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The Scapegoat by Daphne DuMaurier

Wow! This one ranks right up there with Rebecca as one of Du Maurier’s best novels of intrigue and suspense, with plenty of twists, turns and unexpected revelations to keep the pages turning.

“Two men—one English, the other French—meet by chance in a province railway station and are astounded that they are so much alike that they could easily pas for each other. Over the course of a long evening, they talk and drink. It is not until he awakes the next day that John, the Englishman, realizes that he may have spoken too much. His French companion is gone, having stolen his identity. For his part, John has no choice but to take the Frenchman’s place—as master of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a large and embittered family, and keeper of too many secrets.” ~From the blurb on the back of the book.

The initial premise is a little shaky: can two people who are not twins really look so much alike that a switch will fool even their closest friends and kin? However, given that postulation, the story is incredibly insightful as John realizes that he is bound to the past decisions and mistakes of the man he is impersonating in such a way as to make him almost unable to act in any way except the way that the Comte Jean de Gue would have acted in the same situation. John struggles to become Jean—and to keep from becoming Jean. Then, John must decide whether to let himself care about Jean’s family and Jean’s community, thereby running the risk of hurting them and they him, or whether he wants to withdraw and run away from the responsibilities and possibilities that his new life has thrust upon him.

Several questions infuse the plot with significance:
To what extent am I compelled to be the person that others expect me to be?
Can people change?
Is anyone wholly evil or wholly good, or are we all some admixture of both?
To what extent does a person become what he pretends to be?
Do good intentions redeem mistaken actions that hurt others?
Does the past pre-determine the future?

I just found this review by Helen at She Reads Novels in which she says that “[t]here is also another way to interpret the story, one which goes deeper into the psychology of identity.” I must say that I think I know what she is hinting at, but I hadn’t thought of this alternate theory of what happens in the novel until I read Helen’s review. It’s an interesting thought, and it makes me want to go back and re-read the entire novel to see if it really can be read the way I’m thinking. Enigmatic enough for you?

If you like psychological suspense and the philosophical exploration of sin, history, and identity in your novels, you won’t want to to miss The Scapegoat.

The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

I have read very few authors with as much insight into the feelings and thought processes of men, women, and children as Elizabeth Goudge. The Rosemary Tree is remarkable in its treatment of characters who are all somewhat broken (as are we all), but who fall on a continuum from repentant to ineffectual to struggling to wise to completely evil. And the character who is represented as utterly irredeemable, because she doesn’t want to be forgiven or changed, might be the character you least suspect.

It all seems very true to life. (By the way that’s an awful cover, but the others I saw at Amazon weren’t any better. I don’t know why the people are wearing what looks like Elizabethan or Edwardian costumes. The story takes place in the twentieth century, after World War II.) The main characters in this little vignette of village life are:

John Wentworth, a bumbling and diffident country parson who sees himself as a weak man and a failure who can never get anything quite right.

“He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, lifted up to Almighty God the magnitude of his failure and the triviality of his task, and applied himself to the latter. The hot water warmed his cold hands and the pile of cleansed china grew satisfactorily on the draining-board. There was a pleasure in getting things clean. Small beauties slid one by one into his consciousness, quietly and unobtrusively, like growing light. The sinuous curves of Orlando the marmalade cat, washing himself on the window-sill, the comfortable sound of ash settling in the stove, a thrush singing somewhere, the scent of Daphne’s geraniums, the gold of the crocuses that were growing round the trunk of the apple tree outside the kitchen window.”

Others see him as Don Quixote, the Man of la Mancha.

Daphne Wentworth, John’s wife, is much more competent than her husband, but also full of pride and thwarted ambitions from her youth.

The couple have three children: Pat, who is like her mother, competent and intelligent and sharp, Margary, who is more like John, dreamy and vulnerable, and Winkle, who is the baby of the family, but wise with the innocence of childhood.

Harriet lives upstairs in the Wentworth parsonage, and she is wise with the wisdom of many years of experience, first as John’s nanny, then as the parsonage housekeeper, and now as a retired pray-er and watcher over the entire household.

“They all said they could not do without her. In the paradoxical nature of things if she could have believed them she would have been a much happier woman, but not the same woman whom they could not do without.”

Maria Wentworth, John’s great-aunt, lives in Belmaray Manor and keeps pigs.

Young Mary O’Hara, Irish and full of vitality, and Miss Giles, middle-aged, bitter, and full of frustrations, both teach school at the small private school that the Wentworth girls attend. Mary’s aunt, Mrs. Belling, “was a very sweet woman and had been a very beautiful one.” She is headmistress of the little school, where all three girls are quite unhappy, each in her own way.

