceship with her remaining (more or less) loyal soldiers to take over another planet 13 light years away.
Their scientist uses a sleeping gas to put everyone on the ship into suspended animation for the trip. Because of Reasons, they miss the planet they were aiming for and, many millennia later, land on Earth during WWII. Bess-Istra promptly moves to take over the Earth.
This novella features another those tough, highly competent guys so popular in Golden Age SF, a war correspondent in this case, who falls in love with Bess-Istra even though he knows she’s bad news (not to mention being, you know, an actual space alien, though she conveniently speaks English). When I hit the phrases “her breast heaving” on the third page and “her glorious, scarlet lips” on the page after that, used in a completely unironical way, I knew we were in trouble. It never really gets any better from there.
The only part that engaged me was the brief explanation of how and why they missed the other planet they were aiming for. :)...more
Trog is a 1944 novella that's currently a nominee for the 2020 Retro Hugo award, in the novella category. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (aTrog is a 1944 novella that's currently a nominee for the 2020 Retro Hugo award, in the novella category. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (along with a link to Internet Archive, if you're really interested in checking this out):
It's the 1950s in this story, and civilization is severely breaking down all over the world. People called Troglodytes or "Trogs" have been mysteriously destroying key equipment and industries. The prevailing theory is that humans have a mass consciousness that is fed up with technology and wants to send humanity back to more of a Middle Ages type of existence, so this group-mind thing temporarily possesses individuals, turning them into Trogs. To add to the problem, Trogs can also cause everyone around them to temporarily black out, so no one ever sees them committing the sabotage. People walk around, worrying that they themselves are Trogs who committed destructive acts during their black-outs.
Trog is very much a tale of its era, with tough-minded, competent men who whip out world-changing technical gadgets, mostly useless and decorative women (when women even appear in the story at all), and — this is a 1944 story, after all — Nazis nefariously scheming to take over the world. Despite these drawbacks, and the minimal characterization, I did think this was a reasonably entertaining story, plot-wise.
The “collective unconscious of humanity” theory admittedly doesn’t make much sense, but then, large groups of people often do in fact adopt ideas that in retrospect seem utterly nonsensical, and of course here it turns out that something entirely different is going on. Good thing we have the heroes to save the day … before the plot really had a chance to get exciting, unfortunately. Still, giving due consideration to when it was written, Trog wasn’t so awful that I think it deserves only a single star. That dubious honor I’ll reserve for Intruders from the Stars....more
2.5 stars. This is a Victorian era romantic soap opera, with all the drama, self-sacrifice and long-windedness that implies.
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Written in 1873 (I2.5 stars. This is a Victorian era romantic soap opera, with all the drama, self-sacrifice and long-windedness that implies.
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Written in 1873 (I read it online at Project Gutenberg), The Doctor's Dilemma begins with an uppercrust, frantic young woman, Olivia, escaping from the rooms in London where she's been locked in for three weeks because REASONS, and haring off as far as she can go ... which ends up being the Channel Islands. There she shelters with a friendly fisherman and his aged mother in a remote cottage on the island of Sark.
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One fateful day Olivia slips and falls down a cliff, injuring herself pretty badly. Enter the handsome doctor from the nearby island of Guernsey, and love at first sight. But the handsome doctor is also engaged to a cousin of his, which was a major thing to try to upend back in that day. Also the doctor soon realizes that Olivia is the nameless woman that he saw a newspaper ad for, by someone trying to find her. Sinister or good? He doesn't know. What he also doesn't know is that Olivia has other secrets she hasn't shared ...
Not badly written, for its day, but MAN, does this novel take the long and winding road to the expected ending. Maybe it was originally written as a newspaper serial? Because I can't think of any other reason (besides Victorian, which admittedly does explain a lot) for it to be so lengthy. I have to admit I skimmed most of the second half of it.
Recommended only if you really like old-fashioned romance and don't mind if it’s a super-slow burn....more
3.5 stars. This is the first book in the Mrs. Tim series, a novel in the form of journal entries written by the wife of a career British military offi3.5 stars. This is the first book in the Mrs. Tim series, a novel in the form of journal entries written by the wife of a career British military officer, Mrs. Tim Christie. D.E. Stevenson, who wrote this book in 1932, was herself a military wife, and based much of this book on her own real-life journal, so there's definitely a realistic take on the ups and downs of British military life in between the world wars.
The first half is best viewed as an immersion into Hester Christie's day-to-day life. It doesn't really have much of a plot, but she has a wry sense of humor and tells some interesting stories. The second half is more novel-like, as Hester visits a well-to-do friend in Scotland for a few weeks' vacation and there's lots of interpersonal drama, including her friend's son falling in love with the Wrong Girl and a Major Tony Morley (who works closely with Hester's husband Tim) who follows Hester around and has fallen in love with her ... which Hester utterly fails to realize because she's "hedged about with innocence," in Tony's words. Her obliviousness to his love for her never really worked for me, since Hester is otherwise quite observant, but maybe this is what readers in the 30s expected where one of the parties was married? In any case, even though Tim isn't around for most of the book, Hester is unswervingly devoted to him. And Tony, questionable though his motives may be, is a hilarious guy who always brightens up the pages when he appears.
