Daniel Deronda was George Eliot’s final and most ambitious novel – even more ambitious than her most famous work, Middlemarch.  Like Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda follows two main characters on parallel paths that occasionally join up.  But while in Middlemarch Dorothea Brooke and Dr. Tertius Lydgate rarely encounter one another until the end – they are in different social spheres, with Lydgate being a fairly prosperous but still middle class country doctor, and Dorothea an heiress and member of the local gentry – the two focal points of Daniel Deronda, the titular Deronda and local beauty Gwendolen Harleth, are thrown into one another’s company regularly even as they follow their separate paths.

The novel opens with a memorable scene: Gwendolen, a tall, striking and classic beauty, is at the roulette table, winning spectacularly – until she feels the disapproving eyes of a stranger upon her, and begins to lose spectacularly.  At a ball later that night, she asks about the stranger and is told that his name is Daniel Deronda.  Gwendolen is fascinated by the handsome and enigmatic Deronda, but before she is able to finagle an introduction she receives word that her family has lost all their fortune (whoops) and she must return to England immediately.  She quickly pawns a necklace to get money for the journey, but is surprised to find the necklace promptly restored to her; someone has freed it from the pawn shop and sent it back to her anonymously.  With no actual evidence of her benefactor’s identity, Gwendolen suspects Deronda.

The reader is then, somewhat confusingly, whisked back in time to the previous year, when Gwendolen, her mother, and her four half sisters arrive at Offendene, a country house of middling size that is to be their new home (as it is close to the recently widowed mother’s sister and brother-in-law, who is obviously a rector, #someonegottadoit).  Gwendolen quickly captivates the community and, in particular, attracts the attention of her cousin Rex Gascoigne, as well as Henleigh Grandcourt, cousin and heir to the local baronet, Sir Hugo Mallinger.  Gwendolen isn’t especially interested in marriage, and she quickly throws cold water on Rex’s suit, but Grandcourt, with more to offer, is a more enticing prospect, to the degree that it promised freedom from the social constraints of singledom.

Of course marriage was social promotion; she could not look forward to a single life; but promotions have sometimes to be taken with bitter herbs–a peerage will not quite do instead of leadership to the man who meant to lead; and this delicate-limbed sylph of twenty meant to lead.  For such passions dwell in feminine breasts also.  In Gwendolen’s, however, they dwelt among strictly feminine furniture, and had no disturbing reference to the advancement of learning or the balance of the constitution; her knowledge being such as with no sort of standing-room or length of lever could have been expected to move the world.  She meant to do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner; or rather, whatever she could do to strike others with admiration and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of living, seemed pleasant to her fancy.

Grandcourt has an oily and obnoxious personal secretary, Mr. Lush, who – for his own reasons – does not want to see Gwendolen marry his employer, so he engineers a meeting between Gwendolen and a figure from Grandcourt’s past, who reveals a secret about Grandcourt’s character and elicits a promise from Gwendolen never to marry the man.  Gwendolen flees England for Leubronn, Germany – where she first encounters Deronda, in that memorable opening scene.  Eventually, it becomes apparent that Deronda has connections to Gwendolen’s neighborhood: Deronda turns out to be something of a ward or protege of Sir Hugo, and Gwendolen wonders why she finds him so fascinating.

“I wonder what he thinks of me really?  He must have felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my necklace.  I wonder what he thinks of my marriage?  What notions has he to make him so grave about things?  Why is he come to Diplow?”

These questions ran in her mind as the voice of an uneasy longing to be judged by Deronda with unmixed admiration–a longing which had its seed in her first resentment at his critical glance.  Why did she care so much about the opinion of this man who was “nothing of any consequence”?

With no fortune left, and no prospects of anything better than a position as a governess, Gwendolen is persuaded to accept Grandcourt’s offer of marriage when he renews his pursuit of her.  She does so against her scruples (which are, admittedly, limited) and against her better judgment (also limited) and the newlywed couple decamps first for Grandcourt’s stately house, where Gwendolen receives a horrifying shock (which extinguishes any affection Grandcourt may have had for her) and then, eventually for London.

