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I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

Jul16

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. Recommended by Cassie at Scads of Books. Also recommended by Carrie K. at Mommy Brain.

This book also happened to be the first book in a new project: our new Family Reading Club. My sister and I together chose this book for June because both of us had been planning to read it. So far the Family Reading Club includes just me and my sis. But we’re planning to get others involved: Mom? Eldest Daughter?

I liked I Capture the Castle very much; Sis J was a bit lukewarm. The first interesting thing about the book was really about the author: Dodie Smith also wrote 101 Dalmatians, the story that was the inspiration for the Disney movie. Castle, as far as I can tell, has little or nothing in common with Dalmatians, aside from a tendency toward quirky, eccentric characters.

I guess it was the characters that “captured” me. I Capture the Castle is narrated by sevevteen year old Cassandra, who ives in somewhat genteel poverty in a drafty old castle with her older sister, her artist’s model stepmother, and her washed-up writer father. The only hope for the family to get out of poverty is for one of the girls to marry someone rich. (This is starting to sound like a Jane Austen novel, but it’s not like that at all.)

Cassandra tells the story in her journal. She’s a wonderful narrator, witty, insightful, and honest. Cassandra’s sister Rose is the pretty one, and she’s determined to do whatever it takes to get the family some money. Stepmother Topaz is a model for various famous artists, but by the time she pays her expenses in London while she’s modelling, she doesn’t bring home much income. Father James Mortmain wrote one highly praised novel, very popular in America, but after spending a couple of years in prison for a crime that was never committed, James got a bad case of writer’s block. All he does is read mystery stories and work crossword puzzles and show up for dinner expecting miraculous loaves and fishes.

Into this rather chaotic family, which also includes a Heathcliff-ish servant with a crush on Cassandra, walk two rich Americans, Neil and Simon Cotton. Rose is sure she’s going to marry one of the brothers; she doesn’t really care which one. And Cassandra is both an interested observer and a willing accomplice to Rose’s rather clumsy machinations. The book turns into a tragicomedy as Cassandra grows up and begins to realize that she has romantic feelings of her own. I really liked the ending of the book; let it suffice to say that the ending was not trite and expected.

A minor discussion in the book was of great interest to me. Cassandra considers escape from her feelings of unrequited love by burying herself in religion or in good works. She’s essentially a pagan with Christian cultural clothing, but she sees others who are happy in their churchiness or in doing good. So Cassandra thinks she could do the same and thereby achieve peace and emotional detachment. However, she decides finally that she’d rather hurt (better to have loved and lost) than take refuge in Christianity or even simple goodness. I think she has a very simplistic view of Christianity, but maybe for a seventeen year old who hasn’t been properly taught what being a Christian is all about, she’s fairly advanced in her thinking. I wanted to tell her that being a Christian doesn’t help you to avoid suffering and pain; it only gives you a framework in which to evaluate and give meaning to the suffering and emotional pain that is unavoidable in life. But of course, I had to remind myself that Cassandra is a fictional character.

Do you ever want to talk back to the characters in your books? Please tell me I’m not the only one.

The July book for our Family Book Club is The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton. You’re welcome to claim us as family and read it, too. Or not claim us and still read the book. SisJ’s already read the book; I still have to pick it up from the hold shelf at the library.

The Cure by Athol Dickson

Jul13

Thank you, Bethany House, for sending me a review copy of Athol Dickson’s most recent novel, The Cure. I continue to be impressed with the intellectual and spiritual depth of Dickson’s writing. I added River Rising by Dickson to my list of Best Fiction Ever. The Cure is a worthy successor to that novel, although River Rising remains my favorite.

What if there were a cure for alcoholism? What if you could take one dose of a certain mixture of chemicals and herbs and be cured completely of the desire for alcohol? No more cravings ever? How would such a cure change society? What would such a cure be worth in dollars?

