Re-Reading: MAUD CASEY'S CITY OF INCURABLE WOMEN

Interweaving material from hospital case notes with fictional invention, Casey illuminates the mistreated “madwomen” of late 19th century Paris’s Salpêtrière asylum. Casey’s precise, luminous prose is supplemented by telling period documents and images. Every novel from Casey is a haunting, immersive treat. You can read our interview with the author on her previous book, The Man Who Walked Away, here. Buy this one on Amazon and Bookshop and visit the author's website for more.

Favorite Films: ITV's EMMA, 1996

Though without the spectacular and showy visuals of Autumn De Wilde’s 2020 adaptation of the novel, to my mind this 1996 adaptation from Britain’s ITV better captures the warmth of heart behind the story’s intricate ironies. Andrew Davies adapts the text with his usual skill, brilliant British actors give stellar performances throughout (I’m forgiving Prunella Scales for making the already over-the-top character of Miss Bates even a little more extra), Jenny Beavan’s costumes are lovely, and the story’s themes of growth and community—as well as its comedy—resonate throughout. Ignore the over-feminine pink of the poster and the fact that Kate Beckinsale isn't blond; this is a strong adaptation of Austen's classic.

Just Out: ROSEMARY SIMPSON'S DEATH TAKES THE LEAD

 

As a former NYC resident, I always enjoy the Manhattan-related elements of Simpson’s Gilded Age mysteries (I especially appreciated the appearance of the Metropolitan Museum in Murder Wears a Hidden Face). In the lively ninth installment, Prudence MacKenzie’s strength and smarts are tested by a murder in the city’s theatrical circles—a world that’s even more dramatic offstage than on. As always with this series, the plotting is well-crafted and the glimpse of Gilded Age America rich. You can buy the book on Bookstore.org and Amazon.com  and keep up with the author on her Facebook page.

Just Out: CLARA McKENNA'S MURDER AT GLENLOCH HILL

In Clara McKenna's charming sixth Stella and Lyndy mystery,  the couple visits Scotland, golf’s home nation, during the celebrated Open Championship. Needless to say, the vagaries of links golf are not the only challenge Stella and Lyndy face. The couple’s strong personalities and colorful family connections make for a fun, energetic tale, and a story thread relating to their attempts to get pregnant is a poignant touch. Order the book on Bookstore.org here and visit McKenna here.

Society Nineteen Reviews: DOUGLAS WESTERBEKE'S A SHORT WALK THROUGH A WIDE WORLD

What would it feel like to be unable, on pain of death, to stay in one place for more than three days or return to the same location twice? Marrying inspirations from Verne and Borges with his own distinctive vision, Westerbeke’s engrossing debut offers one answer. It begins in 1885 Paris, when nine year old Aubry Tourvel is struck by excruciating pain and facial bleeding. Doctors can offer neither cure nor explanation, but Aubry and her family learn by trial and error that she risks death if she remains anywhere for more than a few days or attempts to return there again. Mrs. Tourvel spends three years on the road with her daughter until Aubry sneaks away one night, releasing her mother to return to the family home. Forced to remain constantly on the move, Aubry sharpens her natural resourcefulness, learning to hunt her own food and negotiate language barriers with help from a picture book she creates to communicate key needs. More painfully, she learns what love is like when it can only last three days and grows accustomed to leaving even the people, places and experiences she values most behind. Aubry’s unique affliction makes her an international celebrity, but one aspect of her travels is never revealed: the fact that sometimes, when faced by impassable deserts or mountains, she finds escape in the form of openings to a huge subterranean space. In what seems to be a vast underground library, she discovers scrolls of stories narrated in images and feels the limits of time as well as space break, then is able to emerge back into the world with geographical obstacles behind her. Eventually, she circumnavigates the earth five or more times. Fantastical as Aubry’s predicament surely is, the themes of Westerbeke’s novel speaks powerfully to familiar human concerns. Travelers moving through an unimaginably huge and complex world, unable to step in the same river twice, dealing with constant change and our sometimes unswayable hearts: we are Aubry Tourvel, and Aubry Tourvel is us.

Society Nineteen Reviews: GODMERSHAM PARK by GILL HORNBY

Those who have read my rave review of Gill Hornby's Miss Austen won't be surprised that I also loved her Godmersham Park. Named after the estate of Jane Austen's older brother, Edward, the novel is a fictional retelling of several years in the life of Austen's friend Anne Sharp (sometimes spelled Sharpe). Little is known about the real Sharp's family background or early life. She really enters the historical record in 1804, when she arrived at Godmersham to serve as governess to Edward's daughter Fanny. Though she left Godmersham in 1806, the friendship she struck up with Jane Austen during those years flourished until Austen's death in 1817. Sharp went on to found a boarding school for girls in Liverpool's Everton district, where she died in 1853. (If you're curious about the historical Sharp, you can find excellent information here.)

