[570] North River – Pete Hamill

” He was a doctor, but medicine was not an exact science. There was no cure for everything. As in life. The cause of death was always life. Across many years now, he had comforted people he knew would soon die. He hoped his consoling whispers would do them no harm. ” (3:46)

North River is what know as the Hudson that separates New York from New Jersey. In this novel, set in the 1930s, against this river that symbolizes both impermanence and closure, Peter Hamill gives us what he knows best—New York City. Rich in ambiance and period details, North River draws closely and intensely from the city, in the tight grip of Depression, where people are addled, desperate, and lonely.

But he had lost prayer somewhere along the way, along with faith. He had been educated to deal with the body, not the soul. In the Argonne, he lost what remained of the affairs of the soul, among the torn and broken bodies of the young, until the day came that he cursed God. (Ch.5, p.94)

In winter 1934, 47-year-old James Delancey ministers to poor patients in the tenements of Lower West Side. They are burst-outs who cannot afford to pay him but he treats them nonetheless. Among his patients are old stubborn heads who refuse to go to hospital, neighbors who blame him for loss, and lush husbands who beat their wives. On a snowy morning he finds his toddler grandson at his door with a note from his daughter, who is off to Spain looking her husband, a revolutionary from Mexico pursued by the FBI. Although flustered by his grandson’s impromptu arrival, the little boy infuses life and warmth into his home. To cope with his new domestic arrangement, Delancey enlists the help of Rose, a tough, decent and intelligent Sicilian woman with a secret in her past.

But across the days of other people’s illness and damage and painful unhappiness, the days of endless casualties, he carried Rose with him now. She and the boy had formed a current in his life, like a secret stream flowing south through the North River . . . It was a stream that was always in the present, not in the past, nor the future.” (Ch.9, p.164)

Indeed the past has haunted him that the nobly beleaguered doctor has transmuted his attention to the poor and needy. The influenza pandemic claimed both his parents’ lives. His wife Molly was furious with him for volunteering duty overseas. Unable to shake off her angry feelings of abandonment, she walks off to the river leaving him with his daughter Grace. This new life with Carlito and Rose is threatened by a mafia who is angry at Delancey’s treating the bullet would of a rival and refusing to reveal his whereabouts.

North River is both character- and plot-driven. Stewed in guilt, self-doubt and misery until his grandson arrives, the doctor has always lived in the past, held captive by dreams of his disappeared wife and haunted by the carnage of battlefield in France. Portraits of rouges and rule benders, along with the budding romance with Rose propel the novel, which truly evokes the Irish, for no other ethnic group so easily lends itself to such fertile inner conflict as shown in Delancey and the characters that populate this book.

341 pp. Back Bay Books. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

Returns: About Rereading

I checked in at the Booking Through Thursday blog, which is the host for a weekly book meme or blogging prompt. Here is this week’s prompt:

What book(s) do you find yourself going back to? Beloved children’s classics? Favorites from college? Something that touched you and just makes you long to visit?
(Because, doesn’t everybody have at least one book they would like to curl up with, even if they don’t make a habit of rereading books? Even if they maybe don’t even have the time to visit and just think back longingly?)

I find myself returning to books that sparkle with contemplative prose. Many stories have stayed with me over the years but certain books have really stuck with me because of how the stories were told. Without further ado, I give you my treasured list and urge to grab these reads:

CROSSING TO SAFETY by Wallace Steger. The intense narrative power of the quiet prose brings into life a friendship between two married couples. It’s really a love story, not in the sense that it explores romantic dialogues and actions, but in the sense that it explores private lives. In the guise of friendship, sustained through births, outdoor adventures, job losses, war, moving, unrealized dreams, and thwarted ambition, Stegner offers, with an uncanny sensitivity, a glimpse of the physical and emotional intimacy in marriage that go largely unspoken out of respect and loyalty.

THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald. A tragic love story that takes place in a society of which the values have gone awry. Gatsby is a man of desperate love who has been blinded by rotten values. He doesn’t know that while pursuing his dream, it’s already behind him and that Daisy will always be like that green light at the end of the dock in an unreachable distance. Fitzgerald’s language once again proves that his prose is unfilmmable, without the latest release of the film adaptation.

