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Deborah Crombie
Did you ever have one of those evenings? It’s already dark, it’s raining, and you’re cozy, cuddled into your favorite chair, slippers on,– hunkered down for the night.
The last thing you want to do it go out, but…you have something you really want to see, a thing you really want to do. So back and forth you argue with yourself ~~ should I go or should I stay?
Tuesday night, my neighborhood independent bookstore was hosting a talk by Deborah Crombie. She was promoting her newest book, Garden of Lamentations, which I loved.
So I pulled myself together, put on some decent clothes, my raincoat and boots. Made myself a travel mug of tea and ventured out in the storm.
So glad I did.
Ms. Crombie was very open and funny. She’s a native Texan and she told how she unexpectedly fell in love with England – especially London, how on a trip to England, she stumbled into a place that would make a perfect setting for a mystery. Then, in a lovely self-depreciating manner, she described how she taught herself to write mystery novels by deconstructing her most admired British authors — P.D. James, Reginald Hill and Dorthy Sayers.
Ms. Crombie glossed over what must have been really hard work — long hours of writing through many drafts, author tutorials, writer workshops, university courses, and endless networking — other wannabe writers throw in the towel at even half this workload.
I came away with a signed book for a fellow Crombie fan/friend and a resolution to read Dorothy Sayers and Reginald Hill– whom, somehow, I’ve never read.
A very nice evening – and to think I almost stayed home in my slippers.
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The $64 Tomato by William Alexander
I’ve been perusing seed catalogs for our four little vegetable beds. Despite our summer fog, our little garden gives us fresh lettuce, peas, greens and herbs most of the year. Once we get our first taste of our own garden salad made from heirloom lettuces and organic herbs, we decide it’s all worth it. Be damned the slugs, the mold from the fog, the time, effort and mostly the cost.So, with visions of fresh peas and lettuce dancing in my head, I picked up this slim little book, sitting on my shelf for years now. The $64 Tomato is for gardeners and wannabe gardeners alike — and the subtitle says it all:
How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden
This is a unvarnished, honest look at what it means to maintain a garden when everything seems against you, and your dreams and plans vastly outrun the available time. But, like all hopeful gardeners, Mr. Alexander gamely plows ahead. (pun intended, couldn’t resist — I’m here all week, tip your waitress)
I laughed my way through this quirky memoir, reading about Mr. Alexander’s 2,000 sq. foot Hudson Valley vegetable garden, a fruit tree orchard and even his attempts to recreate a Swiss-style wildflower meadow on the property.
There’s a spooky handyman who bears a striking resemblance to Christopher Walken, a crew of exasperating contractors, and a menagerie of groundhogs, deer, Japanese beetles and crop destroying worms. These pests, both insect and mammal, defy Mr. Alexander at every turn. They come, they see his garden, and they conquer. His efforts to eradicate those pests (and yes, eradicate means exactly what you think) involve a mean 6,000-volt electric fence (really?) and harken back to that male-favorite film Caddyshack.
But throughout, we do see that Mr. Alexander does actually recognize the joy from his efforts:
Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience.
You gotta feel for this guy, there are the vacations that had to be planned around the harvest, the near electrocution of the tree man, the limitations of his middle-aged body, and the judgment of his wife and kids.
Mr. Alexander’s cost-benefit analysis included every cost — from seed ordered by the pound, to the live animal traps and then amortizing it over the entire life of his garden — results in a staggering $64* to grow each of his prized Brandywine tomatoes. (They sound wonderful, nothing like a homegrown tomato – but yes $64 seems extraordinary.)
But as any gardener will tell you, the pleasure of growing fresh food for friends and family — well that’s priceless.
*Another reviewer (obviously an economics major) pointed out that Mr. Alexander puts the entire costs of his garden on the poor tomato. This reviewer suggested he should have evaluated all crops at market value, taken that number and subtracted it from total expenditures, and then use the difference as a percentage of total expenditures to be applied as a markup percentage to the market value of the Brandywines equally with other crops.
