Thoughts: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA by Gaston Leroux

Original Publication Date: 1909 (French); 1911 (English)

Genre: gothic

Topics: opera, love, mystery





















Review by heidenkind:

In the labyrinth under the Paris Opera, an impish yet dangerous "ghost" reigns. Sure, he's killed a few people, but all he wants is to be loved!

The Phantom of the Opera was a reread for me (or read-listen, since I downloaded the audiobook from Librivox. Read by my favorite narrator, Ralph Snelson, fyi). I first read it in high school and it's honestly one of my favorite novels. Erik has to be one of the greatest characters in fiction. Yes, it is BIG with the drama (it takes place in an opera, what do you expect?), and one of my friends on FaceBook called it pulpy, but I don't think it's pulpy--it's more sensationalistic. Like The Woman in White, only shorter and French.

Anyway, The Phantom was definitely due for a reread, as I'd forgotten a lot of things since I last read it. For example:

• I totally forgot Raoul and Christine were childhood sweethearts. That was sweet. It kind of made me like Raoul for a few chapters, until...
• I realized Raoul is actually a BAZILLION TIMES more annoying that I remembered him being. Uhg, he is SUCH a douche. Christine can't do anything without him going into a pity spiral and he cries at the drop of a hat. I honestly don't know how Christine can stand him. I guess being a vicomte and (I guessing) rich is a plus, but still. Not worth it.
• Of course, her other choice is the Phantom, who let's face it is a bit of a psycho. I'd forgotten just how creepy Erik can be sometimes. His letters to the Opera managers (who are hilarious, by the way) read like something Jack the Ripper would write, and his default response to any difficulty seems to be either torture or killing. But when he's not being creepy, he's totally awesome! And then he just inspires pity, which is never a good basis for a relationship.
• I love the framing in this novel. Usually framing annoys me, but in The Phantom of the Opera it really helps make this outlandish story somewhat plausible.
• The Persian--I remember really liking him when I first read the book, but this time around I was kind of annoyed with how he took Raoul's side. Why you got to hate like that, Persian dude?
• Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical adaptation of this book is really good. REALLY good. I bet you five bucks he read this book back to front as a kid so many times he knows it by heart. Of course, I still like the book better, because I like books, but still. Good job on that!
• In high school, I remember being frustrated with the ending, but seeing it as inevitable and recognizing that Christine and the Phantom could have never been together. Now, I'm not so sure. It's really the worst ending ever because no one gets what they should have, and only douchey Raoul gets what he wants. You know that saying, if you love someone let them go? I guess we know who really loved Christine now, don't we?

Anyway, this is a good book. You should all read it!




Download The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux at Project Gutenberg|Librivox

Review: BEAUTY AND THE BEAST by Marie Leprince de Beaumont

Original Publication Date: 1756

Genre: fairy tale

Topics: beauty, morality




















Review by heidenkind:

Beauty is selfless and sweet, but when her dad steals from a beast in a castle, she happily leaves her two annoying sisters to go live with the beast in her father's place.

Marie Leprince de Beaumont was a French governess living in England, who later became a popular children's author. Her version of Beauty and the Beast is often credited as the original, but in fact it's simply an abridged, edited version of the original story by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. One gets the sense from reading Beaumont's version that she was into moralistic tales.

First of all, Belle is the perfect daughter--from the perspective of a parent. She never starts fights with her sisters or complains, and she sacrifices herself for the good of her family. RME Then there's the Beast, whose main claim to monstrosity seems to be social awkwardness. "...every evening Beast paid her a visit, and talked to her during supper, very rationally, with plain good common sense, but never with what the world calls wit." Beauty, by the definition of this story, consists not just of physical attractiveness but charm and cleverness and social gracies, none of which the Beast has to tempt Belle. Eventually she gives him the dreaded You're a Good Friend speech.

All of this would be fine if I didn't feel as if, in the end, Beaumont's Beauty and the Beast ends up supporting the idea that beauty is important. Sure, Beauty eventually falls in love with the Beast--AFTER he transforms into a charming prince. Before that he was good enough to be her "friend" (read: lapdog), but not good enough to marry. It's like those make-over movies I hate where the guy doesn't notice the girl is attractive until after she puts on make-up. Maybe if we'd gotten a peek into Belle's thoughts and knew her motivations for refusing the Beast, it wouldn't be so bad; but as it is, the takeaway message seems to be: yeah, you'd better be good-looking and fashionable and charming, or you're just not worthy of love.

This was a quick read, but definitely not my favorite version of Beauty and the Beast. I am curious to read Villeneuve's version now, though.



Download Beauty and the Beast by Marie Leprince de Beaumont at Project Gutenberg|Librivox

Review: CARNACKI THE GHOST FINDER by William Hope Hodgson

Original Publication Date: 1914 for the original collection; between 1910 and '12 for the individual short stories.

Genre: mystery

Topics: ghosts, supernatural
















Review:

Thomas Carnacki is a ghost expert--think Van Helsing, but with ghosts instead of vampires. Occasionally he shows up at a pub and tells this group of blokes about a particularly interesting--quote unquote--adventure, and then sends them on their way and they're like, "Wow, do we know that guy?" (Haha, I'm kidding. They do seem to know who he is. The framing was just got to me after a while.)

There are six short stories in this collection, and honestly the first three weren't that interesting to me. Carnacki isn't a particularly compelling character, and the ghost stories weren't creepy at all.

Also, when someone goes somewhere to investigate a haunting, and then it turns out to BE a haunting (!), that doesn't provide a lot of narrative tension or surprise. The stories in Carnacki the Ghost Finder reminded a bit of Hound of the Baskervilles (of which I am not a fan) but with less personality and no logical explanation. What are the rules of these spirits? What makes Carnacki more capable of getting of them than anyone else? I was considering bailing on this collection, but decided to stick with it for one more story. I'm glad I did because the second half of Carnacki the Ghost Finder was much better than the first.