It's a cozy read, definitely of its time in terms of social attitudes and unexamined classism, but that generally comes with the territory in older books. This isn't my favorite book by D.E. Stevenson (that would be Miss Buncle's Book) but I did enjoy getting a glimpse of another, bygone world through Hester Christie's eyes.
These books were very popular in their day (Stevenson wrote three more Mrs. Tim books) but I may or may not ever get around to reading them. I did read her book The Four Graces last week, which I'd recommend more than this one for people who like old-fashioned romances....more
3.5 stars. This 1928 British mystery reminds me a little of an early Agatha Christie novel (I imagine that's not just a coincidence), complete with a 3.5 stars. This 1928 British mystery reminds me a little of an early Agatha Christie novel (I imagine that's not just a coincidence), complete with a Miss Marple-type character in Miss Maud Silver, a small lady with mouse-colored hair, knitting needles and an extremely sharp mind. Surprisingly, though, Grey Mask predates the first Miss Marple book by a couple of years.
Charles Moray, a wealthy young man, has never recovered from being jilted just a few days before their wedding by Margaret Langton. He went off and traveled the world for four years to drown his sorrows, and is just now returning to England. When he gets to his closed-up home, he finds (and secretly listens in on, through a convenient peephole) some people discussing a criminal enterprise - including a possible murder - led by a man in a sinister, featureless grey rubber mask.
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The worst shock is when Charles sees his ex-fiancee Margaret show up to report to Grey Mask. Because Charles still has Feelings, though with a lot of anger mixed in.
What's going on, and how can Charles extricate Margaret from this mess? He doesn't want to involve the police, for fear of ruining Margaret's life. Miss Silver to the rescue!
Grey Mask is a little dated. There's a lovely and incredibly silly 18-year-old girl ...
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(not Margaret, but a rich girl with hardly two brain cells to rub together, who is the person that the criminals are considering murdering). And there's more than enough melodrama, romantic tension and virtuous self-sacrifice to fill my quota for the week - but it's a pretty good mystery for a 90+ year old book. It sucked me right in and spit me out around 2:30 am. Miss Silver actually plays a fairly minor role in this book, though my guess is her role becomes more prominent in the later books.
You can get a free copy of this and several other Miss Silver mysteries in ebook form, here on the FadedPage website. While you're at it, take a look at this Miss Silver fan's webpage for an interesting discussion of the differences between Miss Silver and Miss Marple, and a general analysis of the Miss Silver mysteries. My favorite part was this:
Every Miss Silver mystery has at its heart a romantic couple (not a romance necessarily). This couple must and will unite; under no circumstances will either party die or prove to be a villain, and if a crime was committed by either, it will have been in ignorance, and with no lasting ill-effects. (Such foreknowledge about the end has never diminished my enjoyment of the books–the romance triumphant is as much part of the series as Miss Silver’s velvet coatee, or the creepy brooch with the hair of her grandparents).
I'll definitely read a few more of these sometime....more
I read Green Dolphin Street as a group read with the Retro Reads crowd. I had such high hopes because I've loved the other two historical fiction noveI read Green Dolphin Street as a group read with the Retro Reads crowd. I had such high hopes because I've loved the other two historical fiction novels I read by Elizabeth Goudge, but this one landed with kind of a thud.
Marianne and Marguerite are two sisters, daughters of a wealthy merchant, who live on the island of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. Marianne, who is five years older than Marguerite, is intelligent but mercurial, and not as conventionally lovely or as well-behaved as her younger sister. They both fall in love with William, who's not in their social class but is a compelling personality. They all hang out together as they grow up but, predictably, it's Marguerite that William falls in love with.
William leaves Guernsey to go to New Zealand to seek his fortune, planning to bring Marguerite there once he's settled and doing well. But he's drunk the night he writes the fateful proposal letter, and accidentally mixes up the sisters' names and asks Marianne to come to NZ to marry him. (The author claimed this part was based on a factual story.) Marianne is elated; Marguerite deeply dejected. And William, when he sees which sister shows up on the boat months later, doesn't know how to undo his mistake. This is back in Victorian days, when you just didn't do that kind of thing.
Green Dolphin Street follows their lives and adventures together. There are some harrowing times with the Maori natives, and here Goudge's normally fine sensibilities let her down. It's dated and, to say the least, racially insensitive. This book was written in 1944, and if you can't make allowances for outdated social attitudes, you'll be offended.
Between that and the Drama (with a capital D) between William and the sisters, (view spoiler)[ and the resulting difficulties in William's and Marianne's marriage (hide spoiler)], this just wasn't a book I found appealing. Elizabeth Goudge was a talented author, but I'd definitely recommend The Dean's Watch or The Scent of Water over this one.
3.33 stars for this amusing 1932 Christmas story by Damon Runyon, who wrote the short stories that the musical Guys and Dolls is based on.