As texts including Jane Austen's Emma make abundantly clear, young women did not become governesses for the fun of the job. Hornby 

traces several years in the life of Anne Sharp, a friend of Jane Austen’s. In 1803, Sharp’s mother dies and her once affectionate father, Johnny, inexplicably drops off from contact. Anne, suddenly without a home at 31, seeks work as a governess, one of few professions open to women of her class. She finds a position at Godmersham Park, Kent, arriving there in 1804 to teach Fanny Austen, the 12-year-old daughter of Jane’s older brother Edward. Anne struggles with the job’s constrictions and the loneliness that comes from being considered neither gentry nor servant, which feels to her like living in “a small village set away from society, into which gossip from the capital arrived long after the event.” Fanny proves a bright pupil, but she’s confused by Henry, Edward’s younger brother, who makes his admiration for her plain despite being a married man. With Jane, an observant and intelligent single woman, Anne develops an enduring bond. Then Edward’s wife grows resentful of Henry’s affection for Anne, even as new information about the mysterious Johnny upends Anne’s beliefs about her past. 

Hornby’s skillful mix of fact and fiction captures the complexities of the Austens and their era, and her crisp, nimble prose sparkles throughout. Best of all, Hornby genuinely channels the sentiment of 19th-century English literature (“Oh, the pleasure of having someone with whom to share her best thoughts,” Anne narrates about Jane). Janeites aren’t the only readers who will relish this smart, tender tale.

Society Nineteen Reviews: LEARNED BY HEART by EMMA DONOGHUE

Though Emma Donoghue is best known for her contemporary novel Room, I follow her primarily for her superb historical fiction. Slammerkin (2000), The Sealed Letter (2008), Frog Music (2014), and The Wonder (2106) are each quite different in topic and tone, yet all are fierce, brilliantly crafted novels that make marvelous fiction out of a solid grounding in historical fact.

This time around, Donoghue bases an extraordinary novel on a mystery in the life of British landowner and diarist Anne Lister. You might not think that there are many mysteries left in Lister's life now that a significant group of excerpts from her five million (yep, that's million)-word journal, written partially in code, is available in well-done published editions. You might also doubt that there's much creative gold left in Lister's life now that she's been the subject of one film, one television series, two biographies and myriad other works. Happily—though not all that surprisingly, given Donoghue's talent—you would be wrong.

Learned by Heart focuses primarily not on Lister herself but on Eliza Raine, the first of Lister's lovers. In 1805, the two met as teenagers in their Yorkshire boarding school; their relationship turned passionate before Lister departed the school in summer 1806. Raine, the daughter of an English father and a never-identified Indian mother, believed the two would be partners for life. Unfortunately, she was not the last of Lister's paramours to discover that Anne's heart was more passionate than predictable. Following the demise of their relationship, Raine's mental health deteriorated significantly enough to lead to her confinement in a small private asylum in 1814. It's impossible to retroactively diagnose her mental illness, if indeed she had one for some or all of her remaining 46 years; though it appears that she may have suffered from from some form of psychosis, there's no doubt that the combination of her taboo sexual desires and mixed race also led to her volatility being interpreted more harshly than they might have been for a racially "pure" and heterosexual young woman.

Learned by Heart is structured in two interwoven threads. One traces the relationship between Raine and Lister; the other consists of letters written from Raine to her former lover from the asylum in which she is confined. The juxtaposition works beautifully. The more straightforward and literal narrative grounds readers. The letters, unreliable as they may (or may not) be, give the novel much of its poignancy, mystery and depth. Donoghue brings both women vividly and sympathetically to life; she does an equally excellent job evoking the settings and society in which they lived their equally, if differently, complex lives.

In an Author's Note at the end of book, Donoghue speaks of becoming fascinated by Raine's story when she and her partner—a noted Lister scholar—spent time in the same building where Raine and Lister shared a room as schoolgirls. She wrote the first notes on what would become this novel in 1998, giving it an gestation period of some 25 years. Some books might grow stale or overwritten in a working timeframe that lengthy. Happily, Learned by Heart is not one of them.

Find out more about the author and the book on Donoghue's website. Emma Donoghue's Learned By Heart can be purchased on Bookshop, Amazon U.S., and Amazon U.K. 

Letter from Anne Lister to Eliza Raine,
courtesy of West Yorkshire Archive Service

Page from Anne Lister's coded diary,
courtesy of https://www.annelister.co.uk/