In other words — don’t blame the tomato.
Mr. Alexander has also written several other books…all revealing his obsessive tendencies. I plan on reading both of these next:
52 Loaves in which our hero attempts to recreate a perfect loaf of bread from scratch: growing, harvesting, winnowing, threshing, and milling his own wheat, and
Flirting with French: How a Language Charmed Me, Seduced Me, and Nearly Broke My Heart. Mr. Alexander’s struggle to master a foreign language after age 50.
I like this guy, he’s my sort of geek, obsessive yet funny — outlandish, yet self depreciating. I would love to chat an afternoon away with him – preferably in the garden.
So, Mr. Alexander, if you’re reading this, you have an open invitation to stop by for a cup of coffee — or perhaps a salad — you can bring the tomatoes.
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Happy Valentine’s
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Garden of Lamentations by Deborah Crombie
You’ll want to plan a stop at your local independent bookstore on your way home, because Garden of Lamentations, Deborah Crombie’s latest mystery novel, is out today. Trust me on this one, have I ever steered you wrong?
As you know from THIS POST, I am a big fan of Ms. Crombie’s work. However, we have grown despondent here at Book Barmy, it’s been practically three years since the last installment of Ms. Crombie’s mystery novels set in London.
A very long (endless really) time to wait*.
Despite this time apart, upon opening Garden of Lamentations it was like meeting old friends and picking up where you left off. Duncan and Gemma are still in their cozy home with their chaotic, blended family. There are still pets underfoot and their delightful, busy life as parents is once again superimposed with murder and crime.
While things have never been easy for this high-powered police couple, their strong relationship always balances their career stresses. In this 17th installment however, we detect early on there’s an unusual tension between Detective Chief Inspector Kincaid and Detective Inspector Gemma James.
Duncan is secretive and distant as he investigates a series of presumably unrelated cases, involving a long ago undercover group of police, a racial hate killing and continues to try and understand why he was transferred . His investigation uncovers a former commander’s secrets and underlying corruption at highest levels of the Met.
Ms. Crombie’s setting is in Gemma’s and Duncan’s own London neighborhood of Notting Hill. A young nanny is found dead under a bower** and Gemma is called in to investigate this murder in a private locked garden for a block of homes off Kensington Park Road.
If you are not familiar with locked gardens of London, they are open only to the residents backing up and surrounding the garden. These gardens are enjoyed and often maintained by the residents. (Many a time I’ve longingly peeked through the gates of these wonderful London oasis’s.)
Through multiple viewpoints we follow Gemma and Duncan through their individual cases, but especially with Duncan’s private investigations, I struggled to recall certain events from the previous two novels. But, as I read on, Ms. Crombie excels at weaving her plots together and most of my questions were answered.
It may have helped to revisit Ms. Crombie’s previous two – Sound of Broken Glass (#15) and To Dwell in Darkness (#16).
Once again, the flyleaf displays a hand drawn map of the book’s setting. I found myself examining the map to locate the pub where Duncan meets an old colleague or the spot where the local children have dance lessons.
This is one of the best in the series. There’s an engaging cast of Notting Hill neighbors, a locked garden mystery, and residents’ lies and secrets. We see the dark side of undercover police work and the repercussions of blurred lines between civilian and police life. Confessions and duplicity are revealed and some of the past can be put to rest. There is even a hint of a life change for Duncan and Gemma in upcoming installments.
As always, Ms. Crombie gives her readers absorbing mysteries combined with believable characters and fascinating London settings.
Garden of Lamentations was worth the wait.
Many thanks to Harper Collins/William Morrow for the opportunity to enjoy an advanced readers copy.
* I understand during this time there was a new grandchild for Ms. Crombie, which may have cut into her writing time.
