More Mini Reviews

 The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden

The five Grey kids, Joss, Cecil, Hester, Willmouse and Vicky, were each born three years apart, ranging in age from 4 to 16. They barely know their absentee botanist father, who only returns from international fieldwork once every three years. (Do you sense a pattern?) One summer, their mother decides to take them to the battlefields of France to imbibe the history of great sacrifice. Yet she ends up in hospital suffering from a dangerously infected horsefly bite. Meanwhile, the kids are left at loose ends at their hotel, Les Oeillets. A fellow guest, Mr Eliot, offers to take charge of the quintet, and Mother agrees based on first impression, without thinking to check his credentials. Hmm, our readers' suspicion antennae are set twitching. 

It's partly a coming-of-age story. The narrator, 13-year-old Cecil, is quietly disgruntled because her beautiful 16-year-old sister Joss is making such an impression on Eliot. Cecil's tweenie desire to be special is always in conflict with her desire not to stick out. She wants to be unusual, but whenever anyone suggests they already are, she feels indignant and embarrassed. 

It soon becomes clear there's a mystery concerning their friend Eliot, but the kids aren't sure they want to clear it up, since his handy charisma has worked on each of them, and they love him. 

The distinct and quirky personalities of characters gives this story its charm. Not just the Grey siblings but the hotel staff too. I love it that meticulous7-year-old Willmouse, the only boy in the family, aspires to become a fashion designer. I also like perceptive Cecil's comments. For example, 'It was odd that we, who had never seen elegance before, immediately recognised it.' And I appreciate the sensual and vivid descriptions of the French summer, including the greengage plums which are alluded to in the title. 

My main reservation is whether Godden tries to make the story too dramatic at the end by adding murder to the plot. It was really unneccesary, since there is already crime enough for a book which is more of a reflective ramble than an eventful potboiler. It seems melodramatic, doesn't really fit the tone, and is a shame, considering the character who is sacrificed. Oh, and there's also too much untranslated French. Godden takes after Charlotte Bronte here, but in the most annoying way. 

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Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild

Meg Ryan's character Kathleen Kelly from the movie 'You've Got Mail' strongly recommended this charming kids' classic from 1936. I picked up this old Puffin from a secondhand book sale for the sake of the memories. 

It's about the three adopted Fossil sisters who make a pact to make their name count, and get their start in the performing arts. Pauline is great at putting on other people's characters like garments. Little Posy is clearly born for dancing. Petrova, the middle sister, would prefer to be wearing overalls and tinkering with engines but gets swept along with the family stage passion anyway. 

I enjoyed it as a sturdy, uncoordinated little girl, when it gave me aspirations to learn drama and dancing, which never amounted to anything. I found it an okay read when I revisited it recently. Alas, I'd forgotten about poor Winifred, the most talented student in the school of performing arts. But she misses out on the best roles even though she aces auditions because she lacks Pauline's classical beauty. Winifred has a 'clever, interesting looking face' and straight, mousy brown hair, but this never quite cuts it. 

Noel Streatfeild doesn't shy away from life's injustices. She reveals a shallow and demanding industry that requires a performer's heart and soul. Somehow, this actually comes through without losing any of the vintage charm of the story. But it sure doesn't make me inclined to track down the rest of the 'Shoes' series, and I was surprised to discover there are 11 spin-offs. Some people must've loved them. Based on this first, which is said to be the very best, I wasn't one of them. 

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Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

I'm assuming it's general knowledge that Mary Westmacott was the pseudonym Agatha Christie used when she wanted to try her hand at a different genre than mystery. This is said to be Dame Agatha's personal favourite Westmacott title. When I read that on the Christie website, I got hold of the e-version offered by my state library. 

Christie/Westmacott was eager to delve into the confronting question of whether we tend to view ourselves with far more affection and lenience than we really deserve. What if others see our true colours, and regard us as huge hassles in their lives? What if, in our comfy habit of thinking well of ourselves, we're clueless about what's really going on?

