Pandora’s Boy, Lindsey Davis

5 stars

First Sentence: When my husband’s ex-wife came offering me work, I knew she was up to something.

Thoughts: The Quirinal Hill is where the lower-upper class of Rome lives. It’s much more posh than the Aventine rabble Albia is used to. It’s where Laia Gratiana, Tiberius’ first wife, likes to hang out. That’s why she was the one who brought the case of Clodia Volumnia to Albia’s attention. Clodia was a fifteen-year-old girl who was found dead in her room. Rumor has it she drank a love potion that was actually poison. The love potion came from the local face-cream woman* and not-so-secret witch Pandora (not her real name).

The reason why Laia brought the case to Albia is because after Clodia’s death an episode of Real Housewives of the Quirinal Hill broke out. Clodia’s grandmother’s got into a knock-down drag-out fight that ended with one of the house slaves getting his arm broken. Sentia, Clodia’s mother, moves out and files for divorce. Volumnius, the father, is desperate to find the truth behind his daughter’s death. Auctus, Clodia’s brother, is with the army in North Africa and doesn’t know what happened yet.

Then there’s Clodia’s friends, which is where Albia begins her investigation. They were actually Auctus’ friends; Clodia was the annoying kid sister always wanting to tag along. They’re a dissolute bunch, trading boyfriends and girlfriends like Pokemon cards, hellraisers who think nothing of wrecking things because they know their parents will pay for the damages. A real charming bunch of backstabbers. The only thing Albia can get from them is that they all had dinner at a fancy thermopolium the night of Clodia’s death that little sister was decidedly not invited to. She showed up anyway, but they all claimed she was fine at dinner. None of them knew anything about a love potion.

Besides, why would Clodia drink a love potion? She had just broken up with her boyfriend, Numerius, true, but why would she drink the potion if she wanted him back? Numerius has no clue. Then Albia finds out that Clodia had transferred her affections to Vincentius, Pandora’s grandson. Vincentius seems a charming sort, but he’s the scion of the Rubirii gang. In fact, Pandora is the gang leader’s sister.

Oh boy.

Other questions pop up as the investigation continues: why was Clodia’s room cleaned before the doctor came to pronounce her dead? What is Pandora really hiding? What is Vincentius up to? Why is the thermopolium so important to the case? Maybe the answers will come at the séance Laia invites Albia to where Pandora claims she will raise Clodia’s spirit. Or maybe they’ll all get into trouble because magic is illegal.

*The Roman equivalent of the Avon lady

The Dragon Has Some Complaints, John Wiswell

5 stars

First Sentence: What the hell was in his mouth?

Thoughts: Garrodigh was once a four-headed dragon. Somehow he lost Lefty, leaving only Centerhead, Bottomhead, and Upperhead. None of them remembered how Lefty died, it was too traumatic. Besides, they have to deal with their other injuries, their holed wings, and broken left foreleg. Instead they all develop different complexes: Upperhead thinks he’s a human dreaming he’s a dragon, Centerhead wants to eat all humans, and Bottomhead has gone feral. They spend a lot of time lying around gnawing on various things, especially Bottomhead. Then cannonballs started falling out of the sky, triggering a big burst of PTSD.

The other dragons wouldn’t let Garrodigh hide in the volcano where he used to live, claiming he was a human sympathizer. He doesn’t remember that but okay. When he saw some of the fighting dragons falling out of the sky he had a brilliant idea. He went to where they landed, pretended to be one of the wounded, and tricked the humans into taking him to the flying city Kardoša where he could be fed and pampered until he healed enough to eat them all.

It didn’t quite work out the way he expected. He nibbled on some drugged treats which knocked him out long enough for the humans to set his wings and leg and move him into a stable with a nice cozy pile of silver coins to lay on. Then Raina showed up. She had dreamed of being a dragonrider, but there were no dragons to give her. Until Garrodigh, of course. She showed up with all the proper paperwork and claimed him as her own. She took him to his physical therapy sessions, and gave him baths, treats, and flower garlands. She even got him his first job for the humans flying a barge down to rescue some refugees. A little girl refugee is fascinated by him and names him Mister Slithers. Not very dignified, but she also gives Bottomhead a gold coin which he lets Centerhead sleep on. So comfy.