THE REMAINS OF THE DAY by Kazuo Ishiguro. Subtly plotted, this novel gives the impression that characters and scenes in the beautifully paced novel become no more than mouthpieces and backdrops for Ishiguro’s concern for the human condition: A desire to exceed one’s limitations. We are all obsessed with the upstairs-downstairs world as Downton Abbey has brought to life, but Stevens is, to me, the most capable butler in service. Not only is Stevens loyal to a fault, his former employer, Lord Darlington, however decent, honest, and well-meaning he was, was also playing a dangerous game by allowing himself to be used as a pawn in Hitler’s schemes.

THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Mikhail Bulgakov. What good is good without evil? This novel gives you the best answer in the backdrop of Stalin Soviet Union. Despite the atmosphere of terror that deepened all through the years he was working on the novel, the book takes on a surprisingly light tone, one of multifaceted humor, without compromising its philosophical depth. It is Bulgakov’s embittered and sarcastic response (and indictment) to his era’s denial of imagination and its wish to strip the world of divine qualities.

THE NAME OF THE ROSE by Umberto Eco. This is the one book that hits me by this author. It deals with issues from an age of classics; so in other words, because it’s set in Medieval times, is written in Dark Age vernacular and includes historical details worthily accurate of the respected academe Eco is. It is not just an exciting DaVinci-Code-style historical thriller, but also a densely layered examination of stories about stories about stories, of symbols about symbols about symbols, of the meaning behind meaning behind meaning.

[569] A Royal Pain – Rhys Bowen

” Oh, Lord. It had never occurred to me that there would be a companion! Of course there would. How dense of me. What king would send his daughter, newly released from the convent, across from the Continent without a chaperone. ” (Ch.6, p.54)

[Her Royal Spyness series #2] About two months after Lady Georgiana, a Windsor who is thirty-fourth in line for the throne, solved the mystery murder case that would have incriminated her brother and threatened her life, she returns to her normal life and makes a living by cleaning houses. She belongs to a branch of the family that has been down on its luck. In disguise she dons her maid uniform and maintains appearance of the upper crust when she is off.

I began to think that Granddad was right. The princess was rapidly turning into more than I could handle. The small stipend from Binky certainly wouldn’t cover outings like lunch at the Savoy and I couldn’t risk letting Hanni loose in any more shops. (Ch.16, p.121)

The Queen is constantly troubled by her son’s intimate liaison to Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee and asks Georgiana to play hostess to a Bavarian princess whom Her Majesty likes her son to be interested in. Georgiana has no servants, no funds to entertain a friend, let alone a royal guest. With a small stipend from Binky, she is to hire a short-term maid, and to install her grandfather and his neighbor as butler and cook.

The book is lighter than what I expect a “whondunnit” to be. When the princess arrives with an overbearing baroness, she proves to be more than a handful—she drinks like a fish speaks like American gangster in movies, and sets her sights on Darcy O’Mara, the one man who makes Georgiana’s heart flutter. To makes matter worse, upon her arrival, three people have died in a remarkably short space of time with no seemingly obvious connection. Parts historical fiction, comedy, and mystery, Bowen’s prose really sparkles. I find myself reading sentences over again just for the sheer pleasure of her words. On top of the clever twist at the end, the book shines in the historic description of the society and the ways people conceive the relations and their ways of thinking. This is a comical royal romp.

307 pp. Berkeley Prime Crime. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[566] Princess Elizabeth’s Spy – Susan Elia MacNeal

“You grew up in America, after all—exactly what do you know about British aristocracy?”
“Not much beyond the historical, I’m afraid,” Maggie said.
“All right, impromptu quiz—what do you say when you meet the King and Queen?”
Maggie gave David a wry look. Frain had forgotten about royal etiquette lessons. “Hello?”
David smacked himself on the head. “Oh, my dear Eliza Doolittle — we have a long night ahead of us.” (Ch.5, p.52)

This book is Maggie Hope Mystery #2, a sequel to Mr. Churchill’s Secretary. After she has discovered and broken the hidden Nazi code that points to three specific attacks in London, Maggie Hope is no longer Winston Churchill’s secretary at Number Ten. She has proven that her scientific acumen, intelligence, problem-solving skills and ability to handle dangerous situations make her a great asset to the British war effort. The beginning of Princess Elizabeth’s Spy sees Maggie entering MI-5 school for spies. Although her grades are stellar, she doesn’t do well enough on the physical tests to be sent abroad to gather intelligence for the British front.

