Anne Emery. Cecilian Vespers

     Anne Emery. Cecilian Vespers (2009) Reinhold Schellenberg, a German priest attending a course on sacred music dies of semi-decapitation. Who killed him, and why? That’s the mystery, but Emery’s real interest is the fallout from Vatican II, in which Schellenberg played a small but crucial role. To judge from the book, she’s a devout Catholic who knows her history and theology. A good deal of the talk is about sacred music, the changes in the liturgy, and the theological and spiritual effects of those changes. She doesn’t pass up opportunities for satire, generally quite mild, but she really doesn’t like the feel-good, me-focussed self-congratulatory piety expressed in much modern church music. The course leader, Brennan Burke, detests this religiosity. He’s a priest of the old school liturgically and theologically. He’s the most complex character in the book.
     The narrator, Monty Collins, is like Emery herself a lawyer, but he doesn’t ring quite true. She needs a male narrator, a woman wouldn’t have the same kind of friendship with a priest, and hence access to information about the suspects. He’s recently separated from his wife who’s borne a child with an unnamed lover. He’s remained on polite terms with his wife, and loves his children. There’s a hint he’ll take to the bastard that’s been foisted on him; maybe in a the next book.
     But the narrator hasn’t enough inner life to make him fully believable. Not that it matters, the focus is on conversation. That conversation is always interesting, revealing character as well as the facts that fit and don’t fit the narrative which will solve the puzzle. The solution is a last-minute revelation of the facts needed to explicate the hints planted earlier. I didn’t like it much, I prefer a richer mix of relevant and irrelevant details than Emery provides. Maybe Emery wrote a wider-ranging, more rambling story, but had to cut it to fit a price point.
     Emery is really far more interested in her characters, in their back stories, their past relationships, the effects of social and psychological traumas they endured, how politics leads us into choices we would rather not make. She knows that ideas have consequences. Discovering the murderer means discovering the motivations of the innocent as well as the guilty. Motivation comes from our desires, but it’s shaped and directed by our beliefs.
     A good read, but not to everyone’s taste, I think. **½

Arabesque (1996)

     Arabesque (1996) [D: Stanley Donen. Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren, Alan Badel] David Pollock, an Oxford professor of eastern studies (Peck), is roped into deciphering a mysterious Hittite inscription used as a cipher in an international game of oil diplomacy and assassination of the Prime Minister of an obscure oil-rich middle eastern country. Beshraavi, an evil business man (Badel), is behind it all. His mistress Yasmin (Loren) plays a double double-cross in an attempt to prevent the killing. Many plot tangles and spy caper cliches later, David and Yasmin end up in each other’s arms punting on the Thames. Splashy fade-out.
     Competent film making, fun to watch, typical of its era, with a huge variety of settings, a helicopter chase, well-acted bit parts, and fast enough narration to keep you interested. Peck and Loren work well together. This movie doesn’t attempt to be anything other what it is, well-made fantasy adventure romance. Above average for the genre. **½

Village of Secrets. (2014)

     Caroline Moorehead. Village of Secrets. (2014) Subtitle: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France. Not so much defying as deceiving. The people of Le-Chambon-Sur-Lignon were able to save an astonishing number of children from deportation to the death camps. A handful of pastors and other community leaders were able to lead this effort partly because of the collusion of officials outside the region, the deliberate sloppiness of the police, and because external agencies (nowadays called NGOs) could operate until the USA entered the war, but mostly because this part of France is remote and in those days was ignored as of no economic or political account, whose inhabitants were ignorant and backward. That gave them a certain anonymity; they could hide behind their stereotypes. When you are fooling people who think they are smarter than you, it pays to play up your supposed inferiority.
     Nevertheless, the risks were real. The deprivations suffered by the Jews were terrible. Their self-delusion that as citizens of France they were safe are pitiful to contemplate: when thugs are in power, legal and cultural protections are meaningless.
     This is one the few books I did not finish. After reading two-thirds of it, I decided I didn’t need any more details. The people did what they did at great risk to themselves. Not a pleasurable read: the knowledge that so many children were saved from death is offset by the knowledge that they suffered from the loss of their families, most of whom died in the gas chambers.
     The book is well-written. Moorehead is one those historians who can write a story As a record what good people can do when they follow their conscience and use their wits, a story worth reading. It’s also a semi-comforting account of how the Nazis weren’t nearly as efficient as we have come to believe. You may be able to finish the book. ***

The Ark in the Garden. (1998)

     Alberto Manguel, ed. The Ark in the Garden. (1998) A well-made little book, a collection of fables or parables about current politics, economics, values. Margaret Atwood’s, A Christmas Lorac which inverts the Scrooge story, is typical: a reminder that our present version of capitalism is dysfunctional, a polite word for an appalling reality. The major theme is the disconnect between our understanding of ecosystems and our economic values. The common notion is that we can choose between “the environment” and “the economy.” That’s like believing we can choose between eating and breathing. We’ve become insane.
     The minor theme is freedom, the freedom to be what one is without unjust constraints, whether those constraints are our obligations to others, or limits on our choices, or others’ indifference. These two themes I think are related by a more abstract one: the necessity of growing up.
     A good book. ***

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.