My favorite story in the collection was "The Horse of the Invisible," which is a terrible title (all the titles are terrible). There were a lot of elements that made this particular story stand out to me: for one, the haunting itself was really interesting. It's tied to a family curse where every first-born female of the Higgins family is haunted and eventually killed by an invisible horse between the time she starts courting and the time she's married. Because there hasn't been a first-born daughter for seven generations, the Higginses consider the story merely a legend; but with their daughter Mary being tormented by "gobbling horse's neighs" in the night (which definitely sounds annoying), they're prepared to take it more seriously and call in Carnacki to help. Another thing I loved about "The Horse of the Invisible" is that this is the first story where Carnacki uses photography to help him solve the mystery. I have this thing about ghost photography; I find it fascinating even when it's clearly a hoax. William Hope Hodgson does a great job of describing the photographs Carnacki takes so that you can imagine exactly how creepy they are. And finally, the solution to this particular mystery isn't entirely supernatural. I approve of this.

I also really liked "The Searcher of the End House," because it was all about Carnacki living with his mom. Amazingly enough, it turns out Carnacki's house is haunted! But he didn't figure this out until his mom start bugging him. Detective, investigate thyself. This haunting was super-complicated and the solution was totally random--and also not entirely supernatural.

Carnacki the Ghost Finder isn't the greatest short story collection ever, but it has its moments. In the end I felt like it was worth listening to because of the strong finish.



You might also be interested in:
"Thomas Carnacki, King of the Supernatural Detectives," at The Guardian

Download Carnacki the Ghost Finder by William Hope Hodgson at Project Gutenberg|Librivox

Review: MYSTERY AT GENEVA AN IMPROBABLE TALE OF SINGULAR HAPPENINGS by Dame Rose Macaulay

Original Publication Date: 1922

Genre: mystery, in the loosest sense of the word

Topics: politics, gender, society













Review:

Henry Beechtree is a reporter for the British Bolshevist, an early-twentieth century version of Fox News. He's in Geneva covering the meeting of the League of Nations, but delegates keep disappearing. Who could be responsible? Henry thinks he knows.

Mystery at Geneva was not at all what I was expecting. Rose Macaulay opens the novel by stating,

As I have observed among readers and critics a tendency to discern satire where none is intended, I should like to say that this book is simply a straightforward mystery story, devoid of irony, moral or meaning. It has for its setting an imaginary session of the League of Nations Assembly, but it is in no sense a study of, still less a skit on, actual conditions at Geneva, of which indeed I know little, the only connection I have ever had with the League being membership of its Union.

She then proceeds to spend the next 280-ish pages ridiculing nationalism, gender assumptions, religion, politics, reporting, and other aspects of European society, as well as going into extreme detail describing the League of Nations and how it's like a high school full of cliques and hypocrisy.

As for plot, it wouldn't be accurate to say there isn't one, but if you're reading it you will wonder if there is. Only about 10% of the book has anything to do with an actual mystery. This is not a novel of international intrigue; it's a book where guys sit around discussing subjects in such a way as to highlight how ridiculous they are. Occasionally a League delegate disappears and people are like, "Hey, that's upsetting. We should figure out what happened," then they go right back to pointless talking. Metaphor much?

This sounds exactly like the sort of thing that would normally drive me crazy--I HATE mysteries that aren't mysterious--yet somehow I actually enjoyed myself. Macaulay is funny, and it's kind of fascinating to me how the more things change, the more they stay the same. She could just as easily be pointing out the failings of the UN and modern journalism. Plus, her tangents against gender assumptions are pretty awesome. Here's one passage I thought was interesting:

It may be observed that there are in this world mental females, mental males, and mental neutrals. You may know them by their conversation. The mental females, or womanly women, are apt to talk about clothes, children, domestics, the prices of household commodities, love affairs, or personal gossip. Theirs is rather a difficult type of conversation to join in, as it is above one's head. Mental males, or manly men, talk about sport, finance, business, animals, crops, or how things are made. Theirs is also a difficult type of conversation to join in, being also above one's head. Male men as a rule, like female women, and vice versa; they do not converse, but each supplies the other with something they lack, so they gravitate together and make happy marriages. In between these is the No-Man's Land, filled with mental neutrals of both sexes. They talk about all the other things, such as books, jokes, politics, love (as distinct from love affairs), people, places, religion (in which, though they talk more about it, they do not, as a rule, believe so unquestioningly as do the males and the females, who have never thought about it and are rather shocked if it is mentioned), plays, music, current fads and scandals, public persons and events, newspapers, life, and anything else which turns up. Their conversation is easy to join in, as it is not above one's head.

Wow, that was a long thought! Now you have an idea of what I mean about the characters going on and on about things. Here's another excerpt that I liked:

Deeply Henry, going about his secret and private business, intent and absorbed, pondered this question of News, what it is and what it is not. Crime is News; divorce is News; girl mothers are News; fabric gloves and dolls' eyes are, for some unaccountable reason, News; centenaries of famous men are, for some still stranger reason, News; railway accidents are News; the wrong-doing of clergymen is News; strangest of all, women are, inherently and with no activities on their part, News, in a way that men are not... To be News in oneself, without taking any preliminary action—that was very exciting for women... All sorts of articles and letters appear in the papers about women. Profound questions are raised concerning them. Should they smoke? Should they work? Vote? Take Orders? Marry? Exist?

All this discussion about gender becomes very pertinent by the end of the book, and The Mystery at Geneva has an ending I honestly didn't see coming. On one hand, I thought it was a great twist. On the other, I'm not sure it effectively supports the point Macaulay was trying to make about gender definitions being total bull crap.

Mystery at Geneva is no Riddle of the Sands (review here)--this is not an international spy thriller. It's social commentary. If I had been reading it, I might have started to lose patience; but since I was listening to it on audio, I kind of just let it go and enjoyed the exquisite irony of Macaulay's writing. That being said, I can see why this novel is a forgotten classic: it's obscure, a bit preachy, long-winded, and the plot is literally a joke. But weirdly I had fun with it.



