Remember Me (Weldon 1976)

 Fay Weldon. Remember Me (1976) Madeleine, Jarvis’s ex-wife, wants revenge. She’s obsesses about him and his new wife Lily, who is a self-centred horror. Their circle includes Philip, a doctor (somewhat of a cold fish) and Margot his wife, who once many years ago made love with Jarvis, on the coats stacked in the spare bedroom during a party when Madeleine was still married to him. That’s the setup. Weldon tells their interlaced stories with a mix of universal and character points of view. About halfway through the story, Madeleine dies in car crash, and her ghost hangs around making trouble. Eventually loose ends are nicely knotted, some poetic justice dishes appropriate retribution, loves are rekindled, and ghostly Madeleine rests in peace.

     IOW, this is a romance, but with sharp elbows. Weldon is very good at skewering moral failings, and acute in observing how people avoid painful but healing insights. An enjoyable read that raises questions that most of us need to ask about ourselves and our relationships.
     Recommended. ***

Perils on a Nile Cruise: Night Train to Memphis (Peters)

 

Elizabeth Peters. Night Train to Memphis (1994) Vicki Bliss (PH.D.) yields to entreaties to go undercover as an expert on Islamic Art in order to catch a thief. She thinks the thief is her occasional lover and opponent Sir John Smythe (one of his aliases). She’s wrong of course, but it takes a heap of complications, numerous villains, a psychopathic female, misunderstandings, hair’s-breadth escapes, etc, before she discovers and faces the truth, which is that she truly, truly loves him (obvious from the  beginning, so telling you that isn’t a spoiler).
     Fun, a nicely done mix of entertainment and education in Egyptian archaeology. Snappy writing, dialogue that moves the story along at a brisk pace, and of course enough soppy romance to satisfy fans of that genre. The dust cover shows an American diesel engine, not an Egyptian one. The train doesn’t actually figure except as a background means of getting a character to a crucial place and time. Above average of its type. **½

The Christmas Train ( a re-read)

David Baldacci. The Christmas Train (2002)  I re-read this book (previously reviewed) because we had watched the Hallmark Movies adaptation. The book is both better and worse than the movie. Better in its depiction of railroading (albeit with a healthy dose of AMTRAK public relations stuff tossed in), and its handling of the storm-caused entrapment of the train.
     Worse in its characterisation. Actors can fill in the gaps in a thin script, and hint at depths that in writing must be done with throwaway lines and trifling details. There is none of that here. Tom Langdon is 2D. Everyone else is 1.5D, even Eleanor Carter, his long lost and ever after pined for love. Like Dickens, Baldacci uses defining quirks to set up his characters, but unlike Dickens, he doesn’t give us the incidental details that make these characters real enough to serve the illusion.
     The writing is often indifferently general and abstract. Baldacci is one of those writers who believes that Latinate words (like “inclemency” for “storm”) elevate the style. And he is incapable of riffing on cliches to make them not only fresh but apt.
     I kept on reading mostly because I wanted to see how the movie and book compared. The movie omits a few incidents, and cranks up the sentimentality (easily done with visuals, after all). The book could have been much better with more ruthless editing. Baldacci’s story is a typical love-romance, and the tropes of the genre must be respected. But a lot of the time it reads more like a travelogue than a novel. His attempts at ironic witticism fall flat.
     The plot hinges on Tom’s understanding that his past life was a refusal to accept reality, and Eleanor’s willingness to take him back. That requires more complex and subtle dialogue than Baldacci gave himself room for. The acknowledgements suggest that the book was “project” proposed to him, perhaps by AMTRAK. It doesn’t feel like a story he felt compelled to tell.
     Schlock, barely OK as a beach or airplane read. *

Nesters vs cattle baron: Louis L’Amour. The Mountain Valley War

  

    Louis L’Amour. The Mountain Valley War (1978) Drifting gunfighter Kilkenny, alias Trent, throws in his lot with some Hatfields and other farmers who’ve claimed good land in the foothills. Local cattle baron King Bill Hale doesn’t like it. Miscellaneous gun battles and fist fights ensue. Nita, an old flame, and a couple of old vendettas complicate the plot, but of course Kilkenny wins, and settles down with Nita to raise cattle and kids. Some philosophical musings about justice and law, the futility of guns and the necessity of government, indicate that L’Amour’s was maturing out of his simplistic libertarianism. Well-done single point of view, plausible plotting. One of L’Amour’s better books.**½