Gwendolen is catastrophically disappointed in her marriage.  Her expectations that she would be able to use her feminine influence over Grandcourt to right old wrongs is sadly mistaken, as Grandcourt proves more than equal to her efforts to master him.  The next time Deronda encounters Gwendolen, she is a shadow of her pre-marriage self.

But a man cannot resolve about a woman’s actions, least of all about those of a woman like Gwendolen, in whose nature there was a combination of a proud reserve with rashness, of perilously-poised terror with defiance, which might alternately flatter and disappoint control.  Few words could less represent her than “coquette.”  She had a native love of homage, and belief in her own power; but no cold artifice for the sake of enslaving.  And the poor thing’s belief in her power, with her other dreams before marriage, had often to be thrust aside now like the toys of a sick child, which it looks at with dull eyes, and has no heart to play with, however it may try.

Lest you be tempted to hate Grandcourt, George Eliot – who has to be George Eliot, after all, surprising no one who read Middlemarch – makes sure to remind you that he has a perspective, too:

And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified in taking care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had accepted.  Her marriage was a contract where all the ostensible advantages were on her side, and it was only one of those advantages that her husband should use his power to hinder her from any injurious self-committal or unsuitable behavior.  He knew quite well that she had not married him–had not overcome her repugnance to certain facts–out of love to him personally; he had won her by the rank and luxuries he had to give her, and these she had got: he had fulfilled his side of the contract.

(When reading the above passage, I was reminded of nothing so much as the chapter that Eliot devotes to defending the sepulchral and cold Casaubon, after spending about 300 pages persuading the reader that he is a grossly unworthy husband to the beautiful and brilliant Dorothea.)

Meanwhile, what is our friend Daniel Deronda up to?  He is rescuing half of London, it seems – the saintly Deronda can’t seem to stop himself saving people from themselves.  Most consequentially, he happens across a young woman on the verge of drowning herself.  Deronda talks her off the riverbank, installs her with the mother and sisters of his college friend Hans, sets her up with a career as a singing teacher and drawing-room performer, and then takes it upon herself to track down her long-lost brother and mother.  Meanwhile, he becomes captivated by Mordecai, a consumptive philosopher and Jewish nationalist, who is himself convinced that Deronda is going to carry on his life’s work after Mordecai’s imminent death.  Between Mordecai and Mirah – the young woman Deronda saves from drowning herself, who is also Jewish – Deronda experiences a cultural awakening.  He is drawn to Mordecai’s philosophy and begins to seek answers about his parentage.  But as Deronda navigates his growing feelings for Mirah and his fascination with Mordecai, he has no one to turn to for support, having always been the pillar of strength for others.

Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda’s mind because he had never had a confidant to whom he could open himself on these delicate subjects.  He had always been leaned on instead of being invited to lean.  Sometimes he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might possibly unfold his experience: a young man like himself who sustained a private grief and was not too confident about his own career; speculative enough to understand every moral difficulty; yet of equality either in body or spiritual wrestling;–for he had found it impossible to reciprocate confidences with one who looked up to him.

Basically, that’s Deronda’s problem: everyone looks up to him, so he has no one to confide in.  Even Gwendolen relies on Deronda as a sort of confessor and moral guide (and he does give decent advice, even though he often only has half of the story).  Deronda is a little too saintly (essentially, he is Dorothea Brooke without the forbidden crush), so it’s nice to have Gwendolen – who is a sort of more complex version of Middlemarch‘s local siren Rosamund Vincy – to add a bit of salt to the narrative (and even Grandcourt, who is a gigantic jerk, is fun to read about).

Overall, I loved Daniel Deronda, although I can’t say it will replace Middlemarch as my favorite of Eliot’s novels.  Deronda himself is almost annoyingly perfect, but he’s well-balanced by Grandcourt, as Mirah is balanced by Gwendolen.  The parlor and country-house scenes are impeccably drawn and the London setting makes for a fun change from Eliot’s usual village territory.  Daniel Deronda was a commitment, for sure, but well worth the time and energy it demanded.

