Book Review: Lolly Willowes

Lolly Willowes (1926), by Sylvia Townsend Warner, is a must read for the fan of Elisabeth Gaskell, anyone who knows who Djuna Barnes is, and Agatha Christie fans who have read everything she’s written multiple times, want more, and are sick of murder but up for 1920s witches. And 1920s philosophy and politics.

It is for readers who want a more overtly feminist and less cheerful version of the Map and Lucia books by E. F. Benson.

It is also for Theodore Dreiser fans who want something less discouraging and meaningfully shorter. You don’t need to have actually read Dreiser’s American Tragedy (1925) to know it is not going to turn out well, though if you’re interested in the death penalty, it’s worth a read. The stakes in Lolly Willowes may seem significantly lower: No one is about to be executed by the state here.

Yet it is clear that Sylvia Townsend Warner recognizes the stakes as quite high. Lolly Willowes depicts the slow suffocating power of class and gender expectations. Upon her father’s death, Lolly is sucked into her brother’s family’s life in London:

• “‘Of course,’ said [sister-in-law] Caroline, ‘you will come to us’.” (1)

• “She would take the air in Hyde Park and watch the children on their ponies and the fashionable trim ladies in Rotten Row, and go to the theatre in a cab.” (4)

The dehumanizing way in which these expectations become internalized is gently chilling:

• “Every one spoke of her as Aunt Lolly, till in the course of time she had almost forgotten her baptismal name.” (58)

• "[W]hen Laura went to London she left Laura behind, and entered into a state of Aunt Lolly. She had quitted so much of herself in quitting Somerset … shorn of her long meandering country days, sleeping in a smart brass bedstead instead of her old and rather pompous four-poster, wearing unaccustomed clothes and performing unaccustomed duties, she seemed to herself to have become a different person. Or rather, she had become two persons, each different."(61)

Though gentle, Lolly Willowes is clearly a far from subtle exploration of interpellation. The level of detail about her smart vs pompous bed is one of the delights of the book. The fact that rather than fully becoming “another person” she manages to “become two persons” indicates that Lolly Willowes, against the odds, may succeed in extricating and being (again) herself. Her affinity for wandering the hedgerows and gathering herbs as a young woman leads, eventually, to participation in a rural Witches’ Sabbath.

She meets the Devil. More, she contracts with the Devil and in so doing (re)names her self:

• “She, Laura Willowes, in England, in the year 1922, had entered into a compact with the Devil.” (169)

Rows of white candles burn and melt in front of a dark background.

In between her youthful endeavors and her eventual compact with the Devil, mainstream life, as represented by London and by her roles as an unmarried woman in an established family, attempts not just to control her daily life but to lead her, occasionally through argument but largely through repetition of daily and yearly rituals, into not just becoming but accepting what it expects her to be.

Lolly Willowes is a deeply political, weirdly and subtly—even equivocally— witchy novel in which, most of the time, almost nothing seems to happen. The plot is a woman’s frustrated and often unconscious fight against internalizing the expectations her social context has of her. Lolly Willowes tries to be fundamentally optimistic about the potential of individual identity and resistance, and Warner’s perspective is delightfully presented with scene setting and a world of side characters. The description of the behavior of hedghogs, and that of a hedgehog-centric rural neighbor is, for a certain kind of reader, simply not to be missed:

• “Kind Miss Carloe, she would sit up till all hours tempting her hedgehog with bread-and-milk. Hedgehogs are nocturnal animals ; they go out for walks at night, grunting, and shoving out their black snouts.” (136)

One question here is whether this individual woman, Laura Erminia Willowes, Aunt Lolly, will be able to avoid her fate as “Aunt Lolly.” Miss Willowes’ (“Laura” doesn’t seem quite right) has triumphs. At the same time, the equivocal presentation of the novel’s own witchy escape route and the characterization style together suggest a more ambivalent or at least less straightforward view.

19th c Canadian Chick Lit

Lucy Maud Montgomery is (long)* 19th Century Canadian juvenile chick lit, and I love her.

One of the best trips of my life was a family vacation that included Prince Edward Island and its delightful Green Gables, and Lover’s Lane, and the house with the dress that Montgomery once wore, as an adult with a waist smaller than I had as a skinny high schooler. The lupines were everywhere and they were in bloom, and the potatoes were fantastic.

Like many other girls, I read Anne of Green Gables, and going to the place is a highlight of literary travel I recommend to anyone who cares for Anne with an e.

I recently read Montgomery’s Christmas Stories. I used the app Serial and read one story of baked goods and snow and boarding houses and, of course, Christmas generosity each day.

The generosity in these stories typifies the genre, and it must be unexpected. People turn out to be better than you think, at least for a day. That is a key ingredient in a nineteenth century heartwarmer, along with, I now realize, a Christmas plum cake.