The Cure reminds me somewhat of a John Grisham novel: lots of intrigue, South American missionaries, fugitives, criminals, homelessness, lawyers, a large pharmaceutical company, broken, imperfect people. I give that comparison as a person who has read almost all of Grisham’s novels and admired most of them. I do think both The Cure and River Rising have a spiritual and thematic depth that is lacking in Grisham’s novels. If you know someone who likes Grisham, and you want to give him a new book in that same vein, I would suggest The Cure.

I enjoyed the story very much, read it last night and this morning, and it got me thinking. What does it take to be “cured” of a sinful addiction? First, you want something that takes the desire away, but is that enough? I’ve heard that there’s such a thing as a “dry drunk”, a person who’s still enslaved to alcoholic behaviors even though he’s not drinking alcohol. Many addictions have a physical component. However, in any addiction there is also an element of sin, of idolatry, putting the addictive substance or behavior in the place of God Almighty, so one can be freed from the substance or behavior and still be enslaved or empty. That’s why AA insists in its 12 Step program that in order to become a recovering alcoholic, a person must place his trust in a Higher Power.

Some applicable Scriptures:

Matthew 12: 43-45 When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ When it arrives, it finds the house unoccupied, swept clean and put in order.Then it goes and takes with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.

Proverbs 26:11-12 As a dog returns to its vomit,
so a fool repeats his folly.
Do you see a man wise in his own eyes?
There is more hope for a fool than for him.

Romans 7:21-25 So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Anyway, it’s a great book. If you read it, come back and tell me what you think. I think I’m glad that Mr. Dickson is writing books, and I’m looking forward to reading whatever he writes next.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card

Jun27

Last year, on the the recommendation of some of my blog friends, I read Orson Scott Card’s sci-fi materpiece, Ender’s Game. Although I thought the ending was bit weak, I enjoyed the book very much. Now I’ve read my second book by Card, and it’s quite different from Ender’s Game, but also delightful.

Enchantment is a fantasy fairy tale based on the story of Sleeping Beauty, set in Russia, and reminiscent of Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. A late twentieth century American young man named Ivan goes back in time to the ninth century to the kingdom of Taina after rescuing a sleeping princess from the clutches of a ravening bear. The book is full of paganism and witchcraft mixed with, sometimes clashing with, Orthodox Christianity and Judaism. Ivan is Jewish; the princess is Christian; both lapse into scientism or superstition at times. The atmosphere of ninth century Eastern Europe is recreated in a way that feels right. Christianity has become the official religion of Taina, but for some it’s only a thin veneer over their native paganism. And when the kingdom must confront and fight true, powerful Evil in the shape of Baba Yaga, the witch, it’s necessary to call on both the old gods and the new Christ and on all the help that the twentieth century can send into the past.

If you’re interested in retellings of fairy tales or in medieval historical fiction, Enchantment is one of the best of either I’ve read. It’s an adult or young adult book with some (married) sexual descriptions and innuendos.

Some children’s fairy tale novels that I like:

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. In fact, you can hardly go wrong with any of Levine’s books for children.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

Beauty by Robin McKinley.

Briar Rose by Jane Yolen. Another Sleeping Beauty recreation set in and around the Holocaust. I know it sounds odd, but it works.

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. Loosely based on the ballad of Tam Lin.

Sarah Beth Durst’s latest fairy tale commentary: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Ms. Durst also has a fairy tale-based book, hot off the presses, that I’d like to read and make one of my favorites. It’s called Into the Wild, and I’m going to read it as soon as I get my hands on a copy. I’d also like to read some of Donna Jo Napoli’s fairy tale novels for children and young adults. She’s a good author.

If you read this genre, what are your favorite fairy tales retold or adapted to novel form?