A Passage to India is E. M. Forster’s final novel – and while Howard’s End has its champions, I think this is his masterpiece.  Forster loves to have his characters travel; a good portion of A Room With a View takes place abroad, of course, and so does Where Angels Fear to Tread (which I’ve not yet read, but which is on my list).  In A Passage to India, Forster’s characters go even further afield, to the India of the British Raj.

The action takes place in Chandrapore, an outpost of the Raj that seems to be mostly forgettable.  It doesn’t have the teeming romance of the bigger cities, nor the natural wonder of the countryside; it just is.  A tight-knit English community has grown up around the local English Club, headed informally by a government official and social tastemaker known as “the Collector.”  The English society in Chandrapore is tenuously balanced by a diverse array of Indians – Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs – who don’t have much in common and don’t get along particularly well.

Into this potentially explosive mix appear two English women: Adela Quested, newly arrived with plans to marry the local magistrate, Mr Hislop, and Hislop’s mother Mrs Moore, who accompanies Adela.  Both Adela and Mrs. Moore are curious travelers, and Adela expresses a wish to see the “real India.”  Not Indians, mind you – India.  The local English community views both Adela and Mrs Moore with an indulgent skepticism, but assumes that each will fall into line after they’ve had the chance to tourist around a little bit (and if not then, certainly after a hot season).

Early in the novel, we also meet Aziz, a Muslim doctor, who will be swept up in Adela’s wish to see the “real India” – with far-reaching consequences.  Cycling into town from a gathering at a friend’s home, Aziz stops in a local mosque, where he encounters Mrs Moore for the first time.  Forster’s descriptive writing is at full power:

His seat was the low wall that bounded the courtyard on the left.  The ground fell away beneath him towards the city, visible as a blur of trees, and in the stillness he heard many small sounds.  On the right, over in the Club, the English community contributed an amateur orchestra.  Elsewhere some Hindus were drumming–he knew they were Hindus, because the rhythm was uncongenial to him–and others were bewailing a corpse–he knew whose, having certified it in the afternoon.  There were owls, the Punjab mail… and flowers smelt deliciously in the station-master’s garden.  But the mosque–that alone signified, and he returned to it from the complex appeal of the night, and decked it with meanings the builder had never intended.  Some day he too would build a mosque, smaller than this but in perfect taste, so that all who passed by should experience the happiness he felt now.

As Aziz contemplates the fragrant night and listens to the sounds of the small city, it becomes clear that he is not alone.  Mrs Moore has stumbled into the mosque with her shoes on – a major offense, and one that symbolizes the English community’s cultural tone-deafness.  Aziz, ever the gracious host, instantly befriends Mrs Moore and through her, Adela.  Adela, meanwhile, persists in walking the tightrope of behaving unconventionally while also being engaged to marry the local magistrate.

“People are so odd out here, and it’s not like home–one’s always facing the footlights, as the Burra Sahib said.  Take a silly little example: when Adela went out to the boundary of the Club compound, and Fielding followed her.  I saw Mrs Callendar notice it.  They notice everything, until they’re perfectly sure you’re their sort.”

“I don’t think Adela’ll ever be quite their sort–she’s much too individual.”

“I know, that’s so remarkable about her,” he said thoughtfully.  Mrs Moore thought him rather absurd.  Accustomed to the privacy of London, she could not realize that India, seemingly so mysterious, contains none, and that consequently the conventions have greater force.  “I suppose nothing’s on her mind,” he continued.

“Ask her, ask her yourself, my dear boy.”

“Probably she’s heard tales of the heat, but of course.  I should pack her off to the hills every April–I’m not one to keep a wife grilling in the plains.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be the weather.”

“There’s nothing in India but the weather, my dear mother; it’s the alpha and omega of the whole affair.”

Early in their stay, Adela and Mrs Moore attend a tea party at which Aziz is also present.  Aziz makes a wild invitation to the English ladies to have tea at his lodgings, but in another cultural misunderstanding, discovers that they actually thought he was serious.  To save face, and avoid letting the women see his humble home, he plans a picnic instead, and gathers a large group to explore the Marabar Caves, a landmark outside of town.  Aziz values hospitality, and he is intent that every detail be perfect – from the elephants he engages to take the group to from the train station to the picnic spot, to the servants and the weather and the walking route.  It all has to be perfect.

