Sunday Sentence: 'The Infatuations'

As inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, the best sentence(s) I read this week, presented without context or commentary:

The passing of time exacerbates and intensifies any storm, even though there wasn't the tiniest cloud on the horizon at the beginning. We cannot know what time will do to us with its fine, indistinguishable layers upon layers, we cannot know what it might make of us. It advances stealthily, day by day and hour by hour and step by poisoned step, never drawing attention to its surreptitious labours, so respectful and considerate that it never once gives us a prod or a nasty fright.

-- Javier Marías, The Infatuations

Review: 'The Cleaner of Chartres'

The Cleaner of Chartres
By Sally Vickers
Contemporary fiction
June 2013
Viking
ISBN: 978-0670785674

Some novels are less than what they appear, others are more so. Some can be read as entertainment only, while some can be read that way but have other things to say. Salley Vickers writes novels that are unassuming yet have wise observations about people and how they like to judge others. The Cleaner of Chartres is such a novel.

Agnes Morel is one of those quiet women who appear as if they are going through life trying to be undetected. She arrived one day in Chartres, no one remembers exactly when, and has made a meager living for herself cleaning and occasionally watching children.

One priest tries to turn Agnes into his confessor, not of crimes, but of his crisis of faith. Two catty old women who employ Agnes use her in their game of oneupsmanship. A lonely professor turns his life around when Agnes begins to organize his messy office. A psychiatrist worries whether he helped Agnes or made her life worse. And a man involved in a cleaning project within the cathedral finds her fascinating.

Perhaps because she is quiet and makes no demands of her own, others either want her to listen to them or assign all sorts of activities to her. She is often regarded by others are a character not unlike that of Chauncey Gardner in Being There, in which others mistake simplicity for being profound. But in the case of this novel, there is no satire involved.

There is, however, past tragedy and that is used against Agnes when it becomes known. And that's when the narrative becomes really rather interesting. Vickers is good at pointing out what the foibles of each character mean in terms of what kind a character each is. She also is good at slipping in some asides that showcase what's behind what some people do and what's behind their thinking.

In this exchange. Abbe Paul is speaking first while Agnes responds:

"...But since no one knows what it quite was there's no reason why you wouldn't be the one to uncover the mystery." 

"Maybe it is better left uncovered." 

The Abbe Paul looked at Agnes rather as Alain had, with respect. "How sensible. People are desperate to probe mysteries which for the most part are best left unprobed. It is the modern curse: this demented drive to explain every blessed thing. Not everything can be explained. Nor should be, I think." 

"Some things should be, though." She was thinking of the riddle of her own birth. 

"To be sure. I often wonder if happiness isn't knowing what should and what should not be explained." 

"But how can we tell which is which?" 

"Hmmm," said the Abbe Paul. "That, I suppose, is wisdom."

This exchange encapsulates what I like about Vickers's writing -- my initial reaction is to question what's wrong with trying to explain every blessed, and cursed, thing. At first, Vickers's plot seems to suggest that this dashing about trying to explain things, especially when not equipped with all the necessary information, can lead to trouble and hurt people.

But then something else happens, just when it looks like the entire plot is going to collapse upon itself as the smaller-minded characters ascend. As more characters find out what actually happened in the past and what recently happened, things don't just straighten themselves out. Situations actually improve for several characters.

The results are plausible but, depending on one's outlook about other human beings, either likely or barely possible. How one responds to fiction is largely a matter of what one brings to it, and responses could be viewed as a Rorschach Test of sorts. Reading a novel by Vickers, who is a Jungian psychotherapist, it's possible to take a step back from reading and reacting to see what one's own reaction might mean.

Or whether it's just an entertainment.

©2014 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Book Reviews and reprinted by permission

Review: 'The Hidden White House'

The Hidden White House
By Robert Klara
History
October 2013
Thomas Dunne Books
ISBN: 9781250000279

Harry Truman had more to worry about than carrying on FDR's work when the president died and the plainspoken man from Missouri became the nation's leader, winning the war and deciding whether to drop the atomic bomb. The White House was falling apart right around him, his family and visitors to the country's most famous residence.

Although it's not true that the leg of Margaret Truman's piano went through the floor and the ceiling of the next level, it did break through the flooring. The house was literally falling apart around the Trumans. Over the years, various changes to the building had wreaked havoc with its stability.

Chandeliers swinging above guests' heads and floors swaying beneath the passing feet of color guards prompted the Trumans to move out and Harry to battle Congress for funding.