*Edited to add: one day I’ll have to write about the long 19th century concept. Suffice it to say that Anne of Green Gables was published in 1908.

Family Book Review: The Water Dragon

Sometimes it’s the story that makes a book special, and sometimes it’s the story of how we come to a book. Last summer on a family road trip vacation, we went to the beach, visited family, and checked out city sites. This should be the perfect vacation, right? Something for everyone!

The kids loved this trip. Especially the public library where we stopped to break up the drive home, which is where we stumbled upon Ji Lian’s The Water Dragon: A Chinese Legend.

This is truly an any age tale, timeless, and crafted to not include any “ripping kids from their parents” elements. We like the illustrations too.

This is a great read for those with an interest in Chinese dragons, and a good intro to them for those already interested in the dragons of Western stories.

Family Book Review: The Seekers

The Seekers by Hari and Deepti (Hari Panicker and Deepti Nair) is one of the beautiful books our family has been enjoying recently. This story of Mio and Nao and their adventure is told through words, yes, but more important are the gorgeous papercut illustrations.

The people have long told the story of the silver fox and the fire wolf. Nao believes the legend, and he is right, and the people restore balance in the end. This book is about the illustrations: the turquoise of the silver fox, the focus on purples on one page and golden on another, the layering and the precision of the tree roots, the fish in the water, the gloom, the luminescent beauty. The stylized paper cut illustrations match the story and tell it well. 

This is a story of storytelling and the destructive consequences of exploitation, clearly but not (for me at least) overwhelmingly. Part of what makes this work is that the elusive idea of balance underlies the moral. It’s no more moralistic than any other fable or in fact your average children’s story. 

This is obviously for those who want to enjoy the art. It is a story suited for reading aloud to young children and complex enough in its themes for older children, probably with guidance. It’s also a great (meta) illustration of the power of storytelling in a culture and leads easily to questions about the power of stories in raising children and in passing along knowledge and values. 

Re-reading A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book

One of the great decisions readers must make, often by default, is whether to re-read books. Perhaps thanks to Ann Fadiman, the carnal vs courtly lover of books controversy is widely recognized. You may already guess my approach to that controversy by my interest in the question of re-reading: Is re-reading a waste of time? 

I’m not referring to re-reading a book for study, which is necessary and obviously a done thing. No. I’m thinking here about rereading as a luxury. 

Our inevitable mortality, as Wordsworth doesn’t quite put it (which I remember because a couple of lines from his Ode: Intimations of Immortality popped into my head three days ago, so I re-read the poem) makes unjustified re-reading a luxury. Or that’s how I’ve come to think about it. Maybe it’s some kind of guilt at being unproductive. Even being high-minded and abstract enough to see reading as worthwhile and reading for a job as meaningful is not, apparently, enough to justify reading a book for pleasure alone when there are endless new books to be read for pleasure. 

And why did Wordsworth’d aforementioned ode come to mind? I could answer that several ways, and I’m not sure which is the most complete, but here’s one thing I am sure of: I thought of that quintessential Romantic poem not because I read it once, but because I’ve read it many times, here and there, for one reason or another. For this class or that, or for fun, or when I want to re-remember Romanticism, or when it’s referenced elsewhere and I take another look. That’s one of the answers here: I’m re-reading AS Byatt’s The Children’s book for several obscure reasons and one straightforward one: that book captures beautifully the feeling of decadence and then disaster that seems inevitable in retrospect because it’s a narrative we relate to but don’t, somehow, quite expect to crash around us. Or we do expect it, with a sense of its inevitability. Either way, there is nothing we can do, nothing that could have been done. Boom. The economic corruption and inequity and instability preceding WWI, the sense of changing times, the mines in the North as a specter, the World’s Fair in Paris, art nouveau, suffrage, the end of the Victorian Era—this is what, among other things, the Children’s Book is made of. And one of those other things is poetry and Romanticism, which while not openly critiqued in this nothing if not pretending to be even-handed compendium, is certainly not as appreciated as nature itself. 

In short, I’m re-reading this particular book because it’s cataloguing and contrast and time period and sense of narrative and detachment appealed at the moment. My usual re-reads are shorter and give me either a plot with some action or characters I want to hang out with.  This one does not.

What it managed to do is stick in my head as an unusual read, in let because it is in its way unusual and in let because I tend to feel frustrated and alienated by epic novels detached from character and plot and stuffed beyond the gills with an excess of description and fact and lecture. So for me, to finish such a book (yes—I’ll quit a book. More on that another time) makes it memorable. For example, I have checked out Pachinko from the virtual library three times and read a bit each time, and I’d say it’s 50/50 whether I’ll check it out again or whether I’ll ever finish. 

What re-reading this sort of book has done, as re-reading always does in some way, is serve as a mirror for my interests and mood at the moment. One aspect of this re-reading is that I’m enjoying the overwhelming amount of descriptive detail more than usual. It feels like reading Walt Whitman. Which I should maybe re-read. 

