Mothering Sunday - Graham Swift

I first heard of this book from an NPR story (you can read NPR's review here) while I was driving during my morning commute. I think the part of the review that caught my ear was "one of those deceptively spare tales . . . that punch well above their weight." I am a huge fan of short fiction and I appreciate those stories that can do more in 25 pages than some novels do in 500. Short fiction, I've come to understand, is not "easier" to write because the page requirement is less; it's actually far more difficult. A writer must do more in less time, evoke feelings and emotions in the reader that often take hundreds of pages, but do it in 20, 15, or 10. A writer that can do that should be commended. And Graham Swift is a writer that can do that. 

Mothering Sunday takes place on March 30th, 1924. A holiday in which service staff across the English countryside are given the day off to spend with their mothers. Jane Fairchild, maid to the Niven family, however, does not have a mother. Abandoned as a child, she has no family to visit on Mothering Sunday. At first she intends to spend the day with a book from the Niven library - a character trait that is teased out and expanded upon over the course of the book. 

Her plans are changed however, when she gets a call from Paul Sheringham, the only surviving son of a neighboring gentry family with whom Jane has been having an affair for some years. Paul is engaged to be married to Emma Hobday within a couple of weeks, and Jane knows this is likely to be their last tryst. 

Over the course of Mothering Sunday's sparse pages, Jane's character is lovingly teased out as we see the world through her eyes. We know only what she knows. We feel only what she feels. It's a remarkably limited, but also necessary point of view. As Jane wanders Paul's home after he has left her in his bed, we see the changing society reflected back through Jane's thoughts. The war is over - a generation of young men have been buried in France or Belgium, never to return home. And the life of those in service and those they serve, is changing (have you seen Downton Abbey?). 

The story slowly reveals Jane's future as an accomplished novelist in her own right - a path she was set upon maybe even before the events of that Mothering Sunday, but certainly a path that was clearer once the dust had cleared from the day.

At times evocative and luxurious, reading Mothering Sunday felt like a sprint and a marathon all at once.

4.5/5 Stars. 

Dead Wake - Erik Larson

Nerd alert. I love history and I love military history, but my brain always seems to jump from the American Civil War to WWII. I recently read a book about the Napoleonic Wars in Europe (you can read that review here). After reading this book, it seems that Europe was still confused about whether they were fighting the Napoleonic wars in 1915. 

Trench warfare is awful.

Anyway, a lot of the assumptions I had about the Lusitania were wrong. I thought the US went to war right after the Lusitania was sunk. Wrong. I thought the Lusitania was a US ship. Wrong. 

So amid all of these wrong facts, I somehow forgot that in May 1915, the Lusitania was filled with people. Mothers, fathers, children, babies, sons, wives, Vanderbilts! And that's all so sad and tragic. Larson really hits home with the descriptions of families trying to stay together as the ship went down. Even though the water was warmer than the Titanic sinking, the speed at which the ship sank, the 55 degree water, and the distance from shore really made surviving difficult for the passengers. 

The narration of the audio version was slightly irritating as it was a bit too over dramatic, but all in all I really liked this book and learning more about the events precipitating WWI.

4/5 Stars.

The Lake House - Kate Morton

On a recommendation from my sister - who almost never steers me wrong - I picked up The Lake House, as I was in need of a new audio book for training for this 1/2 marathon (two more weeks folks).  I was a bit astonished to see a run time of 21 hours though! To put this in perspective, my average book for running is about 10-11 hours. This meant I'd be "reading" this for about three weeks. (Actually it took me more than a month - ouch).

So I settled in for a long story. And it was long. But also good. I liked the writing, even when Morton did get a little long winded. The story is framed by Sadie Sparrow, a London detective who is on administrative leave following a press leak regarding an investigations she was assigned to looking into the disappearance of Maggie Bailey.

As a concession to her partner, Sadie goes to Cornwall to stay with her grandfather, Bertie on holiday. She can't get the Bailey case out of her mind and wonders if it has anything to do with a recent letter she received from the baby she gave up for adoption as a teenager. Layers of several mysteries that are woven together.

To distract herself from all of this, Sadie takes up a keen interest in the Lake House she discovers while running. Turns out that the family that lived there moved shortly after a tragedy in 1933. The tragedy? The disappearance of an 11 month old boy, Theo.

The story then vacillates between Sadie's story in 2003, to 1933 and before told through the eyes of Alice and Elinor Edyvane (yeah sorry, I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, I only listened to the book). It turns out Theo's disappearance hinges on the family secrets of several of the Edyvane family's individual members. The story gives away just enough to keep you guessing throughout, until the end, when it all starts to fall together and the reader has quite the jump start on Sparrow. I started to lament that she might not be a very good detective after all.

While Morton is certainly long on supposition and story-telling to the point where you don't really care to hear all the details of the moth eaten area rug that serves no purpose in plot - what she does end up giving you is very full character development. Sadie, Alice and Elinor are complete characters, with back story, motivation, failures, character flaws and all the rest. So the completion of the novel - a rounding up of both the Edyvane and Bailey cases, while maybe a bit eye-rollingly coincidental and predictable, is none-the-less very satisfying.

4/5 Stars.

The Early Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald - F. Scott Fitzgerald

I really can't say enough good things about this collection of short stories. I have been a long time fan of the Great Gatsby and I've also read a previous collection of his short stories which included the unforgettable "Diamond as Big as the Ritz."

In this collection of early stories, you can see Fitzgerald process and explore themes following and during WWI. He's writing at a time when social mores are becoming undefined and the gender norms blurred.

The first story, "Babes in the Woods" explores a loosening of sexual restrictions among teenagers. Both play a game in which they observe the required social niceties, all the while thinking of how they will break them. When they fail to achieve their desired results, both are equally disappointed.

"Sentiment - and the Use of Rouge," follows a young man home on leave from the war who finds that he does not understand what has happened to society. He finds the women too "painted" and the men too scarce. The war may have meant something to him at the front, but it has wrought further changes back home.

"The Cut-Glass Bowl" uses a woman's conceit and pride to illustrate her downfall in both beauty and superiority. Just as the "Four Fists" shows a man learning life lessons at the end of a fist.

I cannot leave out the hilarious "The Camel's Back" in which a disappointed suitor attempts to arrive at a costume party as one half of a camel.

Lastly, the collection also includes "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which I think I knew was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald but alas is nothing like the movie. It's main focus is on the things were learn as an adult, but shows them in reverse as Benjamin loses that knowledge as he becomes younger.

There's such a delicious voice of yearning, disappointment, understanding and disillusionment in so many of these stories. I can't recommend them enough.

5/5 Stars!