A National Passenger Chronicle, Vol. 4 (Book Review)

Dale Wilson  A National Passenger Chronicle, Volume 4 (2010) [Available from Nickel Belt Rails, Box 483, Station B, Sudbury ON P3E 4P6, $50 +$8 S&H] This is not a scholarly work, but serious scholarship by several hands underpins it. A collection of photographs, maps, and plans in loosely chronological order, grouped by region, it provides an overview of the state of passenger travel from the beginnings of VIA to the present day. It’s as thorough as a personal collection of materials can be, i.e., stronger in some areas than others. Wilson doesn’t attempt to analyse the whys and wherefores of the changes passenger travel, but contents himself with factual captions and the occasional personal comment. He clearly wishes that railway passenger travel in Canada were better done, but he doesn’t waste his time bemoaning sad facts. The result is a very good overview, and (oddly enough, considering) an urge to get on a train.
     For those of us who lived through that transition, and can recall the earlier regimes of passenger travel, it’s a reminder of a time in which Canadian passenger travel by rail was more or less deliberately downgraded. It hasn’t recovered. Two years ago, we took the train from Sudbury to Edmonton. Most of the travellers were tourists from overseas, who loved the scenery, but were somewhat perplexed by the low status of the passenger train in Canada.
     Photo-reproduction varies from adequate to excellent, the captions are informative, and the whole tells a story. In other words, it’s very good of its kind. Recommended to anyone who likes passenger trains, trains in general, or just a nice wallow in nostalgia. ***

Wolf to the Slaughter (Book Review)

Ruth Rendell Wolf to the Slaughter (1967) A woman disappears, her gormless artist brother has no idea where she’s gone, and several odd events suggest murder. Burden and Wexford sort it out, of course.

     As usual with Rendell, the investigation stirs up trouble for the people involved. She has a sharp eye for vice and weakness; she notes how circumstance and character lead us all into more or less devious and deviant paths. None of the characters evoke much sympathy.

     This is an early Wexford, Rendell is still discovering the character. There are no hints of most the backstory we know from the later books. The solution is a surprise, and the only unsatisfactory aspect of this novel. It fits the available evidence and facts, in that limited sense it’s plausible. It’s even inevitable, given the personality of the killer. But it somehow doesn’t ring true: the murderer seems to be invented to fit the crime. **½

Death Comes to Pemberley (Book Review)

     P. D. James Death Comes to Pemberley (2011) Austen fans will like this book, P D James fans less so. It’s obvious that James is having fun writing this book, indulging every Austen fan’s weakness and secret desire: to know as much about Elizabeth and Darcy as possible.
     James has an astute eye for character, and reminds us of the darker undertones in Pride & Prejudice, such as lingering memories of misplaced affections. Her extrapolation of Darcy and Elizabeth as a married couple is however rather thin. Darcy and Elizabeth are most of the time too good to be true: James seems to be in awe of Austen’s characters, and doesn’t deepen our understanding much. Her hints at disturbing memories could have led to a more subtle understanding of these two people, whose love has grown out of their characters. Austen is one of the first to insist that character, rather than any combination of social class, convention, or legal and financial expectations, is the basis of a sound marriage. This implies that Darcy and Elizabeth are pioneers in a new model of married happiness. Austen merely assumes happiness; James could have shown it. We don’t see much of them as parents, either; perhaps James didn’t trust herself to this well enough, and hid behind the eighteenth century upper-class habit of banishing children to the nursery. Her reminders of the severe social constraints on Darcy and Elizabeth are salutary, however: we are too prone to assume that 21st century social norms could have been applied two hundred years ago. Still, I would have liked to see Darcy and Elizabeth discuss their doubts and fears more.
     In the secondary characters such as Col. Fitzwilliam she assumes some changes, not all for the best. Georgiana has become a mature young woman, but instead of showing us how this has changed her relationship to her brother, James tells us. The servants are uniformly loyal retainers who know their place; we see and hear no Upstairs, Downstairs bickering (or worse). Wickham has seduced one of the servants, which provides an intersecting plot, the solution to the puzzle, and (finally) revelation of Mrs Younge’s role in the misfortunes of Pemberley.
     The crime plot is pretty simple, and the murder puzzle, such as it is, is resolved by a death-bed confession which exonerates the accused just prior to passing sentence (which annoys the judge). Prime suspect Wickham has apparently been chastened both by the loss of his good friend Denny (the victim) and by his experience as an innocent man found guilty, and will no doubt make good in Virginia, where the prison chaplain has helped him find a place.
     In the final chapters, James ties up a lot of loose ends, many of which feel superfluous to the crime story, but which may satisfy the Austen fan’s longing for more than Austen gave us. They fulfill the desired function of filling in the details of the story of Darcy and Elizabeth. In terms of character, plot, and back story, this pastiche is successful.
     However, a successful Austen pastiche must above all capture her style, and here James fails. Too many of her words are simply not correct usage for the turn of the 19th century. Her syntax, although far more formal than most crime writers’, lacks the diamond hardness of Austen’s prose. The dialogue is serviceable, but we get very little of that ironic revelation of character at which Austen excels. The authorial asides, which in Austen are always light in tone however severe in judgment, often feel heavy-handed. What saves the novel is James' narrative gift, which keeps us turning the page even when we’re given exposition rather than story-telling.
     I enjoyed reading this book, but not as much as I expected, and less than I wanted. **-½

Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (Book Review)

     Stuart McLean Vinyl Cafe Unplugged (2000) Number six in McLean’s series of Vinyl Cafe stories. A good read. Mclean is a very studied writer-narrator, he doesn’t have that air of spontaneous reminiscence that Garrison Keillor has. But like Keillor, he has a location and a cast of characters whom we get to know better every time we hear another story. Both have a knack for starting slow and presenting a series of events and choices in what at every step seems reasonable and logical, until we arrive at a bizarre scene that defies belief. Both also give shape to what at first seems a random series of events, but which lead to a satisfying conclusion. Both make us understand the importance of the insignificant. And both are able to make us feel part of the community whose history they chronicle.
     This kind of story has a long and honourable history. Many folk tales have the same structure. Charlie Chaplin and the comic duos of early film like Laurel and Hardy use the same device, as does nearly every sit-com. It’s a very flexible form, it’s really just one thing after another. This apparent randomness gives even the most outlandish anecdote an air of reality that suspends disbelief. It also enables assembling a group of seemingly unrelated events into a thematic whole, whose shape is often not seen until the end of the story. McLean’s popularity rests on his skill in using the form, and on his ability to infuse his tales with the ordinary virtues and vices of our common humanity.
I could summarise a couple of the stories here, but I won’t. You’ll get far more pleasure out of reading them yourself. ***

Death Notes (Book Review)

     Ruth Rendell Death Notes (Put On by Cunning) (1981) An elderly man drowns in his ornamental pond, apparently by accident. His fiancée tells Wexford that he thought his long-lost daughter was a fraud. The long and tangled and international case that flows from this is one of Wexford’s trickiest, but also curiously unengaging. It’s as if Rendell lost interest once she had figured out the plot. Wexford is still the centre of the narrative, but we know him well by now, and there are no new revelations of character. Burden, newly remarried, has mellowed, and also become capable of sharper insight. The secondary characters are nicely sketched, but that’s all they are, sketches. The villain is merely a stick figure on which to hang the crime. A pleasant read, but not Rendell’s best. **

Ronnie Barker's Book of Bathing Beauties (Book Review)

 

Ronnie Barker: Ronnie Ronnie Barker’s Book of Bathing Beauties (1974) A scrapbook of bathing beauties. Well, what did you expect? The majority date from around 1900 plus or minus a decade or two. They are oddly innocent to 21st century jaded eyes, but the themes embodied and expressed by them have no date: all women are beautiful, most men like to look at women, most women like to be looked at, and people who want to interfere with these elemental pleasures are blue meanies with neither a sense of humour nor an understanding of human nature. The date of the collection is significant: nowadays there would be a lot of fussing about objectification of women, and the book might not be published. Think of it as social documentation, a reminder that what we think of as erotic or naughty or sexy has a lot more to do with fashion than with morals. Anyhow, this is is clearly a "concept book", compiled and published to cash in on Barker's persona as a TV comedian.  If you want to know more about Barker, see his obituary at:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1499900/Ronnie-Barker.html
**

Fred has a Friend

Angus arrived some months ago. The first few weeks he had no one to talk to, which made existence rather boring. Now he and Fred observe the humans of the house reading the paper or watching television. Angus and Fred also get to listen to the radio, in fact they are standing on one of the speakers. Whether they have ears in their feet, as some arthropods do, has not been determined. They no doubt converse on the usual subjects, but since I have no idea what these might be for a penguin and an owl, I can't tell you. They never talk in my presence. I can only infer that they discuss matters of interest from subtle changes in expression. Some killjoy has opined that these changes in expression are mere tricks of the light, but I firmly disagree. Both Fred and Angus strike me as eminently intelligent beings, the kind that take great pleasure in commenting on the passing show.