Get Mystery at Geneva: An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings by Dame Rose Macaulay at Librivox|Project Gutenberg|Internet Archive

Review: SCARAMOUCHE by Rafael Sabatini

Original Publication Date: 1921

Genre: historical fiction

Topics: adventure, revenge, coming of age, French Revolution













Review:

"He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad."
--kick-ass opening sentence of Scaramouche

On the brink of the French Revolution, Andre-Louis Moreau is a cynical lawyer living in Brittany who doesn't care about politics AT ALL. His bestie, Philippe, does however, and is very involved with the political reformers of the literary cabinet. One night, the highest-ranking noble in the area, the Marquis de la Tour d'Azyr, provokes the egalitarian Philippe into a duel and kills him because he possesses a "dangerous gift of eloquence." After witnessing the murder, Andre-Louis swears to speak with the voice of his dead friend and seek justice through the destruction of the Marquis and his entire class. But how far will he go in his quest for vengeance?

I love Scaramouche! I really want to live in this novel. It's full of fabulous characters, adventure, romance, and it is definitely unputdownable. If you like reading about theater, history, men with gigantic feathered hats who bow over a lady's hand, sword fights, revenge tales, anything by Alexandre Dumas--The Count of Monte Cristo, The Three Musketeers, etc.--or a great story, you should definitely pick this book up. Even if you don't, I still think you should read it.

Maurice Sand as Scaramouche by Michel Levy Freres, 1860

What is a Scaramouche? you might be asking. Scaramouche is an olde-timey stock character from the Comedie Italienne, kind of like Harlequin. After Andre-Louis stirs things up in Rennes and Nantes, he has to get away from the local heat for a while; so he joins a troupe of players, where he takes on the role and the name of Scaramouche. What makes it a good name for him is that, as soon as he sets out to get justice for Philippe, Andre-Louis is playing a role--that of his friend, of Scaramouche, of a politician, etc. This is definitely an all-the-world's-a-stage sort of book, and Andre-Louis is pressed by necessity into taking on these roles; but there's also a sense that he doesn't know who he is (literally or figuratively) or what he wants until the end of the novel.

There's also a lot of conflict between generations in Scaramouche, which makes the Revolution the perfect setting for the story. Wherever Andre-Louis goes, he meets old men who are like, "Listen to your elders, young sir! That's not the way we do things around here. *huffle huffle huffle*" But Andre-Louis has his own ideas of the way things should be done (which are naturally much better than the old guys'), and the energy to put those ideas into the practice. In the same way Andre-Louis is inevitably going to get his way, France is going to fall to the force revolution.

But all that is just happening in the background. The center of the story is Andre-Louis, who tends to do bad things for the right reasons, and always seems to land on his feet. He's a strange mix of opposites--sarcastic and earnest, canny and dense, idealistic and unforgiving--but always likable and sympathetic. Rafael Sabatini takes every opportunity of making light of the people Andre-Louis meets--judges, politicians, writers, actors, academics--and it really is funny. You don't need to know anything about the French Revolution or the 18th century to recognize these characters and the humor and irony in Sabatini's prose.

As for the female characters, they wouldn't pass the Bechdel Test--this is definitely a male-centric book, and all the women fill the role of either mother, saint, or whore (in fact, that perfectly summarizes the three major female characters in this book)--but I did like all of them. They're all women who behave true to their class, but with their own motivations, and are pretty independent.

Basically, Scaramouche has everything you could possibly ever want in a novel. Have I mentioned you should most definitely read this book? You should.



You might also be interested in Alex's review of Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini here.
Find Scaramouche on Librivox|Project Gutenberg

Review: BEASTS, MEN AND GODS by Ferdynand Ossendowski

Original Publication Date: 1922

Genre: memoir

Topics: Asia, journey, war, Bolshevism, Buddhism













Review:

Pursued by Bolshevik Revolutionaries, Ferdynand Ossendowski, a Polish scientist, resolves to return to his family the only way he can: by traveling through Siberia into Mongolia and China, then back into Western Europe via the United States. Along this epic journey he encounters beasts, men, and gods, sometimes within the same person.

I normally don't go for memoirs, but the summary for Beasts, Men and Gods on Librivox described it as, "an epic journey, filled with perils and narrow escapes, in the mold of The Lord of the Rings. The difference is: it’s all true." A TRUE version of Lord of the Rings? This I gotta see. And there better be effing wizards.

While Beasts, Men and Gods isn't exactly Lord of the Rings, it definitely fulfills its promise as an epic journey--a very fascinating, well-told journey over a country Ossendowski calls "the land of mystery and miracles." Ossendowski had an established history of political dissidence opposing the Bolsheviks before this story began, and even spent time in a Russian prison under a death sentence until it was commuted to a "wolf ticket"--basically papers that prevented him from leaving the country or holding down a regular job, which was why he was in Siberia to start off with. He wrote a book about his time in prison called In Human Dust that Leo Tolstoy declared one of his favorites.

Ossendowski can and will kick your ass.

You wouldn't know any of that from reading Beasts, Men and Gods, however. Ossendowski doesn't give us backstory as to why the Bolsheviks are after him, just that he's visiting a friend and receives word soldiers have surrounded his house. With no other options, he escapes into the wilderness of Siberia and lives in the woods on his own for at least a year. Forgoing these details was a smart move on Ossendowski's part--it gives the narrative an everyman feel and underscores the horrors of the Bolshevik Revolution more effectively than if he'd turned the book into a political treatise. And Beasts, Men and Gods isn't really about politics, anyway; it's about a struggle to survive against the chaos of war and nature. Ossendowski wants the reader to feel as if all of this could happen to them, whether or not they're involved in politics, and he succeeds.