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This3.33 stars for this amusing 1932 Christmas story by Damon Runyon, who wrote the short stories that the musical Guys and Dolls is based on.
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This story is set in the same Prohibition-era world, where the guys are gangsters and/or hard drinkers and the women are all "dolls." It's free online here at the New York Times magazine.
The narrator is hanging out at Good Time Charley's New York speakeasy, drinking rather too many hot Tom and Jerry's with Charley, when a guy called Dancin' Dan shows up to join them in their Christmas Eve drinking binge. When another guy nicknamed Ooky shows up a couple of hours later, dressed in a Santa Claus outfit from his job, Dancin' Dan has a great idea: borrow Ooky's Santa Claus suit and go bring Christmas to a destitute 90 year old lady, the grandmother of one Miss Muriel O'Neill who Dan has been dancing with lately at her club.
"... I wish to say I always question his judgment in dancing so much with Miss Muriel O'Neill, who works in the Half Moon Night Club. And the reason I question his judgment in this respect is because everybody knows that Miss Muriel O'Neill is a doll who is very well thought of by Heine Schmitz, and Heine Schnitz is not such a guy as will take kindly to anybody dancing more than once and a half with a doll that he thinks well of."
At any rate, everyone is buzzed enough to think that sneaking into Miss Muriel's apartment to fill the stocking of her grandmamma is a grand idea. So off go the three guys on their errand of Christmas charity and cheer.
There are some really fun twists to this rather O. Henry-like tale. There's also a little too much 30's-style slang, and you have to be able to handwave the outdated social attitudes in this 80+ year old story. But otherwise it's a quite funny and goodhearted Christmas tale.
December 2018 group read with the Retro Reads group....more
2.5 stars. Jean Webster, best known for her charming 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs, also wrote this 1907 bit of fluff novel, Jerry Junior. Jerry (Junior)2.5 stars. Jean Webster, best known for her charming 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs, also wrote this 1907 bit of fluff novel, Jerry Junior. Jerry (Junior) is a wealthy upper-class American, a handsome young man whiling away several days in an Italian village, waiting for his sister and aunt to arrive. He's getting very bored, so when the hotel waiter tells him about a lovely young American woman staying in a nearby villa, he decides to drop by (without an invitation or introduction, gasp!) and meet her.
Unfortunately, Jerry and Constance get off on the wrong foot, and she dismisses him without a whole lot of thought. Jerry, angry and a little humiliated, is about to leave town when he overhears Constance discussing him with her father at the hotel's restaurant, admitting he was handsome and slightly regretful about how it played out. Since Jerry's attracted to her, he decides not to leave town after all. When he also overhears her asking for an Italian guide for some hiking the next day (“He must have curly hair and black eyes and white teeth and a nice smile; I should like him to wear a red sash and earrings.”) Jerry - in a burst of dubious inspiration - decides to disguise himself as their guide (though he speaks almost no Italian).
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The next day during the hike, Constance makes him almost immediately but decides not to let on that she recognizes him, and flirts with several handsome Italian officers just to make Jerry jealous. Jerry digs himself deeper with lies and scheming, but also manages to do some close-up flirting with Constance. When Jerry's sister finally arrives, the plot thickens further.
So this one didn't appeal to me all that much, though readers of old-fashioned romances might get a kick out of it. There's some amusing dialogue, but I was too annoyed with Jerry and Constance's relentless game-playing with each other. I got kind of bored with the whole story and started skimming after a while, though it picks up a bit toward the end. There's also a strong dose of unexamined classism and stereotyping of Italian characters, nothing wildly out of line (it's pretty typical for a century-old novel) but it didn't help Jerry Junior's case.
This is a Gutenberg and Amazon freebie, but I'd only recommend it to those who really love retro romances ... which I generally do, but not so much in this case. Too bad! The Gutenberg version does contain some charming Gibson Girl-type illustrations.
3.5-ish stars for this old-fashioned romantic suspense adventure. Emma Delaney is an upper-class English girl, orphaned at a young age and living with3.5-ish stars for this old-fashioned romantic suspense adventure. Emma Delaney is an upper-class English girl, orphaned at a young age and living with her aunt and uncle in Jamaica in the late 1800s. When she’s 17 1/2, she’s talked into marrying Oliver Foy, a wealthy landowner twice her age. Her hopes and dreams quickly come crashing down(view spoiler)[; Oliver is a sadistic, abusive man (hide spoiler)].
In a thrilling scene, Emma escapes with Daniel Choong, an older Chinese fisherman who was a lifelong friend and her former nanny’s husband. They spend the next few years deep in hiding, with Emma pretending to be Casey, a mixed-race creole girl owned by Daniel (she speaks a lot of pidgin English here). More adventures ensue, and there are new places, new friends and maybe a romantic interest or two for Emma/Casey. But her past life isn’t done with her yet!
This is a historical gothic suspense type of novel with a little bit of romance and a Caribbean twist with a Chinese mafia subplot. It's fairly dated, with a couple of sympathetic but stereotypical minority characters, and Emma pretending to be a minority with a thick accent (which is sometimes used for laughs) can be a needle scratch. It reads more like a 1950's or 60's novel to me than one written in 1980.
