Merry Murder (1994)

     Cynthia Manson ed. Merry Murder (1994) Collection of mysteries set at Christmas time. Light confections for the most part, varying from elaborate shaggy dog stories to police procedurals. "On Christmas Day in the Morning" by Margery Allingham goes beyond the usual lightheartedness, and prompts a meditation on memory and love. Stories vary from ** to **** (2002)

The Night the Gods Smiled (1983)

     Eric Wright The Night the Gods Smiled (1983) Charlie Salter makes his debut in this novel. I read it many years ago, and it wears well on second reading. Sidelined because he backed the wrong man in the office political games, Charlie now has a chance to redeem himself. He does so, with the help of Henri O’Brien, and his low-key questioning, which slowly but surely excavates facts and motives. But is is his decision to join a squash club gives him the missing pieces, the motive, and the murderer. Nicely done, with a promise of interesting developments in Charlie’s character, and his relationships with his wife and co-workers. **½ (2002)

The Salterton Trilogy (1986)

Robertson Davies  The Salterton Trilogy (1986)
     Tempest Tost (1951) The Salterton little theatre company puts on The Tempest, and a number of complications in personal and social relationships ensue. Solly Bridgetower and Pearl Veronica Vambrace appear for the first time; they hardly notice each other until near the end, when Solly takes Veronica home from the ball, and her father berates her. Hector McIlwraith suffers mid-life blues, and pursues Griselda Webster, a girl with more than her fair share of common sense, but who nevertheless is briefly flattered by a cad, Lt. Roger Tasset. The love-lives sort themselves out, not without a little pain, and some of the social relationships are, er, clarified, like butter.
     This book is a social comedy much in the style of Jane Austen, and like hers, Davies’ satire is sometimes very sharp. The persona of avuncular good will slips from time to time and reveals an irritated distaste for hypocrites, moral cowards, social climbers, and pelf-hunger; in this, Davies resembles Stephen Leacock. From time to time Davies preaches, but he does it so gracefully, and makes his sermonettes such natural parts of serious or semi-serious conversation, that one hardly notices. This is Davies’ first published novel, and shows some creakiness here and there, but any writer would be happy to have made such a well-crafted work. One of my favourite books. ***½
      Leaven of Malice (1954) A mischievous fake classified ad announces that Solly Bridgetower and Pearl Veronica Vambrace are to be married on November 31st. This starts the story; the inevitable joining of Solly and Veronica ends it. In between we have a mystery (who is the mischief maker?); a parent blinded by egotism even to his own love for his daughter; two shy and sensitive people discovering they are made for each other; and a variety of social enmities, some of which end in satisfying poetic justice.
     As in Tempest Tost, Davies’ tongue is often sharp enough to cut deeply into small-town Canadian pretensions, but his focus is family tragedy or near-tragedy. Davies is a comedian, with a comedian’s cruelty (something he discourses on in the third book). So although the story veers close to tragedy, and certainly includes a great deal of pain, his characters prove themselves resilient enough to survive and even to find happiness. Another favourite book. ****
     A Mixture of Frailties (1958) Mrs Bridgetower dies, and her will enjoins her son and daughter-in-law to produce a son before they can inherit her considerable fortune. In the meantime, its income is to be devoted to the European education of a young woman in the arts. The lucky girl is Monica Gall, a singer, and the book centres on her. I get the feeling that Davies started out with the intention of telling the story of Solly and Veronica’s marriage under the blight of the dead woman’s’ malicious testament, but that Monica got away from him. In any case, he’s more interested in the education of an artist than in a blighted marriage, albeit that education causes enough trouble.
     But the social and personal relationships and their effects on the characters, which is the stuff of novels, seems not to interest Davies as much in this book as in the other two. Rereading it, I realised how much I had forgotten of the discussions of art and art education, and how much Monica’s life reads like a case history. The satire is almost perfunctory – it’s as if Davies is discovering some new aspect of comedy. He can make fun of silliness as well (and as gently or roughly) as ever, but his heart isn’t in it. I suspect he has come to a realisation about his talent here, and that’s why this book seems to be an experiment in the themes and forms he uses in his later trilogies. Although all three books tell how troublesome, and even wicked, choices may cause unintended good, it’s in this book that this theme becomes explicit. Nevertheless, because it has the requisite happy endings, it satisfies. ***½
     The Trilogy: I reread these three novels over almost two months. I’d forgotten how much happens in them, how many characters there are, how lightly Davies wears his learning, how well the plots develop, how naturally the dialogue fits into the story. As a group, these books would make a lovely TV series (it would have to be a full season in length), or a set of three longish movies. However, if such a production kept Davies’ astringent tone, it would not be very popular. Davies is very hard on Canadian pretensions, and especially on our peculiar mix of self-deprecation and vanity, and on a trait we share with the Americans: our conviction that ignorance of politesse is a virtue. (2002)