She explores the theme through Joan Scudamore, a self-satisfied, middle-aged wife and mother. Joan's husband, Rodney, is a successful lawyer and their three adult children were all smart kids with nice manners which she took credit for. So Joan is stranded in transit for a short time between London and Baghdad, where she'd been helping her daughter, Barbara, through a brief illness. At first Joan is thankful for the opportunity to simply rest for a few days, but the stillness of the desert railway siding hotel starts playing havoc with her nerves. 

As memories and nostalgia filter through her mind, Joan begins to wonder whether she's a busy-body, control-freak and trouble-maker who others simply tolerate and secretly blame for stamping the passion out of their lives. Once the train gets moving she's thankful to escape her morbid imagination and resume life as normal.

But were her misgivings really imaginary? Cue the eerie music! Something like reverse gaslighting is taking place. Rather than telling her clearly and honestly when she oversteps the mark hundreds of times, Joan's family members find it easier to let her drift on in her oblivious domestic paradise. Since they're colluding in a collective copout, perhaps it's partly their own fault that she makes them feel wretched. I have little respect for Rodney, Tony, Averil and Barbara for quietly resenting Joan behind her back all those years to avoid some short term discomfort. Having said that, they probably know her well enough to sense that honesty would be ineffective. Yet they never once put it to the test within these pages. This is not a pleasant read but quite an interesting one. 

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'A Tangled Web' by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Over the years sixty members of the Dark family and sixty Penhallows have married one another—but not without their share of fighting and feuding. Now Aunt Becky, the eccentric old matriarch of the clan, has bequeathed her prized possession: a legendary heirloom jug. But the name of the jug's new owner will not be revealed for one year.

In the next twelve months beautiful Gay Penhallow's handsome fiancé Noel Gibson leaves her for sly and seductive Nan Penhallow; reckless Peter Penhallow and lovely Donna Dark, who have hated each other since childhood, are inexplicably brought together by the jug; Hugh and Joscelyn Dark, separated on their wedding night ten years ago for reasons never revealed, find a second chance—all watched over by the mysterious Moon Man, who has the gift of second sight. Then comes the night when Aunt Becky's wishes will be revealed...and the family is in for the biggest surprise of all.

MY THOUGHTS:

Plain-spoken Aunt Becky Dark, aged 85, knows she's soon to die, and that all her relatives long to inherit her valuable antique jug - a Georgian monstrosity covered with mawkish pictures and poetry. She holds a clan gathering, ostensibly to reveal who will inherit it, but in reality to taunt her extended family and rouse their spite and envy against each other. 

Several subplots are brewing among the guests in her parlour, which somehow manage to sort themselves out in the aftermath of the party. To mention just a few, Hugh and Joscelyn Dark were married years ago, but she ran out on him on their wedding night and nobody knows why. Peter Penhallow and Donna Dark, who always hated the idea of each other, experience an odd attraction when they're finally face to face. Young Gaye Penhallow is brimming over with passion for her playboy boyfriend Noel, oblivious that trusty family doctor Roger is also quietly in love with her. And Big and Little Sam, who have lived amicably together for decades, have a major falling-out over a prize statue that gets delivered to their door.

Montgomery is one of my favourite authors, yet sometimes she misses the mark for me. I get the feeling we're meant to admire Aunt Becky as a canny straight-shooter, but I just find her a spiteful old trouble-maker. Putting pompous people in their place with a few well aimed home truths is one thing, yet she kept having vicious digs at hapless relatives for no other reason than total public humiliation. Nobody deserves the sort of demeaning treatment she puts them through. Perhaps it serves them right, in a way, for not staying home and indirectly telling her, 'You know what you can do with your tacky jug!' 

At this stage, 1931, Maud had been writing long enough to recycle several of her favourite conventions and passages. She really had a thing about large eyes being beautiful. In her world, nobody with small or puffy eyes could ever be regarded as desirable or romantic. Little Brian Dark's plight has strong echoes of Hilary Gordon's, Nan Penhallow is a similar style smug cousin to Valancy's cousin Olive and Jane's cousin Phyllis. And Penny Dark's cats have the same names as Andrew and Jane Stuart's; First and Second Peter. Talking about cats, they tend to come to sad ends in Montgomery's fiction, and poor little Cricket is no exception. Finally, Gaye thinks, 'If I were dead and Noel came and looked at me, I would live again,' which is the exact same line Ilse Burnley uses about Perry Miller at the end of Emily's Quest.   