Madeleine Brent books also tend to follow a formula - English girl raised in exotic foreign lands and immersed in that culture experiences major personal trials, adventure and romance - and the formula gets a little threadbare after two or three books. Still, it had an exciting plot that pulled me in. If you like the Victoria Holt type of novels and aren’t too offended by dated social attitudes, give Madeleine Brent a try.
Content notes: there's a domestic abuse subplot; it’s not too graphic but may disturb some readers....more
In the year 2136, our planet Terra’s space exploratThis 1953 SF novella is a freebie on Project Gutenberg. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature:
In the year 2136, our planet Terra’s space exploration is cut short by the Centauran Empire of Proxima Centauri, which surrounds our solar system and refuses to allow humanity access to the galaxy. Faster-than-light travel exists, but always results in an explosion when the FTL device reenters normal space, so there’s no way to jump past the Centaurans. Both sides are constantly working to come up with new weapons and strategies, and spying on the other to discern their latest developments, but, curiously, there is very little actual fighting. The Terrans have an SRB computer that is constantly evaluating humanity’s odds of succeeding in an actual war with the Centaurans, and they’re waiting to fight until the computer shows that the odds have shifted in their favor.
But now it has occurred to the human researchers that they can use an FTL device as a bomb against the Centaurans, which they’ll be unable to avoid because of its FTL speed. While the scientists are working madly on ironing out the problems with delivering the bomb (which they call Icarus) accurately, another group of Terran researchers quickly pull their time machine back to the present. The time machine accidently brings back one Thomas Cole, a handyman from the year 1913. Cole takes off and escapes the government facilities … and now the SRB computer refuses to compute odds on the Centauran battle. Cole has created an unknown variable that the computer cannot deal with.
So Cole goes on the run, while Security Commissioner Reinhart angrily does his best to have his military forces kill him so that he can get his odds calculations back and start the war. Peter Sherikov, the scientific director, becomes aware of Cole’s intuitive genius at fixing machines and wants to make use of his talents, but Reinhart has no intention of changing his plans.
The Variable Man is a fast-paced novella with some old-fashioned charm, like much Golden Age science fiction, but also suffers from some of the shortcomings of many other older SF tales: women are non-existent or appear only as sex objects, the characters are stereotypical, and there is a focus on action in the plot at the expense of depth or characterization. Also, the linchpin of the plot ― that Cole is such a mechanical genius that his untrained skills are hugely useful with technology more than two hundred years later ― proved too much for my disbelief to be suspended. Still, Philip K. Dick spins a good yarn, and I enjoyed the retro vibe of this story....more
3.75 stars. In this 1938 book, the proper Miss Pettigrew, a 40 year old faded and timid governess who's fallen into desperate poverty, is sent to a ne3.75 stars. In this 1938 book, the proper Miss Pettigrew, a 40 year old faded and timid governess who's fallen into desperate poverty, is sent to a new job by her employment agency.
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The address she's given is for a sexy nightclub singer, Miss LaFosse, who's in the throes of Man Troubles: she's juggling two lovers, with a third hopefully waiting in the wings. Miss Pettigrew is scandalized but intrigued. Miss LaFosse begs Miss Pettigrew to help her out:
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... and somehow Miss Pettigrew rises to the occasion. A friendship starts to form, and one thing leads to another in the most crazy, wonderful day the downtrodden Miss Pettigrew has ever experienced in her life.
In so many ways this novel is delightful, fluffy fun, with a delicious sense of humor. It's wonderful to see Miss Pettigrew start to blossom, Cinderella-like; even a makeover is included in the fun:
Miss Pettigrew, rapt, thrilled, transported, gazed at herself as her dreams had painted her. A lump came into her throat. Her eyes became misty.
‘Guinevere,’ screamed Miss Dubarry in a panic. ‘For God’s sake, control yourself.’
‘Guinevere,’ gasped Miss LaFosse. ‘Control, I implore you. Your make-up. Remember your duty to your make-up.’
Miss Pettigrew made a valiant effort. ‘Most certainly,’ said Miss Pettigrew with dignity. 'England expects!'
Unfortunately, the occasional, casual racism (against Italians in particular - the word "dago" is used) and anti-Semitism (this guy looks like he has Jewish blood! Oh noes!!) left a bad taste in my mouth. I give older books somewhat of a pass on being dated and non-PC, but I'm still shaking my head over the wholehearted embrace of racist ideas by our heroine. (Whether the author agreed with Miss Pettigrew is, I suppose, up for debate. See the thread for discussion.) A lot of readers are able to handwave this kind of thing in an older book, and it's occasional here (maybe 6 or 8 different passages in the book), but be advised. If you're going to be deeply offended by this sort of thing, or by things like a man physically trying to shake some sense into the woman he loves, you should probably give this a hard pass.
