Summer Sleuthing

"When I'm rich, my mother'll have a garden and a gardener . . .
And we'll have champagne every evening when she's tired . . .
champagne and a gardener!" (71)

Though I'm not typically a reader of whodunits, these entertaining novels have changed my mind this summer, with their sly wit, droll quips, clever allusions, and existential humor.

Some examples from
B. J. Morison's
Champagne and a Gardener

" . . . Pherousa led a simple existence. . . .
Pherousa, sixteen, was allowed to read fiction
if it had a nautical setting." (25)

"After the usual interlude, passengers began to appear,
with the stunned and / or exalted expression
common to disembarking air travellers." (58)

After hearing several people
refer to someone as “Cousin Cordelia,”
Elizabeth asks:
“Is that lady everybody’s cousin?”
To which Hill replies:

“Well no. Actually her father and Mrs. Worthington
were the children of first cousins. Mrs. Woodhue
is only my wife’s third cousin,
but in Boston they cling to their cousins.
Everybody must have something.”

One of "Poor Cordelia's" hardships:
she has come into some money, but her
husband Ted is spending her capital:

" 'Spend her capital!' echoed Persis, in horror. She may not have the had the exotic worldly thrills that Elizabeth Lamb had experienced, but almost eight years of life spent in the vicinity of Boston had taught her what was the unforgiveable worldy sin." (67)

Additional
Little Maine Murders

************************

And further adventures of
The Thursday Murder Club
by Richard Osman
[Click for previously posted lines from #1]

The Man Who Died Twice
#2 in Osman's Thursday Murder Series

A poignant exchange with Donna,
after Ibrahim is assaulted during a street robbery:

Donna asks, "How's the pain?"
"'It's getting better,' says Ibrahim.
"It only really hurts if I breathe.'"

He then encourages Donna
to discuss her ongoing sense of loneliness:
"'Does it hurt?' asks Ibrahim.
'Only when I breathe,' says Donna. (295, 296)

"All is quiet in this happy place. Another day done, family safe and sound, curtains closed and heating on. Nothing you'll ever see on the news, but something you should really pay more attention to, just the gentle hum of contentment." (394)


Ibrahim: "The secret of life is death. Everything is about death, you see. In essence . . . Our existence only makes sense because of it; it provides meaning to our narrative. Our direction of travel is always towards it. Our behaviour is either because we fear it, or because we choose to deny it. We could drive past this spot once a year, every year, and neither the horse nor ourselves would get younger. Everything is death."

Joyce: "That's one way of looking at things, I suppose."

Ibrahim: "It's the only way." (406 - 07)

Along the same lines as Ibrahim's view of death:
The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead
QK, FN, KL

And this seasonal gem:
"It is another glorious autumn day,
but there is a bite in the air
that tells you there won't be too many left.
Winter is waiting impatiently round the corner." (22)

************************

The Bullet That Missed
#3 in Osman's Thursday Murder Series

Ibrahim gets some of the deepest lines, perhaps because he is the most like Osman himself. In this insightful exchange, the criminal Connie considers hiring Ibrahim as her psychiatrist:

Ibrahim: "I always start with one question. Are you happy?"

Connie: "Well, I'm in prison."

I: "But that aside?"

C: "I mean. Maybe I could be happier?
You know, five percent. I'm OK."

I: "I can help with that.
Five percent, ten, fifty, whatever it might be.
That's my job. I can't fix you,
but I can make you run a little better."

C: "You can't fix me?"

I: "Humans can’t be fixed.
We’re not lawnmowers. I wish we were."

C: "What do you charge?"

I: "Sixty pounds an hour."

C: "I'll pay you two hundred an hour."

I: "No, it's just the sixty.
And my schedule is pretty flexible."

C: "Great. Let's do Thursdays."

I: "Actually, can we do Wednesdays?
Thursdays are the one day I have something on." (60 - 61)

Because there is no commitment more compelling
than The Thursday Murder Club!

And this should go for you too!
Happy summer reading and sleuthing!

************************

P.S.
Bogdan also imparts his share of worldly wisdom:

"Everyone wants to feel special,
but nobody wants to feel different." (22)

P.P.S
Looking for another mystery series?
Try Quirke: KL & QK

Bloomsday

Check out this mystery
~ and review in The Guardian ~
for numerous fun allusions to James Joyce's Ulysses.
Quirke even sees a "lanky-looking galoot
in a gabardine raincoat" (148).
[also on QK]

Happy Bloomsday
from James Joyce and Friends!

Herman Melville

Oscar Wilde

Edgar Allan Poe

All figures available from
The Christmas Company

Also Nativity

Memoirs in May

Contemplating My Own Memoirs

"Go Away I'm Reading"

As you can imagine, I receive a lot of gifts
along these lines, and love them all:

"No Such Thing As Too Many Books"

1.
“Every connection has an obligation
even if the obligation is Joy — to cherish it.” (p 92)

From
Left on Tenth: A Second Chance at Life
Delia Ephron (b 1944)
[See also QK & KL]

2.

