BOOK REVIEW: A Perfect Match by Margaux Thorne

A Perfect Match by Margaux Thorne is the first book in a new Historical Romance series, The Cricket Club.

Myfanwy Wright is the orphaned daughter of a viscount. She lives for cricket. And for an injured, reluctantly retired cricketer, Samuel Everett. Myfanwy has been watching Samuel on the field since she was ten years old and has been infatuated with him for just as long.

The viscount’s will named Samuel as Myfanwy’s guardian. This is just for a few months until she reaches her majority. Then, she intends to buy a cottage and enough property for her own cricket field, where she can gather together her single ladies’ cricket club, the only “family” she has anymore. Until then, she is determined to have an affair with Samuel.

This steamy Victorian-era Romance plays with tropes of love between a gentlewoman and a commoner, and between a guardian and his ward. There is a touch of grumpy-sunshine. What gives this romance its entertaining kick is the way these tropes incorporate cricket. An underdog team must fight its way to the top. It will take the combined talents of Samuel and Myfanwy to win the big game, and the combined determination of both to win each other’s hearts.

BOOK REVIEW: Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick

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

Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party by Edward Dolnick sets out to answer the question: When did we learn that dinosaurs existed?

To my surprise, the answer (according to Dolnick) is 1802, when the first dinosaur tracks were discovered by a 12-year-old boy while plowing his father’s Massachusetts fields. Of course, the story is more complicated than that. No one knew what the tracks were. Dinosaur bones had to be found and studied; skeletons had to be imagined and reconstructed. The creatures had to be named and categorized. And finally, they had to be classified as “dinosaurs,” a word that did not exist before 1842.

Dolnick takes the reader on a trek through 19th century natural science (in England, primarily, but also in America), showing how well religion and science coexisted until Darwin took the stage. Men and women were enthusiastic fossil hunters. In fact, one of the foremost fossil-finders of the day was a young, impoverished Englishwoman, Mary Annings. While she was recognized by the great scientists of the day, she was not recognized as a great scientist. The occasional  cooperation and more frequent competition among the great scientists makes for entertaining reading.

Of course, gigantic bones were discovered prior to 1802. But although these were eventually found to be prehistoric, they are practically modern-day compared to dinosaurs. Dolnick steps back in time to acquaint the reader with those spectacular finds as well.

This delightful and informative book does a wonderful job of placing the natural science debates of the Victorian age within the context of its time. It poses another question as well: What do you do when faced with the unimaginable?

BOOK REVIEW: Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir by Milton Mayer

I’m oddly fascinated by Robert Maynard Hutchins (one-time president of the University of Chicago) and his wife Maude Phelps McVeigh (a sculptress and author.)  See previous reviews: A Great Idea at the Time: The Rise, Fall, and Curious Afterlife of the Great Books by Alex Beam and An Aristocracy of Critics: Luce, Hutchins, Niebuhr, and the Committee that Redefined Freedom of the Press by Stephen Bates.

Robert Maynard Hutchins: A Memoir by Milton Mayer is a biography of Hutchins, written by his friend and aide. (Even Mayer had a hard time explaining what he actually did as Hutchins’ aide.) The book does a good job of taking the reader through Hutchins’ professional life and gives a half-hearted nod to his private life. He uses quotes extensively, showing the convictions and contradictions of his subject. And he gives his own interpretation of Hutchins, which varies from fawning to disappointed and sour.

I can recommend this book for its facts, but it’s a slog to read. The prose is turgid. And when Mayer tries to be coy, he’s obtuse. There is humor, but it’s all Hutchins’. I have another biography on my shelf, Unseasonable Truths: The Life of Robert Maynard Hutchins by Harry S. Ashmore, that I’ll try next.

BOOK REVIEW: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I just finished reading Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky for a class. I’m glad it was assigned or I likely never would have read it. Long, heavy, Russian literature in translation intimidates me. But this is a remarkably readable book, despite its length and depressing themes. 