Eventually Garrodigh realizes Raina has troubles too. She came to Kardoša from the Federation of Free Republics, which is currently at war with the flying city. Some people (specifically the Second Knight of the dragonriders) don’t trust her because of her birthplace. The First Knight Oleks trusts her, though. Mainly because he grew up across the road from Raina and sent her a ticket to Kardoša a few years after he ran away himself. There’s some unrequited love between Raina and Oleks which neither of them will admit to because that would be too easy.

Then the FFR unleashes a new weapon that knocks out most of the dragonriders. Garrodigh and Raina, as one of the few survivors of the attack, are tasked with going to the FFR to find where they’re launching their attacks from and take it out. What they find will be more surprising than anything else they’ve encountered so far.

The Weaker Vessel: Woman’s Lot in Seventeenth-Century England, Antonia Fraser

5 stars

First Sentence: It was a fact generally acknowledged by all but the most contumacious spirits at the beginning of the seventeenth century that woman was the weaker vessel; weaker than man, that is.

Thoughts: The seventeenth century was a time of major change in England. It began with the last gasp of the Tudor Dynasty when Elizabeth I died and the first breath of the Stuart Dynasty when James I took over. In the middle of the century there was a civil war which ended with the execution of Charles I and the creation of the Commonwealth and Cromwell’s Protectorate. Then Charles II came back to re-establish the status quo which was re-established again in a more firmly Protestant manner with the Glorious Revolution of William III and Mary II.

But what were the women doing during all of these government switchovers? How did they fare between the reigns of the queens, Elizabeth I and Anne? That’s what Fraser gives us in this book.

As throughout most of recorded history, the main role of women was to marry and have children. Even within those confines, though, seventeenth-century English women had room to do some amazing things, especially during the war. Several women on both the Royalist and Puritan sides fought directly to save their own homes and villages, with a few actually disguising themselves as men and going into battle. After the war, new opportunities opened up for women on the stage. While actresses quickly became associated with prostitutes, there were some who stayed “honorable” even as their famous colleagues became mistresses of rich theater fans and producers. Acting didn’t pay very well back then so you pretty much had to find a patron if you wanted to do more than get by.

Fraser begins her book with the institution of marriage since this was the beginning of the era when heiresses were kidnapped and forced into fake marriages to unscrupulous gold-digging men. Some women didn’t think marriage was the be-all and end-all of their lives and sought out an education, even as it was falling out of fashion for women after Elizabeth I’s death. The Duchess of Newcastle, of Blazing World fame, was one of the few who outright flaunted her intelligence in a world of men who only wanted women to know basic reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. (Very basic, only enough to read some of the Bible and do some household accounting.)

What about ordinary women? Well, they didn’t leave much of a written record, but Fraser found enough to fill in some important gaps. Women were at the forefront of the dissenting religions, specifically the Quakers who were among the first to allow women to preach (for a while, at least). A lot of middle and lower-class women went into business with their husbands, joining guilds and running the store while the war was going on. Others, like fishwives, had their own businesses in their own right even if they couldn’t own a storefront and had to walk around town hawking their wares. And widows had a lot of power, even if they didn’t remarry. Especially if they didn’t remarry. And then there were the midwives who were never out of work in these days before birth control. But just because a woman assisted at your birthing didn’t mean you were safe. This was also the time before antibiotics, antiseptics, and advanced anatomical knowledge so death was always an option during birth. Or after. There were some midwifery manuals, but those were written by men so….yeah. In some ways we are very much like our ancestors.

Anyway.

I enjoyed this look at an oft ignored part of history. I like knowing what ordinary people did and what women did during Big Historical Events because what men did has been researched to death. Let’s get a fresh look at times gone by, shall we?

No Name, Wilkie Collins

4 stars

First Sentence: The hands on the hall-clock pointed to half-past six in the morning.

Thoughts: Life was quiet at Combe-Raven until the day Mr. Vanstone received a letter from America. Suddenly he and his wife are away on a mysterious trip to London, leaving their two daughters, Norah and Magdalen, and their governess, Miss Garth, behind wondering what just happened. Meanwhile Captain Wragge, a distant cousin of Mrs. Vanstone, stops by to add some more mystery to the trip. When the Vanstones come back they give no explanation for why they went away and life goes on as usual.