The first part of the memoir focuses on his time living more or less alone in Sibera, and it's the best part of the book. You know how the 1965 movie Doctor Zhivago has these incredible visuals that burn themselves into your mind, like the train car covered in ice so thick they have to hack their way through it? Beasts, Men and Gods is kind of like that. Ossendowski's description of the spring thaw is incredible, with the breaking of the ice sounding as loud as a roar and chunks of ice the size of boulders flying up from the river and flattening trees when they land. But the ice carries ugly things in its depths:

Watching this glorious withdrawal of the ice, I was filled with terror and revolt at seeing the awful spoils which the Yenisei bore away in this annual retreat. These were the bodies of the executed counter-revolutionaries... Hundreds of these bodies with heads and hands cut off, with mutilated faces and bodies half burned, with broken skulls, floated and mingled with the blocks of ice, looking for their graves; or, turning in the furious whirlpools among the jagged blocks, they were ground and torn to pieces into shapeless masses, which the river, nauseated with its task, vomited out upon the islands and projecting sand bars.

Yikes! It's easy to understand why Ossendowski was against the Bolsheviks, even though he never comes right out and says that he was.

The book slows down considerably in part two, when Ossendowski makes it into Mongolia and tries to travel into Tibet (with the goal of reaching the coast of India, where he can catch a boat back to Europe), only to be blocked by Chinese revolutionaries. Trapped, liked Mongolia herself, between two countries being taken over by communism, Ossendowski travels here and there, meets people, gets into skirmishes, is shot several times, and attempts to catch us up on Chinese-Mongolian politics. I'm not terribly interested in the politics, and the fights Ossendowski and his traveling companions get into start to feel repetitive. I began to wonder what the heck the point of all this was. But! The story picks up considerably in the part three, when Ossendowski meets Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, also known as the Bloody Baron.

Baron von Ungern-Sternberg, 1921, in a Mongolian deel uniform with the Russian Order of St. George.

The Baron was a German national who became a general for the White Russian army (the royalist side fighting against the Reds, or Bolsheviks), and the guy was CRAY CRAY. He was an excellent general, but known to be ruthlessly violent as well as believing himself to be the reincarnated Mongolian God of War. For serious. The way Ossendowski describes him makes the Baron sound like a blonde Moriarty from BBC's Sherlock--the high-pitched laugh, the faux bonhomie and latent violence. Ossendowki is as frightened of Ungern-Sternberg as anyone, but at their first meeting he tells the Baron off and demands his respect. After that Ungern-Sternberg decides he's trust-worthy and brings him into his inner circle (Ossendowski apparently taught the Baron's troops how to make poisonous gas, but that is not mentioned in the book).

The Baron is a fascinating guy, and Ossendowki is clearly at once repelled and transfixed by him, as is the reader. Knowing what we know now, it's a little spooky at times how the Baron seems to be predicting WWII, a battle between good and evil, as he describes it. He also knows he won't see that battle, anticipating death at the hands of his own commanders, which was exactly what happened.

Ossendowski himself is an interesting guy, too, and he only gets more interesting as his journey goes on. In his normal life he was an academic and scientist, studied under Marie Curie, and taught classes on physics and chemistry at universities in Russia and Poland. As with politics, he never gives us details about his past, but you can tell he's a scientist just by the way he describes things such as the environment and animals in Mongolia. At a few points in the book he comes across strange phenomena or legends and his reaction is, "The locals believe this is caused by evil spirits, but clearly it is a chemical reaction to blahity blah blah." And yet, one gets the impression that there's also a part of him that buys into the mysticism of Mongolia. He believes true prophecies were made about him, and he never attempts to explain Baron von Ungern-Sternberg's belief that he's a god as delusion or narcissism. The last part of the book, which takes place in the palace of the Living Buddha and describes its treasures and prophecies, are the words of someone who's drunk the kool-aid, not a scientist.

And Ossendowski is SMART. I'm not talking book smarts, either, though obviously he is that. He can read people, and that saves his life more than once. He sizes other men up in seconds and then somehow knows what to say or do to get the reaction he wants from them or inspire their trust.

Which leads me to the end of the book, and the reason why I hate memoirs. Because while I don't doubt the veracity of what Ossendowski wrote (I have no reason to--it's absolutely incredible, but people have incredible and unbelievable experiences during war, as I know from stories my own grandparents have told me), he clearly isn't telling us everything. Even if I hadn't Googled him, I'd still know he was being evasive about certain parts of his journey, especially in part four. That's where I started to go, "What the hell?" because he NEVER says how he gets out of Mongolia. One would think that would be a good conclusion to the story, if only just a sentence to mention it, but there's absolutely nothing. Why? According to Wikipedia, he got a position as a diplomatic envoy to Japan, and from there traveled to the US, supposedly hiding treasure he stole from the Bloody Baron along the way. Is that why Ossendowski skips that portion of his journey entirely? I don't like to think that Ossendowski would steal from anyone; but from the start of Beasts, Men and Gods, he edits out certain facts in order to make the impression he wants, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that things occured in those final days that he decided were best left unsaid--not even glossed over, but skipped entirely.

Why not just write a fictional novel about it, for heaven's sake?

In any case, it seems appropriate that Ossendowski's journey through "the land of mystery" ends with a mystery for the reader. I think this memoir is incredible, thought-provoking, awe-inspiring, and I definitely think it's worth checking out.


Read Beasts, Men and Gods on Project Gutenberg|Librivox (Mark Smith narrates and does a fabulous job)

Review: THE LOST STRADIVARIUS by John Meade Falkner

Original Publication Date: 1895

Genre: Gothic, epistolary

Topics: ghosts, evil, temptation

Proposed alternate title: The Devil Went Down to Oxford











Review:

John Maltravers is a respectable student at Oxford, until one day he and his V E R Y close friend, Mr. Gaskell, decide to play a Gagliarda, whatever that is. The melody calls up the ghost of a man who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know, and who just happened to have occupied John's rooms a century ago. When the ghost passes on his Stradivarius violin, John sells his soul to the devil to become the greatest fiddle player in all the land, and is soon ignoring his fiancee, familial responsibilities, growing out his hair, acting like a dick rock star, traipsing off to Naples at the drop of a hat, smoking the pot, and spending way too much quality time with nubile Italian boys.

The only reason I downloaded The Lost Stradivarius from Librivox was because a good portion of it is narrated by my man Ralph Snelson, whom I am stalking (only on Librivox, though, don't worry). As always, he does an excellent job. There was one chapter where I started crying because he conveyed the emotions of the narrator so well.