Major Pettigrew, unlikely romantic hero

     Helen Simonson. Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (2010) A romance. Major Pettigrew, widower, with an obnoxious social-climbing son, notices Mrs Ali, widow, shopkeeper in Edge-combe St Mary’s. They marry, of course, after overcoming their hesitancy and social and family objections. Like any good romance, a social comedy, well-observed, with nice riffs on the usual stereotypes, but with attractive leads. Mrs Jasmin Ali has more practical common-sense, the Major must overcome his small vanities to prove worthy of her, both are reticent , unwilling to give offence or cause embarassment. They both have to accept family responsibilities. A feel-good story with Important Themes, tailor-made for the reading clubs that will study the helpful questions included at the back of the book.
     The book is above average for the genre. Unusually, it tells the story from the male lead’s point of view, which adds to its charm. As one of Jasmina’s young relatives says, “You’re a good man, for an old git.” Precisely, and the touch of fantasy is what makes romances fun reads. I liked this one. ***

Daisy Does It Again: A Mourning Wedding (re-read)

     Carola Dunn. A Mourning Wedding (2004) Daisy, wife of Chief inspector Alec Fletcher, pregnant, arrives at Haverhill, a monstrous Victorian pile inhabited by three generations of Fotheringhams. She will be assisting her friend Lucinda Fotheringham at her wedding to Gerald “Binky” Bincombe. During her first night there, Lucy’s great-aunt Eva dies of strangulation. Alec is of course summoned to take over from the locals. Another murder, Lucy’s wavering about the wedding, assorted family feuding, and an attempt  on Gerald’s life, complicate the story. Lady Eva was in the habit of keeping notes on verified gossip, which widens the field of suspects, and makes for a trawler-load of red herrings. Daisy supplies the solution that ties up all the loose ends. Lucy decides to marry Gerald after all. The requisite happy ending of a detective story thus being supplied, all ends well.
     This is Dunn’s 13th novel in the Daisy Dalrymple series, and the experience shows. It’s smoothly told, well constructed light fiction. If you like historical romance disguised as crime fiction, you will like this series. I like it well enough to snap up any that I find on the used-book shelves. Above average for the genre. **½

Early Cary Grant vehicle

 

     The Amazing Adventure (1936) [D: Alfred Zeisler. Cary Grant, Mary Brian, Peter Gawthorne] A debilitated rich young man visits doctor who tells him he's suffering from money. Takes bet that he can’t last a year on his own, earning his own living. Finds out how the other half lives, also discovers that some people are kind, and some people are crooks. Helps first employer launch his extra-special cook-stove, defeats crooks, finds true love, rewards those who were kind, and fades out on clinch with wife who like him was taking a year off to earn her own money. The movie is barely an hour long, looks and feels like it was cut from a longer version. Pity. **

Riffing the love romance

     Adriana Trigiani. Lucia, Lucia (2003) A very New York book, reminding me of east coast movies (it would make a good one, I think). Lucia Sartori, the only daughter of an immigrant family, tells her story to a young woman living in her apartment house. Lucia is a career woman: in the end, only her family matters more to her than work. One thing after another happens in her life. She’s jilted at the altar by John Talbot, a charming scumbag, there’s deaths and marriages, but all in all she’s had a good life. Her only regret: that when Altman’s Custom Tailoring Dept. closed, quality and craftsmanship ended there.
     Well written, it draws you in. I read the book alongside several others, it wasn’t a page-turner for me. Lucia is a nice person, a little too good to be true, which can be said of all the characters, even the scumbag. Well done plausible 1950s ambience, if a little too pastel coloured. The edition I read included an interview between the author and Delmarr, Lucia’s boss, and “reading questions”, which look like they were devised by a high school teacher. It’s a riff on the love romance: the heroine doesn’t marry the handsome charming boss after all. Above average for the genre. ***

The Harlequin Tea Set: More Christie short stories

 

