The Last Dance Of The Debutante

February 17, 2022 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

It’s no surprise, well at least it shouldn’t be, I have a fondness for British books. Or books with British settings. Historical British books. British etiquette and customs. So, Julia Kelly’s latest historical fiction novel The Last Dance of the Debutante was a must read.

Kelly’s last few novels focused on World War Two. With The Last Dance of the Debutante, it’s 1957 and the last London season with the debutantes being presented to the Queen (Elizabeth II) is fast approaching. Basically, it’s peak Claire Foy in The Crown time. True confession: The Crown isn’t my thing but oh well.

Quiet, bookish Lily Nicholls comes from an excellent family. She lives with her widowed mother in reduced circumstances, with Lily’s terrifying paternal grandmother paying for her school and expecting an iron grip on deciding her future. A bit first season Gilmore Girls with less coffee and a mother who rarely socializes and doesn’t sound like a Preston Sturges 1930s leading lady on Pixi Stix.

Then Grandmother Nicholls decides Lily is going to be one of these final debutantes, Lily’s education and her mother’s retreat from the world be damned.

Now since Lily is pretty, smart and can make her own clothes look like something from couture, I was never too worried about her future and was pretty sure she Would Prevail and Find Her Path and Her Tribe.

Does she?

Please read the book.

Of course, what truly grabbed my attention wasn’t the round of parties and just how exhausting being a debutante is. I’ve read my Nancy Mitford. Being a debutante is like being in beauty pageants only the stakes are a husband (preferably rich, titled and the right social class) versus a fur coat and a scholarship. There’s a lot of sacrifice behind the pretty dresses and wide smiles. There are secrets lurking in the Nicholls household and Lily’s Mummy aka Josephine is a tightly coiled bundle of nerves.

If you want to make Lily’s mummy Josephine jump faster than me at work deep in a project when a coworker comes over to my desk to ask a question? Say “Joanna” and a simmering rage plus terror comes to the surface.

Who is Joanna? Joanna, Lily’s much older sister has committed some grave social sin and her banishment from the family unit is complete right down to her name never being spoken. She’s the shadow haunting everything.

And bit of a side tangent on Mummy Josephine please? She is a such a bitter person she draws your attention. The bitter and coldness radiate off the page. I half want to smack Josephine while not wanting to incur her wrath. And I am talking about a book with a beautiful yet poisonous fellow debutante everyone half loves half fears, a found family tribe of debutantes who will never be Debutante of the Year but are The Girl Squad Who Has Your Back Bestie and a flock of potential suitors.

I try very hard not to reveal spoilers but there is a plot twist I had about 75% figured out before Lily was even presented at Court (Elizabeth II not “Oh crap I have jury duty” court) except for one person. And a second plot twist is quickly handled with much more good character of spirit than I could summon in that situation. I do admit I wish there had been more time devoted to that second plot twist because the ramifications could have been awesome in a glorious peak 1980s soap opera plot line. But Julia Kelly’s heroines are much better people than me even with their flaws. And unlike me, Julia Kelly can really write excellent historical fiction.

So TLDR. Did I enjoy The Last Dance of the Debutante? Yes. Will I ever watch The Crown, nope. And am I waiting not so patiently for Julia Kelly’s next book? Hard YES!

My Best Friend’s Exorcism

September 25, 2021 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

My local library is a city library. Sometimes a book is on their site, but the actual book is away with the fairies. Example? Grady Hendrix’s My Best Friend’s Exorcism, in the catalog but AWOL since 2020, which meant a trip to library a half hour away. In my Big Book of Whiskey Tango? This a great way to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon.

For those of you who might not be familiar with Grady Hendrix. Short answer for folks like my Dad or spouse. You know all those weird paperbacks I read in the 1980s, the ones with the black covers and lurid paintings? So did Grady Hendrix. Only unlike my corporate cubicle dwelling self, Grady Hendrix has turned his love of those battered paperbacks into a fine living.

I am a huge fan of Grady Hendrix’s Horrorstör and I’ve heard great things about his other books too. My Best Friend’s Exorcism should be perfect Wendy-Marie reading. Horror, 1980s, references to Duran Duran and an author who really can bring the ickkk.

***SPOILER***

This should not be a surprise if you’ve read any review or summary of My Best Friend’s Exorcism but just in case you are new to this book?

Spoilers ahead.

***You have been officially warned***

Okay…so you are still reading.

Great!

Was I the only person who thought Gretchen got her demon friend that night in the woods? Not her period. The actual demon possessing her.

Or did you figure out she got possessed at summer camp?

Because I sure didn’t.