Intruder in the Dust and Vintage Paperbacks: A Book Review

I love vintage falling apart paperback mysteries. The covers are so melodramatic and often tacky. The physical books do not stand the test of time, or the test of having their pages turned. Sometimes the pages fall from the binding before I can even finish reading the book the first time. 

I cannot resist. 

One of my favorites is William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust (1948). I have two 1962 Signet paperbacks -- the one with the author’s name in yellow across the top, a black and white illustration, the feet of a menacing crowd encircling two men, one kneeling. I also have two other editions of this unloved failed mystery. I even wrote about this book for my dissertation. Its mystery plot is so illogical and baffling; its treatment of race so troubled; its most annoying character so long-winded. 

On the front cover of my favorite 1962 editions, we read: ““The superb novel of murder and violence in a small southern town by one of America’s greatest writers.” And on the back, we are assured that this is the “explosive story of an arrogant old man who faced death rather than relinquish his identity… and a young boy who broke the law to save him” (ellipses in original). 

As you’re reading Intruder in the Dust, you’re probably wondering: Did I lose track of something that would make this all make sense? Critics relentlessly point this out, but: Isn’t that what people wonder when they read Light in August (1932) too? But Light in August is serious Faulkner, from his prime. Light in August may be more worth reading than Intruder in the Dust, but here’s the thing: I don’t actually care. 

People say Intruder in the Dust is terrible because the plot is terrible.

People, with ample justification, read Yoknapatawpha County’s Gavin Stevens, a lawyer, as Faulkner’s mouthpiece, which is awkward, because Gavin is wrong and in a way that aligns all too beautifully with Faulkner’s own argument in a piece published in Life magazine on March 5, 1956 as “A Letter to the North: William Faulkner, the South’s foremost writer, warns on integration—‘Stop now for a moment.’” 

And also: Just shut up Gavin Stevens. This guy really likes to talk, and it’s way too easy to get lost in his monologues. 

People say Intruder in the Dust is a pot boiler. They saw that cover and knew Faulkner needed money, and the book was popular. As Lawrence H. Schwartz puts it in Creating Faulkner’s Reputation: The Politics of Modern Literary Criticism, “In January 1948, Faulkner dropped work on the fable and began writing a short detective novel that he was sure he could complete. It was Intruder in the Dust. Faulkner finished the manuscript in April but wanted to delay in order to sell segments of the novel to magazines for additional income” (61). Yes, this bad mystery was written fast and it was written for money. It sold well and Faulkner got a $40,000 movie contract from MGM.

But here’s the thing: If you want to read a real Faulkner pot boiler, read Soldier’s Pay. 

I have a vintage copy, complete with a brooding man seated in the background and a beautiful woman with a pensive expression and a voluminous yet revealing pink garment in the foreground. 

I only have one copy of Soldier’s Pay.

Boxers and Saints: A Review

Gene Luen Yang’s Boxers and Saints is a critically acclaimed historical graphic novel set. I like a pretty wide range of fiction, but a magical realist epic graphic novel would not be something I would expect to love. And I love Boxers and Saints. I’ve read it a few times, sometimes dipping in and out, but also straight through more than once. This book review is pretty spoiler free.

One book features a “Boxer” and the other a “saint.” The graphic style is appealing to me, the time period complex and controversial, and the two novel approach compelling and an excellent strategy for addressing differing perspectives. 

This dual perspective approach is central to what makes Boxers and Saints work. Also central is the masterful balance of the individual and small scale with the scope of the Boxer Rebellion. Somehow, I think Yang’s trademark magical realism makes this balance work. 

I would not expect all of this to work, at least not for me: The scale is epic, not something I normally seek out. On top of that, Boxers and Saints healthy dose of magical realism puts it in another genre I do not spend significant reading time exploring. 

For me, the fact that this is a graphic novel designed with a relatively young audience in mind (despite some very violent and disturbing graphic scenes and themes) is probably crucial. Boxers and Saints might be classified as YA.  That means that I can read quickly, and the many references to historical context that I don’t fully understand do not compel me to research. Yang invites readers with little historical knowledge to simply read the story, without requiring them to feel stupid or devote themselves to catching up. Boxers and Saints is great way to learn and teach about the Boxer Rebellion, a significant, complicated, and relatively recent episode of modern Chinese history that many Americans have barely heard of. It is not a comprehensive history, and it does not set out to be. 

What it is is an intimate piece of epic storytelling. We see Little Bao watching his older brothers and seeking to develop his own role. We see peopl desperate for a meager meal and sharing a cup of tea in the night. That balance of the individual and small scale with the scope of the Boxer Rebellion is ambitious. There is a surprising amount of exploration of character, a none-too-subtle but also not overbearing exploration of human motivation, violence, identity, culture, and religion. 