Miss Pettigrew, like Valancy in L.M. Montgomery's delightful The Blue Castle, is a dispirited, bullied woman ready to start breaking society's rules. The company Miss Pettigrew starts keeping lives a fast lifestyle, but ultimately the story affirms friendship and old-fashioned values, which I wouldn't have expected initially.
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The Kindle version of this novel (which is far too expensive for an 80 year old novel) does have the original illustrations, which are delightful. On the down side, it really needs another round of copy editing. If you have a choice, get a hard copy....more
2.5 stars. "A Proposal to Cicely" is a short story written by Georgette Heyer very early in her career. A Jane Austen blogger, Vic Sanborn, found the 2.5 stars. "A Proposal to Cicely" is a short story written by Georgette Heyer very early in her career. A Jane Austen blogger, Vic Sanborn, found the original 1922 Happy Magazine where this story was first published. She tweeted it and then reposted the entire story (which is out of copyright) on her blog here. (There are some odd paragraph breaks in several places, probably left over from the tweets, which make it a little confusing at times to determine who's doing the talking. But still, it was extremely nice of Vic to share.)
Cicely, a 1920's British flapper girl, is bored with everything, not least the frequent marriage proposals of her first cousin once removed, Richard ... who is clearly a stand-up guy because he's an "athlete and amateur boxer." Boxers in Heyerland, amateur or otherwise, are always primo specimens of manhood, intelligent and generally good-looking, and it's invariably a mistake to turn down a marriage proposal from them. Just sayin'. (It is, however, a little funny to see this athlete blowing clouds of cigarette smoke.)
Anyway. After Cicely spurns Richard once again, she tells him that she's decided to go rusticate in the English countryside for a month or so with a girlfriend, that being clearly less boring than city life. Once there, Cicely befriends a handsome - and single - farmer, Fred Talbot, and makes the mistake of treating Fred with the same casual friendship that she treats all her guy friends, which Fred (being an old-fashioned country boy) interprets as romantic interest. Trouble is brewing!
This is a simple story, dated in its social attitudes, especially with Heyer's classism, and the characters are all one-dimensional. It was also very early in Georgette Heyer's writing career; her later works are typically much better and more nuanced. It has some charm and humor, but I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone except Heyer completists or readers who adore old-timey romances from the early 20th century....more
Powder and Patch is ... wait for it ... about guys wearing makeup, not women. This is Georgette Heyer's second-published novel, originally published uPowder and Patch is ... wait for it ... about guys wearing makeup, not women. This is Georgette Heyer's second-published novel, originally published under the title The Transformation of Philip Jettan in 1923.
Philip, a straightforward, plainly dressed country gentleman, gets totally shot down by Cleone, the girl he loves, for not being sophisticated enough. So he gets in a huff and hares off to Paris to learn how to be a charmer in the Georgian period ... which means white wig, makeup (face powdered, rouge, strategically placed beauty patches on the face), fancy clothes and high heels, and also learning to sweet-talk the ladies.
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Ooh la la! It's a Cinderfella type of story, and Philip - once he's finally convinced to go along with the fashions of the time - throws himself into it wholeheartedly. Within six months, he's fluent in French, suave with the ladies, expert with the sword, and the darling of Parisian high society. It's all highly unrealistic but good fun.
But Philip is still nurturing the hope in his heart that Cleone will love him for who he really is. When he meets up with her again in London, he decides to give her his best French dandy mannerisms. Hah! Served her right! Unfortunately it all backfires, and the two of them spend most of the rest of the book at cross purposes, trying to make each other jealous, saying hurtful things they don't really mean, and other types of nonsense like that.
I did like Philip as a main character (except when he got a little too carried away with the high fashion routine) but Cleone was one of those silly heroines who acts like an idiot too often for me. Other than her being lovely, there's really not much to recommend her. She's not memorable in any good way.
Now this novel was written almost 100 years ago, BUT. It still was a jaw dropper for me when Cleone's Aunt Sarah spent about 3 pages lecturing Philip on how to handle Cleone and win her love. A sampling of her good (NOT) advice:
♥ "You walked off when you should have mastered her. I'll wager my best necklet she was waiting for you to assert yourself. And now she's probably miserable."
♥ "You should know by now that no woman means what she says when it's to a man."
♥ "Women don't reason. That's a man's part. Why, do you suppose that if Cleone thought as you think, and had a brain like a man's you'd be in love with her? Of course you'd not. You'd not be able to feel your superiority over her."
♥ "Take that girl and shake her. Tell her you'll not be flouted. Tell her she's a little fool, and kiss her. And if she protests, go on kissing her."
No. Just no. Even for a hundred years ago, this advice is appalling, especially when it's coming from, and written by, another woman.
Also, Aunt Sarah has a little black page who speaks with, apparently, a southern drawl, and whose name, it pains me to say, is Sambo. Luckily he only shows up in two extremely brief scenes.
Finally, it's very helpful if you speak French, because there's a lot of it in this book, including a whole poem written by Philip to a French lady's little pearl earring, and Heyer rarely bothers to translate it for the reader.
There were some cute moments in this story, and it's kind of a fun, frothy, silly romp of a romance, but you have to make major allowances for old-time societal norms and values.