Crime and Punishment is one of those classics where it is obvious why it is a classic. Even in translation, it is beautifully written, thematically complex, and surprisingly gripping. I was surprised to find it gripping because much of the book comprises interior and somewhat repetitive suffering. But the character’s suffering is distant from the reader. We can understand it without feeling it ourselves.

Raskolnikov, the main protagonist, commits a premeditated murder, compounded by an impulsive one. He was obsessed with the act before committing it, and he wallows in guilt and attempted self-justification afterward. He is surrounded by people who love him or don’t, who suspect him of the crime or don’t, and he scorns them all and tries to drive them away. He also seeks them out. He’s terrified of being caught, but also ruminates over turning himself in. He has grand theories, and delusions of grandeur. Is he insane? Or is that just an easy explanation for modern readers?

The author dives deeply into the viewpoints of several characters, not just Raskolnikov. Their motivations are as clear to the reader as they are to the characters themselves, which often means they are obscure. It’s a book to linger over, and to read more than once. It helped to read it in a class!

BOOK REVIEW: Georgette Heyer by Jennifer Kloester

I’ve been slipping biographies of writers into my reading list, most recently George Eliot (The Marriage Question: George Eliot’s Double Life by Clare Carlisle) and John Donne (Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne by Katherine Rundell.) This time, I turned my attention to the Queen of Regency Romance, Georgette Heyer, one of my favorite authors. (Heyer was born in 1902 and died in 1974.)

Georgette Heyer by Jennifer Kloester is a meticulously researched biography of this talented and fiercely private writer. Like many comprehensive biographies, the book begins even before her birth, with an overview of her parents and grandparents. We learn about her early life, particularly the influence of her father. For my part, I found the childhood portion of the book to be a little too detailed and lengthy. It was slow going at first, but grew more interesting when Georgette reached adulthood and her writing took off.

And take off it did. From her very first published work, The Black Moth, written while she was still a teenager, Heyer found an eager audience. However, it took a long while for her to settle in to writing what she wrote best. She wanted to be taken seriously, and to write big books. (She did write a few non-Romance historical novels.) Moreover, she wrote constantly to keep the wolf from her door. She could turn out short stories with ease. And she wrote a slew of detective novels (contemporary at the time, but that now also read as historical.) These all sold well, but her romances were what her fans clamored for most. It is said that she essentially invented the Regency Romance genre.

The biography focuses a good deal on Heyer’s worries over money. After her father died, she was financially responsible for her widowed mother and, for a long time, her two younger brothers. She also supported her husband until he got his legal career off the ground. They had one son, and during his childhood, Georgette was primary (and at times, only) breadwinner. And yet, the biography makes clear that it wasn’t that her income was insufficient, but rather that she and her husband spent themselves into a financial hole and had a hard time climbing out. This was good news for her fans, since it spurred her to write romance after romance.

It was interesting to see the life circumstances surrounding each of Heyer’s novels. She lived through both World Wars. Family members fought in WWII, a great source of anxiety. There was also a paper shortage. Rationing meant limiting the number of books that could be released and printing them smaller. (Heyer’s books got top priority because they sold so well.)

The biography quotes many of her letters and some of the responses. We peer into her relationships with her agents and publishers. It isn’t always pretty. She was rather thin-skinned, and the impression I got from the book was that she tended to drop people when they were no longer useful to her. She was also a product of her time and her upbringing, which meant she was a bit of a snob and a bigot. We want better from our idols, but they are human. And Kloester’s biography does a great job of revealing Georgette Heyer, warts and all.

Book Review: Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance by Catherine Lloyd

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

I love Catherine Lloyd’s historical mysteries. Her new series is the Miss Morton Mysteries. You can see my reviews for book 1: Miss Morton and the English House Party Murder and book 2: Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld, which were both thoroughly enjoyable. I’ve been looking forward to book 3: Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance, and was not disappointed.