Magdalen joins some of her friends in putting on an amateur play for another friend’s birthday. Turns out Magdalen has some serious acting talent and she steals the show. That wasn’t why she joined the play, though. She wanted an excuse to spend more time with Frank Clare, the boy next door. The Vanstones like Frank even though his father thinks he’s a waste of time who will never amount to much. Mr. Vanstone tries to get Frank started in a couple of careers, but Frank always quits when he’s expected to actually do something. Despite all this, Frank and Magdalen are soon engaged. Mr. Clare, in response, sends Frank to China for a couple of years to make something of himself before marriage.

Then Mr. Vanstone is killed in a railway accident. Mrs. Vanstone, who was pregnant, dies shortly after giving birth to a stillborn son. The three of them are buried together. Then the truth comes out: the trip to London was so Mr. and Mrs. Vanstone could get married. They had been living in sin for twenty years because Mr. V had a wife in American from whom he had separated in mutual dislike. The letter in the beginning was announcing the first Mrs. V’s death in New Orleans. This means that Norah and Magdalen were illegitimate.

This wouldn’t be such a big deal except that Mr. Vanstone hadn’t updated his will after he was marriage. Due to Victorian laws, the money that should have gone to his daughters went to his estranged brother Michael in Switzerland. Michael hated his brother and everyone connected to him, so he tells his nieces to get out of Combe-Raven posthaste. No, he won’t give them any money, how dare they ask?

Norah, like a proper Victorian maiden, resigns herself to her fate and goes into service as a governess. Magdalen, though, is mad as a hornet and determined to get the money back from Michael if it’s the last thing she does. She tries to go on stage, but Norah and Miss Garth teamed up with the family lawyer to block that path. Instead Magdalen goes north and meets up with Captain Wragge. He’s an old-time schemer who’s made a living scamming people, so he’s well placed to help Magdalen hone her acting skills and make her grand scheme against her uncle. Then Michael Vanstone dies.

Don’t get excited, he had a son to leave his money to. Noel Vanstone is a sickly spoiled brat of a man with an overbearing housekeeper, Mrs. LeCount, who manages everything for him. Magdalen goes back to London to get the lay of the land by visiting Noel and Mrs. L in disguise. She doesn’t reckon with Mrs. L’s canniness in penetrating her disguise and, what’s worse, gathering physical evidence. Magdalen goes back to Captain Wragge and moves to the seaside with him and his wife, this time disguised as their daughter, so she can work her feminine wiles on Noel. Mrs. LeCount, however, is on her guard and might be too much for Magdalen to handle.

It’s not as fast-paced as The Woman in White or The Dead Secret but Magdalen’s scheming is entertaining even as it eats at her conscience. The plotting gets a little too convoluted towards the end once the second will is introduced, but that’s probably because I know very little about the law in general and Victorian law in particular. Mrs. LeCount is a formidable villain, much like Count Fosco, but more easily distracted once you find her weak spot. Still it’s all comes to a satisfying, if hurried, conclusion.

The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, John U. Bacon

4 stars

First Sentence: On Tuesday, July 4, 1995, a serene summer day, a boat named the Northlander eased across calm seas until she sat directly over her destination.

State: Michigan
Have I Been There: No
Do I Want to Go There: I would like to see the Upper Peninsula so I can see the land of The Cat Who… series.

I know this is more about the Great Lakes than Michigan, but which state is more Lakey? Besides, the final delivery the Fitzgerald was going to make was in Detroit and it was lost near Michigan, so I say that counts. Look, this is another last minute replacement for the original pick. My initial picks for the M states are not being good to me. Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, and Montana better be on their A games.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand. Because I live in the world, I had heard about the Edmund Fitzgerald my whole life mostly because of the ballad. I’ve never actually listened to it other than hearing a few verses referenced in various MST3K episodes. Honestly, I’m not a Gordon Lightfoot fan. If I never hear “Hallelujah” again it will be too soon. But the story of the ship itself is fascinating.

