Monthly Archives: December 2009

Charlotte Brontë’s novel Shirley was a bit of a rough read for me. I liked it in places, but in others it felt slow and unfocused. It had an entirely different feel than Jane Eyre and Villette; it was less intense, less gripping. Shirley herself didn’t appear for a good 150 pages (out of the 600 or so pages in my edition), and when she did appear, she livened things up quite a lot, but even afterward the novel’s pacing still felt off. What is most interesting about the novel is the issues it deals with, especially the “woman question” and issues of industrialization, but it’s not a book to read for an exciting plot.

The novel’s opening is odd — and thereby sets the tone for the rest of the novel. It describes three rather foolish curates who are spending the evening drinking and talking and teasing each other. These three characters turn out to be minor, though; they appear later in the novel, but only occasionally. Soon they get interrupted and one of them is sent on a mission that is much closer to the novel’s central plot — a mill owner is under threat of violence because local workers fear that his new machinery, just about to be delivered, will take away their jobs. The curate is supposed to help guard the mill. This opening is typical of how the entire novel tends to work — things happen, but the build-up to the action takes a while and it follows such a winding path that I was left feeling bewildered about what I was supposed to be paying attention to.

In addition to the mill owner, Robert Moore, we soon meet Caroline Helstone, a young woman in love with Robert. When Caroline’s guardian — her uncle — becomes angry with Robert and forbids Caroline to see him anymore, she feels she no longer has any interest in life and her health begins to decline. This sounds kind of pathetic, but Caroline’s life is very lonely and it feels purposeless. Her uncle is distant and unsympathetic, and she longs for the ability men have to get a job and to do some productive work. The only possibility she knows is available for women is to be a governess, and she tries to become one, although everyone around her refuses to help.

It’s at this point that Shirley arrives. She is Caroline’s age, roughly, and is an energetic, lively young heiress. Her presence livens up the neighborhood, and it also livens up the book. She is a welcome and much-needed friend for Caroline, but unfortunately, Caroline suspects that there is a romance about to begin between Shirley and Robert, and she becomes jealous and her health fades even further.

At this point I’ll stop describing the plot; unfortunately the back cover of my edition (Penguin) mentions some details that come up very late in the book and spoil a good bit of what suspense there is. It’s bad enough when an introductory essay gives away the plot, but much worse when the back cover does — because who can resist reading the back cover?

At any rate, part of the interest of the novel comes from how this love triangle will work itself out, and also of great interest is Shirley herself. She is regularly described in masculine terms; “Shirley” was a man’s name, first of all, and she likes to make a joke that she is a gentleman:

Business! Really the word makes me conscious I am indeed no longer a girl, but quite a woman and something more. I am an esquire: Shirley Keeldar, Esquire, ought to be my style and title. They gave me a man’s name; I hold a man’s position: it is enough to inspire me with a touch of manhood … You must choose me for your churchwarden, Mr. Helstone, the next time you elect new ones; they ought to make me a magistrate and a captain of yeomanry: Tony Lumpkin’s mother was a colonel, and his aunt a justice of the peace — why shouldn’t I be?

Caroline is much more retiring and ladylike than Shirley, but the two agree that women’s options in life are woefully limited and they chafe against the male characters who refuse to take them seriously because of their gender.

The other issue the novel takes up is technology and industrialization, and this is largely Robert’s story; he is in debt and is struggling to make his mill profitable enough to clear his name, but there are several obstacles against him, including the threat of violence from Luddite protesters and the fact that England is at war, which is disrupting commerce. Shirley isn’t anti-industrialization; Robert’s struggles are portrayed sympathetically, and the technological changes seem inevitable. What matters, ultimately, is whether Robert’s heart is in the right place; he has some lessons about charity and generosity he needs to learn.

I’m glad I read this novel because I was curious about what it was like, and I’d like to read all the Brontë novels eventually (I’ve read Jane Eyre, Villette, Wuthering Heights, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and now Shirley, which leaves me The Professor and Agnes Grey, unless I am missing something), but in spite of some of the interesting issues it deals with, it’s my least favorite so far.

Mary Roberts Rinehart’s novel The Yellow Room was the latest selection for my mystery book group, and we were supposed to meet this evening at Bloodroot, which advertises itself as a feminist vegetarian restaurant and bookstore. It’s the site where the idea for the mystery group began, so it was the perfect place to hold a meeting. But the weather forecast for this evening called for lots of snow, and we cancelled. (The snow has yet to arrive, though, and it appears as though the weather forecasters may have gotten things wrong. Still, the backroads of Connecticut are narrow, hilly, and winding, and I didn’t want to take my chances.)

It appears from conversations I’ve had, emails I’ve gotten, and Emily’s post on the book that our meeting would probably have turned into a lively conversation about how bad the book is. I can sum up my assessment best by saying that as I neared the end, I didn’t care in the least who the murderer was. That’s a sure sign of a bad mystery novel if there is one, right? I was just eager for the thing to be over so I could move on to something else.