Maggie shook her head. A decapitated Lady-in-Waiting, rabid corgis, and a man who lives with birds? ‘I thought living in a castle would be interesting, Sir Owens,’ she said, ‘but nothing—absolutely nothing—prepared me for this. . . Maggie went back into the sitting room. She stopped by the bookcase, which was empty. She squinted at it. The dust indicated books had been there for a time and had recently been removed. Now, that’s odd, she thought. Why would someone take Lily’s books? (Ch.9, p.102-3)

Instead MI-5 finds a job for her as math tutor to Princess Elizabeth, a post as an undercover, so she can keep an eye on Elizabeth, fondly known as Lilibet, who, as heir to the throne, may be a Nazi target. Soon she realizes danger is on the prowl on castle grounds when a lady-in-waiting is murdered. Her book, removed from the shelf of her quarter, is proof of connection to another murder at the Claridge’s in London. Castle life quickly proves more dangerous and her assignment, after all, is not cushy but one that involves intrigue, kidnapping, and treason. In this novel, besides the conspiracy that places the entire royal family in peril, Maggie Hope also grapples with the loss of her boyfriend and the possible truth that her father, Edmund Hope, an expert in code and cipher at Bletchley, might have been a German spy.

As Maggie needs to discern who the German agents are that have infiltrated the castle, she races against time to save England and its heir from a most disturbing fate. Although Princess Elizabeth’s Spy is not a historical fiction, more a fictional story set in the past with real characters, the book is very well-researched. The Windsor Castle, with its grandeur and staidness, is a workplace like “living in a museum—and terribly cold in winter” during the war. The King and Queen were strict about rationing, so even the princesses were limited to one egg per week, and the rest of the restrictions the British people lived through. The castle’s dungeons were used a bomb shelter where servants and the Princesses move their beds, changes of clothes, books, kitchen utensil and furniture in to keep calm and carry on. This light mystery gives one a glimpse of what it was like to live in war-time England and the story constantly keeps one on the edge using humor and red herrings.

369 pp. Bantam Books. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[565] The Château – William Maxwell

” Paris seemed to be withdrawing piecemeal from the world. At first it didn’t matter, except that it made the streets look shabby. But then suddenly it did matter. There were certain shops they had come to know and to enjoy using. And they could not leave Harold’s flannel trousers at the cleaners, though it was open this morning, because it would be closed by Monday. The fruit and vegetable store where they had gone everyday, for a melon or lettuce or tomatoes, closed without warning. ” (Ch.16, p.282)

Spontaneous and unpredictable, occasionally encumbering, The Château does not have a clear pot. The narrative is simplicity itself: Harold and Barbara Rhodes are young, well-to-do American couple who decide to take a four-month vacation in post-war Europe in 1948. Although their trips cover England, Germany, and Italy as well, The Château focuses on France, where they stay with Mme Vienot and her family in a château that takes in lodgers to make ends meet.

Feeling tired and bruised by their own series of setbacks, they hurried on up the stairs, conscious that the house was cold and there would not by any hot water to wash in and they would have to spend still another evening trying to understand people who could speak English but preferred to speak French. (Ch.8, p.148)

Most of the actions take place in the château, where they spend two uncomfortable weeks, with meager amenities, rationed commodity, but strict formality. The book relays, in day-to-day, almost excessively, prosaic details of meals, social gatherings, and other happenings in the mansion. They deliberate if they should depart early but only to change their mind upon the next warming on the part of their hostess. Obviously France is far from ready for receiving visitors. Travelers like the Rhodes receive food coupons upon having their passports inspected. They have traveled with four month’s supply of everything from coffee, cigarettes, to cold cream—commodity that would be scarce in post-war Europe. Means of transportation is limited. But they manage to travel extensively and see many sights.