A soft 3 stars for me, maybe 2.75.
Bonus content: When this book was originally published, it had a final chapter that Heyer and her publisher decided to drop when they republished it several years later under Heyer's own name. I'm firmly in the camp that the story is better without this last chapter (unusual for me; I typically like epilogues), but it's worth reading to see how Heyer's view of the later lives of Cleone and Philip seems to have changed as she got a little older. (view spoiler)[ In one version they presumably settle down at Philip's country estate; in the other they go to Paris and re-enter high society there, with Philip letting loose his inner fashion hound again, spending 4 hours personally getting Cleone ready for her first Parisian ball. (hide spoiler)] You decide which ending you prefer! Here's the lost chapter, from an old copy of the first edition of this book found in the British Library by a diligent Heyer fan and copied by her for our benefit: http://www.shelaghlewins.com/other_st...
Since I indulged the romantic side of my personality with three historical romances last week (in one day! though two of them were novellas)3.5 stars.
Since I indulged the romantic side of my personality with three historical romances last week (in one day! though two of them were novellas), and I was feeling a little sick last night -- no, Thanksgiving dinner was not to blame ... well, maybe it was a little -- I randomly read 4 short stories last night that showed up on someone or other's online list of "great short stories." <----- Yes, I'm still doing my literary penance thing, or maybe a better way to describe it is that I try to keep a certain balance in my reading. If I indulge myself with some literary junk food, I try to balance it out with something more substantial and thought-provoking.
So: four short stories last night, all available online, mostly old and thus out of copyright. I'm starting with Louisa May Alcott's "Scarlet Stockings," a charming, nostalgic type of read. If you like older books with old-fashioned manners and values and a little squeaky clean romance, well, I've got the story for you right here.
Harry Lennox, a well-traveled and intelligent young man in maybe his early twenties, is visiting his sister Kate in a small town during the U.S. Civil War era. Lennox is a little jaded and rather proud of his educated, sophisticated self, and is getting bored with the social scene in this little town. Except that there's this quirky girl who walks by their house every day who doesn't seem to care to give him the time of day. And she wears bright red stockings -- he can see tantalizing glimpses of them as she strides along on her business. Madness! (Remember, Civil War era.) Anyway, Harry wants to meet this girl and impress her with his vast coolness, but Belle is not to be so easily impressed, and seems to see straight through him.
The characters are reminiscent of some of our friends in Little Women. I wasn't totally buying into this story, I think mostly because of its rosy glasses view of going to war and fighting for your country. Not that I don't believe in that, but something about the fervor Belle feels for it as she encourages Harry to Do What's Right, didn't quite sit right with me.
But Belle is otherwise a great character, independent and definitely out of the mold for mid-19th century young women. She believes in doing good -- and that means getting involved personally with people in poverty. Harry Lennox's reactions as he accompanies her on her charity excursion, trying to impress her, are priceless, as is Belle's response when he offers to give her money to help the poor rather than getting involved personally. "Give it yourself; one can't buy blessings, they must be earned or they are not worth having."
So in the course of writing this review I've talked myself into rounding up to 4 stars rather than down to 3. I recommend this to those who like the old-fashioned, romantic reads.
Read it free online here at AmericanLiterature.com. ...more
I let this 99 cent Kindle special distract me and suck me in, when I was still in the middle of East of Eden. But sometimes you just need something toI let this 99 cent Kindle special distract me and suck me in, when I was still in the middle of East of Eden. But sometimes you just need something to read that's quick and shallow and easy on the brain.
This is a rather melodramatic story, written in 1958, about three English sisters and their mother, who are left in financial straits when their father and husband dies. The mother decides to move with her daughters from London back to Scotland, where life is simpler and cheaper. Two of the daughters go kicking and screaming, except in a more genteel kind of way. Eventually all three daughters fall for the same good-looking doctor. The younger two pine away for him in silence while the lovely, heartless older sister sweeps him off into a whirlwind romance. Teh drama ensues.
This would have been a better book if it had delved a little more deeply into the lives of these girls and their mother, but it's all pretty superficial. The ending is startlingly abrupt; I actually went back and forth on my Kindle once or twice, trying to see if I'd missed another page, or chapter. An epilogue. Something!
It's also quite sentimental, which isn't always a bad thing if you're in the mood for it.
"...you are merciful. You understand that it is her nature to have her treasure in this world. That is so, isn’t it? She has not been good. Oh yes, she has told me about it —but still you love her in your heart and are sorry. Do you think the Good God is less loving and sorry than you?”
This book has its charming moments, in an old-fashioned way.
Chairley’s Chairley was a fat little boy with red hair and a ruddy complexion. At one time he had haunted the garden whistling untunefully, climbing the trees and searching for birds’ nests. He had stolen all our apples (not just a few, which we would not have minded, but the whole crop at one fell swoop) and had sold them to his friends at twopence each. Margaret and I had a feeling that Chairley’s Chairley was on his way to a Big Business Career, but his father had put a stop to that. “He’ll nae dae it agen,” said old Tom Gow —and added with relish, “Chairley walloped him proper.”