** I had to look it up – a bower is a pleasant shady place under trees or climbing plants in a garden or wood.
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The Fortress by Danielle Trussoni
I’m busily sorting through my stack of advanced readers copies, which, I’m ashamed to say, have been piling up, unread, some for more than a year. Bad Book Barmy, very bad.One of my January goals (beyond the annual diet and fitness ones) is to figure out which from the pile I will read and review for you, my loyal readers.
This one, with its lovely cover, ended up coming to bed with me the other night. My little book-reading light (because Husband insists on sleeping) stayed on well past midnight.
At first blush, The Fortress may seem like one of those typical memoirs recounting a romantic adventure of a couple finding, buying and fixing up a rundown French villa ~~ but no, it is so much more. More complicated, deep, and especially, more real.
From the back cover:
From their first meeting, writer Danielle Trussoni is spellbound by a brilliant, mysterious novelist from Bulgaria. The two share a love of music and books and travel, passions that intensify their whirlwind romance. Within months, they are married and embark upon an adventurous life together.
Eight years later, their marriage in trouble, Trussoni and her husband move to the South of France, hoping to save their relationship. They discover Aubais (pronounced obey, as in love, honor and . . . Aubais), a picturesque medieval village in the Languedoc, where they buy a thirteenth-century stone fortress. Aubais is a Mediterranean paradise of sun, sea, and vineyards, but they soon learn the fortress’s secret history of subterranean chambers, Knights Templar, hidden treasure, Nazis, and ghosts. During her years in Aubais, Trussoni’s marriage unravels with terrifying consequences, and she comes to understand that love is never the way we imagine it to be.
In The Fortress, Ms. Trussoni lays bare the consequences of her impulsive life. Her whirlwind romance in Bulgaria and then purchasing a run-down French villa called La Commanderie. Her husband confounds her with lies and he manipulates Ms. Trussoni into doubting her own sanity. But she hangs on to her rose-colored perception of their love. She refuses to give up, continuing to try and help the often cruel and increasingly psychotic Nikolai — trying to fix what is, in reality, a collapsing marriage.
The writing is starkly beautiful and Ms. Trussoni strikes a wonderful balance between both the dark and the beautiful sides of their love, their messy and often glamorous life, and what was versus what is.
We were both extraordinary and wrecked, naive and experienced, brilliant and stupid, our exceptional parts snapping together as seamlessly as the damaged ones.
And this heartbreaking passage when Ms. Trussoni’s mother unearths her hope chest and explains, this was what most young girls born in the 40’s or 50’s did to prepare and dream about their future marriage.
It wasn’t until later that I understood that I did in fact have a hope chest of my own. Not of wood, not locked up and hidden under a stack of quilts, but a hope chest nonetheless, one filled with dreams about my life. I believed in romance and destiny. I believed in love at first sight. I believed that when I found the right person, time would stop and we would be suspended in a state of endless passion. There was no place in my hope chest for disappointment or failure. There was no place for imperfection or broken promises or compromise. And while my hope chest ideas might have had all the trappings of a good romance, they didn’t have the capacity to hold real love.
I gobbled this book, reading it in great gulps — perhaps everything could work out, maybe some sort of redemption for them both. But The Fortress is a stingily true tale of life — real, messy and rough around the edges. Finally, there are legal battles, children’s welfare at stake, anger, tears and a resolution (of sorts).
Rest assured, despite everything, Ms. Trussoni makes it through. And in the end, this is a love story. You’ll have to read The Fortress yourself to discover the happy ending.
An advanced readers copy was provided by Dey Street Books, an imprint of William Morrow.
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100 Years Overdue
Excerpted from the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mr. Webb Johnson returned a San Francisco library book 100 years late. There was no fine.
“Whew,” Johnson said.
The book, a collection of short stories published in 1909, had been checked out by his great-grandmother Phoebe Webb in 1917 from the old San Francisco Fillmore branch which, like his great-grandmother, is no longer around.