Star Over Bethlehem (1965)

     Agatha Christie. Star Over Bethlehem (1965) The mystery novels contain hints that Christie was a believer, especially her brief comments on guilt, innocence, and just punishment. This collection of stories and poems gives us a fuller impression of her beliefs.
      In I a Mrs Grierson knows that her dislike of people compromises her good works, done from moral conviction. She wishes that she could like the people she helps. A stranger on a water taxi wears a seamless robe. Tempted, she touches it, the touch transforms the way she sees and feels about her fellow humans. In the Cool of the Evening tells of an autistic boy who meets a stranger in his garden. With the stranger, he invents names for the odd animals that result from a nearby radioactive spill. His mother, embarrassed by him, doesn’t recognise his gift, and wishes he were normal.
     The last story, Promoted to the Highest, is a fantasy in which fourteen saints, depicted in an ancient fresco in a country church, petition to be allowed to return to Earth to continue their work. Dying for their faith wasn’t enough; they need to live it. Their request is granted. The recipients of their miraculous powers are rather disreputable. Christie shows her suspicion of mere respectability here as much as in her mysteries.
     I think this slight book should be more widely known. Christie strings clues and misinterpretations together just as she does in her mysteries. The stories  achieve their purposes. They’re parables, relying on outline of plot and character in order to prompt the us to think about puzzles that are difficult to pose any other way, and whose solution will always be provisional. Philosophers may be satisfied with abstractions. The rest of us want concrete experience. Christie delivers. These pieces remind me of C. S. Lewis. ***

So’s Your Aunt Emma (1942)

     So’s Your Aunt Emma (1942) Zasu Pitts leads a cast of B-list actors working their way through a script concocted by someone who thinks a good idea is enough. The good idea is that a respectable old maid travels to the city to see the boxer son of the man she didn’t marry, gets entangled in gangster double crosses, and of course manages to  bring everything to a successful end. Love and justice triumph, as do the wholesome values of Aunt Emma.
     But the script hobbles along, the acting is merely competent, the photography ranges from average to awful, and the narrative pace is too slow even for 1942. One of those movies that could have been much better. The title is a catch-phrase of the times. Look in Wikipedia for more details.
     Definitely a B movie, second half of a double bill.  Mildly amusing as an example of Hollywood product. **

The Peanuts Movie (2015)

     The Peanuts Movie (2015) See the IMDb information here.
     One of the charms of Schulz’s Peanuts was his line. He could put more expression into a squiggle-mouth than many artists could put into a whole canvas. He was also a great writer: it’s not easy to make a three- or four-panel strip tell a story, or imply a larger one. Unlike many strips, Peanuts had a backstory that Schulz continually developed. So although the kids lived in a timeless universe, things did happen, our knowledge of the characters deepened, and their relationships became more complex. Just how Schulz managed this with a cast of almost pure stereotypes repays careful study, but this review is not a thesis.

     When any well-loved cartoon is converted to a movie, many in the audience, including me, will watch with a critical eye. How well does the movie capture the look’n’feel, the ambience, the quirkiness of the source? The answer here is, very well. The producers decided to model the characters in 3D, but to keep their faces 2D. Their mouths and eyes and eyebrows are the expressive squiggles of Schulz’s strip. That makes the movie visually very appealing, and dialogue almost unnecessary.
     The story is simple enough, Charlie Brown falls in love with the Little Red Haired Girl that has just moved into town. But he’s too bashful to talk to her, too afraid that she will look down on his dorkiness, too much conditioned into accepting the role given him by his classmates, especially Lucy.
     There are sub-plots. We see Snoopy as the WW1 Flying Ace fighting the Red Baron, every character gets at least one scene centre-stage, kites are Charlie Brown’s nemesis, and so on. For us who grew up with Peanuts, or whose children did, the movie is a nostalgia trip. Everything ends well, there’s a preachy moment when the Little Red Haired Girl explains why she likes Charlie Brown, but otherwise the movie is a well-done riff on the perennial Peanuts themes. Recommended. ***½

Take Five by Dave Brubeck at Montreal in 2009

One of the great jazz standards is Take Five. Dave Brubeck made it his own. There are many versions available on line, but this 2009 Montreal Jazz Festival video is one of the bests. Brubeck was near the end of his life, and he just lets his crew take the tune to wherever they want to take it. Lovely sax, cello, bass, and drum solos. ****

[Pendon Museum]. Bringing the Past to Life (2015)