    Agatha Christie. The Harlequin Tea Set... (1997) Except for the last two, these stories were published in various magazines and not collected until now. All except one were written in the 1920s and 30s; they cater to the taste of that time. Christie shows she can write romance, often with a touch of the supernatural, psychological studies, and of course whodunits. Christie had mastered the craft long before she became the Queen of Crime.
     The plots generally have a twist calculated to surprise the reader, such as a star actress who doubts her skills, yet uses them to trick a would-be blackmailer into leaving the country, thus proving to herself that she’s a real actress. All are written to create an ambience, a mood: a small statue of some pagan god displayed in a museum becomes the occasion of two lonely people meeting and falling in love. Poetic justice figures in most of them, as in the story where a woman marries well after losing her first love, who reappears, and then kills himself so that she will not be tempted to leave her husband. But she will now forever know that he died not realising that she had become a morally lazy lover of creature comforts who would never have left her rich husband.
   And so on. Christie fans will be happy, and the casual reader may be entertained.  Perhaps useful for anyone wondering about their ancestors' taste. * to ***

2026-06-02: Edited.

Night Train to Lisbon

     Emily Grayson. Night Train to Lisbon (2004) It’s 1936. Carson Weatherell, daughter of a well-to-do Connecticut family, meets and falls in love with Alec Breve, a Cambridge physics student also travelling on the Paris-Lisbon train. They embark on an intense affair, while the war clouds gather. Carson’s Uncle Lawrence (married to her Aunt Jane) tells Carson that Alec is a member of pro-Fascist group, the Watchmen, suspected of passing secrets to the Germans. He asks her to tell him everything she knows.
     She returns home, and tries to forget Alec, who shows up when she finally sends him a Dear John letter. Pressed, she tells him what Lawrence told her, Alec denies it, they go to London, where his foster mother tries to pull some strings, but Alec is arrested anyway. Carson goes to Cambridge to see his friends and discovers that one of them has framed Alec. So Alec is set free, they marry and live happily ever after. Oh yes, turns out that Carson is Jane’s daughter, conceived during WW1 before Jane and Lawrence married, and raised by Phillippa (Jane's sister) because her marriage was sterile.
     The story focusses on Carson’s feelings. The plot is barely enough for a medium length short story, but it isn’t the point. It’s Carson’s self-discovery and increasing self-confidence that matters. Sometimes, Grayson’s narration of Carson’s dialogues with herself sounds more like a psych lecture than a story. The inter-war years setting helps plausibility, but as with any fantasy-love Romance, the facts of the setting don’t matter much, really, and there are few errors. In the Epilogue, “Carson and Alec are married at the Old Bailey”, a hilarious error. I suppose Grayson assumed that since the Old Bailey is a court house, one may be married there. In the USA, yes, but not in the UK. The Brits talk like Americans, too.
     We see everything from Carson’s point of view. That’s the most plausible part of the book, as she is a naive and under-educated All-American girl. Her dialogues with herself are plausible, and she comes across as an intelligent and strong-willed woman. No wonder Alec falls in love with her. I read the book over about a month, in smallish chunks. I bought it because the key opening scenes are set on a train, and that was quite well done. I wouldn’t have read it otherwise. It’s above average as a Romance. **

Brooklyn (2015)

      Brooklyn (2015) [D: John Crowley. Saoirse Ronan, Emory Cohen, Domnhall Gleeson.] Eilis Lacey goes to America at the cost and urging of her sister Rose. There, she suffers from home-sickness and loneliness, then meets Tony Fiorello, a nice lad whom she marries the day before she returns to Ireland for a friend’s wedding. She almost decides to stay, but she goes back home to Brooklyn.
     The movie’s a romance with more edge than one might expect. The plot is cliche-ridden, most of the characters stereotypes, the dialogue straightforward and sometimes trite. Nevertheless, the movie works. It does so because it takes itself just seriously enough that we engage with the characters and believe Eilis as a young woman who must decide between yielding to her yearning for Ireland and her desire for her new life in America. The story’s about how the new country becomes home, and the old country a place to visit. Its mood and ambience, the willingness to look at (but not dwell on) pain and darkness, the insistence on hope, these remind me of a Maeve Binchy novel.
     Acting, photography, narrative pace are very good. Occasionally, the movie teeters on the edge of sentimentality, but its central theme, that one’s happiness has a price that other people must also pay, is one worth remembering. The music is occasionally intrusive. It’s almost two hours long, but felt shorter. A good evening’s entertainment, but probably not to everyone’s taste. **½

