BOOK REVIEW: Eighty Days. Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman

For our next meeting, our book club has chosen Eighty Days. Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World by Matthew Goodman.

The book is a dual biography of these two adventurous women. Nellie Bly is the better known historical figure. She initially made her name as a journalist by going undercover to write exposés. However, determined to make her mark on the world and to prove women could be as successful as men, she proposes to her editor that her next project be beating the fictional record for circumnavigating the globe recounted in Jules Verne’s novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. Although the idea was rejected at first, as the editor began to realize that someone was likely to undertake the task soon and it would be a greater publicity stunt to send a woman than a man, he gave her the green light.

Elizabeth Bisland was also a writer, but she wrote more literary articles for a monthly magazine. Her editor decided that it would be an even greater publicity stunt to send another woman around the world in the opposite direction to see who would come in first. Elizabeth was reluctant, but seemed to have been given little choice. She was aware it was a race, but Nellie was not.

The book goes into lengthy detail, sometimes absorbing and sometimes rather plodding, describing their itinerary, traveling quirks, hazards, people they meet, impressions of distant locales and peoples, and their thoughts on the undertaking. There are also numerous digressions that give a great deal of detail about things touching upon the various modes of transportation, sights they saw, and the lives of people they came into contact with. An eighty-day race is a fairly slow-paced one, but the book would have been more interesting if some of the extraneous detail was pared away to give it more sense of urgency.

The personalities of the two women were quite opposite and they were differently affected by the venture. In some ways, the short summaries of their lives afterward was more compelling than the story of the race.

BOOK REVIEW: Someone to Care by Mary Balogh

I’m a sucker for Mary Balogh’s Regency Romances, most recently the Westcott Novel series (starting with Someone to Love.) The latest addition to the series is Someone to Care.

Miss Viola Kingsley was, until two years prior, a countess – the wife of the Earl of Riverdale. At least, she thought she was. Upon the earl’s death, Viola discovered the marriage had been bigamous. Her children are illegitimate and were disinherited. The family circled the wagons and supported one another, so the scandal has more or less faded for the others affected by the earl’s deception. But not for Viola. After a christening party held for a grandchild, Viola snaps. Needing time for herself, she flees.

She isn’t particularly clear on where she wants to go, but the decision is taken out of her hands when her hired carriage breaks down in a small country village and she is forced to wait overnight for it to be fixed. There she comes across an old acquaintance, Marcel Lamarr, who is now the Marquess of Dorchester.

Marcel is a widower, but his wife died in an accident many years earlier. His response was to immerse himself in a life of pleasure-seeking debauchery.

Fourteen years earlier, Marcel had tried to begin a flirtation with Viola, but she, then a virtuous young wife, sent him on his way. When she enters the country inn where he has also been temporarily detained by a transportation mishap, memories of his past attraction come flooding back. He approaches Viola to renew the flirtation.

This time, Viola succumbs. Why not? They spend a lovely day together, followed by a night of passion. In the morning, they decide to run off together for a fling, both recognizing that this is to be temporary.

Naturally, they fall in love. Following some of the usual conventions of Regency Romance, they miscommunicate and pride keeps them from being honest with one another. Before they can part, they are found out in their love nest and, doing the honorable thing, Marcel announces that they are betrothed. For the rest of the novel, they try to wriggle out of the betrothal even though marriage is clearly where they need to be heading.

Sometimes, plots that follow this track get annoying because the hero and heroine just behave stupidly. But Mary Balogh has a talent for writing sympathetic characters that tug at the heartstrings so you can forgive them for making a muddle of things. In addition, she usually twists convention enough that the typical romance plots feel fresh. In Someone to Care, Viola is forty-two years old! Marcel is just shy of forty. A regency romance featuring "middle-aged" lovers with the woman older than the man? Someone to Care is a heartwarming romance and I continue to follow this series avidly.

BOOK REVIEW: Charity Ends at Home by Colin Watson

I received this book for free from Netgalley. This did not influence my review.

I decided to keep going with the Flaxborough Chronicles. The next book in this charming detective series by Colin Watson is Charity Ends at Home.

Detective Purbright is wearily keeping tabs on increasingly competitive Flaxborough charity drives when an anonymous letter is brought to his attention, a letter that has been sent to three local VIPs: the coroner, the constable, and the newspaper editor. The distressed writer is convinced he/she is in danger. Loved ones are plotting murder. Although the writer does not sign the letter, an enclosed photograph is referred to – but no photo is enclosed.