Head San Francisco Librarian Luis Herrera welcomed the book back and said the library was very glad to get it, finally. At the 2017 rate of 10 cents a day, the overdue fine would have come to $3,650. Fortunately for Johnson, fines on overdue books are now capped at $5. And under the library’s current amnesty program for overdue books, there’s no fine at all.
The amnesty program has gotten 2,000 overdue books back onto library shelves since it began Jan. 3. About 1,400 delinquent borrowers have had their library privileges restored. An additional 54,000 patrons with accumulated fines of $10 or more are still walking around with suspended library cards. Under the amnesty program, they have until Feb. 14 to turn in their books with no penalty.
Amnesty programs — which San Francisco also offered in 2009, 2004 and 1998 — are somewhat controversial in the generally noncontroversial world of libraries. Some say that when libraries are known to forgive and forget every few years, it offers little incentive to return overdue books at other times. But Herrera said it was all about getting books back in the library where they belong, not about collecting a dime or two or 36,500.
Johnson said a check of family history showed that his great-grandma had died one week before the book was due. The timing suggests that Webb may have had more pressing business to attend to at the time than returning the book, he said.
The amnesty came in handy because Johnson said he had discovered the overdue book in 1996 and had hung onto it ever since. That means “Forty Minutes Late” has been unintentionally late for 79 years and deliberately late for 21 years.
“We figured it was ours now,” Johnson said. “I’m guilty. I know it. Guilty, guilty, guilty.”
The book is by F. Hopkinson Smith, an author, artist and engineer who designed the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The first story in Smith’s collection is about a cranky man who nearly misses a speaking engagement because of a late train. The author, in the story, suggests there are worst sins than being late, such as being cranky — a notion that Johnson says he fully endorses.
Conscience, along with the amnesty program, persuaded him to bring the book back. Another reason he brought it back is his cousin Judy Wells wanted to check it out.
She showed up at the Park Branch Library along with Johnson. After Johnson handed the overdue book back to the library, Wells stepped up to the circulation desk and applied for a library card. She figured she could go right home with “Forty Minutes Late” again, for three weeks or 100 years, whichever comes first.
But Herrera, perhaps reluctant to entrust the volume to the extended Webb-Wells-Johnson family for another century, said “Forty Minutes Late” would be temporarily unavailable until it could be properly re-cataloged and evaluated by library historians.
“I can wait,” Wells said.
Written by Steve Rubenstein of the San Francisco Chronicle.
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The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty by Vendela Vida
It’s every travelers nightmare ~~ jet lagged, tired, disorientated, and at your most vulnerable ~~ you’re robbed. This is exactly what happens to a nameless American woman in the unconventional novel, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty.
While checking into her disappointing hotel in Casablanca, her backpack, holding her wallet, passport, computer, and all her money, is stolen while her back is turned.
(Let me stop here to say I heard Vendela Vida –don’t you love her name?–interviewed on Fresh Air — the author got the idea for this novel after her own experience of being robbed in a foreign country.)
The police investigating the theft are blatantly incompetent, perhaps in on the theft, and in the end return a backpack, but it’s not hers. It contains another woman’s wallet, money, passport, and (still working) credit cards.
While she is understandably panicked by the crime, she realizes she is also strangely free to become anyone she wants to be. Our nameless narrator takes the backpack and assumes the new identity.
Little by little, during this slim little novel, we are given her backstory An ugly divorce and a betrayal by her twin, allows us to understand why she escaped to Morocco and her need to create new personas.
The novel is written in second person singular (i.e.: you)
“You know who you are; other people do not need to.”
This voice is actually more intimate than the first person singular, as if we are co-inhabiting each new identity. She is recruited to play a famous actress’s stand-in for a film being filmed in Casablanca, she substitutes for the actress on a dreaded date with an older gentlemen, and even meets Patti Smith.