(source: telegraph.co.uk)

From the beginning, the day is a disaster, despite Aziz’s efforts.  Aziz’s English friend, Professor Fielding, misses the train – a critical piece of ill luck – the guests are discontented, and a confusing encounter in the shimmering heat of the caves leads to Adela fleeing from the picnic.  When Aziz arrives back in Chandrapore after the disastrous day, he is arrested and accused of assaulting Adela – and the fragile racial detente of the city erupts while the local officials strain to keep the peace.

The others, less responsible, could behave naturally.  They had started speaking of “women and children”–that phrase that exempts the male from sanity when it has been repeated a few times.  Each felt that all he loved best in the world was at stake, demanded revenge, and was filled with a not unpleasing glow, in which the chilly and half-known features of Miss Quested vanished, and were replaced by all that is sweetest and warmest in the private life.  “But it’s the women and children,” they repeated, and the Collector knew he ought to stop them intoxicating themselves, but he hadn’t the heart.

Forster’s characters are wonderfully complicated.  It would be easy to portray Adela as a monster and Aziz as an innocent victim – but Forster draws the reader into Adela’s confusion and her distress as the situation spirals out of control.  It is clear that something happened to Adela in the caves, but – what?  Aziz, meanwhile, does not help himself by insisting that he is innocent because he would never assault a woman as hideously ugly as Adela.  (Speaking as a lawyer, here: that is not an awesome defense.)  As the tension builds, it becomes obvious that no one is entirely at fault, no one is entirely blameless, and definitely no one is in control.

I loved A Passage to India.  From the finely-crafted landscape details to the complex characters and the simmering tension of the courtroom scene – in which Aziz is tried for assault – every word is pitch-perfect.  It also struck me that Forster’s sensitive portrayal of a community torn apart by racial tensions was well ahead of its time.  Forster wrote this book in 1924, decades before Indian independence, and well in advance of rising global consciousness about race.  It’s a wonderful book in any event, but when considered against the backdrop of the period in which Forster was writing, it’s a rare achievement indeed.

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby. I can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book. Here are my reads for February, 2020…

Life Among the Savages, by Shirley Jackson – I’ve never read anything by Shirley Jackson before, because I am not really into psychological suspense or horror, so The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle and Jackson’s other work struck me as probably too scary.  But Jackson is a major American literary figure and I did want to give her a try – and her lightly fictionalized memoir of living in a rambling Vermont farmhouse with her bumbling husband and hilariously mischievous children was much more my speed.  I laughed until I cried, especially at the antics of Jackson’s two elder children, Laurie and Jannie, although I was disappointed to discover that Jackson’s husband was actually a controlling, cheating jerk, who was considerably sanitized in her memoir.  All things told, though, LOVED.  Fully reviewed here.

A Passage to India, by E. M. Forster – I am gradually working my way through Forster’s bibliography and enjoying each book more than the last.  I liked A Room with a View, loved Howard’s End, and was enthralled by A Passage to India.  Forster’s last novel – and masterpiece, in my opinion, although I know Howard’s End has its champions – he explores the race relations of an outpost in the India of the British Raj.  Adela Quested, a young woman contemplating marriage to a colonial government official, arrives with her prospective mother-in-law – both keen to see the “real India.”  They soon encounter a number of local characters, including Aziz, a Muslim doctor, who invites them to picnic at an area landmark.  The day goes wrong, and in a very confusing way, and leads to a momentous accusation that upends the city and throws its tenuous balance completely off-kilter.  It’s a beautifully written book, I think quite ahead of its time, and I thought it was wonderful.  Full review to come on Friday.