He put himself in her shoes and decided that he would have been relieved for a minute or two, and then he would have begun to worry. He would have been afraid that they would find in Paris what they were looking for—they were tourists, after all—and not come back. (Ch.8, p.140)

So the entire book sees the Americans hitting one site of attraction after another, gradually becoming enmeshed in their host family’s doings. Account of their misunderstanding of the French is shrewd, poignant, and funny. Even in their bliss moments of attachment to France, they are reminded of their foreignness and awkwardness. Lurking in their mind is the question: “Do you think there was something going on that we didn’t know about?” (350) Maxwell captures the feelings of alienation in a traveler. There are social disappointments, the inadvertently offense given and the anxiety about being taken advantage of.

I don’t mind three-hundred pages of culture shock and social solecism (and all the wonderful descriptions of French sights) because Maxwell intersperses his subtle accounts of character with sharp observations about human nature. His writing is also supple and contemplative. But what trumps the whole reading experience is the indulgent, distracting, and clunky epilogue that aims to demystify the French’s “mystery.” Yes, the Rhodes are puzzled and hurt by the French refusal to warmth and charmed when it’s given unexpectedly. But they departed with a much lighter spirit and what transpired to a friendship with the host. The epilogue becomes a poor structure that answers questions not necessarily any answer.

402 pp. Vintage International. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[562] Mr. Churchill’s Secretary – Susan Elia MacNeal

” As the days turned to weeks, everyone in London learned to live with it. The learned to live with the dread an the fear . . . But they could go on. They had to. They all went to work, ate their meals, spoke to one another in the shops, went on as though they were people in one of those classic British plays—always polite, terribly formal, occasionally stiff. It was almost comical sometimes. ” (Ch.13, p.149)

In May 1940, Winston Churchill just became the Prime Minister of England. Unlike his predecessor, Churchill takes on an aggressive disposition on going to war against the Nazis. It is against this historical backdrop—a strange moment in time and a limbo-like state when horror was fast approaching but barbarity had yet to descend—that MacNeal sets her novel. With the Nazis marching across France, Holland, and Belgium and threatening the island, England is also hemmed in by IRA terrorists, who have coordinated bombings in London.

Learning all the sick and twisted details of the war, Maggie was starting to hate, hate with a ferocity she never knew she had within her. Could I kill a Nazi? she thought. Before, she would have said no. Or maybe—but only if she was in a kill-or-be-killed situation. But now she felt she could do it easily, with a song in her heart if it meant getting even. (Ch.7, p.78)

Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is the story of Maggie Hope, a British citizen who was raised by her aunt, a lesbian academic, in America. She graduated t the top of her class at Wellesley but put off doctorate study in mathematics in order to handle a sale of her late grandmother’s house in London. Possessed all the skills of the fine minds in British intelligence, her gender however only placed her to be a secretary in Churchill’s typist room in the basement of 10 Downing. She is the replacement of a secretary who was murdered, and the truth of that dubious atrocity was in conjunction with the novel’s more intricate, underlying plot later.

Women are slowly but surely making strides—the vote, higher education, laws that protect our money and property. But this treatment of women—middle- and upper-class women—as though we’re children or goddesses or precious objets d’art—well, that’s a kind of slavery. (Ch.10, p.120)

Maggie’s past is revealed in a natural arc as the story takes on different fronts with intricate connection that is not immediately obvious. War-time England comes alive under MacNeal’s pen. Beneath the thin veneer of civility and pleasantries, in spite of the social norms of the ballets, the dancing and the theater, the nation is bracing for the worst. The IRA sees Nazi collaboration as a means for Irish freedom and retaliation. The government is aware of Maggie’s possible motive to take up work with the Prime Minister. The MI-5 has IRA and German spies under surveillance. With the impending political and military chaos, MacNeal never loses sight of her heroine, whose parents perished in a car accident shortly after she was born. As the malicious plots against London begins to unravel, enemy infiltrated, Maggie’s expertise in mathematics, language, and codes has not only proved her talent, it has also saved the life of many and in London. An innocent advert that appeared on the paper didn’t escape her keen eyes and acumen. Mr. Churchill’s Secretary is a compelling novel that blends intrigue and espionage as MacNeal skillfully weaves historical facts into fictional plot and the lively dialogue.