Maeve Binchy. A Week in Winter

 

    Maeve Binchy. A Week in Winter (2012) Chicky returns to Stoneybridge, buys Stone House from the remaining Sheedy sister, and turns it into a boutique hotel. The book tells us the stories of the first week’s guests, in typical Binchy fashion: sketches that rely on plot lines the way a sketch relies on pencil lines. There’s the juvenile delinquent that becomes a man, the fading actor who comes to accept the company of ordinary folk, the girl deceived by a psychopathic manipulator, the woman holidaying with her  future mother-in-law who hates her, the young man unwilling to succumb to the family tradition and take over the business, and so on.
     Binchy’s characters are flawed and damaged, but for the most part prevail. Life, that is their socio-economic contexts and other people, treats them capriciously and sometimes cruelly. But most of them come to some safer harbour, and that is Binchy’s main appeal. She dispenses hope. That, and her remarkably clear and economical style. She can tell more in two or three sentences than many writers can say in two or three paragraphs. I’ve become mildly hooked on her, but not to the extent that I seek out her books. **½

Katherine Hall Page. The Body in the Snowdrift (2005)

     Katherine Hall Page. The Body in the Snowdrift (2005) The part-owner of a ski resort in Vermont dies. Faith Fairchild accompanies, Tom her Episcopal priest husband,  to a birthday party there, organised by and for her father-in-law Dick Fairchild. The ski resort is owned by family friends, the Staffords. Faith finds the body when she rises early for a solitary ski. Both families are dysfunctional, but Dick Fairchild is oblivious. The resort is on the edge of financial collapse, it needs a successful season. A lot of odd incidents occur, culminating in murder. Faith subs for the chef who has mysteriously disappeared, and whose body later is spread over the slopes by the snow-making machine. Faith somehow “solves” the murder, the murderer corners her, but her nephew and the daughter of one of the resort owners save her. The murderer and his evil genius (the aging-hippie Stafford sister) are unmasked. So that’s all right.
     The book is both over- and under-written. The plot is too slight to carry the tale. Hall Page really doesn’t have much interest in how a sleuth works, she’s far more interested in naming brands and dropping literary and culinary hints that the alert reader can use to suss the cultural markers necessary to pass as one of the beautiful people.
     The dysfunctional family is far more interesting than the crimes, but Hall Page’s narration suffers from pop-psych analyses and resolutions, not to mention dialogue in which everybody talks the same way. Characters are like those 2D figures whose arms and legs move and whose faces stay stuck in a stiff grin. Even lead-character Faith is a stereotype. The ambience is barely there; the setting is described in generic terms, so that there’s little sense of place. Much of it reads like a sponsored travelogue.  In fact, the whole book reeked of product placement.
     So why is this a best selling series? Basically, it’s a romance, a genre that has developed multiple sub-genres, all of which require serious suspension of disbelief. Here, there’s the gimmick that Faith is a master chef who owns a catering business, thus is an Independent Woman, despite having a husband and two young children. Some of her recipes are included in every book: to my very amateur eye, they seem simple enough for anyone to make, and rely on well-tried combinations of flavours. Besides being a great cook, loving wife, and good mother, she’s also a sleuth; but we don’t see any sleuthing beyond Faith’s puzzlements and speculations.
     Then there’s the heavy use of brand names. Plus a  story and language that require no concentration whatever. Cliches and familiar tropes lead the reader along the well-worn paths of semi-plausible fantasy. You can read this while daydreaming about schussing down a black diamond run then canoodling in front of a fire.
     The only tension is the what-will-happen-next variety, which is enough to keep a semi-attentive reader turning the pages. I confess that sometimes I am such a reader, but even so, it took me several sessions to read this book, prompted more by a sense that I ought to finish the book before writing about it. Moderately good of its kind. More literate than most examples I’ve come across, hence a *½.