The story itself is narrated, not by Maltravers, but by his sister Sophia, in a letter to his son. Overall I thought John Meade Falkner did a really good job both in choosing Sophia as the narrator and fleshing out her character believably (even though I did have to wonder how she knew so many details about what went on in her brother's life when he was away from home). We need her to be the narrator because Maltravers becomes increasingly unsympathetic as the book goes on, and the story she tells is a thinly veiled metaphor about how she lost her brother to addiction. That's why I don't think of this as a "ghost story"--the ghost in question really has only a minimal amount to do with the central narrative. When Maltravers moves to Italy, the book takes on an unexpectedly Gothic flavor, with abandoned castles, skeletons, and murders mysterious.

SO WHAT, I'm still a rock star, I got my rock moves, and I don't neeeed youuuuu!

I was actually thinking The Lost Stradivarius was pretty good until the final chapter, which is an addendum by Mr. Gaskell, the "very intimate" university friend of Maltravers. There was some ethnocentrism, and paranoia about the undue influence of pagan (read: classical, read: homosexual) Italian culture on Our Susceptible Young People earlier in the book; but in Gaskell's note it was so over-the-top that I was literally LOLing. Falkner also added a bunch of extraneous plot elements in the final chapter, I have no idea why. Am I supposed to care about the ghost's murder and missing pages from his diary? BECAUSE I DON'T.

Still, even though I found the last chapter ridiculous and annoying, it's very zeitgeist-y in that it reflects the Symbolists' concern with art and beauty and overindulgence. I just wish it had been more subtle and not so much with the xenophobia.

The Lost Stradivarius is an interesting mixture of ghost story, Symbolist writing, and Gothic novel, and for the most part it works. I think it would be a great read around Halloween or for the RIP Challenge.


Find The Lost Stradivarius by John Meade Falkner on Project Gutenberg|Librivox|Gaslight

Review: THE TRAIL OF CONFLICT by Emilie Loring

This is the most accurate cover I have ever seen. The characters really are that wooden.

Original Publication Date: 1922

Genre: Romance

Topics: masculinity, love, independence
















Review:

Mr. Glamorgan has a dream: to make so much money he can buy his daughters upper-class husbands. To that end, he buys Peter CourtlandT's mortgage and then threatens to foreclose on him if his son, Stephen, doesn't marry Glamorgan's daughter, Geraldine. You can tell the CourtlandTs are fancy because they have a T at the end of their name that makes no linguistic sense. Anyway, Stephen and Jerry marry, but Stephen's not very happy about it, and they don't have *whispers* THE SEX. Then Stephen's Uncle Nick shows up--a hilarious grizzled old guy with a talent for saying the most awkward thing at any given moment and not giving the tiny twitch of a rat's ass. Nick decides that what this couple needs is to eschew all of Glamorgan's money and move out to Wyoming where Stephen can prove he's a man, man (you would have thought being a hero in WWI would have done it, but nope!). So they do. Things happen, they fall in love, blah blah.

I've read more than a few Emilie Loring novels; my mom has a whole stack of them that I would make my way through on summer vacations. The vast majority are not in the public domain (not as far as I know, anyway), and I can see why no one bothered to renew the copyright on The Trail of Conflict. It's not one of her best. The writing is extremely uneven--pretty good one minute, then a lot of tell-not-show the next; narrative inconsistencies (when the novel starts, it's implied the story takes place in England, then suddenly they're in the US); and the plot is way more complicated than it needs to be. That paragraph only describes the set-up for the entire novel; the vast majority of it takes place in Wyoming. And there's even more plot once they move.

But I wouldn't have minded any of this if I had been able to connect to either Jerry or Stephen. Instead, I spent most of the book wondering what the heck was going through their heads. There's too much plot and not enough characterization, and both the main characters just seem to do stuff with no insight into why they are doing it. Is Stephen ever attracted to Jerry? I don't know! I guess it doesn't matter, since they're married anyway. And what glimpses I did get of their train of thought didn't exactly endear me to them. For example, Jerry gets rid of all her money on the way to Wyoming, then is like, "How am I going to survive without money?" Sweetie, you're moving to the home of a millionaire rancher. You're not going to starve. And where are you going to go shopping in the middle of Wyoming, anyway? Stephen, meanwhile was a total dick and kept calling Jerry "little girl." Guys pro-tip: NEVER CALL A WOMAN THAT.

I wanted to like Trail of Conflict, I really did, but I just couldn't spend another moment with the main characters. Loring has plenty of other books that are worth reading (I really like Here Comes the Sun), but none of them are in the public domain. So there you have it.


Find The Trail of Conflict at Project Gutenberg

Review: THE MAN IN LOWER TEN by Mary Roberts Rinehart

Original Publication Date: 1906

Genre: Mystery

Topics: trains, lawyers, femme fatale, wrong man













Review:

Oh my gosh, you guyyyyys. I loved this book!

Lawrence (Lollie to his friends) Blakely is an attorney in Washington, DC. His bestie and law partner, Richie McKnight, wants to see a girl over the weekend, so he asks Lollie to travel to Pittsburgh in his stead and pick up some important documents for a case they're working on. The trip back turns into the Titanic of train travel--first, someone's sleeping in Lawrence's bunk, lower ten, so the porter makes him sleep in a different bunk. Then he wakes up to find he's been robbed of everything, including the important documents he was carrying. At this point Lawrence is pretty annoyed and yelling at everyone, but things only get worse when they discover the man taking up his bunk in lower ten has been murrrrrdered, and the conductor accuses Lawrence of the crime. AND THEN the train crashes, killing practically everyone. And that's just the beginning! Now Lawrence is being followed by the police, who think he's a murderer, as well as some unscrupulous people who think he still has the documents. Everything hinges on him finding out who killed the man in lower ten.