Summer Reading List: Summer After High School

Jun3

I spent Saturday making summer reading lists for several of my children, and even for Engineer Husband. Here’s the list I made for Dancer Daughter, age 17, who’s planning a “gap year” between high school and college for this next year so that she can earn some money, take a few dual credit classes, and enjoy learning on her own schedule before she tries to fit into a college framework. She’s technically completed all the credits she needs for high school graduation, but we’ve postponed the celebration until May, 2008.

1984 by George Orwell.

A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Auken. This one is a true love story that not only tells the story of the human love of a man and a woman who were determined to have the ideal romantic relationship, but it also tells what happened when God unexpectedly entered the relationship and changed the lives and the marriage of Mr. van Auken and of his wife, Davey, forever.

Christy by Catherine Marshall. Christy is an eighteen year old innocent idealist when she goes to the mountains of Appalachia to teach school in a one-room schoolhouse. By the end of the story she’s a grown-up woman who’s experienced friendship, grief, and love.

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. We’ll be seeing Eldest Daughter in a production of this play at Winedale this summer. So I thought it might be appropriate to read it before we see it.

Cry the Beloved Country by Alan Paton. I love this book about sin and forgiveness and racial reconciliation in South Africa during the apartheid era. I’m looking forward to discussing it with Dancer Daughter.

Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. I haven’t read this book, but DD requested some fantasy and this one sounded like the kind of thing she might enjoy.

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie.

Exodus by Leon Uris. Semicolon thoughts on the novels of Leon Uris.

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale. More fantasy/fairy tale. Shannon Hale and THe Goose Girl. I’m reading the sequel to this book, Enna Burning now.

Green Mansions by W.H. Hudson. This one is a little known classic romance set in the Amazon jungles about Rima, the bird girl, and Abel the European explorer who falls in love with her.

Heidi by Johanna Spyri.

Homecoming and Dicey’s Song by Cynthia Voigt.

House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I thought Wharton’s story of Lily Bart would serve as a nice cautionary tale for a seventeen year old about misplaced priorities. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.” Ecclesiastes 7:4.

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. An excellent story about the lives of women within a closed community of nuns. Not only does the reader get to satisfy his curiosity about how nuns live in a convent, but there’s also a a great plot related to contemporary issues such as abortion, the efficacy of prayer, and the morality of absolute obedience.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding. “Folks down on the beach might have been doctors and accountants a month ago, but it’s Lord of the Flies time, now.” —-Sawyer on LOST, the TV show.

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare. Another Shakespeare at Winedale play, a rather disturbing one in my opinion.

Richard II by William Shakespeare. Yet another Shakespeare at Windale production.

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. Semicolon review here.

Tess of the D’Ubervilles by Thomas Hardy.

Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

Something by Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, or Cordelia Funke. I haven’t read these authors yet, but they come highly recommended in the fantasy genre.

I tried for a balance of fun and educational. I feel honored that Dancer Daughter asked me for the list to jump start her summer reading.

June: Death in Summer

Jun2

“The report of my death was an exaggeration.” Mark Twain, after reading his own obituary, June 2, 1897.

Miracle Max: He probably owes you money huh? I’ll ask him.
Inigo Montoya: He’s dead. He can’t talk.
Miracle Max: Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that your friend here is only MOSTLY dead. There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there’s usually only one thing you can do.
Inigo Montoya: What’s that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
—From the movie Princess Bride.

Nevertheless, death, and near-death, in summer do happen —especially in books. I thought, in honor of Mr. Twain’s exaggerated death and Westley’s almost death, I’d gather together some loose change, er —summer reading suggestions and other odds and ends, having to do with murder, mayhem, and possible death.


Windcatcher by Avi. “The moment Tony saw the boat, he knew, sure as he knew anything, what he wanted, what he needed, was a Snark.”

“Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father – an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.” Ambrose Bierce. Bierce was born in 1842, so he would have been about thirty years old when the alleged patricide occurred.

I Know What You Did Last Summer by Lois Duncan. “The note was there, lying beside her plate, when she came down to breakfast. Later, when she thought back, Julie would remember it. Small. Plain. Her name and address lettered in stark black print across the front of the envelope.”