It’s been over a week since I finished the novel and the details are already beginning to fade (another bad sign); what sticks in my mind is the awkward way Rinehart moved her characters around. It seemed like they kept making the same movements from room to room, kept taking the same walks over and over again, and kept repeating the same conversations, covering a little new ground now and then to move the plot along, but not enough to make things exciting. It was wearying. I also found the characters either stereotypical, dull, or completely unbelievable. There’s a romance between two central characters, and maybe this is my fault for being a sloppy reader, but it took me a long time to catch on that this was happening, and when I did catch on, I found it completely contrived and silly. I didn’t understand why he cared about her and even more so why she cared about him.

So what is the story about? A young woman, Carol, travels to Maine to ready the family’s summer home for her brother who is on leave from the war (the novel was published in 1945), and one of the servants finds a woman’s dead body in the closet. This is the sort of thing that never happens in that small coastal Maine town, and the local police force doesn’t seem to be up for the job. Fortunately a neighbor, Jerry Dane, knows just what to do, and he conducts his own investigation, while at the same time recovering from his war injuries and wooing Carol.

The one interesting thing about the book is the way in which it is a product of its time; it’s one of those books that feels very dated, and it’s interesting to think about what makes it so. The class situation is largely at fault; Carol’s family is wealthy and spoiled, and it’s amusing to read about her awful sister who is socially ambitious and utterly heartless, and her horrible brother who is a womanizer who can’t accept that his “youthful exploits” might have some serious consequences. The novel shows how awful these people are, but there’s no sense that Rinehart is critiquing the class differences or the social system that created them. The servants are stereotyped figures, either unreliable and flighty or fiercely loyal, and I had a hard time caring that poor Carol had to manage with so few of them.

So I’m not interested in reading more Mary Roberts Rinehart, even though I did buy an edition that contains two other of her novels in addition to The Yellow Room. Fortunately, I only spent $4.50 on those three novels, so I don’t mind leaving the other two unread.

I finished listening to that Guernsey book and while I’m still not willing to forgive it its awful title, especially since the potato peel pie part of it is mentioned only once and could easily be dispensed with, I really did enjoy it all the way through. There are other things I’m having trouble forgiving the book for, including being a Pride and Prejudice tribute and updating. There’s no good reason someone’s tribute to Pride and Prejudice should irritate me except that everybody’s doing it these days, but that’s enough reason for me. Everybody’s writing tributes to that book, and I wish they would do something new and different instead. I also think the book goes out of its way at times to set up a cute scene and the plot machinations are too obvious.

But all that aside, my point here is that I really did like the book. It’s the kind of book that makes me confront the fact that in spite of priding myself on being cynical and blasé about heart-warming, feel-good novels, I’m susceptible to them. On the one hand, I really, genuinely don’t like them: they are unrealistic and emotionally manipulative. The characters tend to be too good to be true and the world they live in too simple. Things work out in a way they never do in life, and they encourage unrealistic expectations. On the other hand, if a book is as well-written as this one is, I can’t help but get caught up in the story, which is, as we all know, an intensely pleasurable experience. I found myself tearing up embarrassingly often as I was listening to the story unfold; it’s good I was alone in the car as I listened to it because otherwise I would have had good reason to be embarrassed.

In spite of the varied and conflicting emotions I felt as I listened to this book, I think I kept enough critical distance to be able to say that it’s well-done. It has a good mix of the serious with the lighter material; there was enough darkness because of the post-WWII setting to keep the book from feeling frivolous. The characters were well-drawn (although maybe a little too much on the quirky side now and then), and the epistolary form used well. I really do love epistolary novels, so that was a real pleasure. All-in-all, it was worth overlooking the title for.

I’ve heard a lot about that Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society book, but I never paid close attention to what I heard because I thought the title was awful. I don’t like self-consciously cute titles, or self-consciously cute anything, for that matter. But bloggers I like and respect were writing nice things about it and recommending it to me, so I felt I shouldn’t ignore it entirely, and then I happened to see it in my library’s audiobook collection. I wavered a bit deciding what audiobook to get — did I really want to listen to that book with the awful title? But audiobooks are where I take risks now and then; I’m willing to listen to something I might not want to spent time actually reading, since I’m only devoting commuting time to it.

So I checked it out and began listening to it, and now I’m finding I like it. It is a little too self-consciously cute at times, and who knows what I would think if I were reading it in the usual way, as I’m pickier then, but it’s winning me over anyway. There are multiple readers, which works well, as the novel is epistolary, with a number of different writers. All of the readers have been good, and they capture the characters well. And then the book is about books and reading, much in the vein of 84 Charing Cross Road and The Uncommon Reader, two books I really like. It also tells about what happened on the island of Guernsey during the German occupation in World War II, a history I knew nothing about and which is really interesting.

I prefer it when my suspicions are confirmed, my preconceptions are right, and I can continue to look down my nose at books that seem silly to me. But it’s also fun when I’m wrong and I find something new to like.