374 pp. Bantam. Trade Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[559] Death Comes to Pemberley – P.D. James

” As soon as Lydia, now grown calmer, had been persuaded into bed Jane felt able to leave her in Belton’s care and joined Elizabeth. Together they hurried to the front door to watch the departure of the rescue party. Bingley, Mrs. Reynold and Stoughton were already there, and the five of them stared into the darkness until the chaise had become two distant and wavering lights and Stoughton turned to shut and bolt the door. ” (Book Two, 3:70)

To commemorate the 200th anniversary of Jane Austen’s debut appearance in print, publishers have enlisted some popular authors to invent her contemporary oeuvre. Honestly Austen fan-fic and spin-off have explored every angle possible, from monsters to zombies, nothing really can provoke much interest. So when I heard about P.D. James’s book that transplants the dramatis personae from Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into her own suspenseful universe, my expectation soared.

Death Comes to Pemberley finds Darcy and Elizabeth very much in love and at peace in their cozy home with two boys six years after their marriage. But this peace is suddenly shattered by the stress of a murder on the grounds of their vast estate. On the eve of the annual autumn ball, Lydia Wickham, Lizzy’s disgraced sister who had eloped with George Wickham, gate-crashes Pemberley in a coach. She and her husband had been barred from the property so her arrival in a hysterical state is both troubling and unexpected. Wickham is inevitably the cause of this mayhem. A man of sketchy moral character who had induced trouble, he gets the plot rolling when he is discovered slumped over the body of one Captain Denny. A gash across the base of his skull is the cause of death.

Death Comes to Pemberley claims to be a sequel to Pride and Prejudice with a mysterious twist, but the plot is dull and complex. It pays no attention to the characters that Austen portrays with depth and subtlety. James has used the Austin characters without giving them life or personality they had in the original. She plugs them into a her juvenile mystery plot. Darcy is wimpy and unintelligent, Colonel Fitzwilliam is obnoxious. The worst of all is Elizabeth, who is dull and passive. She is dispensable really. James could have used her as the detective to uncover the truth but under James’s pen Elizabeth is like a museum exhibit. As for the so-called mystery, there is no evidence except for the individuals involved, who are also the victims. Lydia, other than her scornful remark against Elizabeth, gives no testimony. She is in full enjoyment of grievance to listen to any reason. Details of the crime, or, more like the approximated incidents leading to the crime, are ruminated, rehashed, repeated, almost word for word, in Colonel Fitzwilliam’s statement, in the inquest, and again in the trial, making possible a “suspense” that bears late, abrupt presentation of previously undisclosed information.

This is the most dreadful, miserable book in a long time. Death Comes to Pemberley fails to live up to expectations of Austen novel and a good mystery. No evidence turns up, nor do the characters make any attempt to find any. No red-herrings. The full story of the murder is randomly turned up in the end, almost as if it’s no mystery. It’s more a realization that was not realized erstwhile. Even more ridiculous are the walk-on roles from another Austen novel that end up playing a role in the resolution. The truth is sordid, but not interesting at all. I’m appalled and horrified this book is even allowed to published. It’s an insult to Austen that the wit of the original has been completely lost.

291 pp. Vintage Books. paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[558] Mrs Queen Takes the Train – William Kuhn

” She had been used to following the rules since she was a little girl. She always did what she was told. She’s been taught that it was her job as a constitutional monarch always to stick to the program, to follow the Government’s advice, to adhere to the timetable, to act according to precedent. For most of her life she’d done that, and been rewarded for it . . . Playing by these rules, however, had not saved her from the disasters that had befallen the monarchy at the time of the breakup of the Prince and Princess of Wales. ” (Part III, 119)

Mrs Queen Takes the Train imagines The Queen stepping outside of her royal life on a spree to an impromptu visit of the Britannia in Edinburgh. On a rainy December afternoon, feeling bored and disconcerted, provoked by the song My Favorite Things, Her Majesty reflects on some of her happiest memories before they were marred by family troubles and disasters. Also sadly provoked by the recent decommission of the royal train, she toys with the idea of making a solitary trip to see the yacht.