This is a great read for anyone interested in the Boxer Rebellion, Chinese history generally, coming of age, Christianity, or historical graphic novels such as the deservedly popular Maus and Persepolis, or the less well-known Aya and Dare to Disappoint.

Ambivalent Recommendation—Masie Dobbs: A book review

I put Jacqueline Winspear’s Masie Dobbs (published in 2003), the first novel in a series featuring psychologist and investigator Masie Dobbs, on my reading list on the strength of a recommendation card at my local bookstore. I am always on the lookout for a good mystery, especially a good mystery series. 

When I read a mystery, I want to relax, and there is nothing more relaxing than being able to just pick up another book in a series, knowing the world, knowing the perimeters, knowing what will be expected of me as I spend some time with a familiar character. So part of the appeal is that Winspear has published a long series. Seeing that someone has published 15 since 2003 however, also fills me with apprehension. Is the writing going to be annoyingly bad? Is the plotting going to be sloppy? Is this book going to be worth reading for me? 

So I started reading Winspear’s first book with some hope but also perfectly ready to set it aside never to be picked up again. What made me commit was the homage to PD James’ Cordelia Grey series. Less well-known than her series featuring detective Adam Dalgliesh, the Cordelia Grey series is a favorite of mine. When Winspeare introduces Maisie Dobbs as she enters her new office and has a discussion about the hanging of her new name plate, the reference to Grey is unmistakable. The parallel extends: Masie and Cordelia are both female investigators just setting off on her own, as the older men who trained them exit the scene. It was enough for me that Winspear clearly admires James, one of my personal favorite mystery writers— one so good that her characterization, scene-setting, and prose over-all transcends the genre to the point that I include her on my list of top writers. 

Winspear is not on that list. At times, as I read her first Masie Dobbs, I thought about stopping. I don’t read much historical fiction and don’t tend to enjoy it all that much, so the substantial elements of historical fiction didn’t work as well for me as they would for some readers.

The particular form that the sentimentality and over-wrought tendencies of historical fiction takes in the Masie Dobbs series may be deduced from the time period (between the wars) and the fact that Masie, as she often points out, was a nurse in France in WWI. This is a mystery set in the golden age of detective fiction, and that means tea and trains, class warfare—of a fictionally smooth variety—and of course the legacy of WWI. Interestingly, while it is the tendency towards historical fiction that almost caused me to put the book aside, the interest in a different time and place (particularly one so central to a certain kind of detective fiction) is what made me finish the book and put number two on my list as well.

Don’t Care for Agatha Christie? Read The Murder of Roger Ackroyd Anyway

In this brief and not entirely spoiler-free book review of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (Does anyone care, at this point, about spoilers for a very famous and widely read book published in 1926?), I share my fraught relationship with the most famous mystery writer ever. And I tell you to read one of her best for a particularly engaging look at Poirot.

Christie is not my favorite Golden Age mystery writer. I first became obsessed with mysteries, as I remember it, when I was assigned to read “The Blue Carbuncle” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” around eighth grade. I then went to the local library and checked out mystery after mystery. That’s when I discovered Dorothy Sayers and read all of her mysteries. I moved on to Agatha Christie and quickly became frustrated by Christie’s heavy-handed manipulation. The inconsistent quality of her many novels caused me to take a long hiatus from Christie, which ended when, a few years ago, I happened upon someone’s list of her best mysteries. 

The fact is, I was looking for an excuse to explore the Christie cannon beyond Murder on the Orient Express and a few ill-remembered encounters with Miss Marple and Poirot. 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd will be on almost every Christie fan’s list of favorites. As well it should be. The amusing narrator Hastings is replaced in this novel by Dr. Shepperd, physician and friend of the murder victim. Somehow in this book, Christie’s tendency towards manipulation and over-the-top plot twists delights rather than annoys.

Why? Dr. Shepperd is one of the great narrators. This isn’t Ishmael of Moby Dick, for good and for ill, but Dr. Shepperd’s perspective on Poirot is engaging enough to make the book worth the read. At one point, I found myself wishing for more mysteries narrated by Dr. Shepperd, a series, to match the series narrated by Hastings.

Getting to know Poirot through Dr. Shepperd’s eyes is not to be missed. His sister Caroline reminded me of the sisters in Barbara Pym’s Some Tame Gazelle. I’d read a book about her, though I’m not sure I’d like Dr. Shepperd to narrate it. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd features village life and a superb version of the alibi fun that is part of the genre. 

If you don’t want to worry about how many minutes it takes to walk from A to B, and A to C, and B to C and back, or if it annoys you to think about the ramifications of a table that was moved a few inches, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd is not for you. 

If you object absolutely to Christie’s trademark plotting and manipulation, this is not for you.

But it is for everyone else.