A little underbaked, but not bad for retro-type brain candy.
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Now excuse me while I go slink back to East of Eden......more
I've had a lifelong, highly irrational love for Struwwelpeter, a gruesome set of German cautionary children's tales from 1845, set to rhyme, so when kI've had a lifelong, highly irrational love for Struwwelpeter, a gruesome set of German cautionary children's tales from 1845, set to rhyme, so when karen's review alerted me to the fact that Heinrich Hoffman wrote more of this bloodthirsty didactic poetry,* I was all over it, like Paulinchen is with matches.
*ETA: Or perhaps not ... it may have been someone ripping Hoffmann off. See comments 5 and 6 in the thread. (THANKS, Matt!)
Slovenly Betsy is on Project Gutenberg only in English, not German -- I couldn't find a German version of this book even mentioned anywhere online, so I don't know if this book was actually written by Hoffman in English, or if someone translated it, or what the deal is (maybe one of my German-speaking friends can enlighten me?). These stories include one story from Struwwelpeter: Paulinchen, the girl who loves loved to play with matches -- against the advice of her cats, I might add! -- but the rest of the stories were new to me.
Anyway, once again, children are misbehaving in various and sundry ways, suffering terrible consequences, and learning their lessons, assuming the consequences haven't been fatal (never a safe assumption with Hoffman). These morality tales deal with, for example:
☠ Poor personal hygiene ("Slovenly Betsy"): Everyone laughs at Betsy and, ashamed, she mends her ways. Boo! Where's the blood?
☠ Pride ("Phoebe Ann, The Proud Girl"): Phoebe Ann's snootiness causes her to lift her nose at everyone, stretching her neck until, well, this: [image]
Which naturally leads to this: [image]
Now we're talking!
☠ Jealousy ("Envious Minnie"), which I found curious because, for reasons known only to Hoffman, Minnie's unrestrained envy turns her a bright shade of yellow rather than, as one might expect, green:**
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**ETA #2: Matt has illuminated me in comment #8: in German you can say someone is either green or yellow from envy. Of course, since this book was only (as far as I'm aware) published in English, I can still complain. Hah!
☠ Rough-housing ("The Story of Romping Polly"): Poor Polly, whose only sin seems to be wanting to frolic and play like the boys, rather than be restrained and ladylike. It seems kind of unfair that this poor girl breaks her leg while playing. She must have been made of porcelain, because the whole darn leg breaks off:
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See how her brother bursts in tears, When told the dreadful story; And see how carefully he bears The limb all wet and gory.
It also seems unfair that Polly's the only one in the whole book who dies for her misdeeds. I guess Hoffmann really had a thing against tomboyish girls.
There are several more stories, dealing with gluttony, being a crybaby, and more poor personal hygiene, and winding up with "Sophie Spoilall," who ruins all her toys, ripping them to pieces, even though her mother warns her that Kriss Kringle might not bring her any more toys for Christmas if she doesn't mend her ways. Of course she doesn't, and Christmas comes and there are lots of toys for Nelly and Ned, but for Sophie there's . . . um, who knows? The story abruptly ends here, and I'm not sure if the PG version of this book is incomplete or if Hoffmann thought we could all just extrapolate from there. But it was a little dissatisfying.
And even though I got some amusement out of this book, it just didn't have nearly the impact on me that Struwwelpeter has had. The stories didn't seem to have the same spice. Maybe it's the whole childhood memories thing. Maybe it's that reading gory tales in German just makes them seem so much funnier to me. Maybe lightning can only strike once (apparently this book didn't have anywhere near the success of Struwwelpeter).
Good for a few chuckles, if you like this sort of bloodthirsty thing. Free ebook available here....more
Maybe 3.75 stars? This is a tough one for me to rate.
Peter Blood is an Irish physician living in EnglaCaptain Blood, scourge of the high seas! [image]
Maybe 3.75 stars? This is a tough one for me to rate.
Peter Blood is an Irish physician living in England in the late 1600s. When the Duke of Monmouth rebels against King James, Blood wants nothing to do with the rebellion, but when he treats some of the rebels for their injuries and is caught by the king's men, he's sentenced to be hanged by the infamous judge, Judge Jeffries. His death sentence is commuted to a sentence of slavery in the sugar cane plantations of the Caribbean.
Peter Blood is bought at a slave auction by Colonel William Bishop, a truly horrible man whose only good points are that he lets Blood practice medicine rather than slaving in the fields (it makes Bishop more money) ... and that he has a beautiful niece, Arabella.
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Peter Blood and Arabella get to know (and like) each other, but Blood knows that his position as a convict slave makes any relationship hopeless. He and his buddies hatch a plan to escape, but when a Spanish force attacks the town, it might just be Blood's chance for something more exciting and lucrative.