Dishonored Lady (1947)

     Dishonored Lady (1947) [D: Robert Stevenson. Hedy Lamarr, Dennis O’Keefe, John Loder] A soaper, as these movies came to be known. Lamarr plays a playgirl fashion magazine art-editor whose empty life leads to a nervous breakdown. A psychiatrist suggests complete withdrawal from the glitzy life in order to rediscover her true womanhood (although it’s not put as bluntly as that). She does so, takes up painting again, meets a young post-doc (O’Keefe) doing research on blood, does the illustrations for him, and of course they fall in love.
     A lecherous old flame (Loder) picks her up when she returns to New York to help out her successor, and takes her to his place. But before any further compromising behavior can occur, the lecher’s associate arrives, there’s a dispute about missing jewelry, and Loder is murdered. But Lamarr has already left. Of course she is wrongfully arrested and tried, which puts the kibosh on her romance with O’Keefe, but he figures out the truth and gets the bad guy. Lamarr, still feeling guilty over her hoydenish past, flees, but O’Keefe catches up to her at the airport, clinch, and fade-out to happily ever after.
     The plot is not quite as ludicrous as this summary might imply, both the writing and the acting make the characters plausible enough, and with the exception of the murderer, they are nice enough. What 70-odd years have done is change the both the psychological theory and the mores that explain and govern our lives. It’s in the light of those explicit and implicit assumptions about human nature that we read this as a thoroughly dated movie. But we’d better not feel too superior about it. In every age popular fiction rests on the world-view of the day, and the 2010s will no doubt seem just as ludicrous to our descendants as the 1940s seem to us.
     A workmanlike piece of film making, worth a look, especially if you like Lamarr.  **

Ladies of the Chorus (1948)

    Ladies of the Chorus (1948) [D: Phil Karlson. Adele Jergens, Marilyn Monroe, Rand Brooks] A mother (Jergens) and daughter (Monroe) are both members of a chorus line. A wealthy young man sees the daughter, falls in love, and offers marriage. The mother objects on grounds of class, but a weekend at the young man’s home, where his mother reveals herself as a thoroughgoing democrat and romantic, clears up all obstacles, and everything comes up roses, as they say.

    The acting is competent, the movie-making also. This is the kind of double-bill filler that Hollywood churned out by the thousands, or so it seems. Later, the movie-makers would apply the same techniques for making content for TV from sitcoms to dramas. A pleasant hour of entertainment, a cut or two above the average for this genre. **½

Alexander McCall-Smith. Trains and Lovers (2012)

     Alexander McCall-Smith. Trains and Lovers (2012) Four people share a compartment from Euston to Edinburgh. Two young men tell the stories of their loves, the older woman tells of her parent’s love, and the older man keeps silent, but we learn about his life-long chaste gay love for his boyhood friend. McCall-Smith knows how to tell stories so that we want to know more. His writing is skilful, his dialogue sounds natural, his scene-setting creates ambience the way good movie music does: we hardly notice that it’s done, still less how it’s done.
     The events of his characters’ lives are hardly unusual. It’s McCall-Smith’s ability to make the ordinariness of life significant that explains his popularity. I find his books very readable, but they are finally not quite satisfying. They are very well done stories, but they don’t demand that we reflect on our own lives, they don’t make us rethink our prejudices and insights. On they contrary, they soothe us by suggesting that our attitudes are just fine the way they are. A young man and a young woman can find a life-long love despite the social distance between them. A young woman can be deceptive and duplicitous. A man and a woman’s life together can engender something deeper than mutual respect.  Love is more than sex, it can grow and continue without sex. Do we doubt these insights? Only if we insist on cynicism, and McCall-Smith somehow disarms the impulse to sneer. That’s what makes his books something more than pleasant entertainments. **½

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011)

      The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2011) [D: John Madden. Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Maggie Smith et al] A sweet feel-good movie about some elderly Brits looking for a cheap place to live out their years and perhaps fulfill a few dreams or fantasies. They land in the Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, run by an enthusiastic but somewhat gormless lad whose mother wants him to sell the dump and marry a respectable girl. And so on. The stories intersect nicely, and everyone get more or less what they wish for and maybe even deserve. The theme is self-validation: what makes life worth living, if you can’t live with yourself? A heavy question, but dealt with lightly.
     A good script, it helps you over the humps of implausibility. Well acted by experienced pros, if you like Britcoms and British drama and movies, you’ve seen them all before. They know what they’re doing, and so does the director, who uses their strengths to woo us into that blissful state of believing the preposterous plot and recognising the wisdom in the many one-liners.
     The photography, music, and editing support the story, and don’t intrude on it. It’s based on a novel, which I suspect is summer beach reading. That’s what this movie is, too, a summer evening entertainment, pleasant, innocuous, and like all such apparently slight fluff containing depths that you don’t see until scenes pop into your present at odd moments. Well done professional entertainment. ***