Fierce Pyjamas (2001)

     David Remnick & Henry Finder Fierce Pyjamas (2001) An anthology of New Yorker Pieces from the 1920s to 2000. There are more pieces from more recent decades; humour dates very quickly, but for that very reason a more balanced selection would have been far more interesting. A pleasant read, with the advantage that it can be done in short takes. ** to **** (2002)

The Original Hitch Hiker Radio Scripts (1985)

     Douglas Adams The Original Hitch Hiker Radio Scripts (1985) The whole lot, including bits snipped to shorten the scripts to the mandatory 29 minutes 30 seconds. I bought this book in 1986, and it promptly disappeared into Jon’s library in the spare bedroom. Marie found it recently when she was dusting the book shelves, so I finally got to read it. It was worth the wait.
     As we all know, Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect (actually an alien from a small planet near Betelgeuse) manage to hitch a ride minutes before a Vogon space constructor fleet demolishes Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The subsequent episodes detail their rescue by a ship powered by the Infinite Improbability Drive, meeting Ford’s semi-cousin Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian (an astrophysicist and the only other Earth survivor), Marvin the depressed robot, and so on. The central trope is the search for the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. Throughout, The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy informs Arthur (and us) of various background stories needed to make what sense we may of the impossible events that the five adventurers survive (but only just).
     The first six episodes were made into the TV series that introduced me and (probably) millions of other people to the Guide. Adams used the latter six when he wrote the Hitch Hiker’s trilogy of four books. The different media versions differ in detail, and occasionally in story-line, but throughout we have the picaresque quest, and Adams’ amazing ability to make deep philosophical and scientific conundrums intelligible via jokes. And it all makes the kind of absurd logical sense that only the English, it seems, are able to convey.
The book includes notes on each episode by the producer Geoffrey Perkins with interpolations by Adams. ****

Sorry, wir haben uns verfahren (2012)

     Stephan Orth & Antje Blinda Sorry, wir haben uns verfahren (2012) A collection of anecdotes about the German Federal Railway. The events range from the silly through the bizarre to the scary. One example will suffice: An elderly lady boarded the train. The conductor and fellow passengers helped her to find her seat and stow her baggage. Then she needed a place to hang her coat, and spied a lovely bright red knob. Perfect! She hung her coat on it, and promptly stopped the train. The bright red knob was the emergence brake.
     Each anecdote is signed, so presumably the events actually happened, even the ones that sound like urban legends. The title alludes to a commuter train that stopped several miles up a branch line. The train had been diverted from its planned track, and the engineer had no idea where they were. So he announced, Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have lost our way. Amusing enough. My cousin, a ferroequinologist like me,  received two of these from his family and decide the share the surplus. I’m glad he did, the book entertained me for a two or three hours. **½

Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001)

     Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten (2001) Jon gave me this book for Christmas, and I’m glad he did. Sacks tells us of his childhood and adolescence, when he was consumed by a rage for chemistry, in part stimulated by his uncles. Uncle Abe ran a factory that made light bulbs with tungsten filaments, hence the title. But the real focus is Sacks’ fascination with the elements, and his discovery of their properties. He read voraciously about the history of chemistry and chemists. He set up a lab in which he did experiments duplicating (as far as he could afford it) the discoveries of his heroes. That he didn’t destroy himself and the house was I think as much a matter of luck as of caution. Nowadays, such a course of study would not be possible, even in a well-equipped high school lab. Liability insurance has imposed safety regimes that make independent lab work by high school students almost impossible.
     Sacks, as in all the his books, comes across as a charming man with a lively curiosity, intellectual rigour, and the kind of imagination that can see the patterns that matter. This impression is strengthened by his TV interviews, which have the quality of conversations that we have the privilege of overhearing. Sacks spent some time at a horrible boarding school when he (along with thousands of other children) was evacuated from London during WW2. Reading was an escape; science, especially chemistry, promised stability and security. His large family gave him a diverse society, that loved him and his brothers unconditionally. These combined to heal the wounds inflicted by a sadistic headmaster (who, on the little evidence provided by Sacks, was a monster with demons of his own).
     I enjoyed this book enormously. The writing is graceful, intimate, intelligent, witty, wry, and above all vulnerable. One gets the impression that this is the authentic Oliver Sacks, a man one feels privileged to know in person. ****
     Update 26 March, 2013: My son Jon died on 19 March. He was 48 years old, but to me he was still the boy with whom I had conversations on our walk to school, about history and anything else that caught his interest.  I don't know how much of what I think I know of history I learned from him, but by now it's most of it. His choice of books for gifts was always thoughtful; he had little money to spend, and must have searched yard sales and library books ales all year long. He liked yard sales, actually, he was a great searcher-out of treasures that others didn't value. I shall miss him. Grief seizes me without warning. Obituary via etouch.ca or legacy.com.