Into this mix comes a stranger, Michael Stone, who is weighed down by many, many real failures and sins and who comes to Devonshire where the story takes place not so much for redemption as simply for a place to go, perhaps to hide from the world. Michael will find more than he’s looking for, and the other characters in this novel will change and grow as a result of Michael’s presence and the truth he brings into their lives.

Elizabeth Goudge really has written a lovely novel. Apparently, The Times criticized its “slight plot” and “sentimentally ecstatic” approach when the book was first published in 1956. I’ll admit the story is a bit short on action, but the descriptions of how and what people think and feel more than makes up for any deficiency in fictional exploits.

Sidenote/detour: While looking for more information about Elizabeth Goudge, I found this article about an Indian author, Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, who plagiarized from The Rosemary Tree in her 1993 Cranes’ Morning. In fact, aside from changing the setting to India, the names of the characters to Indian ones, and the religion to Hinduism, Ms. Aikath-Gyaltsen copied much of Goudge’s novel word-for-word. It took about a year for the plagiarism to be noticed and confirmed, and in the meantime Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen died, probably committing suicide. Sad story.

I wonder what Elizabeth Goudge, who died in 1984, would have thought about it all?

Not to end this review of and homage to Ms. Goudge’s agreeable novel on such a sad note, I’ll leave you with one more quote:

“The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her, too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a south-west gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think, and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if He liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers.”

I like the idea of God as a spendthrift, creating beauty for the sheer joy of it all whether there’s anyone there to perceive it or not. Isn’t there a poem based on that idea? Maybe Emily Dickinson?

The Homecoming of Samuel Lake by Jenny Wingfield

Ah, yes, complex, multi-layered, “faith-informed” fiction. I speeded through this book, recommended to me by the blogger at Thoughts of Joy, because I really, really loved the characters and wanted to know what would happen to each of them. So, let’s start with the characters, almost of whom could be described as “central characters” in the book:

Swan Lake, an eleven year old, rather precocious, and full of mischief.
Bienville and Noble, Swan’s older brothers.
Samuel Lake, Swan’s Methodist preacher daddy. Samuel is about to go through a crisis that will test his faith, his commitment to his life’s work , his marriage, and his sense of who he is.
Willadee Moses Lake, Swan’s mama. Willadee makes good biscuits, likes for her children to run free as much as possible, and loves Samuel Lake extravagantly.
Calla and John Moses, Willadee’s parents. Calla runs a general store out of the front of the house during the day, and John runs an all-night bar called “Never Closes” out of the back.
Toy Moses, Swan’s uncle. Toy likes hunting and fishing in the woods, and he doesn’t talk much. He lost a leg in the war, and the rumor is that he killed a man after he returned from the war.
Berniece Moses, Toy’s wife who thinks that she is in love with Samuel Lake.
Ras Ballenger, neighbor to the Moses family. Ras trains horses and terrifies his wife and children.
Blade Ballenger, Ras Ballenger’s oldest son and Swan’s new friend.

I wish I could give you a feel for this novel. That list sounds sort of prosaic and humdrum, but the book is anything but. Jenny Wingfield captured the culture of the south that I grew up in just perfectly. These are real people, and I enjoyed reading about them. Well, mostly I enjoyed. I must warn sensitive readers that there are violent deaths, more than one, in the novel, and there is a very difficult scene toward the end of the book that could trigger emotional distress in some readers.

That said, I think the violence and abuse in the novel were described in a tasteful manner while not minimizing the horror of what happens to several of the characters. I also thought Samuel Lake’s perplexities and inner confusion were handled quite well. Lake is a man with a deep faith in God, and that faith isn’t ridiculed as it could easily have been. Nor is Lake’s faith cheapened by making it facile and shallow. He has to struggle with some very difficult questions, and in the end (which some people didn’t like) the answers God gives Samuel Lake are satisfying but not really complete. It’s a realistic ending, and one one that I did like.

More reviews:
USA Today: “But it’s Wingfield’s ability to set the stage, to transport her readers back to rural Arkansas of the 1950s, that takes this novel to another level.”
Book Snob: “The Homecoming of Samuel Lake will break your heart, make you leap for joy, and bring tears to your eyes. You will fall in love with the Lake and Moses family and become a believer in miracles.”
Literary Hoarders: “There are parts of this novel that are difficult. You’ll want to holler “watch out!” at critical moments. You’ll want to hold the hurt, and will want to save the helpless. Luckily, you’ll have Swan on your side. She’s eleven years old, and you will be eternally grateful that she has no patience for injustice.”