Not sure if I’m feeling ultra-dumb or grabbing my pink FBI baseball cap from Hunter Dog in order to doff it at Mr. G. Hendrix, Esquire.

Yeah…I’m dumb right? I mean I know I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer.

I don’t hate My Best Friend’s Exorcism. There are truly great parts. The friendship before things go downhill between Abby and Gretchen has wonderful notes I really related to. When dinosaurs, moussed hair and the United Colors of Benetton ruled the Earth, I was the poor friend. It is not fun and it’s a bit challenging to not feel out of sorts when the world smiles on your peers.

And I wonder about Gretchen. Is she chafing against her parents because of their religion, normal teenage growing pains or something darker? Because I always suspect something darker lurking in the corners of life.

Also, I want to smack Glee so hard, enough to leave a little undead raccoon paw print on her cheek-she captures the perfection annoyance of several rich girls I knew in my part of small town Connecticut. I can’t remember Grady Hendrix describes her because my brain can only hold so much information and Bill Paxton’s filmography is more important. Even if I can’t watch more than five minutes of Mortuary or The Colony.

In my head? Glee has thick golden hair and a dainty facial structure. I do not possess a dainty facial structure. Remember when everyone was using Google Arts & Culture app to find their fine art double? Mine was Charles the Bewitched. So, my long-lost Habsburg self can picture Glee’s Benetton outfits, the very precisely flipped up polo collars and the matching Tiffany bean earrings and necklace. I hate Glee.

Now what is stuck in my poor head after putting down My Best Friend’s Exorcism?

One word.

Margaret.

***HI SPOILER AHEAD***

Thanks to consuming enough true crime media the spouse has declared Harold Schechter “my true crime boyfriend”, I suspected arsenic poisoning versus the true body horror. Which is so gross, especially if you know anything about the body horror and well, I might end up a more than a pants size smaller after if I continue reading more Grady Hendrix books. What happens to Margaret has me squirming, unwilling to drink anything I cannot see through. I also can’t eat any noodles or ice cream. Seriously I had enough food aversions and issues before reading My Best Friend’s Exorcism. If I finally sign up for the therapy I most likely desperately need, can I send Grady Hendrix my co-pay bills?

But I don’t love My Best Friend’s Exorcism. I should love it. The main fault is not the book itself. Grady Hendrix came up with an interesting plot and the design team at Quirk Books captures the quintessential 1980s high school yearbook right down to the signed yearbook flysheet/endpapers or whatever you call those pages in a book. The problem is me.

I am not the reader My Best Friend’s Exorcism needs for maximum enjoyment.

2016 Me still deep in my love affair with weird fiction/horror would have loved My Best Friend’s Exorcism. The hopeful me. 2021 Me is not in that same headspace and ultimately My Best Friend’s Exorcism did not hit the sweet spot I need in fiction. Not every book is meant for every stage of life. And there are plenty of readers who will find My Best Friend’s Exorcism their perfect book.

Klara and the Sun

September 12, 2021 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

“I think I’m too dumb to understand this book. I like it but I’m not sure what even happened.”

Yesterday I read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun. Yes, Klara and the Sun was released several months ago but I don’t lurk the New Fiction section at Barnes & Noble and watch the morning shows so the whole “Good Morning America” Book Club selection wasn’t on my radar.

I read it, even more confused and unsure of the world than the titular Klara and I’m convinced it is just too literary for me to grasp.

I didn’t even realize the story takes place in the United States until I had finished the darn book and was looking at proper reviews.

I’ve only read one other Ishiguro novel (Never Let Me Go) and just assumed Klara and the Sun was in some hazy other place, maybe Canada, maybe the UK, maybe Japan almost like a latter-day Atwood novel. Please tell me I’m not the only person this dim to read Klara and the Sun.

From last night’s review binge (and the darn jacket copy) I’ve learned Klara and the Sun is about the nature of the human heart. Okay…and here I am, who has the “Happy Birthday David” Prometheus promo video saved on her YouTube account and can sing Gary Numan’s “Are Friends Electric?” at the drop of a hat, getting excited to learn the Never Let Me Go guy who wrote a book about Artificial Friends (AF) in a hazy future with possibly modified humans.

Now I have questions about this hazy future America. These questions aren’t answered fully because Klara and the Sun is beautifully crafted literary fiction not a multi-part science fiction epic. Kazuo Ishiguro isn’t that kind of writer. And the main character is an Artificial Friend and unlike David 8 from Prometheus she’s not seeking answers to why she was created/messing with the humans. Klara the AF is curious and retains almost every small detail, constantly learning even when she is for sale in a shop. After Klara is purchased to be a companion, she has adventures and experiences which are the exploration of the human heart for smarter folks and for me clues to trying to figure out the world.

