Review: I'VE COME TO STAY: A LOVE COMEDY OF BOHEMIA by Mary Heaton Vorse

Original Publication Date: 1918

Genre: romantic comedy

Topics: love, free will, battle of the sexes






















Review by heidenkind:

Ambrose is a writer living in Greenwich Village, right on the edge of Washington Square. Despite the fact that he rarely has two pennies to scrape together, he has a fine wardrobe, wonderful friends, and only writes when he feels like it. Ambrose is living the dream, in other words. But when he adopts an orphan named Sonya (or is it the other way around?), Ambrose can sense his glorious life slipping away into one of conventionality and obligation. Will Ambrose be able to hold on to the life he wants while still doing the right thing?

Books like I've Come To Stay are the entire reason I started this blog. This novel is totally obscure and completely delightful, and I can't wait to tell everyone about it! In tone it reminded me of Gigi, or perhaps a 1910s American version of Notting Hill. In other words, I loved the hell out of it.

I've Come To Stay is a unique take on the romantic comedy. First of all, the people that populate it are fun and quirky, as one would expect from a book set in Greenwich Village. I'm a total sucker for stories that capture avant-garde communities and time periods like this, and I've Come To Stay does it perfectly. It's filled with people who've deliberately rejected the idea of being conventional and decided to become dancers, artists, writers, fashion designers, and political dissidents. They're not necessarily ambitious—Ambrose certainly isn't—except when it comes to freedom and self-expression. For instance, Sonya, the orphan who decides Ambrose is going to adopt her, was raised by her grandfather:

...to express her individuality fully. If she feels like catching a ride on a hearse, she does it. Instead of the Bible she has had Nietzsche; instead of the catechism, Max Stimer; instead of geography she was from the cradle taught to dance by a fat, old Italian ballerina...

Another example is Camilla, the woman Ambrose is sweet on. She longs to escape her "horrible blue-serge youth" in the country, and accordingly has no interest in settling down, getting married, or being a mother, especially to Sonya. Will Ambrose be able to convince her that marrying him doesn't mean becoming a boring and conventional hausfrau?

There's a theme of obligation and responsibility running through I've Come To Stay that intersects with a subtly played out battle of the sexes. As Ambrose's Aunt Adelaide tells him, "It's that awful maternal instinct run rampant." Adelaide's theory is that women make men miserable by treating their husbands and boyfriends like children. But men do the same thing to women, as Camilla discovers when she's caught in her own web of obligation.

I wouldn't call I've Come To Stay a strict romance—most of the scenes and storylines have to do with Sonya messing up Ambrose's life, not the relationship between him and Camilla—but it is SO, SO FUNNY. The dialog between Ambrose and Camilla is sharp and clever, and Ambrose himself is droll and completely charming. His interactions with Sonya are also pretty amusing, since she's an insane, tiny drill sergeant ("When I'm one minute late to school I feel as if I had wasted my whole life") who's constantly trying to get him to toe the line.

When I got close to the end of I've Come To Stay, I honestly wasn't sure if Camilla and Ambrose would end up together, and I was more than a little worried they'd both settle down and decide to "grow up" or become normal. This novel could have gone in so many different directions, but the conclusion Mary Heaton Vorse writes is absolutely perfect and delightful.

If you like comedies, romantic or otherwise, I really hope you'll give I've Come To Stay a try. I loved it and predict it will be one of my favorite books of the year. I want to read all of Vorse's other books now!




Download I've Come To Stay: A Love Comedy of Bohemia by Mary Heaton Vorse at Archive.org|Librivox

Review: CAPTAIN BLOOD by Rafael Sabatini

Original Publication Date: 1922

Genre: adventure

Topics: pirates, politics, freedom, love






Review:

With a name like Peter Blood, a man has limited but awesome career choices. He could become a soldier, a doctor, a rebel, a killer, or an outlaw. Somehow this Peter Blood manages to be all five.

After soldiering under De Ruyter, Blood decides to put his bachelor's degree in medicine to good use (bachelor's degree! Education has really gone down in quality since the 17th century, people) and settle to a quiet life in Somerset as a physician. But fate has more adventures in store for our high-strung hero; after attending to a rebel wounded during the Monmouth Rebellion, Blood is arrested and accused of being a traitor. He's sentenced to death, but the sentence is commuted to slavery in Barbados. Blah blah blah, he captures a Spanish ship and becomes a pirate captain!

Honestly, I didn't enjoy Captain Blood as much as Scaramouche (review here). I didn't dislike it, but neither did I want to LIVE in it they way that I did Scaramouche. This mostly isn't the book's fault at all. I was listening to the Librivox version, and it wasn't the best production. I know they're volunteers and all, but it made listening to Captain Blood difficult at times. This novel definitely deserves a re-recording. Part of it also had to do with the fact that I had a lot of interest in and knowledge of Revolutionary France going into Scaramouche; my familiarity with the time period of Captain Blood (1680's, according to Wikipedia) is sketchy at best.