1956: Events and Inventions

January 1, 1956. The Sudan becomes an independent republic, gaining its independence from Egypt and Britain.

January 8, 1956. Operation Auca: Five U.S. missionaries Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, Jim Elliot and Pete Fleming are killed by the Waodani of Ecuador shortly after making contact with them.

March 2, 1956. Morocco declares its independence from France.

'Frying pan' photo (c) 2009, Jean-Pierre - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/May, 1956. In France, Teflon Co. markets a non-stick frying pan, the first non-stick kitchenware.

July 26, 1956. Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, president of Egypt, seizes control of the Suez Canal. His plan is to build a dam on the Nile at Aswan with the money the canal generates. In October Anglo-French forces bomb the canal, and in November they take the canal back from the Egyptians. The United Nations sends troops to take control of the canal.

September 13, 1956. The hard disk drive is invented by an IBM team led by Reynold B. Johnson.

September 21, 1956. Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza García is assassinated. His sons, Luis Somoza and Anastasio Somoza Debayle, rule the country of Nicaragua for the next twenty-three years.

'Chess: Fischer Design / 20071003.SD850IS.0774 / SML' photo (c) 2007, See-ming Lee - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/October 17, 1956. 13-year-old Bobby Fischer beats Grand Master Donald Byrne in the NY Rosenwald chess tournament.

October 26, 1956. Rebels against the Communist government and the Soviet presence in Hungary destroy a huge bronze statue of Stalin in Budapest and face off with Soviet troops stationed in Hungary. Prime Minister Imre Nagy sympathizes with the rebels, but more Soviet troops are being sent to quell the uprising.

Back-to-school fashions in 1956-57

1956: Movies and Television

The King and I with Yul Brenner and Deborah Kerr is on my list of Ten Best Movie Musicals Ever.

The Ten Commandments also came out in 1956. Biblical epic directed by Cecil B. DeMille. I prefer Prince of Egypt, but no one should miss Charlton Moses.

The Man Who Knew Too Much, an Alfred Hitchcock film starring Doris Day and Jimmy Stewart, also opens in June, 1956. It’s a great Hitchcock thriller, and Doris Day wins an Oscar for Best Song with “Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)“.

On April 19, 1956, movie star Grace Kelly becomes Princess Grace as she marries Prince Rainier, ruler of the principality of Monaco.

On September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley makes his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He sings four songs in two sets: Don’t Be Cruel, Love Me Tender, Ready Teddy, and You Ain’t Nothing but a Hound Dog. The show is viewed by a record 60 million people which at the time was 82.6 percent of the television audience, and the largest single audience in television history. Elvis’s first movie, Love Me Tender, opens in November.

In November 1956, the film And God Created Woman (French title: Et Dieu… créa la femme), directed by Roger Vadim, husband of starring French actress Brigitte Bardot, is released in France and makes a big splash, gaining Ms. Bardot the appellation of “sex kitten.” Heavily edited to pass the censors, the movie will be released in the United States in 1957.

1956: Books and Literature

Ten North Frederick by John O’Hara wins the National Book Award.

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Juan Ramón Jiménez wins the Nobel Prize for Literature.

C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle wins the Carnegie Medal, not his best, but it was about time.

Published in 1956:
Imperial Woman by Pearl S. Buck. A fictionalized biography of Ci-xi, aka Tz’u Hsi, the Last Empress of China. I have this book on my shelves, and it’s not just fictionalized—it’s Fiction using the names and circumstances of historical characters. But it’s a good story and it does give a flavor of China in the latter 19th century.

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. I have so many favorites when it comes to C.S. Lewis, but Till We have Faces is such a wonderful re-telling of the Cupid and Psyche myth. There are so many layers to the story. I must re-read this one soon.

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. This book is the first in Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, and it’s a possible read for my North Africa Challenge this year.

The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier (also called Escape from Warsaw). I love this children’s novel set in the aftermath of World War II about refugee children from Poland who manage to be reunited with their father in Switzerland despite many obstacles.

Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie. I remember this one in which Poirot and mystery writer Ariadne Oliver arrange a murder hunt on a large estate, and the whole thing turns truly deadly. The character of Ariadne Oliver, possibility Agatha Christie’s alter-ego, adds a lot of fun to the story.

Might as Well Be Dead and Three Witnesses by Rex Stout. More Nero Wolfe. THere’s never too much Nero Wolfe, even at 300+ pounds.