The back cover blurb of my edition says, 'What happened at the party, and what happened because of it is described by L.M. Montgomery at her humourous best.' Nope, I beg to differ. So many of the scenarios were pathetic rather than funny. Joscelyn wasted such a slab of her life over reactive silliness! Aunt Becky's wit erred on the side of cruelty. Peter and Donna were a tad melodramatic. Gaye's situation was predictable from the get-go. The antics of the two Sams were slapstick in a crass way. And the final paragraph, delivered as a remark by Big Sam, is surely a contender for most tasteless ending of a classic novel. I liked Aunt Becky's obituary which she wrote for herself, that shocked her clan, but that's about it. 

I tend to wonder if Montgomery really had her heart in this project. It feels as if she was just going through the motions, stitching together a patchwork story by recycling work she'd written before.  

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'Pollyanna's Jewels' by Harriet Lummis Smith

MY THOUGHTS: 

The setting for this domestic action is Elsinore Terrace, a friendly street in 1920s suburban Boston where neighbours mingle. Jimmy and Pollyanna settle down in a house there with their growing family. They have Junior, who was born at the end of Pollyanna of the Orange Blossoms; Judy, a beautiful child with the black curls her mother always dreamed of; and the sunny baby whose name is never divulged in this book. (It's Ruth, as we find out in later books.) And Nancy lives with them as their only household servant. She considers them her closest thing to family, now that her husband, Timothy, has passed away. I figure he can't have been very old. I guess he died of fatal plot device, same as Dr Chilton. 

There is a small outsider named Philip who lives with his parents in an unvisited house. They each left their former spouses and since he is the offspring of adultery, nobody is allowed to play with him. Pollyanna and Jimmy pity Philip but never encourage him lest they alienate their own kids in the eyes of the neighbourhood. This attitude strikes me as pretty harsh coming from Jimmy, considering his own personal history of being an outcast at Philip's age. I would've liked to see him urge his children to champion the underdog, but I guess this just proves the power of social pressure. This thread works itself out in a fairly brutal, dare I say convenient fashion.

Another neighbour is Mildred Richards, the young mother who chooses to work outside of the home for 'self expression' even though her husband can easily support her. She's a joint proprietor of a gift shop, and she and Pollyanna often lock horns over the stay-at-home-mother debate. Pollyanna makes a fair point when she remarks that drudgery exists in every line of work, including retail, but so does Mrs Richards when she says that some women feel trapped and squandered by being forced to fit the one single mold society dictates for them. (Remember, this is the 1920s.) 

I sense the author, Smith, is agenda driven, biased to Pollyanna's point of view even though the debate is still so un-clear-cut it's raging to this day. I would've preferred her to write more dispassionately rather than foisting her opinion upon readers, since there are valid points to be made for both sides. After all, since Pollyanna is quick to say she's done all the things she ever wanted to, I guess she should allow Mrs Richards the same freedom. 

Another bugbear is the Aunt Polly factor, which drove me crazy. She sells the big Harrington house in Beldingsville, accepts an invitation to live with Pollyanna and Jimmy, then tries to run the place! The narrator remarks that Polly finds it hard to come to terms with the fact that 'she's no longer captain of the craft in Pollyanna's house, but merely a passenger.' I wanted somebody (other than poor Junior) to call her an overbearing control freak to her face, but Jimmy wasn't allowed to and Pollyanna snatched the perfect opportunity to wimp out. It's a pity so many Aunt Pollys of the world are free to juggernaut their way through life, oblivious of the havoc they cause, just because others are too spineless to tell them when they've overstepped. This case is no exception. Arrgghh!  

But as always, Pollyanna and Jimmy's relationship gets a big thumbs up. They are best friends as well as spouses. Chapters often finish with Pollyanna chattering to Jimmy about what happened during the day, to which he responds with some witty wisecrack. Since he really is funny, I like it. 