I first heard about The Man in Lower Ten from Melody at Edwardian Promenade. The first chapter was little rocky for me, as Lawrence appeared to be yet another Edwardian bourgeois male hero. I don't have anything against bourgeois male heroes in theory, but come on. There's only so much a girl can take. But then one of the characters mentioned the Cubs, and how can you not like a book where the characters talk about the Cubbies? You can't. Not, that is.

I'm glad I stuck with The Man in Lower Ten, because there's a lot to love in this novel, and it only gets better as you keep reading. First of all, I love the characters. Lawrence is clever, but not smooth at all, and Richie is the bestest. These are two people I'd love to hang out with. You know that thing where you start thinking about characters like they're actual people, to the point where you're worrying about them if they seem upset? YEAH. Was totally doing that here.

The novel is also insanely twisty and fast-paced, with great, snappy dialog. Even if you're not a fan of mystery novels per se, I think if you enjoy olde timey movies such as Alfred Hitchcock's lighter suspense films, you'll enjoy this book. There are several elements in The Man in Lower Ten that are very common in Hitchcock films: for one, there's a MacGuffin, the documents Lollie picks up in Pittsburgh. There's also an amateur sleuth named Hotchkiss who just happens to be in the Pullman car when Lawrence is accused of murder, and applies the investigative techniques of Conan Doyle and Poe to real-life crimes (Lollie's reaction to this: "I nodded tolerantly. Most of us have hobbies"). And there's a "wrong man" element in the story, as Lollie is misidentified as the person who not only stole the documents, but killed the man in lower ten.

There's also a romantic sub-plot with a beautiful woman whom apparently alllll the men in the mid-Atlantic states are in love with, and who is very definitely involved in the murder somehow. Just how far can she be trusted? I think I worried over this a lot more than Lawrence did.

Of course, enjoying all of this requires a definite suspension of disbelief, and there are a few UnPC Moments (calling the porters "darkies," for instance); but despite being written over a hundred years ago, The Man in Lower Ten feels surprisingly modern, and is as much fun to read as any mystery novel I've ever come across. I now want to read ALL THE MARY ROBERTS RINEHART NOVELS. She's called the American Agatha Christie, but personally I think it'd be more accurate to call her the American Female Hitchcock. Definitely recommended!

Short Story Review: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Original Publication Date: 1907

Genre: Horror

Topics: horror, psychological terror, other dimensional, camping, travel













Review: There should be a sub-genre in horror fiction: camping trips gone awry, think Deliverance or Friday the 13th. Being in an unfamiliar place makes people edgy. The fear of the unknown is a human trait. The Willows by Algernon Blackwood doesn't use a knife wielding maniac to tap into that fear.

In The Willows an unnamed narrator and his buddy, "The Swede", are embarking on that male right of passage, the road trip. Instead of hitch hiking across America, these two are canoeing over Europe. Things have gone well so far. They've stopped in several places, had some adventures, but it's been no sweat for either of them until they hit the Danube. The river is flooding and things are getting hairy. They're two strong, capable boys though and manage to get themselves to a sandy island covered in willow trees.

They decide it would be best to stay there a couple of days and wait for the flood waters to recede. They set up their tent, despite the terrible wind that constantly blows, and go looking for firewood. It's then that the narrator gets a sense that something is not right. He has a feeling of foreboding that weighs heavily upon him. The fear within him is worse when he's within sight of the willow trees which press upon him. He decides not to tell his friend, a practical guy not given to imaginings, although they share a couple of incidents that give him the heebie-jeebies.

During the night, the narrator has a terrifying experience, yet he still refuses to share his thoughts with his friend. He does notice that The Swede is nervous and jumpy. They agree that they need to get away as soon as possible, but will the unknown forces on the island let them go?

Although this story is one in a collection titled Famous Modern Ghost Stories found on Project Gutenberg, I wouldn't say The Willows is a ghost story. It's more a story of an experience with another dimension. American author H.P. Lovecraft admired and was influenced by Algernon Blackwood and as I was reading I felt like I was reading a Lovecraft story. There is an emphasis on a world beyond our own. It was as if the guys were experiencing a Fringe event!

Algernon loved the outdoors and was quite adventurous. His descriptions of canoeing down the river and the island itself were realistic. I wasn't fond of the explain-iness of one of the characters. It was a bit too much like Algernon explaining things to the reader. I like to draw my own conclusions.

Still I enjoyed The Willows. The author creates a strong sense of place and the creepy factor is way up there. I'll definitely be reading more of Algernon Blackwood.

Review: THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS by Erskine Childers

Original Publication Date: 1903

Genre: spy, thriller, adventure

Topics: sailing, espionage, Germanic horde













Review:

Carruthers is a bourgeois suit with a desultory job in London with the Foreign Office. He's feeling sorry for himself because he can't enjoy a house party with his friends, when he receives a telegram from a long-forgotten college acquaintance, Davies, inviting Carruthers to join him on his yacht. Carruthers' immediate reaction is that yachting in the Baltic at the end of September sounds like a HORRIBLE idea and he would rather choke; but a few days later, he finds himself on vacation and headed off to meet Davies, towing along a completely random collection of oddly specific items that Davies requested.

When he first arrives, Carruthers' instinct that this trip was a terrible idea seems confirmed. But he soon chills out, only to find Davies invited him to go sailing for a reason: he believes a German spy attempted to kill him in the Frisian Islands, and he needs a partner to help him figure out what the man wanted to hide.

If you picked up this book based purely on the title, you'd probably expect Riddle of the Sands to be some sort of adventure novel or archaeological mystery set in Egypt. You'd be wrong! The "sands" referred to in the title are actually a collection of sandbanks near the Frisian Islands, which are relatively uncharted and difficult to navigate. On board a tiny boat in the middle of a bunch of barren sand banks doesn't sound like the most interesting setting in the world, but the sense of isolation and difficulty Carruthers and Davies face really heightens the tension of the story. It works!