Sailing the Great Lakes is a whole different animal from sailing on the ocean, and Bacon does an excellent job of explaining why. The Lakes are technically freshwater seas, totally enveloped by land. It’s because of the land that the waves are different than ocean waves. It’s like waves in a bathtub, they keep bouncing off the sides, getting larger and larger and closer together. Ocean waves, on the other hand, have more room to spread out before they hit land. That’s why storms on the Lakes are more dangerous. The waves alone could snap a ship without even trying.

The actual Storm of the Century that sank the Fitzgerald is near the end of the book. The first part goes over the history of Great Lakes shipping, its impact on the surrounding areas, and the early years of the Fitzgerald. These are interspersed with stories about two other major shipwrecks in the 20^th century. The first one took place in 1913 with the first Storm of the Century and the second happened in the 1950s. Both times there were a few survivors who were able to tell what had happened. One reason the sinking of the Fitzgerald became a legend is because there were no survivors.

Right before the storm Bacon tells us about the men onboard (no women, this was in the 1970s). There are a lot of scenes of sailors sitting in bars listening to “Brandy” which I have heard (I prefer the Big Head Todd & the Monsters version). There are brief bios of most of the men, especially Captain McSorley who was on his One Last Job before retirement and deckhand Bruce Hudson. Bruce’s mother, “Aunt” Ruth, was a major power in getting the Fitzgerald memorials established and getting the ship declared an official gravesite.

There’s also the story of the song which, again, I am not going out of my way to listen to. Nothing against the song, but I’ve heard most of “McArthur Park” and that’s enough interminable 1970s crap to last me for a good century at least.

The most amazing part about the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is that it actually made a difference. For once the corporate suits realized that they were hurting themselves and everyone else by pushing the captains too hard to make hugenormous deliveries and stepped back. They let the captains actually make their own decisions about that to do with their ships in bad weather, and stopped penalizing them for taking shelter instead of going through the storm. The National Weather Service stepped up its game to give better and real-time forecasts so the ships wouldn’t be caught in the middle of a blizzardcane in open water.

And that’s why there hasn’t been another shipwreck on the Great Lakes since 1975. May the lull last another 50 years.

Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore

5 stars

First Sentence: The scientist had forgotten all about the radium.

Thoughts: “Excuse me, I need to go punch a capitalist tycoon real quick.” That is my complete review on Goodreads. I’m still looking for a (male) tycoon to knock out. Don’t let any of them come near me because I will not be responsible for my actions.

This is one reason why I become more of a raging feminist every year. Y’all better count your lucky stars that women don’t still wear giant Edwardian hats because I wouldn’t trust me with a hatpin right now.

What set me off? Let’s go over it point by point. This book tells the stories of the women who painted radium on the luminescent clock dials in the early 20^th century. Back then the most interesting thing about radium was that it glowed in the dark. No one had seen anything like it before. Glowing clocks and watches were considered a safety measure because people could see what time it was without striking a match or turning on a light if they heard something go bump in the night or if they were in a war zone and needed to synchronize watches in a basement or something.

Painting the dials was one of the factory jobs open to women. It was actually a very good job, especially during WWI when the government ordered thousands of watches for Our Boys Over There. Some of the girls (who could be as young as eleven) ended up being the major breadwinner of their families because the pay was so good. It was piecework, though, so the more watches you painted, the more money you made.

Since radium was so expensive, the girls were cautioned not to waste the paint. However, they were given brushes to paint the dials* and the hairs on the tips would spread out after a few passes. The best way to repoint the brushes was to stick them in your mouth and swirl it around to get a point. Lip-pointing, it was called. The girls didn’t mind for the most part (some didn’t like the feel or taste of the paint in their mouths). The paint was harmless, their bosses told them. Later, when radium wasn’t so strictly rationed, the girls even painted themselves with it. When they mixed the paint at their stations, particles of it got in the air and landed on their clothes, making them sparkle. Pretty!

Then they started getting sick. The first to die was Mollie Maggia. Her jawbone basically crumbled away, to the point that her dentist was able to lift it out of her mouth. Yikes. I mean, really, yikes. Fortunately (really!) he kept the jawbone pieces which was a boon to doctors years later when they figured out that the radium might be killing the girls.