And the world! There is a lingering post war feeling. The older generation apparently had to make difficult choices for the future generations and people are now “lifted” and “unlifted”. Is the lifting process done at conception or later? Rank determines everything from your house, vehicle, career and it feels like even healthcare. At one point, I stopped reading, turned the spouse and started talking about Gattaca and Elysium before returning to Klara and the Sun and now I’m seeing threads between Klara and her idol (the actual Sun in the sky) and A.I.’s David and the Blue Fairy.

Okay.

Perhaps I need to add more romantic comedies and such like to my personal DVD/Blu-ray collection.

<sighs>

Even if I don’t grasp the underlying explorations of the human heart, grief, motherhood and more? Klara and the Sun is an interesting novel and I’m glad I read it even though I’ll never get answers to the things that consumed me the most.

Cursed Objects

May 31, 2021 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Sometimes you need a book you can pick up, set down and come back to without needing to remember who the characters are, let alone a plot. Or a book you can read while half listening to your spouse keeping up a running commentary on whatever show they’re watching. A book fitting this description is a blessing if you are snatching time to read between say checking on the laundry, stuck at the stove or in your car waiting for an appointment to end. The trick is to find one of these books is to haunt the bookstore shelves.

Or in my case, scanning the New Fiction section of a library with a combination of excellent funding and a buying committee likes to mix it up. A few weeks ago, I was at just such a library and stumbled across J.W. Ocker’s Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items. I know it seems I stumble across many books but thanks a nasty childhood accident back when Jaws ruled the box office, I’m lame in the old-fashioned sense, walking with a limp best described as “broken Frankenstein’s Monster” and unless I’m paying attention to my surroundings can stumble over my own darn feet before you can say “library book sale”.

There I was, bending over slightly at the waist to scan the new books, when a lovely book bound in black with dull bronze lettering caught my eye. I swear I do not pick books on looks alone but let’s be honest, a well-designed book is going draw the eye. Especially if said book isn’t a standard hardcover size.

Now books in the Dewey Decimal 001 need a second, third and seventh look over because even though like many Generation X people, I grew up with In Search of and Time-Life paranormal books, I am more skeptical. And most Dewey Decimal 001 books tend to lean much more woo than I can tolerate.

Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items is not woo. Don’t let the title fool you. Yes, it covers several woo classics (the Hope Diamond, mummy curses, crystal skulls) but there is a strong streak of here’s the story, here’s the truth and enjoy the ride.

Remember me talking about books you can read for a moment and put down? Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items passes the test with flying colors. Early morning trip to the laundromat with five loads of laundry-all with different wash/drying times? Reading while waiting for the electric kettle to finish? A quick chapter before bed? All done and dusted. And if you want to read more? The selected bibliography has some solid reading for those willing to track down or expand their minds.

It’s not a book I would recommend to my father (his tastes run more True Life in the Woods Adventures), or the spouse (World Building Fantasy For The Old School D&D crowd). But I would recommend Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items to my brother, people who loved the original Nimoy hosted In Search of and fun informative podcasts. You are my people, read this book if you’ve haven’t already.

Now the book design. It’s more important than you think. People’s book dollars are limited. An excellent book in a poorly designed/constructed edition isn’t going to appeal to the eye or wallet. If this doesn’t influence your book buying? Lucky you and obviously I am living my life wrong. Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items is a Quirk Books title.

If you are brand new to Quirk Books? They’re an independent publisher who specialize in quirky books. Their titles are informative without talking down to the reader. And their design team? Love love love. One of the reasons Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items is such a good book is the design. Crisp but not overpowering colors, fun graphics all around. Combined with J.W. Ocker’s sharp writing? Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items should be on your Wish/TBR list. It’s definitely on my To Buy list.

Now to return Cursed Objects: Strange But True Stories of the World’s Most Infamous Items to the library for someone else to enjoy.

This Crazy Thing Called Love

February 19, 2014 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

I was trying to rearrange things on my bookcase to make room for my latest treasures after last week’s trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library book shop (stoked I found an almost pristine copy of the Mitford sisters letters in hardcover but it’s a doorstop and a half!) when I managed to knock over the knee high stack of mass market paperbacks next to my dresser. I really need to buckle down and write those V.C. Andrews reviews I’ve been planning one of these days. But instead of settling down with Clan Dollaganger, I found myself putting aside Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles. But Friday afternoon found me combing the stacks of the Avon Free Public Library and adding This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward to my armload of books.