There is a lot of sailing jargon in this novel, which can be a bit difficult for those of us who don't know a jib from a forecastle (*raises hand*), but that's easily overcome because the characters are so awesome. Carruthers, our narrator and protagonist, doesn't know a thing about sailing (even though the author, Erskine Childers, clearly does), and he's so funny it's hard not to enjoy him. He's extremely fussy and a little spoiled, but underneath all his posturing and complaining he's good-hearted. If Karl from An Idiot Abroad was a Victorian gentleman, he'd be pretty similar to Carruthers.

Davies, meanwhile, is a weird combination of a bloke and a fanatic. He really only cares about one thing: sailing. Everything else tends to fall by wayside, and around people who aren't sea-worthy he's awkward, just because he has no idea what to talk about. But he's also basically a good guy, and not as dense as he first seems.

The main thing that I didn't like about Riddle of the Sands was that there were hardly any female characters. I'm a woman; I like to read books with women in them, what can I say. There was one lone female character in this story: the daughter of the German spy. But she didn't do anything; her role in the story was mainly to quell any suspicions that might crop up over Davies' heterosexuality. Or lack thereof.

Aside from that, though, as a espionage thriller this novel is pretty top-notch. Childers knew what he was talking about and put a lot of thought into what role an area like the Frisian Islands might serve in a military conflict between Germany and England, and it shows. Unlike many thrillers, Riddle of the Sands doesn't feel fantastical at all, and I'm not surprised it inspired generations of novelists as well as real-world policy enacted by politicians and military peeps.

I first head about this novel on Evangeline Holland's and Melody B's list of Downton Abbey-era fiction at Edwardian Promenade. I highly recommend you check it out!

Review: Molly Make-Believe by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Original Publication Date: 1911

Genre: romance, epistolary

Topics: illness, letters, love, relationships







Review:

Molly Make-Believe tells the story of Carl Stanton, a young man from New England who suffers from rheumatism. Carl is engaged to be married to Cornelia; and to his complete dismay, his being unwell doesn’t prevent her from going south for the winter with her family as she has always done. To add insult to injury, the letters Cornelia writes him are distant, short, and businesslike: they completely fail to provide a sick young gentleman with the comfort and amusement he requires. How dare his fiancée neglect him so?

It is Cornelia herself who suggests that Carl sign up to receive letters from The Serial Letter Company. As the advertisement says, this company provides “Comfort and Entertainment for Invalids, Travellers, and all Lonely People in the form of “Real Letters from Imaginary Persons”. Carls begins to receive letters from someone who calls herself “Molly Make-Believe”, and very soon this imaginary person begins to take the absent Cornelia’s place in his heart. But who exactly is the real Molly? And could it be that there is any real feeling behind what is in essence a business exchange?

Molly Make-Believe tells Carl and Molly’s story though the letters they exchange, but the presence of long narrative sections means that the novel is perhaps more accurately described as semi-epistolary.

I decided to read Molly Make-Believe because it was mentioned in the same breath as Jean Webster’s delightful Daddy-Long-Legs in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. The reference, I might add, is not exactly flattering, but I figured that if I disagreed with Fitzgerald’s narrator about the latter, I might very well also disagree about the former.

As it turns out, I was completely wrong.

Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs is in many ways a traditional romance, but it’s also full of proto-feminist elements and exciting ideas about women’s education and intellectual and emotional independence. Not so with Molly Make-Believe. The deep-seated assumption underpinning this story is that it’s only right and proper for a woman to put a man’s emotional needs first – that it is indeed completely unreasonable for a wife, or wife-to-be, to dare to do otherwise.

This is well exemplified by Carl’s reaction to the photo the fictional Molly sends him at his requests. You see, she had the audacity to pick a photo of something other than a beautiful woman. Here is our noble hero’s response:

Scowlingly he picked up the picture and stared and stared at it. Certainly it was grim. But even from its grimness emanated the same faint, mysterious odor of cinnamon roses that lurked in the accompanying letter. “There’s some dreadful mistake somewhere,” he insisted. Then suddenly he began to laugh, and reaching out once more for pen and paper, inscribed his second letter and his first complaint to the Serial-Letter Co.
‘To the Serial-Letter Co.,’ he wrote sternly, with many ferocious tremors of dignity and rheumatism.
‘Kindly allow me to call attention to the fact that in my recent order of the 18th inst., the specifications distinctly stated ‘love-letters’, and not any correspondence whatsoever,—no matter how exhilarating from either a ‘Gray-Plush Squirrel’ or a ‘Banda Sea Pirate’ as evidenced by enclosed photograph which I am hereby returning. Please refund money at once or forward me without delay a consistent photograph of a ‘special edition de luxe’ girl.

The response he receives from the company is perhaps even more revealing:

‘Oh, please, Sir,’ said the enclosed letter, ‘Oh, please, Sir, we cannot refund your subscription money because—we have spent it. But if you will only be patient, we feel quite certain that you will be altogether satisfied in the long run with the material offered you. As for the photograph recently forwarded to you, kindly accept our apologies for a very clumsy mistake made here in the office. Do any of these other types suit you better? Kindly mark selection and return all pictures at your earliest convenience.’

The assumption is that this kind of behaviour is a man’s prerogative, and this premise is never, ever questioned. I should add that even after being sent a “satisfactory” set of pictures to choose from, our Carl is still afraid that his Molly may be old, disfigured, or, horror of horrors, black.



Yes, seriously.
MILD SPOILERS

A possible feminist reading of Molly Make-Believe is that it features a young woman who achieves financial independence by attaching value to the kind of care work – in this case, companionship, amusement and emotional support – that women are generally expected to do for free. Unfortunately, this reading is undermined by speech Molly herself gives towards the end:

‘I guess—I guess it takes a man to really run a business with any sort of financial success, ‘cause you see a man never puts anything except his head into his business. And of course if you only put your head into it, then you go right along giving always just a little wee bit less than ‘value received’—and so you can’t help, sir, making a profit. Why people would think you were plain, stark crazy if you gave them even one more pair of poor rubber boots than they’d paid for. But a woman! Well, you see my little business was a sort of a scheme to sell sympathy—perfectly good sympathy, you know—but to sell it to people who really needed it, instead of giving it away to people who didn’t care anything about it at all. And you have to run that sort of business almost entirely with your heart—and you wouldn’t feel decent at all, unless you delivered to everybody just a little tiny bit more sympathy than he paid for. Otherwise, you see you wouldn’t be delivering perfectly good sympathy. So that’s why—you understand now—that’s why I had to send you my very own woolly blanket-wrapper, and my very own silver porringer, and my very own sling-shot that I fight city cats with,—because, you see, I had to use every single cent of your money right away to pay for the things that I’d already bought for other people.

