Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson

This was recently a movie starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. I finished reading the book more than a week ago but I put off writing about it hoping to see the movie first. I kept thinking it was going to come any day but then I discovered that someone in my family had hijacked the Netflix queue and High School Musical 3 arrived instead.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day was originally published in 1938 and reissued in 2000 by Persephone, the British publisher of forgotten works by women authors. I buy a few of these books each year and am slowly establishing a small collection. A friend went to London last spring and brought me back Miss Pettigrew as a souvenir. She bought the original version from the Persephone shop on Lamb’s Conduit St., and it is bound in the iconic gray Persephone cover, but Persephone has also released Miss Pettigrew as part of its series “Persephone Classics” which sport arty covers and are available at mainstream U.S. bookstores. Only nine Persephone titles are available this way in the U.S.-- the rest must be purchased directly from the Persephone shops in London, or over the Web. Miss Pettigrew is also the only Persephone title available as an audiobook; it's read by Frances McDormand and is probably a lot of fun to listen to.

Persephone books seem to come in two styles, heavy and light. The titles I read last year (especially The Priory by Dorothy Whipple) were distinctly heavy. Miss Pettigrew could not be more different; it is so light it practically floats. The plot can be described in one sentence: Miss Pettigrew, a governess in search of a new job, ends up accidentally in the employ of an actress, Miss Delysia LaFosse, and spends her first day using her good common sense bailing Miss LaFosse out of one disastrous situation after another. Much of the book consists of frothy dialogue and descriptions of Miss LaFosse’s extensive wardrobe.

Yet beneath the story’s bubbly surface lurk hints of the gravity of Miss Pettigrew’s situation. Older, ineffective with children, dismissed from employment with increasing frequency, Miss Pettigrew can see her options diminishing rapidly. Choices for unmarried middle-class women in the early part of the 20th century were limited at best. This theme (the lack of choices for women of all ages and social classes) is one that runs through every Persephone book I’ve read. It certainly is present in this book too, though you might miss it if you aren’t thinking too hard.

Does the movie address this issue? Unfortunately I have to wait until someone has watched High School Musical 3 a couple more times before I can find out.

(Book 16, 2009)

Peony in Love by Lisa See

Lisa See’s books have such lovely covers! And her titles: Peony in Love, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan. Don’t they sound delightful? I think I have been avoiding them for these very reasons; I suspected they might not measure up to their marketing. And it’s true that Peony in Love was not what I expected, but in a good way.

The plot of Peony in Love is difficult to describe, but I will try (sorry, some spoilers ahead, and plot sticklers who have already read this may notice that I am simplifying). Set in 17th century China, it tells the story of Peony, a sheltered upper class girl who, as the book begins, is getting ready to enter into an arranged marriage. But Peony rebels against her strict upbringing; she wishes to be a writer, not just a wife, and she wishes to marry a man she loves, not one chosen for her by her parents. She embarks on a secret writing project that consumes all her time and energy, much to the dismay of her mother and her aunts. So far, this is predictable enough, yes? But the book takes an unexpected turn when Peony chooses the ultimate escape by starving herself to death. She spends the rest of the book as a ghost, haunting Wu Ren, the man who would have been her husband and Tan Ze and Qian Ye, his two future wives. With her new ghostly powers, Peony forces Tan Ze and Qian Ye to do her writing for her, and together the three women produce a work called The Three Wives Commentary.

As a ghost Peony has freedom that she never had in life. Able to zoom around wherever she wants, she discovers that 17th century China is full of women writers. Lisa See allows Peony to encounter women poets and essayists who really existed, nicely placing Peony in the midst of a lot of historical action. The Three Wives Commentary is a real book, and Peony, her intended husband Wu Ren, and his two wives Tan Ze and Qian Ye all really existed. (All this is revealed in the extensive author notes at the end of the book.)

Here is a question. It’s common for authors to write about historical events from the vantage point of fictional characters, or even to make up fictional stories about real historical characters. But it really takes a lot of nerve to take a real character and turn her into a ghost! Is Lisa See brave and creative, or just nutty? You have to admit that it’s kind of odd to tell such a serious story about poetry, feminism, history, love, footbinding, and religion through the voice of a ghost. But I think it works.

(Book 15, 2009)

They are Called Bonnet Books

Last week I briefly mentioned the Amish romance novels I discovered for sale at the rest stops on the Indiana Toll Road. Turns out I am not the only one to notice these. Time magazine this week has an article about them. Read it here.