More and more of them got sick. They had jaw pain, joint pain, lost teeth, miscarriages, all kinds of random symptoms.** It took doctors a while to realize the cause was the same. It took longer for them to find out the reason why: radium replaces calcium in bones. You know, the element that holds your bones together. The important one. In fact, one woman realized she had been poisoned when she went to the bathroom at night and saw her bones glowing through her skin in the dark.

No one ever told you there weren’t real-life horror stories.

The first group of women, dial painters from New Jersey, succeeded in getting a settlement after years of legal wrangling. Then the company immediately tried to weasel out of paying for the women’s treatments when they got sicker because, and I want to make this absolutely clear, corporations are not people, they are soulless entities run by a bunch of jerks that care nothing about the people they employ. Ten years later a group of dial painters from Illinois took their company to court and won. They didn’t go for a settlement but a full, on-the-record, trial. The company still tried to weasel out of their penalties because of what I said two sentences ago.

Most of the women died young and painfully, but their deaths were not in vain. Their legal cases were landmarks for occupational safety and led to the creation of OSHA. The survivors helped scientists study the effects of radiation well into the 1970s. Willingly, even. Most of what we know about radiation’s effects on the human body comes from them. This knowledge helped end nuclear testing when scientists realized that other radioactive elements were also bad because they were mostly men and don’t care about the consequences of what they’re doing when they blow stuff up. I’m a fan of blowing stuff up myself, but check what you’re exploding and the surroundings before you do it, okay? Don’t make me get the hatpins.

*Other countries used glass rods or pens which is why radium poisoning was a uniquely U.S. problem.

**One woman had a sarcoma of the knee that measured between 45-47 centimeters before she died. For the record, the carcinoma removed from my breast a couple of years ago was only 1 centimeter. This is one reason why I appreciate living in the future.

The Third Nero, Lindsey Davis

5 stars

First Sentence: Many people wanted to believe the Emperor Nero had never died.

Thoughts: It’s the day after Tiberius and Albia’s wedding and the honeymoon is canceled. Not surprising, since the groom was truck by lightning during the procession to his new home with his wife. There’s no telling when or if he’ll recover so Albia is worried about money. They only have a couple of rooms in their new house finished, the business needs taking care of, and there are bills. Enter Philippus, the son of the late Claudius Laeta.

Like his father, Philippus works for the emperor. Also like his father, he works for imperial intelligence. The reason why he’s making the post-wedding call is not just for congratulations, but to ask Albia to take care of a job for him that requires a woman’s touch. Two provincial governors were—ahem–encouraged to depart this life for the next one recently, and Philippus needs to know what their wives knew about the activities that led to their unscheduled departures. Albia’s not happy about working for the government after all Falco went through, but she needs money and Philippus will pay up front.

Albia goes to the palace to interviews the wives of the late governors of Britain and Asia. The British governor’s wife stayed behind in Rome while he was serving his term of office, so she didn’t know much about the events that led to his death. The Asian governor’s wife, though, was with him when he was killed. After speaking with the widow (or, more specifically, the widow’s sister) Albia suspects that the reason the Asian governor was killed was less to do about what he was accused of and more to do with the third Nero imposter that recently popped up in Parthia.

Ever since Nero was killed in 68, imposters have been showing up claiming to be him. Some fools believed that Nero would bring them back to a better time, forgetting all the chaos he had created in the haze of nostalgia.* The Flavian emperors were quick to put these imposters down, usually while they were still out in the provinces, but this latest was brought to Rome. Philippus and Albia go to the jail where the False Nero is being kept. They find a peasant with dyed blond hair who can’t speak Latin calmly eating a bowl of soup. How this guy was going to pass as Nero was beyond them.

The next morning, the false Nero was dead. The secret ingredient in the soup was poison. The jailers hurry to dump the body in a convenient ditch in the suburbs while Trebianus, the imperial Parthia watcher, hires Albia to check on the Parthian ambassador and his retinue. There’s a traitor in the palace and Trebianus suspects that they’re in with the Parthians and, possibly, the latest false Nero.