Wish You Were Eyre (Mother-Daughter Book Club #6), by Heather Vogel Frederick – Frederick intended this volume to conclude the Mother-Daughter Book Club series, and she wraps up each of the characters’ stories neatly at the end.  (Of course, she ended up writing a seventh book – I think people were too curious about where the girls ended up going to college.)  Wish You Were Eyre picks up pretty much where Home for the Holidays left off – it’s now January, and Concord has put away its Christmas finery and settled in for a loooooong winter.  Several of the book clubbers are looking forward to spring vacation travel – Megan to Paris with her grandmother, and Becca to Mankato, Minnesota, with hers – and all are facing change and upheaval.  Megan’s family is growing in unexpected, and not entirely welcome, ways.  Cassidy is experiencing boy trouble for the first time ever, Jess is unfathomably accused of cheating on a test, and Emma is struggling with jealousy.  Also, Mrs. Wong is running for mayor!  I’d vote for her.

A Man Lay Dead (Roderick Alleyn #1), by Ngaio Marsh – Marsh is a New Zealand writer, a contemporary of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, and one of the only “Queens of Crime” I’d not yet read.  A Man Lay Dead is the first in a series featuring Marsh’s most famous sleuth, Scotland Yard detective Roderick Alleyn.  It’s a classic country house mystery – there are parlor games turned deadly and witty repartee.  Alleyn is called to investigate a murder that took place during a game of “Murder” (because of course) and arrives on the scene to find that all of the possible suspects have alibis.  Now, how can that be?  There was an exciting subplot involving a Russian secret society and a reveal with a flourish (once again I guessed the who but not the how).  I can see how Marsh can be a bit more difficult going than the other Queens of Crime – some of her tropes have not aged well.  But I’ll definitely continue with the Roderick Alleyn mysteries.

The Princess of Cleves, by Madame de Lafayette (translated by Nancy Mitford) – I was attracted to this obscure classic because of the title, so let’s get this out of the way first: this is not about Anne of Cleves.  It does take place during the Tudor period – Mary I is on the throne – but the titular princess is a French noblewoman and the action takes place in and around Paris.  So if you’re thinking, “Excellent!  Something else to add to my Henry VIII reading list!” (just me?) stop thinking that.  Okay, that out of the way: the best part of the book was the hilarious and witty introduction by Nancy Mitford.  The rest of it… I just felt sort of blah about it.  The Princess of Cleves is a little too beautiful and too well-behaved, and I found myself unable to care about her marriage or about the unfulfilled love affair with her husband’s friend, which is the subject of the book.  None of the characters resonated with me, and while I liked the little gems of wit in Mitford’s translation, I just found it hard going and impossible to invest.

American Royals (American Royals #1), by Katharine McGee – I’ll be honest, I probably wouldn’t have thought to pick this up had I not seen it all over social media, so: congratulations, marketing team, you have succeeded with me.  American Royals was fun.  The premise is great: at the end of the American Revolution, when soldiers and politicians begged George Washington to become king, he said – yes.  And the Washington family has occupied the throne of America ever since.  American Royals tells the story of the present-day royals – Princess Beatrice, eldest daughter and in line to be the first ever Queen Regnant of America, and her younger siblings, twins Jefferson and Samantha.  The story was engaging enough and I found the pages flying pleasantly by, but I think the most fun part was McGee’s imagination of what an America governed by a royal family and an aristocracy would look like – there were Dukes of Boston, Tidewater, etc., Telluride was an American version of Klosters, and so forth.  It was a total hoot and I will definitely read on in the series.

The Poisoned Chocolates Case, by Anthony Berkeley – While Berkeley is one of the most renowned golden age detective fiction writers – and the founder and leader of the Detection Club that also included Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and others among its members – I haven’t really seen much of his writing in libraries and bookstores.  The Poisoned Chocolates Case, recently republished in the British Library Crime Classics series, was a delightful introduction to Berkeley’s writing.  The premise is great fun – an informal group of writers and practitioners interested in sleuthing (a nod to Berkeley’s Detection Club) take on the task of solving a mystery that has baffled police.  Starting from the limited set of facts available to Scotland Yard, they take it in turns to present their solutions to the crime on successive nights, and each one comes up with a different answer to the puzzle.  The BL Crime Classics paperback includes two new theories at the end of Berkeley’s original text.  It was a unique and different approach to detective fiction.

Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves, ed. Glory Edim – Well-Read Black Girl began as a t-shirt that Glory Edim’s supportive partner had made for her, turned into a thriving book club and literary discussion circle in New York City, and is now a wonderful book.  Edim gathers together some of the most vivid and brilliant voices in literature, drama, poetry, activism, and more, and challenges each to answer the question: when did you first see yourself in literature?  The essays and oral responses she received, from lights such as Jacqueline Woodson, Jesmyn Ward, Rebecca Walker, N.K. Jemisin, Tayari Jones and others, are beautiful and moving to read.  I’ve read some of the words these well-read black women have put out in the world, but not enough, and Edim’s thoughtfully curated reading lists, sprinkled throughout the book, and the lovely essays collected herein, exploded my TBR.

Bit of a light month of reading – not much light reading, but light on the reading time, if that makes sense.  February often is a lower-volume month for me, because it’s a short month.  This month was also especially hectic at work, with quite a few late nights and weekend workdays cutting into my reading time.  It happens.  The reading, when I could get it, was good at least.  I’m hard-pressed to pick highlights, because everything I read was at least good, even if not every book (I’m looking at you, Princess of Cleves) is destined to make it onto my top-ten list for 2020.  But there were a few contenders there: both Life Among the Savages and A Passage to India were excellent, engaging reads, and Well-Read Black Girl was moving and important.  Sprinkled in as they were with some fun detective fiction and a couple of lighter reads, I’d say this was a good reading month indeed.

How was your February in books?

I have never read anything by Shirley Jackson, despite her sterling reputation as being one of the essential reads of the American literary landscape (and beloved by the book blogosphere).  Why?  Simple – psychological suspense with horror elements is not my cup of tea.  I like my books calming, peaceful, and if there is some nature writing, so much the better.  I am not opposed to a little murder (Exhibit A: my multiple shelves of mysteries) but I like the murder to be bloodless and off the page, and ideally the victim to be someone reprehensible, so I don’t feel too badly.

So, I thought, Shirley Jackson: not for me.

Then I heard about Life Among the Savages, Jackson’s lightly fictionalized memoir of living in a rambling old house in Vermont with her cuddly family.  Much more my speed!  And a good opportunity to read Shirley Jackson, so I can then say that I have read Shirley Jackson.  #alwaysthinking

When Life Among the Savages opens, Jackson is living in a city apartment with her husband and their two children, Laurie (a boy) and Jannie (a girl).  They’re unceremoniously evicted from their apartment by an unsympathetic landlord, but this inauspicious beginning is the catalyst for moving their family to a rambling farmhouse in Vermont, where they settle in and then produce two more babies in succession.  Jackson is a mom after my own heart – minus the chain-smoking, of course – and the vignettes of her daily life are relatable and hilarious.  Witness:

By the time I woke up on a summer morning–the alarm having missed fire again, for the third time in a week–it was already too hot to move.  I lay in bed for a few minutes, wanting to get up but unable to exert the necessary energy.  From the girls’ room, small voices rose in song, and I listened happily, thinking how pleasant it was to hear a brother and two sisters playing affectionately together; then, suddenly, the words of the song penetrated into my hot mind, and I was out of bed in one leap and racing down the hall.  “Baby ate a spider, Baby ate a spider,” was what they were singing.

Three innocent little faces were turned to me as I opened the door.  Laurie, in his cowboy-print pajamas, was sitting on top of the dresser beating time with a coat hanger.  Jannie, in pink pajama pants and her best organdy party dress, was sitting on her bed.  Sally peered at me curiously through the bars of her crib and grinned, showing her four teeth.

“What did you eat?” I demanded.  “What do you have in your mouth?”

Laurie shouted triumphantly.  “A spider,” he said, “She ate a spider.”

I forced the baby’s mouth open; it was empty.  “Did she swallow it?”

“Why?” Jannie asked, wide-eyed.  “Will it make her sick?”