Now given my fascination with true crime and the life of the very very rich, you would think I would have reviewed This Crazy Thing Called Love: The Golden World and Fatal Marriage of Ann and Billy Woodward ages ago. This weekend’s reading wasn’t the first time I’ve encountered the book. Back in 1992 when This Crazy Thing Called Love was published I was right on the library reserve list behind all the old ladies who where old enough to remember the case and in one or two cases, ran in the right circles to have met the Woodwards back in the day. The old ladies in my home town? Full of surprises! What boggles the mind is there are people out there who devoured Truman Capote’s Answered Prayers and Dominick Dunne’s The Two Mrs Grenvilles and took those embellished stories as the gospel truth. That’s like reading Jackie Collins writing about her late night soap opera diva Sugar Anderson and assuming you now know all there is too know about Joan Collins and Shirley Maclaine. The true story is so much more interesting.

For those of you who have never heard of the Capote or Dunne books or even know who the Woodwards were, here are basics. In 1955, socialite Ann Woodward shot what she thought was an intruder at her family’s country home. Only, instead of an intruder who had been targeting their neighborhood, Ann Woodward had killed her banking heir husband Billy Woodward. The Woodwards had a stormy marriage with affairs on both sides and many people thought Ann Woodward had killed Billy Woodward in cold blood to keep him from divorcing her to marry someone from his own class. Billy Woodward’s family stood by Ann Woodward but she spent the rest of her life under a cloud of suspicion and died just before Esquire magazine published part of Truman Capote’s uncompleted novel Answered Prayers that included the story of a scandalous woman who shoots her very rich husband.

Thanks to Susan Braudy, the picture of the Ann and Billy Woodward is treated with fairness and a steady hand. Ann Woodward (born Angeline Luceil Crowell) wasn’t a saint, but she wasn’t the whore that Dominick Dunne and Truman Capote paint her to be in their stories. There wasn’t a secret hick first husband she was hiding from Billy Woodward. Given the changes in Billy Woodward’s will as their marriage crumbled, Ann Woodward would have been better off financially as the former Mrs Billy Woodward vs the Widow Woodward. Believe it or not…there really was a burglar prowling in their exclusive neighborhood the fateful night Billy Woodward died. And you can’t help but feel that if Ann Eden (the stage name Angleine Crowell used before her marriage) had never meet Billy Woodward or at least if their affair had been just a passing thing versus a marriage, both parties might still be alive and thriving in their own worlds.

If you’ve read Answered Prayers and The Two Mrs Grenvilles, make an effort to track down and read This Crazy Thing Called Love. Ann and Billy Woodward and their family deserve that much.

Rude Bitches Make Me Tired

February 17, 2014 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Like my accent if you talk to me long enough, my reading tastes are over all the place. One minute I’m sounding like someone straight of an BBC costume drama and clutching my E.M. Delafield Provincial Lady omnibus to my sensible cardigan clad bosom and the next I’m sprawled on Mr Couch in one of Blacklight’s getting slightly seedy Skinny Puppy concert t-shirts reading Lovecraft and sometimes I’ve popped a cardigan over that concert t-shirt (cheaper than cranking up the heat), sipping hot tea and wishing Celia Rivenbark would materialize in my living room, jangling her car keys and so down with stopping at the Wallingford Sonic before hitting the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlets and cleaning the Lindt store out of every single Almond truffle in the place. Because Miss Celia? So my favorite Southern writer.

Now before you Sweet Potato Queens rise up as one saying “bless her ignorant lil Yankee heart” and trying to pour margaritas the size of an ocean liner down my throat to convert me, sit the bleep down your Majesties. I’ve read every single Sweet Potato Queens book, even The Sweet Potato Queens’ First Big-Ass Novel: Stuff We Didn’t Actually Do, but Could Have, and May Yet more than once. You’re a fun bunch, but dang, I find the whole Sweet Potato Queen thing a bit exhausting. All that bending and kneeling and kowtowing to your redheaded Amazon overlord…Celia Rivenbark seems more approachable. And I think I could encounter Celia Rivenbark and not have my liver trying to make a break for it. In my head? I like to think Celia would be all “oh you don’t drink? The more for me!” and be glad someone could drive her home safely after a girls lunch out. My liver would be half way to Canada if I hung out with Jill Conner Browne for more than five minutes.