Albia doesn’t want to go to the Parthian embassy. It used to be the home of Falco’s arch-nemesis Anacrites. Albia had been there a few times and barely got away. But she needs the money, so she gets her cousin Marcia to help her infiltrate the harem (and to see if the Parthians kept Anacrites collection of erotic pottery. They didn’t). They find themselves in more trouble than they expected when they uncover plans for a fourth Nero imposter. This has got to be cleared up before Domitian gets back from Pannonia. He’s expected any day now.

*Laughs in American living in 2026.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, vol. 3: Century, Alan Moore & Kevin O’Neill

3.5 stars

First Sentence: Fraters and sorors…beloved fraters and sorors…we are gathered in the profess-house.

Thoughts: And here is where I part ways with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. As someone in the Goodreads reviews put it, the series got a little too “old man yells at cloud.” I read a little bit of the next volume, Tempest, and the grumpiness with Kids These Days was much more prevalent. In my humble opinion, the series should have stayed in Victorian times, but I’m not the author so….

There are three sections in this volume, covering 1909 to 2009. The first section involves the Second Murray League which consisted of Mina Murry, Allan Quartermain pretending to be his own son so no one knew about Ayesha’s pool, Orlando in insufferable Edwardian male form, A.J. Raffles the gentleman thief, and Thomas Carnacki the occultist visionary. Carnacki has a vision that something terrible is going to happen in London involving a Moonchild. Subsequent investigation indicates that it may happen down at the Limehouse docks.

Meanwhile Captain Nemo’s daughter Janni refuses to follow in her father’s footsteps and heads off to London. She gets a job in a dive bar in Limehouse which lasts until the night she’s attacked and raped by a group of sailors. She’s rescued by Jenny from The Threepenny Opera who sings songs from the play while Janni recovers and summons the Nautilus to get revenge on everyone who hurt her. The League gets there only to witness Janni taking over her father’s crew. The moonchild problem is left for the future.

The next chapter is set in the psychedelic days of 1969. Allan, Mina, and Orlando (still male) have been sent back to London from the Blazing World to stop the moonchild. Meanwhile the singer in a popular Britpop band has been murdered. One of his bandmates, the one who was there when the singer was killed, plans a huge memorial concert in the park. The real reason for the concert is so the ghost of Oliver Haddo, who was trying to create the antichrist, can take over his body and start his reign of terror. Mina meets with the Traveler, a mysterious man with glasses and a trenchcoat who’s stuck in location but not in time. He warns Mina of Haddo’s plans so she goes to the concert while Allan and Orlando try to find Haddo’s cult. Mina takes the brown acid and has a bad trip where she fights off Haddo’s spirit while the concert goes downhill. She’s taken away in an ambulance before her men can find her.

A brief interlude in the 1970s reveals that Allan’s gone back to opiates to deal with his guilt. Orlando, in disgust, leaves him to join the army.

Orlando’s military career ends in 2009 when he’s hospitalized after going nuts and shooting up a marketplace in Iraq. Just in time because she’s switched over to female. Prospero appears from the Blazing World to warn Orlando that the moonchild has been born. He sends her to a mental hospital to rescue Mina, who’s been kept there for forty years, and they start the search anew. Then it turns into some kind of twisted Harry Potter story that barely makes sense.

In conclusion, drugs are bad, mmkay? Don’t do drugs.

The Graveyard of the Hesperides, Lindsey Davis

5 stars

First Sentence: Everyone knew a dead barmaid was buried in the courtyard.

Thoughts: Flavia Albia and Tiberius Manlius Faustus are already living together, but because she’s an informer and he’s an aedile, Tiberius wants a formal wedding. Albia’s okay with it as long as she doesn’t have to do too much of the planning. Fortunately (or not) she has two teenage sisters who are more than happy to take over that job for her. Oh boy.

Albia doesn’t have time to plan her wedding because she’s helping Tiberius start up his new career as a builder. He took over Salvidia’s business after he moved out of his uncle’s house. Remember Salvidia? She was Albia’s client who got killed in The Ides of April. Tiberius is finishing up a job Salvidia left unfinished at her death, renovating The Garden of the Hesperides, a dive bar on the Viminal Hill. Unlike most dive bars, this one has a legend associated with it. A barmaid was supposedly murdered and buried in the courtyard about ten years ago. No one really believes it until two of the builders uncover human bones while digging a trench for a water feature in the courtyard.