“Jannie gave it to her,” Laurie said.

“Laurie found it,” Jannie said.

“But she ate it herself,” Laurie said hastily.

Jackson is not the mom who can’t be ruffled.  She’s easily ruffled, and also easily distracted – and remarkably clueless sometimes.  I forced Steve to listen as I read five pages aloud, all about Laurie’s first encounter with school.  He comes tripping home, full of stories about a trouble-making classmate, Charles, who is constantly getting into mischief and sassing the teacher.  (Sounds like someone else I know, who shall remain nameless.)  One afternoon, returning late, Laurie explains that Charles was required to stay after school and all the other children stayed to watch him.  The entire family becomes fascinated with Charles; Jackson and her husband debate his antics constantly and Jackson attends a PTO meeting in a state of high anticipation at meeting the no doubt much put-upon mother of the famous Charles.  I’m not going to tell you how it all turns out, but this is Shirley Jackson, so there’s a twist.

Yes, this is Shirley Jackson.  A cuddlier, funnier Shirley Jackson than what I understand her fiction would lead you to expect, but still Shirley Jackson.  So, naturally, after the children trip off to school, she relaxes by reading about axe murders, as one does.

I took my coffee into the dining room and settled down with the morning paper.  A woman in New York had had twins in a taxi.  A woman in Ohio had just had her seventeenth child.  A twelve-year-old girl in Mexico had given birth to a thirteen-pound boy.  The lead article on the woman’s page was about how to adjust the older child to the new baby.  I finally found an account of an axe murder on page seventeen, and held my coffee cup up to my face to see if the steam might revive me.

While Laurie was my favorite, I enjoyed all of the kids, and I identified – slightly painfully – with the anxious way that both Jackson and her husband related to them.  For instance, bringing baby number four home from the hospital:

“Come indoors and I’ll show you,” their father said.

They followed him into the living room, and stood in a solemn row by the couch.  “Now don’t touch,” their father said, and they nodded all together.  They watched while he carefully set the bundle down on the couch and unwrapped it.

Then, into the stunned silence which followed, Sally finally said, “What is it?”

“It’s a baby,” said their father, with an edge of nervousness to his voice, “it’s a baby boy and its name is Barry.”

“What’s a baby?” Sally asked me.

“It’s pretty small,” Laurie said doubtfully, “Is that the best you could get?”

“I tried to get another, a bigger one,” I said with irritation, “but the doctor said this was the only one left.”

“My goodness,” said Jannie, “what are we going to do with that?  Anyway,” she said, “you‘re back.”

Here’s where I will ruin things a little bit.  I loved the way Jackson portrayed her relationship with her husband (Stanley, although he’s never actually named in the book – just “my husband” or “their father” throughout).  Jackson writes Stanley as hapless and bumbling, but in a lovable way – and perhaps he could be, from time to time.  But I was curious about Jackson’s life and about midway through the book I sought out some articles about her, and was dismayed to find that her relationship with Stanley was far from idyllic – he was manipulative, could be quite unkind, and he essentially forced her into agreeing to an open marriage so that he could cheat on her with impunity (and then rub it in).  I fell in love with Jackson and her family as she wrote them in Life Among the Savages, and while some sugarcoating is to be expected, it was heartbreaking to realize how far off the reality was.  Of course, every so often, Jackson does tell her husband off.  It just takes being in labor:

“They kept telling me the third was the easiest,” I said.  I began to giggle again.

“There you go,” she said.  “Laughing your head off.  I wish I had something to laugh at.”

She waved her hand at me and turned and went mournfully through the door.  I opened my same weary eye and my husband was sitting comfortably in his chair.  “I said,” he was saying loudly, “I said, ‘Do you mind if I read?'”  He had the New York Times on his knee.

“Look,” I said, “do I have anything to read?  Here I am, with nothing to do and no one to talk to and you sit there and read the New York Times right in front of me and here I am, with nothing–”

“How do we feel?” the doctor asked.  He was suddenly much taller than before, and the walls of the room were rocking distinctly.