     [Pendon Museum]. Bringing the Past to Life (2015) The latest guide to the Pendon model railway, the brainchild and legacy of Roye England. Roye came from Australia to the UK in 1925. That was a time when even native-born Australians thought of the UK as Home, and Roye was shocked at the difference between his image of the country as a green and pleasant land and the reality of industrialisation and rapid modernisation. He resolved to preserve the England that was rapidly disappearing, and the medium he chose was a model railway.
     One may argue about whether the situation was as bad as Roye believed, but one can’t argue with the result: an amazing and beautiful recreation of the ambience of the Vale of the White Horse. Pendon not only fulfilled Roye’s vision, it inspired a higher standard of railway modelling. The people that gathered round him and helped him build the layout pioneered not only realistic modelling of  the railway and its setting but also realistic modelling of railway operations.
     The book includes a brief biography of Roye England, a history of the layout, and descriptions of its present state and operations. It’s worth reading merely as an account of one of the great model railways, but its emphasis on its function as a museum reminds us that we need to know the past in order to count the cost of the present and be wary of heedless innovation.  England was not as nice a place to live in as Roye believed. Working the farms was backbreaking, dangerous, and unhealthy: farmers had and have among the shortest life expectancies. The caste system that’s still a drag on Britain was even worse back then: the happy servant stereotype we like to watch in Downton Abbey was and is a fantasy. Even with railways as densely built as they then were, travel was expensive and time-consuming. There have been many changes since the 1920s. This museum model railway reminds us that not all change is progress.
     The text is brief but sufficient. A bonus is the Madder Valley Railway, built by John Ahearn, one of the pioneers of railway modelling. The pictures are well reproduced. A good souvenir and introduction to the Pendon. ***

Caroline Graham. A Ghost in the Machine (2004

     Caroline Graham. A Ghost in the Machine (2004) I picked up this book because I like the Midsomer Murders series featuring DCI John Barnaby. As with all book-to-TV series, the first question I ask, does it work? Yes, with the usual shifts in tone, character, and ambience. The TV Barnaby is a more complex and nicer character than Graham’s, TV’s Sergeant Troy is single, not married and a randy alley cat. Graham’s characters are more black and white, so the inevitable comeuppances and changes are more extreme, too. As for ambience, TV with its visuals has the edge. Graham uses setting primarily to sharpen her character portraits through their reactions to their surroundings.
     So what about the book itself? It’s pretty good. Graham takes a long time to set up the murders. She describes Barnaby and Troy’s investigation well enough, but the solution should not surprise an alert reader (which I prefer not to be, I like the surprise). The extreme contrasts between the good and evil characters create a strong moralistic subtext. We know that the baddies will be punished, that their immoral behaviour arises from a lack of self-awareness, and that this obliviousness will lead them into the kind of stupid actions that can be lethal.
     Several plot lines intersect. Graham handles them well, we never lose track, and the alternation of the narrative snippets creates a pleasant tension. I won’t summarise, except to say that Graham likes to tidy up the loose ends, and does so satisfactorily, albeit by using a separate chapter in which the good get some consolation or reward for their sufferings, and the bad ones are or will be punished. This wrap-up is characteristic of romances, and that’s what this book is, a romance with touches of melodrama, satire, and comic-book style narrative compression. **½

Agatha Christie. Death on the Nile

 Agatha Christie. Death on the Nile (1938) By the time she wrote this, Christie's interest had evidently shifted from mere puzzle construction towards character, and her always strong interest in romance began to trump her ruthless views on justice. Linnet Ridgeway, a very beautiful and very rich heiress, is the victim. Poirot happens to be present on the tour up the Nile because he has  has supposedly retired and is taking a holiday. (This is an early attempt by Christie to rid herself of the amusing Belgian. If he's retired, this could be his last bow.) The murder was carefully planned: Simon Doyle, the husband, and Jacqueline de Bellefort, his erstwhile fiancee, have arranged for Linnet to "take away" the man and marry him, then murder her, so that they could enjoy her lovely money. The murder depends on a double alibi, and a barely sufficient window of opportunity. Colonel Race (on the tour boat in his Secret Service capacity) and Poirot investigate, as the tour operators wish to have the affair settled before handing over the case to the Egyptian police.
    At first, Poirot is misled by the carefully staged alibi, but a couple of facts that don't fit arouse his suspicions, and he uses his usual method of looking at the facts from the opposite angle. Since he uses this method so often, and because Miss Marple does so too, I suspect this is Christie's comment on the best method for solving puzzles. Poirot also arranges for two couples to live happily ever after. The story ends with a murder suicide: Jacqueline has brought two pistols with her. Suicide as a way out becomes more common in Christie's later novels. Perhaps an unadmitted snobbishness (upper class people shouldn't be hanged), or a weakening of her pro-hanging views, or her sentimental attitude to true love (perhaps a wishful reaction to her own unsuccessful first marriage) produced this shift.
    The novel is one of Christie's masterpieces, no doubt the reason it was made into a film starring Peter Ustinov (1978). It  had a good success, but Ustinov is a bad Poirot. Despite his considerable acting skill he can't overcome the impression of general tattiness and rumpled disorder, greatly at odds with Poirot's neatness and precision. His clothes are always wrinkled – something Poirot would never permit himself, even in the humid heat of the Nile valley. The movie's simplified plot required significant changes, which IMO reduce the psychological complexity of the story. I suppose the producers couldn't afford the lengthy cast of the original story. Pity. ***