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Jeannette Walls grew up in extreme poverty with an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother. Why is her story unique? Because Walls escaped from her toxic environment and against all odds got a Barnard education and a good job as a journalist in New York City. Her memoir recounts her childhood as her family moved like gypsies across the U.S., living in their car, finally settling down in a crumbling shack in Appalachia with no heat or indoor plumbing. Walls remembers having nothing to eat in the house for weeks at a time, stealing food from the garbage can in the school lunchroom, wearing threadbare clothing, and washing her face in snow for lack of a better alternative.

I put off reading this book for a while because I was afraid it would be too depressing, and it is a sad story. Yet Walls never resorts to self-pity or demonizes her parents; this is not a revenge book. In fact she writes about her parents with humor and affection, recalling the good times as well as the bad. Despite their obvious defects as parents, Rex and Rose Mary Walls treated their children with love and respect, and encouraged their intelligence and creativity at every turn. Many affluent suburban children grow up in environments that are far less emotionally rich, and Jeannette Walls knows this. Walls’s parents eventually joined her and her siblings in New York City but ended up homeless and remained so for many years, despite their children’s efforts to help them find jobs and housing.

Toward the end of the book Walls talks about her fears of revealing her past to her New York crowd – she worries that she will be fired from her job and rejected by her friends and colleagues when they learn of her origins. Why this particular anxiety? She never directly addresses the underlying issue here, the twin stigmas of poverty and alcoholism in the U.S. I kept thinking that if someone with a similar background from a poor nation moved to the U.S. and achieved success through hard work (the same way Walls achieved success) would that person be as ashamed of her past? I don’t think so. What does this issue say about poverty in the U.S. and about that most American of myths: the rags-to-riches story?

(Book 14, 2009)

A Few Book-Related Facts Gleaned from a Week of Travelling

1. I discovered a high school in New York state called Ichabod Crane High School. I wonder how many other schools are named after fictional characters?

2. The Target in Elyria, Ohio sells only (a) books that I have already read (The Senator's Wife, City of Thieves, The Undomestic Goddess) and (b) books that I will never read (everything by Jodi Picault).

3. The rest stops on the Indiana Toll Road sell Amish romance novels. Who knew? I wonder if the rest stops in Utah sell Mormon romance novels.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Who first thought up the idea for the classic English country house mystery? Wilkie Collins? Charles Dickens? Henry James? All three of them wrote early versions (The Moonstone, The Mystery of Edwin Drood, The Turn of the Screw) in the middle of the 19th century. All were influenced to some extent by a real murder that occurred at an English country house around that same time: the mysterious murder of 3-year-old Saville Kent who was stolen from his bed and stabbed to death by someone in his household. Who? The nursery maid? The errant gardener? His sister?

Early versions of crime and mystery stories were appearing in Scotland and England in the late 1840’s and Edgar Allan Poe created the first fictional detective, Auguste Dupin, in 1841 in The Murders in the Rue Morgue. But it was England’s national obsession with the Road Hill House murder (as Saville Kent’s case came to be known) that really got the ball rolling. It was also around this time that the British government started Scotland Yard, and attempted for the first time to create some kind of coordinated, standardized effort at solving crimes. Before this, detection was often conducted by amateurs and was likely to be botched. It was not a great time to stand accused of a crime.

The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is the true story of the Road Hill House murder and of Jack Whicher, the Scotland Yard detective assigned to solve the case. Kate Summerscale’s research is outstanding and her approach is meticulous. She reviews the murder in great detail and introduces us to every single character and event, even the ones that might have been ignored for the sake of brevity. And therein lies the problem with this book. As a historical analysis it is comprehensive and exacting. As a book to read for pleasure it is slow going at best and at times dull. I found that I had to skim in a lot of places, especially the middle where Summerscale describes the chaotic years after the murder and its unsatisfying solution. The best part of this book is the beginning, which is the story of the Kent family and a reconstruction of Saville’s murder. And Summerscale does provide some tasty, shocking theories at the end of the book which makes finishing it definitely worth the time.

I thought as I was reading this that Summerscale should have written a fictionalized version of the story instead of such a detailed, historically accurate account. It would have made for better reading. Then I realized that someone had already done this, or rather, three great writers had already done so. How could she top them? Marilyn Stasio, writing in the New York Times, says that “For the true lit-hist-myst buff, to reread The Mystery of Edwin Drood or The Moonstone directly after The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher is akin to having an epiphany.” I’m sure she’s right.

(Book 13, 2009)