"We thought we were in the best place in the world in this neighborhood, in the all-Irish housing projects where everyone claimed to be Irish even if his name was Spinnoli. We were proud to be from here, as proud as we were to be Irish. . . . Southie was Boston's proud Irish neighborhood. . . .

"I always had a sense of security here, a sense of belonging that I've never felt anywhere else . . . a feeling that someone would watch your back. Sure, bad things happened to my family, and to so many of my neighbors and friends, but there was never a sense that we were victims. This place was ours, it was all we ever knew, and it was all ours. . . .

"That's how I found myself staring out at a sea of faces, looking for my brothers among the living and the dead. I was looking for the truth about their lives and about their deaths. Like me, everyone at that night's vigil will forever be looking for the truth in Southie, where nothing's what it seems." (2, 5-6, 263)

From
All Souls: A Family Story from Southie
Michael Patrick MacDonald (b 1966)

3.
And I'm adding this one here,
because of the subtitle:

Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs
Beth Ann Fennelly (b 1971)

4.
"There was just Erica Jong, Feminist Icon,
except that she was really not that feminist,
and really not that iconic." (216)

From
How to Lose Your Mother: A Daughter's Memoir
Molly Jong-Fast (b 1978)

Except -- could it be that Molly Jong-Fast (while being an otherwise thoughtful and perceptive daughter) and Jane Kamensky (no excuses for her) are underestimating the impact of Erica Jong's work?

I am thinking back to the letter that my sister Peg wrote to me years ago from Frankfurt:

March 17, 1981

Dear Kit,

Since receiving your letter, I've looked everywhere for a copy of Fear of Flying. Do you know that there is not a copy to be found. The library copy is checked out and the bookstore is sold out. I remember seeing several copies in the bookstore about three weeks ago, but now they're gone. So, I've put a reserve on the library copy. Judging from what you say and what I've heard about the book, I figure three are a lot of bored housewives using the book as an "entertainment guide" for Germany. I can hardly wait to read it.

I've not even read the book and I find myself being embarrassed when I ask for it. While at the library, I also requested Firestarter by Stephen King, and everything was normal enough, but I'm certain that when I uttered the first "F" of Fear of Flying, there was an echo that caused all heads to turn and look at me. I never thought of myself as a shy person, and I'm not a prude, but I think I was born too early in this sexual revolution."

Peg and I read Fear of Flying together back in the day, and when How to Lose Your Mother came along, we discussed the life lessons we have retained from Erica Jong's fiction. As a heroine, Isadora Wing may have been flighty (pun intended!), but it wasn't her crazy antics and sexual romp through Europe that left their mark on us so much as her determination to make her own way through a culture of double standards, mixed messages and false promises.

Sure, Jong's soft - core porn approach can be over the top at times yet easy enough to accomodate because she is also telling such a good story and imparting so much wisdom:

On femininity vs feminism
Don't you see that men have always defined
femininity as a means of keeping women in line? (22)

On family
"It was the old psychosomatic side-step.
Everyone in my family dances it at every opportunity.
You've given me a splitting headache! You've given me indigestion!
You've given me crotch rot! You've given me auditory hallucinations!
You've given me a heart attack! You've given me cancer!" (44)

On decision making
" . . . your life may not be simple.
Why do you expect it to be . . .
why do you have to throw everything away
before you give yourself time to decide?
Can't you wait and see what happens later?" (171)

This one is from the sequel
to Fear of Flying
"Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage.
Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice.
It is innocence and open-heartedness
that require the true courage —
however often we are hurt as a result of it."
(How to Save Your Own Life, 77)

And so much more!

**************************

As an inspiring feminist icon, Erica Jong
has a permanent spot on the sidebar of my daily blog,
along with other notables such as Margaret Atwood,
Virginia Woolf, King Solomon, and Sappho.

And she appears in many of my posts:
FN ~ KL ~ QK

April Foolery

On Facebook

Book Group

The last Thursday of every month was Book Group,
when the books would gather together to discuss Brian.

“It’s no fun here any more,” remarked Bleak House, glumly.
“Why doesn’t he read us?” whined the Grapes of Wrath. “It makes me so angry!”
“I’m sure he only bought me so he can show me off to his friends,”
complained Ulysses, in a stream of self-consciousness.

“I bet he can’t even remember my name, The Idiot,”
muttered a voice from the Russian literature section.
“That’s because he avoids you like The Plague,” said another.
“C’est vrai!” came a cry. “It is like I do not exist.”