Miss Caroline Morton was the daughter of a peer, but he gambled away the family fortune then killed himself rather than face the shame of bankruptcy. That left Caroline and her younger sister Susan in the lurch, dependent on the charity of relatives. Caroline took matters into her own hands and found a position as a companion to a wealthy businesswoman (a commoner), Mrs. Frogerton.

Mrs. Frogerton is a no-nonsense, outspoken woman who hired Caroline not only as a companion, but also to help launch her daughter into Society. Miss Frogerton is determined to snare herself a titled gentleman. Caroline’s connections and advice are invaluable.

Unfortunately, Caroline and Mrs. Frogerton keep stumbling upon murder victims and becoming embroiled in solving the who-dunnits.

In the current novel, Miss Morton and the Deadly Inheritance, Caroline learns that she and her sister have inherited tidy sums from her aunt (a fact which makes her sister prey to an unscrupulous relative) and that her father may have made a second will before he died. Although Caroline believes he had nothing to bequeath, others are far more interested in what the will has to say. The plot thickens when the clerk making a copy of the will is murdered. Caroline has another mystery to solve – with the help of Mrs. Frogerton and two men who have aided her in the past, Inspector Ross and Dr. Harris.

Both the Inspector and Dr. Harris are drawn to Caroline, but show their interest in very different ways, and I’m curious to see who (if either of them) will eventually win her. A third man enters the picture, Mr. DeBloom, who pays her aggressive attention, trying to win her over by confiding that his mother swindled Caroline’s father, and he is determined to repay her. And then, a fourth man shows up, Mrs. Frogerton’s son, who shares his mother’s bluntness, and also her commonsense – once he convinces himself that Caroline is not out to swindle his mother.

In addition to the murder, Caroline’s sister goes missing, and it is all-hands-on-deck to find and retrieve her.

The plotting is complex, but the story moves right along. The characters are well-drawn. The resolution is satisfying. And the ending sets us up for book four!

BOOK REVIEW: Jackie by Dawn Tripp

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

I was not particularly interested in Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. I knew who she was and I knew a little of her life’s timeline. But the era she lived in is recent enough that the thought of a novel centered on her life didn’t quite grab me the way historical fiction set farther in the past does. However, I had read author Dawn Tripp’s wonderful novel of Georgia O’Keefe, Georgia, so when I saw Jackie on Netgalley I thought I’d give it a try.

This fictional biography is told mainly from a first person perspective, and it takes the reader deep into the mind and heart of this extraordinary woman. Occasional chapters are told in the third person from JFK’s perspective. There is a whole lot going on in the world during their courtship, marriage, and Kennedy’s rise to the presidency. The 1950s-1960s were tumultuous, world-changing decades, and the history drew me in more than I expected.

Even so, the novel keeps a tight focus on the relationship, the love story between “Jack” and “Jackie,” while the chaos of the era swirls around them. Jackie is intelligent, witty, charming, and independent—perhaps more so than her husband. He sees everything through the lens of his political ambition, even calculating when and who he should marry. Jackie knows this, just as she knows he is a philanderer. It’s painful to watch her draw back from love to protect herself from his casual cruelty, even while remaining unstinting in her support. The author’s ability to show us Jackie’s strength and vulnerability all at the same time makes this novel compelling. 

Jackie’s commitment to what is right, rather than simply politically expedient, helps guide Jack’s public policy, particularly in civil rights. Her moral courage pulls JFK into taking more daring positions. And then, of course, comes the assassination. Readers watch Jackie come apart. And then, put herself back together again.

The novel is relatively long, reaching about 500 pages, and there were times when it FELT long, because the relationship was static for a time. But enough history is pulled in to keep the narrative interesting. And Jackie’s second marriage takes her and the reader in a whole new direction.

While this is a novel, and novels always require the author’s imagination, the research is meticulous and the writing so beautiful that the story is entirely credible as Jackie’s story. The heartbreak feels real.