Purbright is duty-bound to take the threat seriously, but has no idea where to start until a local woman is found dead, drowned in a well. She was active in the local fund-raising community, favoring charities that support dogs. She was not happily married. Naturally, her husband becomes the prime suspect. But how does the letter tie in?

At the same time, a newcomer to town is trying out his own amateur detecting skills. His job is to catch a cheating husband. However, the detective, Mortimer Hive, is not very bright, a drinker, and easily distracted. He bungles his job, but no matter. The person who hired him has decided he doesn’t need Hive’s input after all. The assignment is over.

Hive doesn’t leave town. He’s a good friend of Miss Lucy Teatime (a con-woman introduced in the previous book). Lucy has set up camp in Flaxborough. She is no longer scamming gentlemen looking for lady friends. She’s involved in a new plot, skimming money from charities.

Purbright seems to be impressed by Miss Teatime. It’s difficult to believe he doesn’t realize she is up to no good. Still, she’s courteous and helpful as well as very clever. With her help and with some prodding of Mortimer Hive, Purbright sets about chasing down the murderer.

This book is a bit more jumbled than the others and the humor seems more forced. Mortimer’s ramblings take up a good deal of the book and he wasn’t as interesting a character as the others. Nevertheless, he serves his purpose. The threads are all pulled together to bring about a satisfying conclusion. I’ll take a little break, then return eagerly to this series.

BOOK REVIEW: Lonelyheart 4122 by Colin Watson

I received this book free from Netgalley. This did not influence my review.

Thanks to Netgalley, I’ve discovered British mystery author Colin Watson. (See book one in the Flaxborough Chronicles: Coffin Scarcely Used.) The books largely follow the work of Inspector Purbright, a small-town investigator whose polite, persistent detective skills have solved several murders already.

Book four in the series is Lonelyheart 4122. When two middle-aged women, one unmarried and one widowed, go missing within a short span of time, relatives become concerned and bring the matter to the police. After some gentle questioning, Purbright is convinced there has been foul play and he begins looking into the matter. One thing they both had in common was that they were customers of a match-making agency, the Handclasp House Marriage Bureau. Each had a bit of money that also may have gone missing. Could they have been conned? Were they murdered?

Coincidentally, a con-woman, Miss Lucy Teatime, arrives in Flaxborough, presumably because things have become a bit hot for her back in London. Seeing an advertisement for the Handclasp House, she signs up. Soon, she is matched with a charming old seaman. It’s quite evident that each is trying to con the other. Their mercenary courtship is a delight to follow.

However, Purbright is following also, concerned for Miss Teatime and unaware that she is more than a match for an unscrupulous suitor. But is she a match for a murderer?

With his usual care, Purbright pieces together the clues and hurries to head off disaster.

Lonelyheart 4122 is an entertaining cozy mystery with a splash of dry British humor. This series is a lot of fun!

BOOK REVIEW: The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

My historical fiction/history book group’s last choice (mine) was The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes. I love his writing and had bought this book a while ago but it’s been sitting on my shelf. Choosing it for the book group ensured I would get to it.

I loved it, though it wasn’t a favorite of the group. Almost aggressively literary in style, it has a disjointed, fragmentary rhythm. It’s a deeply psychological book, so that there is not a lot of action. Rather, the angst-filled protagonist spends a lot of time ruminating. Still, it is so intense and so beautifully written that I was hooked from the beginning. (Not the very beginning. The prologue had me concerned it would be a difficult read.)

The Noise of Time is a fictional "biography" of Dmitri Shostakovich, a brilliant Soviet-era composer whose strained relationship to "Power" defines the book as it no doubt defined his life. Was he a communist? A collaborator? Or simply a man determined to make music despite the misfortune of circumstance?

Shostakovich is not an attractive hero, but he is a realistic one. One by one, he sacrifices his ideals in order to survive and to protect his family and his artistic integrity. (His family survives, but he wonders about his artistic integrity.)

The book is a marvelous study of Soviet oppression and psychological terror. The violence is not overt, but it is unsettling all the same. Read this one to compare and contrast with A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles. While I enjoyed the Towles’ story much more, maybe it’s better to be unsettled by the story of a real survivor of the Russian revolution than charmed by a fictional survivor’s story.