Captain Blood is a fine adventure novel, about a good man turned pirate due to mistreatment by King James, a hanging judge and ruthless slaveholders, but trying to keep his honor as much as possible. Because lurrve (and also because he's simply an honorable man). Lots of sea battles and romantic drama here. It reminded me a lot of The Scarlet Pimpernel, another old adventure/romance novel, but with more oceans and ships, fewer Frenchmen and guillotines, and rather better writing.
My big problem with Captain Blood is that there's just so much unexamined racism here. You have to take into account that this was written in 1922, but clearly Sabatini had a lot more problems with white men being enslaved than "negroes" - he never questions the latter at all (though granted, the novel is set in the 1600s), and the black characters are all completely stereotypical, mindless slaves, just background to the main story. It made parts of the novel tough sledding for me. You have to be able to give those parts a pass to really enjoy this novel.
“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
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Only a we“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
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Only a week after reading the far more memorable Hound of the Baskervilles, I could barely remember what “The Sign of Four” was about. It's mostly pleasant but forgettable.
In Sherlock Holmes' second outing with Dr. Watson, Sherlock explains that he needs to shoot up cocaine and morphine to add spice to his life (apparently these were legal drugs at the time). Watson chastises Sherlock (unsuccessfully) for taking chances with his mind, and then distracts him with a question about his old pocket watch. Sherlock, true to form, dazzles the good Dr. Watson once again with his deductions. But this only occupies them for a few minutes.
Luckily for everyone except Holmes' drug supplier, Miss Mary Morstan arrives on the doorsteps of 221B Baker Street with a better distraction: a puzzle about a decade-long missing father and a mysterious annual gift of valuable pearls that she's been receiving from an unknown source for the past six years. Could these two mysteries possibly be related?
Holmes is intrigued; Watson is in instalove.
This is a reasonably good Sherlock Holmes novella, marred by some period racism toward Africans and a too-lengthy flashback toward the end that explains the mystery.
And now I have to go rewatch the Sherlock episode "The Sign of Three" and see what cool connections may exist to the plot of this book.
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September 2015 buddy read with the Pantsless Crunchy Bunch....more
Poul Anderson’s “The Saturn Game,” published in 1981, is a pre-Internet era exploration oRevised review, first published at www.fantasyliterature.com:
Poul Anderson’s “The Saturn Game,” published in 1981, is a pre-Internet era exploration of role-playing games and their effect on the human psyche, which won the 1981 Nebula and the 1982 Hugo awards for best novella.
On an eight-year long voyage to Saturn, one of the more popular ways for the crew and colonists to pass time is becoming involved in psychodramas, a verbal-type role-playing game. But when a team of four people from the spaceship lands their smaller craft on Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons, to explore the terrain, the terrain reminds three of them so strongly of the Tolkien-esque fantasy that they have spent countless hours creating and imagining, that it begins to affect their judgment and discernment. Bad decisions start to cascade as fantasy impinges on their exploratory mission on Iapetus. The fourth team member warns them:
"You played the game, year after year, until at last the game started playing you. That's what's going on this minute, no matter how you rationalize your motives."
The psychodrama game is a little old-fashioned for a SF work, reflective of the early 80’s origin of the story. Rather than being an online multi-player game or even a LARP (live action role playing) type of game, “psychodrama" seems to consist mostly of people sitting around and verbally interacting to create a fantasy story. In real life, people can spend inordinate amounts of time and money on role-playing games, both online and the live-action type, and sometimes the time they spend on these games interferes with their real lives. But this novella ups the ante: What if the players are intelligent, imaginative scientists and colonists, stuck on a spaceship for several years, with little else to occupy their attention but a mental game, in which they play exciting heroes, wizards and adventurers battling elves, giants and dragons? And what if Iapetus has amazing, eldritch landscapes, with gorgeous ice formations that remind them of the magical kingdoms of their imagination?
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When does fantasy start to become confused with reality?
Poul Anderson cleverly weaves the characters’ fantasy world into reality by using italics to show when their imaginations have taken over and they are speaking or thinking as their fantasy personas.
Above the highest ledge reared a cliff too sheer to scale, Iapetan gravity or no, the fortress wall. However, from orbit the crew had spied a gouge in the vicinity, forming a pass, doubtless plowed by a small meteorite in the war between the gods and the magicians, when stones chanted down from the sky wrought havoc so accursed that none dared afterward rebuild. That was an eerie climb, hemmed in by heights which glimmered in the blue twilight they cast, heaven narrowed to a belt between them where stars seemed to blaze doubly brilliant.
There are four chapters in “The Saturn Game,” each beginning with a quote from an imaginary scholarly dissertation written after the events of this story. These quasi-scholarly quotes add an additional layer of depth to the story, as humanity tries to figure out how things went wrong on Iapetus and what should be done to prevent it from reoccurring.
Poul Anderson has created an intriguing mix of the characters' internal and external realities, when fantasy and reality start to blur. “The Saturn Game” feels somewhat old-fashioned after almost thirty-five years, but the questions it poses still resonate.
I tried reading this a few years ago and bogged down and quit halfway through, but reading Lyn's review the other day prompted me to give this one another shot, and I'm glad I did.
Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽
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