So I don’t need to go on and on about how quick I snapped up Celia Rivenbark’s latest book Rude Bitches Make Me Tired: Slightly Profane and Entirely Logical Answers to Modern Etiquette Dilemmas? But can I show you the cut from the book itself? I swear the library used razor sharp diamond edges in cutting the hard plastic cover they heat sealed on the blasted book. And of course I devoured the Rude Bitches Made Me Tired as fast as possible, like a pig at a Old Country Buffet, once I staunched my wound. I am this close to making a custom “Rude Bitches Make Me Tired” sign in PowerPoint on break tomorrow and putting it right next to Blacklight’s Clan motto at my desk. Because there are things we all could do to be nice//better people and Celia Rivenbark points out that way in the funniest way possible. Instead of going all Miss Manners and clutching the pearls and using an epic story about the Trashys to explain why certain forms of PDA are just beyond gross, Our Lady Celia gives it to us straight. And if Blacklight and I had been parents, you so believe we would be the ones cranking the music and car dancing to get our teen to behave just like Celia.

And for you Sweet Potato Queens who are still convinced, blessed my savage lil Yankee heart, Gwen is a demon? Turn to the bottom of page 16 and read to page 17. I swear Celia Rivenbark is referring to the obituary your Supreme Sweet Potato Queen Jill Conner Browne placed when her Very Own Momma died. You know? The one her sister Judy Conner (author of Southern Fried Divorce which I have read thankyouverymuch) approved of? How would I have picked up that reference I hadn’t read the Sweet Potato Queens books? Still not forgiven, am I? <sighs>

Hopefully Celia Rivenbark is hard at work on her next book. If not, maybe she’d like to come up to New England and check out our outlet malls? I promised to drive and not be a rude road hog bitch on the way.

The Asylum

February 16, 2014 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Considering on any given day I’m wandering around in a Lands’ End cardigan with a plain white t-shirt, black pants/black skirt/grey skirt (depending on the season), maybe a silk scarf and a strand of fake pearls from Macy’s (what Blacklight calls my “librarian look” and my coworkers call “Manager Blank Jr”-I don’t have the money to for trends and splashy patterns and the like), it might come as a surprise I devour every single Simon Doonan book I can get my little undead raccoon hands on. And I mean everything from his memoir Nasty: My Family And Other Glamorous Varmints to Wacky Chicks: Life Lessons from Fearlessly Inappropriate and Fabulously Eccentric Women to even why does my local library even have this Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales from the Life of Fashion. Finding The Asylum: A collage of couture reminiscences…and hysteria at the library and shoving it into my bag, looking around like someone was going to snatch it away from me? Perfect understandable right?

You would think between his books and Slate column, Simon Doonan might not have anything more to say or reveal about the fashion industry. But Simon Doonan has more stories than oddly flowered shirts (and the man has oceans of oddly flowered shirts) and The Asylum was read in one great big swoop once I got home from the library. If Blacklight hadn’t figured out he has opposable thumbs and not made himself an English muffin for breakfast and come into the bedroom to rouse me to make an egg sandwich? I would have been standing at the damn stove with The Asylum in one hand and assembling an egg sandwich with the other and wishing I had a free hand to flip him the bird for disturbing me. Reading a Simon Doonan book is almost as good as spa day (and a damn straight cheaper).

The Asylum isn’t the biggest book or the most scholarly (waves to Tim Gunn and his epic Tim Gunn’s Fashion Bible) and I certainly don’t find Kate Moss a goddess (ughh, Kate Moss, just ughhhh) but damn if Simon Doonan can’t write in a gossipy way that makes me forget the sight of Kate Moss makes my teeth start grinding madly. Note: if you were looking at the Rimmel display in Target and heard what sounded like Tic-Tacs getting chomped into dust? Sorry…but blame Target for having the NYX and E.L.F displays so close to the Rimmel display. Note 2: I don’t like Rimmel even if Kate Moss isn’t their spokesface, Team NYX/Team E.L.F. forever!

Now to finish this review, “The Asylum is awesome and if you like fashion buy it already, really don’t waste your money on Nina Garcia books because ughhhhhhhhhh”, and watch Beautiful People (the TV series based on Nasty)on YouTube before Blacklight lurches into the living room, a Vicodin zombie demanding his egg sandwich breakfast…

The Two Mrs Abbotts

February 13, 2014July 19, 2021 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Ever put down Miss Buncle Married and wondered what our old friend Barbara is up to now? I mean, it’s Barbara Buncle Abbott we’re talking about. She must have been up to delicious adventures…

Well, there is a third book in the Miss Buncle series, The Two Mrs Abbotts. Unless you had a very good library system or the luck of the gods at a used bookstore then you had to wonder. Luckily, the local library system was able to unearth The Two Mrs Abbotts but I was only able to get my little undead raccoon hands on it after Sourcebooks Landmark re-issued The Two Mrs Abbotts in trade paperback last month… <sigh>