Yes, the ladies are far too emotional to ever successfully run a business. Furthermore, charging money for the kind of care work they are naturally suited for feels so wrong to them that they’ll always do more than they’re expected to, and the result will inevitably be financial ruin. It’s a sad fact of life.

To end with something positive, I was pleasantly surprised to see that Carl’s fiancée Cornelia was treated with far more kindness than I expected in their final confrontation. The two part ways amicably, having realised that they’re not temperamentally suited to each other, and there’s far less condemning Cornelia for not being as devoted as a woman should be than I feared.

END SPOILERS

It goes without saying that Molly Make-Believe is a product of its time. Of course, the early twentieth-century world in which it takes place was not a place where the gender essentialism, racism or conservatism that underpin this novel were never questioned, as evidenced by novels like Daddy-Long-Legsor the work of early feminists like Charlotte Perkins Gilman and of other activists; but nonetheless these ideas were socially dominant to an even greater extent than they are now.

It’s of course completely possible to enjoy the novel for the love story without aligning oneself with the very traditional ideas about gender roles or the problematic power dynamics it reveals. Readers’ mileage for how much is too much will naturally vary. It’s also possible to find Molly Make-Believe an interesting read exactly because its pre-feminism is so revealing. That was what happened in my case: I may not have loved it, but I’m glad to have picked it up all the same.

You can find Molly Make-Believe at Project Gutenberg.



Another illustration from the novel by Walter Little.
They read it too: Redeeming Qualities

Review: Roast Beef, Medium by Edna Ferber

Original Publication Date: 1913

Genre: Women's Fiction

Topics: women, careers, business, travelling salespeople, single mother, working mother,














Review:

Emma McChesney is a travelling salesperson. Maybe not such an unusual career choice for a woman now but in 1913 it definitely was. Emma is successful at it too. She is the best salesperson for T.A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. And here's why in her own words:

I've lived petticoats, I've talked petticoats, I've sold petticoats, I've dreamed petticoats- why, I've even worn the darned things! And that's more than any man will do for you.

It's not an easy life for a woman- as the men are quick to remind her- there are long days and nights on the road and in hotels. The salesmen can hang out in the hotel parlors and joke with each other. Emma has to spend her evenings alone in her room. She has to be impeccably dressed or the men size her up instantly as 'that kind of woman.' "Morals don't figure with a man on the road, but when a woman breaks in this game, she's got to be on the level," as one character says. It's not fair but it's how it is.

Emma is one tough cookie. She holds her own whether she's battling it out with the T.A. Buck's son, or her nemesis Ed Meyer, or a hotel manager trying to put her in the shabbiest room. Emma is one of the strongest females I've encountered in literature.

Roast Beef, Medium is a collection of vignettes from the tenth year of Emma's career. Changes are afoot. Her son, 17 and full of himself, is about to start college, her boss is ill, and fashions are making petticoats obsolete. How will Emma face these challenges?

I found reading Roast Beef, Medium a bit challenging myself. I enjoyed it but the dialogue is written in the vernacular of the times. Sometimes I'd read a line and think, "Huh? What the heck are they saying?" Emma is a strong character but she did romanticize homemaking a lot. Sure I like taking care of my home but there are days when I wish I could Tom Sawyer someone into cleaning my bathroom for me. She might say she just wants to bake pies but she loves her job too much. You can tell by the way she takes on any challenges. No one ever gets the better of her, she's too quick for that.

If you're interested in a career woman from the past who wasn't a teacher or governess, I think you'll be impressed by Roast Beef, Medium. It's not a very long book either at only 126 pages. Recommended.

You may not have heard of Roast Beef, Medium but you might know one of Edna Ferber's other novels including Show Boat (turned into musical), So Big (Pulitzer Prize 1924) or Giant. Giant was made into a movie starring Rock Hudson, James Dean and Elizabeth Taylor in 1956.

Roast Beef, Medium is a free ebook from Girlebooks and includes illustrations.

Review originally published on Chrisbookarama.

Review: PRINCESS MARITZA by Percy James Brebner

Original Publication Date: 1906

Genre: adventure, romance

Topics: knight-in-shining armor, quest, Germanic horde













Review:

I'm not entirely sure why I decided to download this book. I think it probably popped up as a, "If you enjoyed this book, try..." after I finished Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope. And thematically, it is pretty similar: you have your English gentleman traveling across Europe, saving an obscure kingdom with a vaguely Germanic name, and falling in love with the princess. Except, of course, Prisoner of Zenda's really good, and Princess Maritza... isn't.

Desmond Ellery is a former officer with a dark past and a strong jaw. One day he's wandering about in a meadow, when he runs into the most beautiful woman he's ever seen--his words--who is actually a school girl running away from her studies. She explains to him she's an exiled princess and she would sure appreciate it if he helped her regain her throne. So, naturally, that's just what he does.

The writing style is insanely flowery, and not in a good way (not that there is a good way). I think it's because of this that the pacing of the novel is so slow. I hated the princess right off the bat, who's basically like, "I'm beautiful, I'm not afraid to admit I know it! I want to be a man! My goal after graduating is the political takeover of a country I've never been to!" Awesome. Basically, she's just an object, which isn't surprising; but she's also annoying and shallow.

I did like how Desmond's past is very mysterious, but Desmond himself is pretty boring. The flow of the story can be pretty jumpy sometimes, as well, and is full of paranoia about the Germanic Horde Taking Over Europe. I eventually decided to give up after the book put me to sleep.

In other words, I'm going to stick with Anthony Hope for the time being.