The House on the Gulf by Margaret Peterson Haddix. “Bran was up to something. I knew it the first day he showed me the house.”


June Night
by Sarah Teasdale

Oh Earth, you are too dear to-night,
How can I sleep while all around
Floats rainy fragrance and the far
Deep voice of the ocean that talks to the ground?

Oh Earth, you gave me all I have,
I love you, I love you, — oh what have I
That I can give you in return —
Except my body after I die?

Evil Under the Sun by Agatha Christie. “And from June till September (with a short season at Easter) the Jolly Roger Hotel was usually packed to the attics. . . . There was one very important person (in his own estimation at least) staying at the Jolly Roger. Hercule Poirot, resplendent in a white duck suit, with a panama hat tilted over his eyes, his mustaches magnificently befurled, lay back in an improved type of deck chair and surveyed the bathing beach.”

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. “There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. But it was a time of vague optimism for some of the people: Maycomb County had recently been told that it had nothing to fear but fear itself. That summer, I was six years old.”

June by Amy Levy

Last June I saw your face three times;
Three times I touched your hand;
Now, as before, May month is o’er,
And June is in the land.

O many Junes shall come and go,
Flow’r-footed o’er the mead;
O many Junes for me, to whom
Is length of days decreed.

There shall be sunlight, scent of rose;
Warm mist of summer rain;
Only this change–I shall not look
Upon your face again.

The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters. “The extraordinary events of that summer of 1144 may properly be said to have begun the previous year, in a tangle of threads both ecclesiastical and secular, a net in which any number of diverse people became enmeshed . . . And among the commonality thus entrammeled, more to the point, an elderly Benedictine monk of the Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at Shrewsbury.”

Message from Malaga by Helen McInnes. ” . . . he had come a long way from the tensions and overwork of Houston, a longer way than the thousands of miles that lay between Texas and Andalusia. He hadn’t felt so happily unthinking, so blissfully irresponsible in months. He lifted his glass of Spanish brandy in Jeff Reid’s direction to give his host a silent thanks.”

An End by Christina Rossetti

Love, strong as Death, is dead.
Come, let us make his bed
Among the dying flowers:
A green turf at his head;
And a stone at his feet,
Whereon we may sit
In the quiet evening hours.
He was born in the Spring,
And died before the harvesting:
On the last warm summer day
He left us; he would not stay
For Autumn twilight cold and grey.
Sit we by his grave, and sing
He is gone away.

To few chords and sad and low
Sing we so:
Be our eyes fixed on the grass
Shadow-veiled as the years pass,
While we think of all that was
In the long ago.

Summertime + Death: any more suggestions?

Books Read May 2007

Jun1

The American Plague by Mollie Caldwell Crosby. Semicolon review here.

And Both Were Young by Madeleine L’Engle. I read this one for my Madeleine L’Engle project, but I haven’t gotten around to reviewing it.

Clementine Churchill by Mary Soames (Churchill’s daughter). I started this biography in April and still hadn’t finished it by the time it had to go back to the library. I did read a goodly part of it, though, and found it quite absorbing. Churchill was a character, and I believe God provided him to the nation of England and to the world “for such a time as this,” World War II.

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. I read this book for the Once Upon a TIme Faery Challenge, but I haven’t reviewed it either. Go here for a list of links to all the Once Upon a Time Faery Challenge reviews of fairy tale/fantasy/folk tale ralated books.

First Daughter: Extreme American Makeover by Mitali Perkins. Semicolon review here. Brown Bear Daughter review here.

Gap Creek by Robert Morgan. Recommended by Ariel at Bittersweet Life. Semicolon review here.

A Garden to Keep by Jamie Langston Turner. Semicolon review here.

Hattie Big Sky by Kirby Larson.

Hershey by Michael D’Antonio. Semicolon review here.