Ms. Vida describes the details of our narrator’s experiences through all the senses — we feel the heat, smell the traffic exhaust, but most impressive are the scene descriptions — almost as if they were stage sets:
“…(you) enter an enormous lobby. Its sofas are mocha colored and deep and plush. The kind of sofas that are easy to relax into, and difficult to rise from. White orchids are staged artfully throughout the lobby and Lauryn Hill must pulses softly through the speakers. Everyone is dressed as though going to a business meeting in London or an upscale lunch in New York. No one is dressed as though they are in Morocco…”
Smart and witty, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, explores the possibility of freeing ourselves from the shackles of our identity. How easily appearances, and identities, can be changed. What happens when we choose to become a creation of our own making? When we are able to fully escape our past history?
This is not a travel novel, but rather a reflection on reinvention, lying, and an endless world of possibilities. Shedding her painful past, our narrator restyles herself through several new personas, and finds a surrealistic new freedom on her journey.
The title, by the way, is from a Rumi poem, of the same name which ends,
“Your hidden self is blood in those, those veins that are lute strings that make ocean music, not the sad edge of surf, but the sound of no shore.”
Similarly, Ms. Vida leaves the ending open to the endless possibilities of having “no shore” ~~ as our character assumes yet another identity, but this time, with a hint of future happiness.
An appropriate ending for such a wonderfully unconventional and affecting story.
Vendela Vida, a San Francisco resident, is the co-founder of the literary magazine The Believer. Her husband, Dave Eggers, founded the literary journal McSweeney’s and the wonderful San Francisco literacy project 826 Valencia.
An advanced readers copy was provided by Harper Collins Publishers back in 2015.
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A special day
Among those whom I like or admire,
I can find no common denominator,
but among those whom I love, I can:
all of them make me laugh.
W.H. Auden
Celebrating thirty-eight years of love, friendship, and especially ~~~ laughter.
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Bedelia by Vera Caspary
My January book sortingclean out, uncovered this gem, which from the scribbled pencil mark inside the front cover, I picked up for a dollar somewhere.It was stacked behind some other books (oh, you don’t that too?) and was a tad dusty. So, I’ve had it for awhile. My hardback edition was published in 1945 and doesn’t look at all like the pretty cover to the left. My copy (lousy photo below) shows much wear and tear — and even sports a broken spine. It has been well read and most of its previous readers spilled food and drink upon its pages.
This poor volume almost went into the donation bag but, at the last minute, I rescued it to browse later. I had to see why it appealed to me in the first place…
While I was still in recovery from my recent malady, I picked up Bedelia, crawled under the duvet and read it practically cover to cover. This Goodreads blurb perfectly captures the appeal of this 1940 suspense novel:
Long before Desperate Housewives, there was Bedelia: pretty, ultra femme, and “adoring as a kitten.” A perfect housekeeper and lover, she wants nothing more than to please her insecure new husband, who can’t believe his luck. But is Bedelia too good to be true? A mysterious new neighbor turns out to be a detective on the trail of a “kitten with claws of steel”-a picture-perfect wife with a string of dead husbands in her wake.
Caspary builds this tale to a peak of psychological suspense as her characters are trapped together by a blizzard. The true Bedelia, the woman who chose murder over a life on the street, reveals how she turns male fantasies of superiority into a deadly con.
The story is simple but compelling. Architect, Charlie Horst falls for the beautiful widow Bedelia while on vacation. He quickly marries her and brings her back to his lovely home in Connecticut. He’s besotted (don’t you love that word?) with her, and as they entertain neighbors and friends – everyone else is entranced with Bedelia too. There is one sole exception to Bedelia’s charms — Ben the artist and temporary renter next door. Why is he so skeptical and interested in Bedelia’s past? (Cue suspenseful music…)
Bedelia is the perfect wife: She’s charming, bouncy, dresses to please her husband, she’s the perfect hostess. Other women are jealous – but even they can’t hate Bedelia. She’s too … well, perfect. But, something is surely awry. Then, her past starts surfacing…but that’s all I say. I don’t want to give away any more of the story.