“Let’s not give up on him yet.” It was Brave New World.
After some Persuasion, they agreed to give him one last chance.
“Be quiet!” cried Waiting for Godot with Great Expectations.
“Here he comes now!”

Brian entered the room, with his phone.
He sat down and watched some videos of baby pandas falling over.
After an hour or so, he started googling cats dressed as celebrities.

On the shelf, the books waited with uncracked spines,
their silence speaking volumes.

By Brian Bilston (b 1970)
More on FN & QK & FB

Plus, something funny:
The Sex Lives of Cannibals:
Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

And, something for
Shakespeare's Birthday

Book on Windowsill

Spring in Gościeradz (1933)
Leon Jan Wyczółkowski (1852 – 1936)
Leading Polish painter and educator

I love the way Wyczolkowski captures the ethereal
energy coming from book, curtain, tree, light!

And just what is that golden book upon the windowsill?
Could it be . . .

1.
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1
by Beth Brower
Recommended by my friend Lisa

Hilarious, in manner of Oscar Wilde's
Importance of Being Ernest.  Very droll!
Would make a better mini-series than Downton!

2.
August is a Wicked Month
by Edna O'Brien
Sent as a gift from my friend Vickie

While brooding about some ill-considered personal choices, the heroine repeats a mantra to herself . . .

173: "'It's not a crime, it's not a crime, it's not a crime,' she kept saying, arranging her footsteps to tune in with that one sentence. 'It's not a crime,' she said again . . . But even as she was saying it was not a crime she thought back to herself . . . the ivory girl in her tower of gold. Would they recognize her now?"

193: “She had not thought of him once. Not once. That was her crime. Under the soft skin and behind the big, melting eyes, her heart was like a nutmeg. Some of it had been grated by life but the very centre never really surrendered to anyone, not to the mother who stole for her, nor to the drunken father, nor to her far-seeing but poisoned husband, and not to the child in the way it should have.”

3.
Marriage and Other Monuments
by Virginia Pye
A must read for the local color of Richmond, Virginia,
written by one of my former Philadelphia neighbors

208 - 09: "Why are Black women always so angry at me? I haven't done anything to them."

"Jesus, Melissa, after all these years you don't get why someone might be less than friendly to you?

She shrugged. "I do, sort of, but come to think of it, no, not really."

220 - 21: "She [Cynthia] had left Bobby beause she was unwilling to be his helpmate, but maybe helping was an unavoidable part of the arrangement. Maybe marriage was a pact to keep each other afloat against all odds, natural and manmade. To ease the boat of life downstream through rough waters, including old age."

4.
The Hounding
by Xenobe Purvis
Sent as gift from my friend Laura

Here's what I noticed about this mysterious novel -- especially since I did not look ahead or read any reviews, not even the book jacket -- I honestly did not know and could not guess what was going to happen! Even up until the last page, I did not see it coming -- the murder, the reprieve, the escape.

I can see how some readers want a more detailed conclusion, but maybe it's better for the reader to wonder where the sisters are going and what will happen and whether or not there is a rational explanation. Personally, I want it to be a novel about imaginations running wild, completely unnecessarily.

I loved the thoughts of the grandfather about how strong and independent he wanted the girls to be.

~ Or these ~

5.
With commentary from from
my daughter - in - law Cathleen

6.
Sent as a gift from my friend Katie
[a bizarre connection!]

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Another painting of
window and book

The Young Cicero Reading
by Vincenzo Foppa (c.1427–c.1515)

Posted previously on The Ides of March

The Beginning of Happiness

Virginia Woolf, 1912
portrayed while knitting
by her sister Vanessa Bell

"It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkward, unsatisfying, more kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the tie, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other." (p 98)

from The Hours
by Michael Cunningham, b 1952

Conversation Piece, 1912
by Vanessa Bell (1879–1961)

Mother - daughter dialogue
from the movie script:

Julia: I bumped into Louis Waters.

Clarissa: Oh, you did? Where?

Julia: In the street.
They're all here, aren't they? All the ghosts.
All the ghosts are assembling for the party!
He is so weird.
Oh, what? You can't see that?
You can't see that Louis Waters is weird?

Clarissa: I can see that he's sad.

Julia: Mom, all your friends are sad.
You've been crying. What's happening?

Clarissa: Earlier today I looked around this room
and thought: I'm giving a party.
All I wanna do is give a party!

Julia: And?

Clarissa: I know why he does it.
He does it deliberately.

Julia: Oh, is this Richard!

Clarissa: Of course. He did it this morning.
He gives me that look.

Julia: What look?

Clarissa: To say: your life is trivial. You are so trivial.
Just daily stuff, you know, schedules and parties, and details.
That's what he means. That is what he's saying.

Julia: Mom, it only matters if you think it's true.
Well? Do you? Tell me.

Clarissa: When I am with him, I feel: "Yes, I am living!"
And when I am not with him,
yes, everything does seem sort of silly.