When you first pick up The Two Mrs Abbotts, you might be tempted to shriek “Oh my gods! There’s two of them!?!?!?!”. Calm down. Of course there’s two Mrs Abbotts. Barbara married to the successful publisher Arthur Abbott and Jerry married to Arthur Abbott’s nephew Sam. Remember? Sam fell head over heels for Jerry in Miss Buncle Married. When we re-discovered our friends, it’s World War II and out of all the houses to host Sarah Walker (the doctor’s wife and who Silverstream thought was John Smith in Miss Buncle’s Book) during a Red Cross talk is the comfortable Abbott home. Sarah sees a picture and figures out her Red Cross talk hostess is the former Barbara Buncle in less time than it takes me to devour an Aero classic chocolate (seconds) while the former Barbara Buncle is her usual delightful confused self and almost needs a diagram to figure everything out. Arthur hasn’t been called up but his nephew Sam is in the army leaving his wife Jerry to batch it at their Elizabethan home.

Now let me address one of the most common complaints about The Two Mrs Abbotts. There are two major ones but I’ll address that later. The most common complaint and one that seems to have people scarlet is, for the book being called The Two Mrs Abbotts, you sure don’t get much of the senior Mrs Abbott (Barbara). This might make a devoted Barbara Buncle follower stop reading this post and declare me a total savage but I actually like getting Barbara Buncle Abbott in small doses. Her presence provides a support or frame for overall story but I don’t need it to be all Barbara all the time. The opening scene chez Abbott with Sarah Walker is delightful even though the Abbott children are just a bit too twee for my tastes. Even the best of the Miss Buncle books, Miss Buncle’s Book, is strongest when Barbara isn’t front and center. Barbara is like the almond extract in my favorite Lindt truffles, a few drops go a long, long way. Full on Barbara would be like licking the almond extract spoon when I make almond crescents. Gross and overwhelming.

But back to the goings on in war time Wandlebury. While life with the senior Abbotts doesn’t seem to be that much affected by the war, unless you count Arthur Abbott having Janetta Walters as an author with his publishing company. Given his reaction to her offerings, romances, I kept wondering if D.E. Stevenson was a having a poke at Georgette Heyer or Angela Thirkell. If she was parodying Georgette Heyer, that’s a laugh because you know how I thought the will plot in Miss Buncle Married was quite Georgette Heyer mystery-ish and had to double check to make sure I was reading D.E. Stevenson. Or I could just being having one of my Crazy Literary Theories. Why so mad about poor Janetta Walters, hmm Arthur?

Things are much different for the other Mrs Abbott. Sam’s off at war, and Jerry doesn’t have two darling moppets in her nursery being tended by Markie. Jerry and Markie are dealing with the stomp stomp stomp of combat boots from the local military camp that have turned Jerry’s kitchen into their clubhouse. And instead of trying to give Cook orders for dinner, Jerry is trying to keep an eye on her loathsome evacuees in the cottage down the way. Mama Evacuee is a blowsy bish who longs to go back home more than I longed for her to be off the page. D.E. Stevenson seems to “care” for evacuees as much as Angela Thirkell does. Then again in these ladies novels, horses and dogs always come off better than the lowest classes.

Mama Evacuee goes back to her sluttish lair dragged her spawn with her and before Markie can get the evacuee stink out of the cottage, evacuee spawn Elmie (government name Wilhelmina) is back and wants to better her life. And Jerry gets a paying guest Jane who has the most unflattering mannish haircut and no clue about housework. While Jerry tries to puzzle out Jane and see if she would make a good wife candidate for her brother Archie, the cottage gets the right kind of tenant, Colonel Melton from the military camp and his doting daughter Melanie.

Jerry wonders if Melanie should be in the running for Archie. But Archie has his own ideas and we find out Jane is actually the author Janetta Walters. I’m not sure if it’s because my main complaint about The Two Mrs Abbotts (in short…the book is too damn short and the plot is letting hanging in too many places) but even my stuffed Beanie Baby sized Minecraft Creeper figured out Jane=Janetta Walters. But I’ll forgive D.E. Stevenson for not making it harder to figure this out because she does give the reader a little plot straight out of the best Nancy Drew stories.

There are rumors of a spy lurking around Wandlebury. The military camp is on high alert and at one point thinks Elmie/Wilhelmina’s father on a mission to drag her back to their slum home is the spy. If the Germans did manage to invade? Mr Boles (Elmie/Wilhelmina’s father) is the exact sort that would be dealing with the Germans or on the black market. In my head? Mr Boles is Steve Buscemi at his most rough and weaselly.