Home Fires Burning by Penelope J. Stokes.

Katherine by Anya Seton. Recommended by Heather at Matted Spam.

Anatomy of a Marriage

May23

Gap Creek: The Story of a Marriage by Robert Morgan.

A Garden to Keep by Jamie Langston Turner.

When seventeen year old Julie Harmon marries her handsome young gentleman caller Hank Richards, neither of them has any idea of what it takes to make a marriage work or of what it’s going to take for them to make it economically as a family. They find out the hard way. Some of their troubles are their own fault, and some are the result of fire and flood and sickness and death and hard times. All of their own character flaws and the difficulties that come from outside combine to test their marriage and their commitment to each other. Gap Creek takes place in turn-of-the-century Appalachia, so the troubles are magnified and the consolations are few and far between. And Hank and Julie are so young, hard-working and persevering, but so very young and ignorant of the world. Julie has mother-in-law problems, and Hank can’t control his temper. But they both learn. Gap Creek is an excellent “anatomy of a marriage” book.

“I could never write a book that held together. My mind doesn’t stay still in one place long enough to follow through with a line of thought. It charges over the countryside, catapults through the air, and lands in a neighboring county, crosses state lines, leaps oceans, travels abroad.”

The couple in A Garden To Keep are older, around my age. Elizabeth Landis, the wife and the narrator in the book, is about fifty years old and dealing with a severe case of empty nest syndrome. Her son, Travis, has gone away to college for his freshman year, and her husband Ken is absent a lot, too, travelling for work or playing golf or just absent in spirit while bodily present. Elizabeth has a conversion experience at the beginning of the book, probably the least developed and believable part of the story, and then she finds out that her faith and her marriage are to be tested to the limit. The book jumps back and forth between past and present, profound and mundane, in a very satisfying way, just as real people think and weave thoughts about the realities of living with thoughts about the meaning of it all.

“One of us might venture on rare occasions to say something from deep inside, or it might slop out by accident, but there was never any real follow-up discussion of it. It would just hang there in the air for a while like a vapor. Our home was full of these vapors that had wafted up into the corners and coated the walls and ceiling over the years.”

Ken and Elizabeth have communication problems, and again Elizabeth has mother-in-law problems, mostly of her own making. Elizabeth and Ken must learn to talk to each other and to listen before it’s too late to save their marriage, a thing infinitely worth saving in spite of the deep hurts and infidelities that have brought it to the breaking point.

“But remember, marriage isn’t a little three-line Japanese haiku. It’s an epic poem handed down through many generations. If you give yourself to translating poetry, you will end up with a broader knowledge of language, so if I give myself to translating my marriage, maybe I’ll end up with a deeper understanding of love.”

Of the two books, Ms. Turner’s A Garden To Keep is the better story, more thought-provoking and meaningful. However, the two books together are a course in marriage; perhaps they should be assigned reading for couples who are preparing for marriage. I think some people, anyway, might learn more from a work of fiction like one these books than from a multitude of how-to books on marriage.

Some other “anatomy of a marriage” books:

The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle. The importance of vows, the meaning of perseverance and forgiveness in marriage.

Kristin Lavransdattir by Sigrid Undset. Marriage between imperfect people, vicissitudes of of a difficult marriage between two stubborn, proud people.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy.

Other suggestions?

(Sidenote in large parentheses: My mom and I watched Walk the Line, the Johnny Cash movie, while I was in West Texas, which was sort of a marriage movie, but more of a beginning of the marriage, romance movie. I looked through my list of 107 Best Movies Ever and couldn’t find a single one that fit the “anatomy of a marriage” theme. Most of them end with the beginning of the marriage —which is to some extent when it just starts to get interesting. Camelot and Fiddler on the Roof deal somewhat with the theme of marriage and what makes or remakes a marriage, but that’s not the central theme of either movie. Can you think of any good movies that are about marriage, rather than about romance and weddings? Days of Wine and Roses? It’s really about alcoholism and its effect on a marriage. I can’t think of any. )

The Liar’s Diary by Patry Francis

May3

I actually bought this book at the bookstore and read it because I’ve been reading Ms. Francis’s blog, Simply Wait, for a long time now. I was there, virtually, when she heard that her book was going to be published. And Patry Francis is an amazing blogger. She tells good stories like this one called “The Paper Closet” or this character sketch called “Whatcha Lookin For?”