The Philadelphia Story (1940)

     The Philadelphia Story (1940) [D: George Cukor. Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, James Stewart et al] Tracy Lord (Hepburn) is about to remarry, this time to George Kittredge (John Howard), a stuffy up-from-the-ranks mid-level executive. Her ex C. K Haven (Grant)  arranges for Macaulay Connor (Stewart) and Liz Imbrie (Ruth Hussy) of Spy magazine to pose as friends of Junior Lord and so get the story and the photos that will boost Spy’s circulation. The perfect mix of characters and situation for a successful rom-com, with elements of coming-of-age, social comedy, and satire of the tabloid business, which was beginning to morph into the rapacious sludge-dwellers that we love to detest.
     The movie is beautifully photographed (Joseph Ruttenberg). The editing is well done (Frank Sullivan), but the pace seems slow compared to current practice. The acting is near-perfect, a lovely mix of stereotype and playing against type. Stars have a difficult task: to provide what the audience expects without become mere cartoons. Grant, Hepburn, and Stewart deliver. The script is based on a play, which accounts for the throw-away one-liners, and the complex dialogue. This is one of the few movies that you have to listen to as well as watch.
     The character actors show why Hollywood could churn out well-crafted movies week after week: they supply the base on which the stars are built. A director who knows how to use them will make a better movie. Cukor knows how to use all his cast. The movie is usually classed as comedy of manners, but it’s more than that. Cukor is sometimes under-rated because he specialised in these movies designed for a primarily female audience. I like them, perhaps because I read a lot of women’s fiction in my mother’s magazines, so I can recognise an above average example when I see it. This is definitely above average. Recommended. ***½

Louis L’Amour. The Iron Marshal (1979)

     Louis L’Amour. The Iron Marshal (1979) Tom Shanaghy grows up in the criminal section of New York City. A rumble prompts him to flee, and he ends up in a small collection of shacks and barns in the middle of Kansas. The people living there think of it as a town, and they need a marshal, since the current one is more of a crook than a protector. Tom takes on the job despite his desire to take the first train back to east. A cattle rancher who wants to revenge himself for the murder of his brother, a gang of thieves planning to steal the cash and gold coming into town in anticipation of the cattle drive, a wife who wants to double cross them, the family of the previous marshal, and the gear and guns of the marshal that the town was expecting, are the complicating elements of a typical L’Amour plot. All’s well that ends well: the bad guys are caught and/or killed, Tom falls for the cutest girl and decides to stay. Average for L’Amour, in other words, a pretty good entertainment. **½

Louis L’Amour Passin’ Through (1985)

Louis L’Amour  Passin’ Through (1985) Passin’ Through is the narrator’s nickname. He’s a drifter who doesn’t like being shot at, and the first thing he does in Parrot City is kill Burrows, a man who challenges him. The victim’s friends decide to hang Passin’, but instead of breaking his neck they leave him to choke to death. An Indian woman and her boy whom he’d helped a scant hour before cut him down, and so save his life. He rides on and arrives at a ranch with two women. One thing leads to another, he stays on to help them, but they are not what they seem. There’s some doubt about who actually owns the ranch, Burrows’ friends want to finish their revenge, and assorted other bad guys tangle the plot. The tale ends with knots untangled and Passin’ married to the rightful owner of the ranch.
        L’Amour’s skill at making the landscape present to us is as high as ever, his plotting is complicated but clear enough, and driven by character. The first person narrator is unusual for him, and tricky to handle when you’re writing romance, which demands stereotyped heroes and villains. Passin’s sidebars about himself make the story sound like one long reminiscence, which adds to the believability of the man, who may be uneducated, but has more than his share of common sense, and a strong sense of right and wrong, a trait that makes him stay and participate in the mess despite his equally strong misgivings.
     Another well done Western romance by a master of the genre. ***