Then one day on a walk, Markie, who is deaf but not stupid in the least even though she will not go to the damn doctor and find out if she has cancer or not already, stumbles across a man sleeping in the words. Markie takes one look at him, decides he’s German by the shape of his head, snatches up his gun and leads the military camp to him. Everyone is all “ohhh silly Markie” and then our sleepy hottie (played in my head by a blonde Michael Fassbender) wakes up and speaks in German. Markie is all “don’t be scared, and no sudden moves because we’re got your gun. I’m not kidding”. And then everyone is all “Damn…you go Markie!” Nancy Drew could not have done it better. Wait, Nancy Drew would have used her handkerchief, her spare handkerchiefs and her leather belt wrapped around her slender waist to tie up the “sleeping hottie”.

Now to my main complaint with The Two Mrs Abbotts. This book is much too short!!! The plot needs, no demands, at least 75 more pages to finish everything properly. There is one part where we see what the war is like for Sam, in his eyes and BAMMM! We’re back in Wandlebury and never see him again. I wanted more about Helen (Jane’s sister) taking over as Janetta Walters. I wanted to see if the creepy vibe I got from Colonel Melton and Melanie was just my fevered imagination and if Lancastre Marvell could snake her away from Daddy Dearest. An abrupt ending like the one in The Two Mrs Abbotts is all fine and good for an Angela Thirkell novel since she churned out her Barsetshire series forever and a day. But unless you’re doing an epic and never ending series? Don’t do this. Seriously. Either write the book long enough to finish things off or don’t bother if it’s a one off. Then again? Didn’t I have the same it ended to damn soon problem with D.E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House? Feeling the book I was reading felt like a warmup or first half of a novel versus a whole novel.

The Two Mrs Abbotts is certainly worth reading even if the blasted thing is much too short. D.E. Stevenson captures certain wartime experiences to a t like when the Wandleburyrites marvel over an egg. Yes, the same things you can snap up for $1.49 a dozen at Aldis. But remember, in World War II England? Even in the country, fresh eggs were like gold. And there were recipes even more gag worthy floating around than the cake the ladies make at Jerry’s or Markie’s recipe for macaroni cheese. I would not recommend reading The Two Mrs Abbotts as a standalone book because you truly need to have the other two Miss Buncle novels under your belt to get the best out of a much too short novel.

Careless People

February 9, 2014February 13, 2014 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Now it might not a be a huge secret I’m not the most literary person. Sure I read oodles of books, have planned vacation days around trips to bookstores and was just on the phone with the Most Evil Sibling Ever (Andy) last night planning a trip to the Friends of the Ferguson Library Book Store for Wednesday (hooray for flex holidays!) but just because you read books doesn’t make you literary. You’ll never find me singing the praises of the literary canon far and wide. Actually you’re more likely to find me proclaiming how Melville should have just made out with Nathaniel Hawthorne more than how much I enjoyed Moby Dick and Billy Budd (loathe both books so very much).

So imagine my surprise when I’m cruising by the New Biography section at the Berlin-Peck Memorial Library and snap up a book on F. Scott Fitzgerald. And not just any book about F. Scott Fitzgerald, but one about The Great Gatsby, a novel that is right up there in Gwen Loathes It list right next to Moby Dick, the complete works of Charles Dickens and Ernest Hemingway. If you love love love F. Scott Fitzgerald and think I’m a savage, it’s totally okay to stop reading now. Before you shriek too much, remember I have actually read The Great Gatsby (a horrid school experience against my will) and have of my own free will read several books about the Fitzgeralds. They’re my Kardashians, a train wreck of people who I know more about than I ever intended too. I mean, you can’t read about the Murphys or Dorothy Parker without encountering Scott and Zelda. And the best of these books? Explore the society the Fitzgeralds interacted with right down to the bootleggers and publishers and the rest.

Don’t check me for pod marks. The book in question is Sarah Churchwell’s Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, an interesting exploration of both one of my most loathed books and a unsolved murder from the 1920s that has intrigued me since I was a wee thing. True crime has always been in my wheelhouse and when you combine true crime with a greater look at society I’m in. With all my reading it never fully occurred to me a crime as well known (it was consider one of the crimes of it’s decade) as the Hall-Mills Murder would have influenced the fiction of it’s time. (For people who never heard of the Hall-Mills Murder, in 1922 the Reverend Hall and his married mistress Mrs Mills were found dead in a lane under a tree with love letters scattered around them.) Let alone a book many people (not me) consider one of the best books ever written.