Then Diana had died in Paris and the little boys had been pulled, against The Queen’s will, by public demand, into the midst of media circus. The orgy of public grief was, in The Queen’s eyes, not Britain’s finest hour. If she’d only wept then, perhaps everything would have been all right. But The Queen’s tears were internal. (Part IV, 173)

A visit to the Mews where she feeds her favorite horse, Elizabeth, cheddar offers an opportunity to slip outside Buckingham Palace. With the help of a cheese-shop clerk, she boards an Edinburgh-bound train to fulfill her nostalgia for the lost era embraced by the yacht. Fellow passengers don’t recognize her since she was wearing a hoodie borrowed from the stable girl. Soon the retinue of servants in the royal household has discovered her missing, flummoxed. In pursuit of Her Majesty is a motley group that would never have mingled under ordinary circumstance: a lady-in-waiting left with a small legacy, a seamstress-dresser sworn to never marry, a gay butler whose impeccable service invokes Stevens from The Remains of the Day, a military equerry traumatized by Iraq, and a Britain-born, Eton-educated son from wealthy Indian family who never fit in, and the stable girl. Together the servants keep their eyes on The Queen from a tactful distance, while the equerry strives to keep The Queen’s absence from the palace a secret lest it erupts into a full-blown scandal.

She knew she was struggling with some kind of indefinable grief, but she had been only half conscious of what she was doing up to now. She felt so unhappy that a bit of cheese and a visit to Britannia had seemed like good ideas. She’d not anticipated being at a table discussing a film that troubled her, no matter how sympathetic its portrayal of her had been. (Part V, 245)

Sharing much in common with Alan Bennett’s The Uncommon Reader, Mrs Queen Takes the Train applies insight, wit, originality, and a touch of humor to the remarkably restricted universe of The Queen, to whom “life beyond the palace walls was foreign.” (Part V, 273) Kuhn is careful to steer clear of and not claim too much knowledge of her life, but he does present a story that tweaks the pomp of monarchy and reveals, beneath its rigid formality, permeating from Her Majesty down to the servants, the human heart of a woman. It touches on how The Queen internalized her grief about Diana trouble and tragic death. The book also gives an intimate portrait of the complex relationships between The Queen and her staff, illuminating the British class system that is still at work. Most charming of all is how the odd group of servants has sealed into more than a camaraderie under the peculiar circumstance in which The Queen makes an impromptu sidestepping of her routine.

374 pp. Harper. Hardcover. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[557] A Dangerous Fortune – Ken Follett

” It was almost as if something evil had come up out of the deep water that day in 1866 and entered their lives, bringing all the passions that had blighted their lives, hatred and greed and selfishness and cruelty; fomenting deceit, bankruptcy, disease and murder. ” (567-8)

A Dangerous Fortune is a novel about good and evil, power and greed, and the far-reaching consequences of one’s actions. It opens in 1866 at an idyllic English boarding school where Hugh Pilaster, who belongs to a rising London banking family, witnesses what is officially termed the accidental drowning of a school chum. This crucial but nebulous event dictates series of treachery that span the next three decades and entwine many lives. The accident involves a small circle of boys that includes Hugh’s cousin Edward Pilaster and his sleazy South American friend, Micky Miranda. Did they try to save the struggling Peter Middleton—or did they hasten his end?

The Pilasters own Pilasters Bank, which preside over London as one of the wealthiest banks in the world. They are pivotal and influential in the high society at the time. Hugh is the son of a Pilaster who went bankrupt and committed suicide. The black sheep in the family, a poor relation at the mercy of his wealthy uncle Joseph, he suffers from the malicious scheming carried out by his cunning, social-climbing Aunt Augusta in favor of her son Edward and the potential benefits to be gained for her branch of the family, its power and position in society. Every step of the way she thwarts his prospect and success because Hugh, with his natural talents and business acumen, is a threat to Edward, who is lazy and lacks initiative and drive.