Work comes to a screeching halt. The vigiles are called in. Two cohorts of vigiles. After some back and forth the entire courtyard is excavated, revealing the remains of several men, a chicken, and the barmaid who’s missing her head for some reason. Albia takes the case of What Happened to Rufia the Barmaid Ten Years Ago and Who Are the Other Men?

No one really wants to talk about it. Eventually Albia is put on the trail of one Menendra, a mysterious business women who travels around with a pair of toughs. Finding out her business is a job in itself as Menendra has her fingers in all the pies on the Viminal. When she catches up to her, Albia learns Menendra learned everything she knows from Rufia back in the day, but she can’t shed any light on what happened to her old mentor.

Then they find out that the female skeleton was pregnant when she was killed. Well she couldn’t be Rufia, because Rufia was well past all that when she vanished. So who in Hades was the murdered woman? And, again, why is her head missing? Could it be the Rabirius gang? They’ve been seen nosing around the various bars in the neighborhood and Albia knows they have a protection racket going.

Meanwhile the wedding draws ever closer. Albia shuts down most of her sisters’ elaborate plans by hiring her own augur and sacrificers (I can’t remember the Latin name). They approve because the men Albia hired are hot, hot, hot. Also, they’ll bring their own sheep. This is important because Uncle Balbius keeps insisting he can do the sacrifices at family holidays. He took a class once, you see. Albia’s precautions don’t stop Balbius from showing up with his own pig which inspires the funniest scene in the book. Ah, family.

A Few Green Leaves, Barbara Pym

3.5 stars

First Sentence: On the Sunday after Easter—Low Sunday, Emma believed it was called—the villagers were permitted to walk in the park and woods surrounding the manor.

Thoughts: I think this is the quietest book I’ve ever read. Some books are a conversation, some are a shout, but this one is a whisper. It’s mainly scenes of English village life in the 1970s. The population is aging, their most important engagement each week is at the doctor’s surgery where they pick up their prescriptions. They go for walks on the manor once a year. They make horrible dinners out of gelatin. And they observe each other, especially Emma Howick, an anthropologist who’s writing a study of village life.

Emma sees Graham Pettifer, an old flame/friend/colleague, on a discussion panel on the telly one night and is inspired to write him a letter catching up. Graham takes Emma’s letter to mean more than it does. He shows up unannounced in the village a couple of times to visit, making a big deal (for an Englishman) about how his marriage is on the rocks. Emma isn’t sure she wants to rekindle things with Graham, but she can’t do anything when he moves in over the summer to work on a book. His attempts to leave his wife are ultimately futile because Emma’s more interested in the vicar, Tom Dagnall.

Tom and his sister Daphne rattle around in the old manse, much to the disgust of Dr. Shrubsole and his wife. The Shrubsoles have three children and Mrs. Dr.’s mother living with them in a tiny box of a house and they would love to have the much larger manse. When Daphne moves in with her friend Heather after Heather retires, they think the vicar will move into a smaller house, but he doesn’t seem to want to up sticks. He’s more interested in tentatively starting things up with Emma.

Daphne, meanwhile, finds out that her dream of living with her best friend isn’t what she hoped. She and Heather had made annual trips to Greece, and Daphne thought they’d retire there. But Heather’s moved into a small house in the suburbs of Birmingham or Manchester, one of those industrial towns, and wants to go to Cornwall for their next holiday. The only thing Daphne likes about her new life is her dog. She hopes to move back to the village with Tom but no one there is interested in having her back.

I’m kind of surprised at how much the characters sucked me in to their stories. I was very invested in the Emma/Tom relationship. Graham got on my nerves with his wishy-washy ways. Charlie Brown popped by at one point to tell him to grow a spine. Daphne might have been interesting if she had enough spine to be the termagant she so desperately wanted to be, but at least she got her longed-for dog.

In short, this is the novel form of the English vs. American movies bit from Suzy Izzard’s Dress to Kill. I need to come up with a term for this genre. Arranging matches, maybe?