But that is the basic premise of Careless People, the Hall-Mills Murders influenced and impacted F. Scott Fitzgerald as he plotted and planned his greatest novel. And Sarah Churchwell’s carefully researched details (right down to things from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s scrapbook that dispute certain details you come to expect when you read enough about Scott and Zelda) give you an excellent picture of what life was like as the Fitzgeralds partied and Scott tried to write and the horrifically inept handling of the Hall-Mills murder case.

Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby, doesn’t solve the Hall-Mills Murder (sadly we are more likely to solve the Jack the Ripper murders than who killed Reverend Hall and Mrs Mills due to the bungling police work) but it does do something even my most dedicated professors could never do, made me understand and think about The Great Gatsby beyond something I was being forced to read to pass a class to get that degree. Any decent writer can make Scott and Zelda come alive on the page just due to the force of their personalities but it takes a talented and thoughtful author to make me care about Fitzgerald’s works.

Will Careless People make me snatch up Mr Kindle and buy The Great Gatsby right this second? Will I be tracking down a Norton Critical Edition to get the full Gatsby experience like I did after reading Dreiser’s Sister Carrie for the first time? Never in a million years. But is Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby a book I would read again? Certainly.

A Life of Barbara Stanwyck Steel-True

February 9, 2014 ~ Wendy-Marie ~ Leave a comment

Ever since I was old enough to check out books from the adult part of the library, I’ve read towering stacks of movie star biographies. Some are as told you autobiographies that for all they reveal about the star might as well be turned into those book crafts I see on Buzzfeed every so often. You might as well read their Wikipedia page. Other movie star biographies are either so poorly written either to paint their subject as a saint or sinner of all sinners that well, you read them to the end but feel like you’ve just eaten a box of Twinkies for dinner and hate yourself for reading the darn book. (I’m looking at you Forever Young : The Life, Loves, and Enduring Faith of a Hollywood Legend ; The Authorized Biography of Loretta Young.)

And is Victoria Wilson’s A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940. Stunning, brilliant, epic and don’t drop this bad boy on your foot come to mind. It’s almost 1000 pages including notes and indexes. We are talking Tom Clancy/Stephen King doorstop size. And it’s just the first volume of a full scale biography. And let’s not forget Miss Barbara Stanwyck worked all the time. Work was like books, essential as breathing. Trust me, if you’re looking for a quick read that has S-E-X and scandal on every single page? Please put down A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 (gently because once again trust me, you don’t want to drop this and break a toe) and scamper off to find a Hollywood Babylon book.

It’s not easy to write a biography on a movie star like Barbara Stanwyck. The easy path for the Stanwyck biographer is to use the studo stories about the tough orphan from the streets and maybe her alleged loved of ladies angle. Luckily, Victoria Wilson does not go the easy route even though she could given her subject. Barbara Stanwyck is not your Marilyn Monroe or Joan Crawford with oceans of press stories and scandals to wade through. She was also not the most open or accessible person. I always got the feeling that if someone like Shelley Winters would open up with a drop of a hat in line at Dunkin Donuts while you waited for your Vanilla Bean Coolattas at the pickup counter and tell you everything you ever wanted to know right down to did they dress left or dress right. But Barbara Stanwyck would be a total clam even if you knew her for years and years. Maybe she might crack open a little bit if you caught her at the right time but you’d be better off buying a Powerball ticket during a $400+ million jackpot week.

And that feeling doesn’t seem to be far off because the Barbara Stanwyck Victoria Wilson uncovers is a woman who keeps to herself. The little girl born Ruby Stevens came from a good family on a downward slide and by the time she was a school aged had no proper home. The very young Ruby was placed with various families and her older siblings, a corner of a room here and there with magical times her favorite sister would swoop in and show her the theatrical world. Given all this turmoil and struggles to support herself once she was a teenager, is this any wonder the young Ruby developed a hard shell. And seriously, how could I not love an person who educated themselves and read so much bookstores would send them things automatically? A person who could read a book every night no matter how long she spent on set or toiling at her ranch.

One of the things you take away from A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 is the iron control that propelled Barbara Stanwyck. Curse her for the way she could drop a friend so completely the hurt can still be felt on the page decades later. Curse her for not leaving Frank Fay sooner. Curse her for not being the mother her son Dion needed. But praise her for the willpower and control she exhibited. A woman who could force herself to work after being crushed by a horse? A woman who filmed some of her best early parts strapped and taped up, her face never betraying the extent of how battered her body was? An actress who cared more about the craft than what gown was being whipped up for her.

Barbara Stanwyck wasn’t perfect or a superwoman but she had layers and levels beyond the usual movie star of her times. That is a lady I want to read more about. And Victoria Wilson can not write the next volumes quick enough to satisfy me.