Even though the story is set in 1913 (but written in the 40’s), Ms. Caspary casts the other female characters as career women who discuss men’s lack of respect for working women. They go on and lament that most men would prefer a submissive woman — just like Bedelia. I relished that the weaker woman is the one to be afraid of.
A modern reprint of Bedelia can be found via The Feminist Press through their series called Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp.
There was also a 1946 film adaption called Bedelia and starring Margaret Lockwood. Although they changed the setting to rural England.
Ms. Caspary also wrote Laura which was a major film success.
Much of the story is set during a blizzard – making it a great choice to read in a warm bed during a stormy day. Bedelia was fun, suspenseful, and certainly creepy.
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Reading in Bed by Sue Gee
I will spare you the details, but I’ve been unwell. The upside was permission to remain pajama clad and read in bed (in between some epic catatonic naps).But what to read? I knew I wasn’t up for any Booker prize titles, and reading my Kindle gave me a headache. Then I remembered I had the perfect book for this predicament – Reading in Bed by Sue Gee.
After unearthing it from my shelves and with dutiful tea service provided by Husband, I snuggled in.
One of my favorite British book bloggers Cornflower Books has long recommended anything by Sue Gee. She had me with this statement:
All (her) books are of quality and integrity – they are not showy, not gimmicky, they are perfect examples, I think, of what it means for a writer to be artist and craftsman in equal measure. (The image above is from her blog post.)
The book opens with long time friends Dido and Georgia as they depart the infamous Hay-on Wye book festival (on my bucket list), and as they make their separate ways home their thoughts and frailties emerge and, in this way, Ms. Gee introduces her readers to her central characters.
Two upper middle class Oxford couples, share not only a life-long friendship but also a mutual appreciation of art, classical music, architecture, summer holidays together, – and especially literature:
“Dido and Jeffrey, Georgia and Henry… had reading at the heart of everything, touching and defining everything, a ceaseless inner life so rich it’s hard to say where life and literature begin and end.”
Then death took one half of a partnership. Georgia, widowed a year, is alone with daughter Chloe nearby. Dido, comfortably secure and settled, secretly revels in her seemingly perfect life and husband:
(Her new book) “Justin Cartwright, The Promise of Happiness, just what she needs. She slips off her dressing gown, pulls back the covers. She’s tucked up, her specs on her nose, the pillows just right. She settles into chapter one, is turning page six by the time Jeffrey joins her, fresh from a shower. ‘Hello, my darling.’ ‘Hi’, Jeffrey reaches for his own books, put on his specs. They settle down. Dido is restored. What sweet companionship is this, to read, to sleep, to lie night after night against the man you love – still love after all these years. Poor Georgia.”
I’ll admit Reading in Bed is formulaic, it doesn’t demand much from a reader, but the characters are multi-faceted, intelligent, well developed and flawed — and I cared desperately for each of them. There’s narrow expectations for their children, resulting in the inevitable problems, an eccentric cousin who is loosing her mind, infidelity, illness, and building new beginnings — in other words Ms. Gee has beautifully rendered a well-lived, and loved, set of lives filled with problems, sorrows and joy.
Because I’m an admitted Anglophile, what I (and probably only I) enjoyed most about this British book, was just that — its wonderful, unapologetic, not trying to be anything else — British-ness. The book captures drinking tea in rose filled gardens, shopping in the village, and posh N1 London drinks by a fireplace. There are references to BBC4 shows (the Archers), the Brits keen walking (hiking) outings, and Knickerbocker glories (ice cream sundaes).
Reading a book about women of my same age, with similar views, with my shared love of literature, and so British-ily described was just what the doctor ordered. I’m feeling much better and now I’ve got a new author to follow!
N.B. Ms. Gee’s book are published in the UK, and are only available to us Yanks in their British editions. You can order HERE.