“Doctor,” I said, and I believe that my voice was a little louder than I intended it should be, “you better give me–”

He patted me on the hand and it was my husband instead of the doctor.  “Stop yelling,” he said.

“I’m not yelling,” I said, “I don’t like this any more.  I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want any baby, I want to go home and forget the whole thing.”

“I know just how you feel,” he said.

My only answer was a word which certainly I knew that I knew, although I had never honestly expected to hear it spoken in my own ladylike voice.

All told – I loved this.  It was funny, heartwarming, and at least the parts involving the kids felt very real.  It is perhaps the best endorsement I can give to say that Life Among the Savages convinced me to maybe, possibly, give Jackson’s (very different) true fiction a try.

Have you read any Shirley Jackson?  Should I read her suspense novels or are they too scary?

(Plant-based replica of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African-American History and Culture.  I’m sorry to say this is as close as I’ve gotten so far – I need to make it here for a visit one day soon!)

It’s Black History Month – and for a reader, it’s a perfect time to reflect on the contributions of African-American and African Diaspora writers to our literary landscape.  Since I started trying to read more diversely a few years ago, I have encountered so many wonderful works, classic and modern, by black writers and my shelves are richer for it.  And as I firmly believe that there is nothing like a book for a time machine, here are three books to take you back in time for Black History Month.

 Kindred, by Octavia Butler – First of all, no Black History Month time travel post would be complete without the classic time travel novel by a black woman author.  Octavia Butler is one of the most inimitable voices in science fiction and speculative writing, and while these are not my normal genres, Kindred is basically required reading.  Dana, a modern (1970s) black woman in California, finds herself involuntarily wrenched back through time to antebellum Maryland.  The first time, she saves the life of a young white boy, son of the plantation master – only later realizing that the boy is her own ancestor.  Dana’s connection to the boy she saves is inexplicable, and every time he finds himself in trouble, Dana finds herself dragged back through time to save him.  As she goes back and forth between her own time and her ancestors’ lives, the trips become more and more dangerous – for Dana, and for everyone around her.  Kindred is intense, gripping, and heart-wrenching – required reading indeed.

Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston – Another required reading; everyone should meet the inimitable Janie Crawford.  When the reader meets her, it is in the shadow of a blossoming tree – a fitting setting for Janie, who is herself just beginning to bloom when her grandmother catches her kissing a young man and insists that she get married.  Assuming that love will follow marriage, Janie complies.  But it doesn’t, and Janie is ambitious and hungry, and she wants more than a quiet country life.  So when a stranger pauses by the side of the road, Janie walks off with him.  Joe Starks is as ambitious as Janie, and charismatic.  Together, Janie and Joe stride into Eatonville and bend the town to their will.  Joe quickly rises to become the Mayor and a successful businessman, with Janie by his side.  But again, love doesn’t follow marriage – and when Janie meets Tea Cake, a much younger man, she struggles to understand her suddenly turbulent feelings.

Jam on the Vine, by LaShonda Katrice Barnett – I read this one years ago, but it stayed with me.  Ivoe Williams, precocious daughter of a Muslim cook, steals a newspaper and immediately falls in love with journalism.  Jam on the Vine is the story of Ivoe’s coming of age, from eager young girl to founder of the first black female-owned newspaper, along with her former teacher – turned lover – Ona.  Ivoe and Ona struggle to survive in a brutal world that has no tolerance for black women with powerful voices and the will to use them.  Nurtured by their love for one another, they create a home and life together that sustains them against the buffeting they have to endure from bigoted and hateful people, who want nothing more than to grind them down.  At times, the story can be quite disturbing – Ivoe survives a horrific arrest and attack – but this is ultimately a hopeful story of love and bravery.

I had a hard time choosing just three novels to feature here!  Honorable mentions go to Washington Black, by Esi Edugyan – for something even more fantastical than Kindred – and to Half of a Yellow Sun, by the totally brilliant Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.  I’m sure I’ll pick up even more recommendations shortly, because I have my Black History Month read – Well Read Black Girl – sitting atop my library stack.

Are you reading anything special to commemorate Black History Month?