Aside from that, though, remember how I was just a tad touchy about the women in Scaramouche? Well, when it comes to female characters, Captain Blood is even worse. There's basically one female character, Arabella, and she's annoying as all heck. Basically her entire purpose in the book is to put the screws to Captain Blood and make him feel like a heel for being the most awesome pirate captain who ever liiiiiiiiived.

But there was also a lot to like in Captain Blood, namely: Peter Blood! How could you not love someone who 1., has an Irish accent; 2. speaks approximately a dozen languages; 3. quotes poetry; 4. stands up for his principles; and 5. tells hanging judges, generals, governors, and pirates to kiss his ass LIKE A BOSS.

Another great thing about Peter Blood is that he gets all broody when Arabella doesn't pay attention to him. I love it when he gets all broody! Gah that Arabella, what is wrong with her?

So while I don't think Captain Blood is quite as good Scaramouche, it's still quite good. You should read it, and I will definitely keep reading Sabatini's work (except maybe not on Librivox).



You might also want to read:
Alex's review of Captain Blood here.
My review of Scaramouche here.

Download Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini at Project Gutenberg|Librivox

MACBETH by William Shakespeare

Original Publication Date: 1623

Earliest Known Performance: 1611

Genre: play, tragedy

Topics: free will, leadership, ambition, war, human nature

(image by brekkers)








Review:

How exactly do you “review” Macbeth? Especially if it’s only the second Shakespeare play you’ve ever read? Surely every original thought about it must have already been published, built-upon, attacked and defended.

Now that I’ve read it, I can finally understand the fuss. If you just want a good story you’ll take great pleasure in the spooky atmosphere and the bloody scenes, if you’re a philosopher you can revel in the Grand Issues like free will, ambition and leadership and if you’re a language buff there’s lots of passages to underline.

Just like with A Midsummer’s Night Dream, I took great pleasure in the words, even though they were more archaic and harder to follow (it’s after all a historical play, set in the 11th century). Here are some great examples, the kind you want to memorize and use to impress people at parties:

Where the Norweyan banners flout the sky

And fan our people cold

I have begun to plant thee, and will labor

To make thee full of growing

Start, hide your fires!

Let not light see my black and deep desires

Infected minds

To their deaf pillows will discharge their secrets

Macbeth is the story of a great and respected warrior that once upon a time comes across three witches that give him a vision of the future: he will be King! Macbeth believes them and starts making sure that history bends to this prophecy. Thus begins a bloody chain of events, which starts with regicide, but certainly doesn’t end there.

It’s so spooky that it became a sort of theater-Voldemort: in the acting business it’s only referred to as “the Scottish play”, never by its name, which is said to be CURSED *cue high-pitched violins*.

(credits: Kate Beaton at Hark, a Vagrant!)

The play also has the potential to sparkle great conversations, the type I remember having with friends after watching Donny Darko: would have Macbeth been King, if he didn’t take matters in his own hands? Why didn’t he just sit and wait for the crown to fall on his lap? Was the prophecy just an excuse to bring out everything that was mad and evil in him? What about the Lady Macbeth, another Eve figure, that tempts her man into sin?

Lady Macbeth is an interesting one. She’d also like to be Queen, but knows she doesn’t have the cold blood that’s needed to kill those in her path. And she’s right, because shortly after helping to cover Macbeth’s crime, she rapidly descends into madness and commits suicide. Her power lies in influencing her husband, but even that was too much for her. Still, Lady Macbeth has the best speeches, my favorite being the creepy scene where she asks the spirits to maker stronger, colder… and less womanly:

Come, you spirits

That tend on mortal thoughts! unsex me here,

And fill me from the crown to the toe top full

Of direst cruelty; make thick my blood,

Stop up the access and passage to remorse,

That no compunctious visitings of nature

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between

The effect and it!

As Macbeth himself becomes insane and more brutal, his speeches also become more frantic, and even more spectacular:

I have almost forgot the taste of fears:

The time has been, my senses would have cool’d

To hear a night-shriek

There weren’t as many insults as in Midsummer’s Night Dream (only “rump-fed ronyon”, “shag-haar’d villain” and “lily-liver’d boy”), but there were many little expressions that I immediately recognize. It was such a great experience to think “So that’s where it comes from!” Examples:

that shalt be king hereafter

“King Hereafter” is the name of a novel by Dorothy Dunnett, about the life of the Scottish King that lightly influenced Macbeth’s story.

To wear a heart so white

“A Heart so White”, is a novel by Javier Marias, which my bookclub read a few years ago.

The weird sisters, hand in hand

“The Weird Sisters”, is a recent and very popular novel by Eleanor Brown

Something wicked this way comes

Same title as a Ray Bradbury novel.

One last thought (and a question): I thought it was very cleaver the way Shakespeare made the prophecy make sense. It’s certainly the same level as most Hollywood twists. Was he the first one to use a “literary quibble“?

Macbeth, as well as all other plays by Shakespeare, is available on Project Gutenberg and on LibriVox (in audio).

This post was also published at The Sleepless Reader.