Eloise by Kay Thompson. My urchins love Eloise, but I think she’s a brat, especially in the movies that are based on Thompson’s stories about this six-year old girl who lives on the top floor of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. We disagree.

Martin Gardner begins his Mathematical Games column in Scientific American magazine. Have any of you ever looked at the classic collections of math games and puzzles by Martin Gardner? Classic fun for math geeks like my Engineer Husband.

100 Movies of Summer: The Searchers (1956)

Director: John Ford
Writers: Frank Nugent from a novel by Alan LeMay
Starring: John Wayne, Jeffrey Hunter, Vera Miles, Natalie Wood

Karate Kid says: The movie was about a girl getting captured by Indians, and some guys go out and try to find her. I don’t generally like westerns, but this one was OK. I do like John Wayne; he’s an awesome actor.

Z-baby says: I fell asleep so I don’t remember much about it.

Mom says: I’m with KK: as Westerns go, it was OK. John Wayne’s character, Ethan Edwards is a Confederate soldier, returned to Texas after the Civil War, but unreconstructed and bitter. When his brother’s family is massacred by the Comanches, Edwards is consumed with revenge. He and Marty, an adopted son who escaped the massacre, spend years searching for Debbie, the little girl that the Indians captured and took with them instead of killing.

The representation of Native Americans in the movie was appalling. The Comanches in the movie were bloodthirsty, savage, and completely irredeemable. And if a person was captured by the Indians and not rescued quickly, that person also became “infected” with Indian ways and either ended a savage or a gibbering idiot. Throughout the movie Edwards is not really as interested in rescuing Debbie as much as he is out for revenge. He’s fairly sure Debbie is either dead or unsalvageable. We discussed this bigotry about Native Americans after watching the movie, but it was hard to get across the points that yes, Indian massacres did happen, but no, not all Native Americans were brutal inhuman barbarians.

Anthony Esolen says it may the best Western ever made. I must have missed something.

IMDB link to The Searchers.
Buy The Searchers on Amazon.

Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor

The front page of the copy of this Pulitzer prize-winning novel that I got from the library says that MacKinlay Kantor “planned the writing of Andersonville, his masterwork, for twenty-five years.” I can believe it. The novel is 750 pages long and almost unbelievably detailed in its treatment of the Confederate prison of war camp at Andersonville, Georgia. The style of writing is a little odd. The book is mostly made up of short story or novelette length vignettes of the experiences of different people, mostly men, in and around the prison. A few characters persist throughout the entire book–the Claffey family who own a plantation just outside the prison, another family of poor whites who live nearby. The Yankee prisoners themselves and the prison guards and Confederate officers who run the prison move through the book, making appearances, telling their own stories, but mostly they don’t survive. Sometimes we read from the perspective of one of these prisoners, and then the writing becomes almost esoteric, as the reader partakes of the stream of consciousness, muddled thoughts and actions of disease-ridden and psychologically confused, sometimes delirious, men.

What I took away from the book was a reminder that there really is evil in the world, that Auschwitz and the killing fields of Cambodia, are sadly not the only examples of men treating men like animals, and worse. Interestingly, although Kantor seems to have some sympathy for the Confederates caught on the losing end of a war that they saw as a battle for the survival of their way of life, nowhere does the book make the excuse for Andersonville that I have read before: that the Confederates themselves were malnourished and drained of resources and could not adequately feed or house thousands of Yankee prisoners. In the book, at least, there is plenty of food, just outside the prison walls, and the Claffeys and their neighbors even offer to help provide for the prisoners. But the cruelty of a few officers overrides any attempt to alleviate conditions at Andersonville. In this novel the infamous Captain Henry Wirz, commander of the prison, is a stupid, cruel German (reminding me again of Auschwitz) dictator whose wish is for all of the Yankees to die. And Wirz’s supervisor, General Winder, who is in charge of all of the Confederate prisoner of war camps, is even worse, if that is possible. The two of them make no excuses for their behavior; they are fighting their own war, against the Yankees, even those in prison. (No Geneva convention here.)

Andersonville won its Pulitzer Prize in 1956, several years after the horrors of the Holocaust of Hiter’s Germany had been revealed and somewhat assimilated, so I imagine that the echoes of those WW II atrocities are not unintended. The stories of how some of the Yankee prisoners at Andersonville kept some kind of human dignity even under the most degrading circumstances, and of how some became evil predators themselves, parallel stories of Hitler’s concentration camps and the conditions and choices made there. Andersonville is a disturbing book, but worth slogging through for the lessons and reminders it gives: evil can happen here, and good people can become enmeshed in that evil.