I don't mean with you, right? God!
Never with you. Just all the rest of it.

Julia: Sally?

Clarissa: The rest of it. False comfort.

Julia: Because?

Clarissa: If you say to me, "When were you happiest?"

Julia: Mom!

Clarissa:"Tell me the moment you were happiest."

Julia: I know! I know, it was years ago.

Clarissa: Yeah.

Julia: All you're saying is: you were once young.

Clarissa: I remember one morning, getting up at dawn,
there was such a sense of possibility!
You know? That feeling?
And -- and I remember thinking to myself:

"So this is the beginning of happiness.
This is where it starts!
And, of course, there'll always be more."

Never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning.
It was happiness. It was the moment. Right then.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Down, down into the midst of ordinary things."

"Let us not take it for granted that life exists
more fully in what is commonly thought big
than in what is commonly thought small."

~ Virginia Woolf ~

Theo of Golden

A nice thing to do with this book:
buy an extra copy, wrap it in a golden bow,
and give it as a birthday present.

A few favorite passages
from Theo of Golden
by Allen Levi

This one just made me laugh:
29: "The sidewalk tables at the pubs and restaurants along Broadway were all occupied, and foot traffic was robust, made up predominantly of college students and other adherents to the idea that weekends begin on Thursday."

The significance of a picture frame:
128: "How is it, Theo wondered, that a piece of paper -- a letter, a photo, a ticket stub, a sketch, a painting - is suddenly transformed by placing it in four bits of wood beneath a pane of glass? What does it mean that we place permanent boundaries around transient moments? What does it say of humankind that we take such trouble to freeze specific memories, that we devote such energy to capturing and preserving the 'minute particulars' of our lives?"

The signficance of the bicycle:
146 / 166: "William Saroyan said 'the bicycle is the noblest invention of man.' And in 'Rescue the Perishing,' that story, the little boy did not want a new bicycle. He liked the one he had. It cost him $27.50 of his own money. Well, I don't want a new bicycle either . . . I like mine perfectly fine. . . ."

250: "They [brothers Tom and Douglas in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine] ride all over Green Town on their bikes. And they think Leo Huffman invented the bicycle, so they ask him to invent a Happiness Machine too."

Additional references to
Saroyan's "bicycle stories"
reminded me of
Flann O'Brien & H. G. Wells
For Ellen, as for so many of us:
146: ". . . books were her language, her neighborhood, her connection to reality."

Including: 148: Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O."
150: Carson McCullers
250: Harper Lee
254: James Hurt, "The Scarlet Ibis" -- I remember Ben & Sam reading this one in high school
256: Faulkner (Blue Jay)

The magic of majoring in English:
171: "After high school, I went away to college and got an English degree, so I could be a teacher. I read this essay one time about an English teacher, Whenever somebody asked him about his job, he would say he taught a course in magic. That made sense to me. Still does. He taught his students that words and books are like magic."

One big river
179: "Might it be that the water from the river of his childhood had found its way to this one, that the cyclical life of rainfall -- sky to earth to sky again, over and over -- had brought the elixir of the Iberian wine country to this place? That the river of gold in Portugal had come, through cloudburst and current, to this river of gray in Golden? And had soe of Golden's flow found its way to the hillsides of Theo's childhood? Was there, after all, only one big river that flowed across the earth?"

254: Additional memories of the River Marne

Theo's boyhood memory of seeing a fisherman pause
from his work on the boat to take up his paintbrush:
181: "Any fisherman knows that this is the best time to be fishing. But artists know this is the enchanted hour, when the sunlght is most magical. It's hard to know sometimes. Fish or pai, right? FIsh or paint? Well, I tell you, this time of year, I'm afraid I have no choice. I always make time for this."

The lasting impact of serving in Vietnam and
seeing the Memorial Wall for the first time
186: "It's amazing how a flat piece of stone can change your life, but that damn thing brought stuff up in me I'd been holding in for a long time. I'm still not sure why I went to see it, and I'm not sure I should have, but it probably did me some good."

Many more references to art and literature
51: Shakespeare & Co

161: "The biblically literate among them might have expected a finger to start writing on the wall at any moment: Mene, mene tekel, upharsin."
Previous connections on the Quotidian Kit
Blue Jay & Ginkgo & Picture Framing

Another blogger's
favorite Theo quotes

&

My random notes to self

1.
Is the mystery woman Mrs. Ponder?
(mentioned 2x: the photograph on Mr. Ponder's desk
and the painting in Asher's studio)

2.
Review Theo's visit to Asher's studio
and compare to concluding series of letters

3.
142: missing time
not sure about this one . . .
it's bad enough to misunderstand your own notes,
but particularly when it is a note about something
that's missing, expecially "missing time"!

Perhaps upon rereading, I can figure it out!