So, how could I not read her book? And how will you believe me when I say that I liked it very much? (I’m just one of those biased bloggers, you know, who can’t tell a good book from a dud.)

Still, I say it: The Liar’s Diary is a good read. It’s exciting with intriguing characters and a twisty, labyrinthine plot that I didn’t figure out until the final chapter. Who’s lying, and who’s telling the truth? Which of the characters is lying even to himself or herself?

The Liar’s Diary is about the friendship between two women and about the lies they tell. I must say that although I read the novel compulsively to get to the end and find what happened, I ended up disliking or loathing almost all the characters in the novel. Surprisingly, this antipathy didn’t ruin the story for me, maybe because I couldn’t tell what I thought about the people in the novel until the very end when I finally figured out what had happened and who was lying to whom.

The Liar’s Diary would be a good summer book to take on vacation or to the beach. It’s a fairly “clean read” with some language, sex and violence, but nothing graphic or gratuitous. If you read it, come back and tell me what you thought.

Portrait of Jennie by Robert Nathan

May2

Unlike everyone else in the known universe, I hated The Time Traveler’s Wife. I thought it was way too long, way too confusing, and way too crude and sexually and violently graphic. This book, A Portrait of Jennie, is a much gentler, shorter (125 pages) book with a plot comparable to The Time Traveler’s Wife. I liked it very much.

A Portrait of Jennie was published in 1940; it’s out of print but available used from Amazon. In the story, it’s 1938, and the narrator, a starving artist, meets a little girl named Jennie. She’s a girl from the past, and she inspires a painting that captures the interest of an art gallery owner. As the girl re-appears in the narrator’s life, a bit older each time, she continues to inspire paintings and, finally, love.

Author Robert Nathan wrote many novels, a couple of children’s books, and some collections of poetry. According to Wikipedia, he had seven wives. You wouldn’t think he’d know much about romance and long term love and commitment, but A Portrait of Jennie is poignantly romantic.

A Portrait of Jennie was made into a movie in 1948 starring Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten. Nathan also wrote The Bishop’s Wife, a novel which was also made into a movie.

Quotation Time:

“I suppose most artists go through something of the sort; sooner or later it is no longer enough for them just to live —to paint, and have enough, or nearly enough, to eat. Sooner or later God asks His question: are you for me, or against me? And the artist must have some answer, or feel his heart break for what he cannot say.”

Henderson’s Spear by Ronald Wright

Apr29

Olivia, a British Canadian filmmaker, is writing to the daughter she gave up for adoption at birth. She’s writing from the jail in Tahiti because the French authorities suspect her of spying on nuclear testing in the Pacific, perhaps even murder.

Olivia, in turn, shares her own story and the story of the ancestor of a friend of the family, Henderson, who as a young man accompanied the Prince of Wales on a trip through Polynesia and the Pacific islands. When he was a bit older Henderson had a nearly deadly encounter with some Arabs in North Africa, and he came to believe that his treatment in North Africa was somehow connected to the secrets he learned while travelling with Prince Eddy through Polynesia.

I didn’t feel as if the plot strands in this book came together well. I didn’t much care for the oh-so-liberated Olivia who was mourning, twenty or so years later, both the loss of her father and of her daughter. Henderson, the other main character in the book, was a bit of a Victorian prig, stereotypical, yet he accepted certain events that I think would have appalled any man of his time and background.

I give it about a C+.