Augusta’s decoys don’t make a novel, although Hugh’s comeback is always inspiring. Soon the book gains momentum as Micky Miranda, who is later implicated in multiple murders, is determined to finance his bloodthirsty father’s takeover of a struggling South American nation. Believing that Micky has a potentially lethal hold over Edward in the drowning incident, Augusta, who also yields her sexual passion to the young man, pairs up with him to clear any block come his way to finance his home country—from the sales of rifles, dubious railway construction, to war. The circle of treachery, the hapless Hugh and his constant struggle, the slimy Micky who kills to eradicate any barrier, the low-class Maisie who rises to become the toast of English society—all weld into a relentlessly suspenseful plot in which good triumphs over evil, randy men die of syphilis, and thwarted lovers live to love again.

A Dangerous Fortune is a plot-driven thriller with many giddy leaps and convolution. Aside from a few mention of suffrage and glimpses of clothing and interior designs, the book reveals little about the Victorians. It’s more a plot-driven book set in that period. It does draw parallels with the current day and the global financial crisis. It’s remarkable how little has changed in over a century and how little we have learned when it comes to financial probity. Maybe human nature—the greed and hunger for power—has never changed.

568 pp. Dell/Bantam. Pocket Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]

[556] The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton

” She had suffered for the very faithfulness with which she had carried out her part of the tacit compact, but the part was not a handsome one at best, and she saw it now in all the ugliness of failure. ” (Book II, Ch.4, p.240)

The House of Mirth is a caustic novel about a girl, Lily Bart, who is “born to be ornamental,” and her pursuit to social status and wealth in a society rife with financial scandal and sexual intrigue. Lily, whose vocation is marriage, is very fond of Lawrence Selden, a lawyer, but doesn’t want to marry him because he hasn’t got enough money, though he is sufficiently wealthy to travel for his legal cases. The chance encounter with Selden establishes her heedless nature and determines her future. For as she climbs the social ladder and triumphs in soirées, using her beauty as a power tool, and hoping to secure a palatable future, Lawrence Selden’s presence always has the effect of cheapening her aspirations, and he will be the one who witness her ultimate fall.

It was not the first time that Selden had heard Lily’s beauty lightly remarked on, and hitherto the tone of the comments had imperceptibly coloured his view of her. But now it woke only a motion of indignant contempt. This was the world she lived in, these were the standards by which she was fated to be measured. (Book I, Ch.12, p.145)

Failing to ensnare the wealthy heir Percy Gryce and later the noveau rich Rosedale, it’s inevitable for a girl who has no financial means but with expensive taste should become laden with debts. Dubious business deals and accusations of liaisons with a married man diminish Lily’s social status. Although later Lily obtains a potential lethal hold over her nemesis, Bertha Dorset, who interrupts Lily’s courtship with Percy Gryce, she refuses to take revenge against her enemy with evidence of her infidelity in order to rehabilitate herself in society. Deep in her she knows her marriage to Gryce, Dorset, or Rosedale would have been meaningless because she despises the society she is trying to enter.

She had, to a shade, the exact manner between victory and defeat: every insinuation was shed without an effort by the bright indifference of her manner. But she was beginning to feel the strain of the attitude; the reaction was more rapid, and she lapsed to a deeper self-disgust. (Book I, Ch.9, p.106-7)

Laden with debts, disinherited by her aunt, left with a small legacy , Lily is left to fend for herself. She does not wish to impose herself on the goodwill of Selden’s cousin Gerty Farish. She takes up apprenticeship with a milliner, but knowing with dismay that even if she could learn to compete with hands formed from childhood for their work, the small pay she receives would not be a sufficient income. Wharton emphasizes throughout that Lily is alone in the world, cut off from and bad-mouthed by everyone. Ironically her descent is by way of the selfish, self-indulgent, and materialistic people whom she admires and aspires to be. Lily dies for a scruple in a tragedy that seems both avoidable and inevitable. She could have married any of her well-heeled suitors, used the incriminating letters against her enemy, but blackmailing Bertha would have betrayed Selden and made her complicit with the repulsive. In that she achieves a spiritual victory and proves her love. She embodies lost illusions and destructive melancholy, which Wharton despises. Through her tragic descent Wharton metes out judgment on the lack of social responsibility of the high society—anything is allowed as long as the transgressors are wealthy and maintain a respectable façade.

360 pp. Barnes & Noble Classics. Paper. [Read/Skim/Toss] [Buy/Borrow]