(Oh, and in other family news, the huge secret at the end of Pollyanna Grows Up is accidentally revealed to Jamie, and the you know what really hits the fan. But I guess this happens around the stage when Jimmy would have been free to open his envelope anyway, even if he hadn't done it about ten years prematurely. He and Pollyanna must be nudging thirty by now. Talk about awkward though. Especially between the two guys, who have had close relationship forced upon them in the weirdest way. I guess we'd have to call them stepbrothers by marriage.) 

Skimming over this review, I feel I ought to knock off one star because of the gripes I've aired, but don't get me wrong. I still had great fun reading this book, and hope it shows. 

Next up will be Pollyanna's Debt of Honour. 

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'Sparkling Cyanide' by Agatha Christie

MY THOUGHTS:

Six months before this story starts, beautiful Rosemary Barton was celebrating her birthday with a select table of loved-ones when she dramatically collapsed and died. Cyanide was discovered in her champagne. The police verdict was suicide, since nobody had the apparent means of tampering with Rosemary's glass. What's more, a packet containing cyanide crystals was found in her handbag.

But now Rosemary's husband, George, has received two anonymous letters declaring that it was murder. He's determined to get everyone back around the same table at the hotel to set off a psychological trap and get to the bottom of it. 

The other five guests are understandably uneasy to receive their invitations. Not only is George's proposal a bit creepy, but each knows deep down that he or she had a private reason for wanting vivacious, harmless Rosemary dead. Agatha Christie introduces each person's background tale of how they could benefit from Rosemary's death. They also reveal Rosemary herself to be an empty-headed seductress with the potential to seriously irritate people, depending on their personal triggers.   

The premise that poor Rosemary invited the wrong circle of friends to her intimate birthday party is chilling. So is the fact that they are all 'nice' people. Christie suggests that maybe, given the perfect alignment of timing and hatred, every person is capable of murdering just one other person in their lives. Especially since in each case, their hatred or resentment of Rosemary is based on their own selfish agendas, for she herself was never essentially evil. 'A lovely creature with the brains of a hen,' according to her illicit lover. 

So was it Ruth Lessing, George's immaculate secretary who would go above and beyond for her employer?

Or either Stephen or Lady Alexandra Farraday; the political whiz kid who Rosemary loved and his elegant, self-contained wife?

Or Anthony Browne, the clever young man with a vague job in some armaments firm, whose past will not necessarily bear scrutiny? 

Or Iris Marle, Rosemary's younger sister who's just about to celebrate her 18th birthday, and who is next in line to inherit a family nest egg after Rosemary's death? 

George and all the others get way more than they bargain for at his awkward reunion night, and it makes the crook's slippery trail even harder to follow. The brains behind solving this crime are Colonel Race and Inspector Kemp - with surprise help from one of the guests present on both occasions. 

As always, I enjoy discovering wise Christie philosophy within the pages of her novels which isn't crime related. This time I zoomed in on this dialogue between Anthony and Iris, while they're talking about Stephen Farraday. Do you think he has a point? 

Iris: He always seems to me rather pompous and stupid.

Anthony: He's not at all stupid. He's just one of the unhappy successes.

Iris: Unhappy?

Anthony: Most successes are unhappy. That's why they are successes. They have to reassure themselves about themselves by achieving something the world will notice. 

Iris: What extraordinary ideas you have, Anthony.

Anthony: You'll find they're quite true if you only examine them. The happy people are failures because they're on such good terms with themselves that they don't give a damn. Like me. They are also usually agreeable to get on with - also like me. 

It's a great read that kept me turning the pages and guessing. It may be one of my favourite Christie mysteries thus far, and only a few niggles keep me from giving it five stars. Everyone was so quick to assume suicide at the outset, but I can't believe it would ring true to them that Rosemary would choose such a disfiguring and 'uglifying' method in front of her friends and family, rather than the seclusion of her own bedroom. Also, surely some of the others would decline George's second invitation, even though it was ostensibly for Iris's eighteenth birthday. Come on, they all had a perfect right to play the, 'It's too close to home and distressing,' card without appearing at all suspicious. I find it a stretch of credibility that not one single person played it. 

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