The entire interior was gutted and a new foundation dug for the brilliant facade the surrounds the structure. Plans for technological updates, renovations that both recreated what many would consider classical White House rooms in various time periods and the best in new decor were drawn and redrawn. And Harry Truman was in the middle of it all, even as the family adjusted to living in Blair House and security was hurriedly adjusted for less-than-satisfactory conditions.

The entire process is chronicled in Robert Klara's The Hidden White House, written in a facile narrative style that is a hallmark of contemporary popular history. Klara also includes sources for his material in copious endnotes that provide more information while not distracting from the narrative pull of events.

That the work was completed in a fashion anywhere near the original redesign plans is astounding. The sad state in which the interiors were left because of the Truman wish to get back to the White House before he left office and lack of funding after the actual construction was complete is noted, and it is not surprising that one of the first things Mamie Eisenhower did after Ike won the presidency was to redecorate.

Some photographs were published in the advance reading copy; including even more would have helped bring the story of each stage of the work into better focus.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Book Reviews and reprinted with permission

Sunday Sentence: Shirley Jackson

As inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, the best sentence(s) I read last week, presented without context. Except in this case, to add that this is from a previously unpublished story by Shirley Jackson discovered among her papers at the Library of Congress and published in the Winter Reading issue of Tin House (Vol. 15, No. 2).

It's like everyone back home, she was thinking, picnics and last-minute invitations, and everything confused and grimy and noisy, taking people away from their homes and their dinners without ever stopping to think how inconvenient it might be for the orderly routine of their houses. Mrs. Spencer remembered, with a little shiver of fury, the troops of laughing friends her sister was always apt to bring home, always, somehow, when the house was freshly cleaned and things put in order.

-- Shirley Jackson, Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons

Review: 'The Carpet People'

The Carpet People
By Terry Pratchett
Fantasy/fable
November 2013
Clarion Books
ISBN: 978-0-544-21247-3

First published in 1971 as the early work of a young writer, reworked and republished in the 1990s and re-published anew now with the original illustrations restored and the original newspaper columns from the mid-60s that inspired the story, Terry Pratchett's The Carpet People has been described as similar to The Lord of the Rings, but for children and amidst the carpet threads.

It is a sprawling story of one group of people led by a hunter, his smarter younger brother, a philosopher, a general they meet, another king they run into and whole other hordes of creatures. They all live in a carpet. There are occasional references to such real-world items as matchsticks and there is a menace known as the Fray, but it's uncertain whether that is a vacuum cleaner or footsteps.

Actually, with the setpieces of action not always set up clearly, groups of beings not fully introduced and characters who may or may not be important, The Carpet People is a novel that would be difficult for my students to follow.

There are a few great Pratchett bon mots and the idea that one can decide how one's own history be written, but there are hidden among the weft and weave of an overly complicated tale.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Book Reviews and reprinted with permission

Remembrances: 'You Know When the Men are Gone'

You Know When the Men are Gone
By Siobhan Fallon
Literary fiction short stories
January 2011
Amy Einhorn Books
ISBN: 0399157204

It rarely pays to go into any reading experience with my expectations already in place. Those expectations might be confirmed. There is the danger, however, that other ideas or insights might be lost or not given their due weight.

That was nearly my experience reading the short stories in You Know When the Men Are Gone. The collection about Army families centers around Fort Hood, and was written by Siobhan Fallon, who was an Army wife staying at Fort Hood while her husband was on two tours of duty in Iraq.
The focus is on the women and children at home, although there also are powerful insights about those who are actively serving. From the opening pages describing how the colors and tone of the base change when the troops ship out, Fallon puts the reader amongst those who stay behind.

I had expected that reading these stories would reinforce my belief that our troops need to come home from Afghanistan and Iraq. And without Fallon being political, my belief was reinforced. Characters go through heartache and harm because the troops are overseas.

But this collection of stories has something else to impart. From the beginning, I had the sense of remembering the few months I spent on base as a tween. I'm the rare Air Force brat who spent most of her life in her hometown while my father spent three tours of duty in Thailand during the Vietnam War era.

In town, we were sometimes looked down on; in stores, for example, we weren't regarded as reliable customers. I remember a particularly embarrassing episode at the local department store when the clerk somehow found out Dad was in the Air Force and not employed at a regular dad job in town. She looked us up and down while Mom was having us try on winter coats and wondered aloud whether Mom could afford to buy the coats.

This was Mom's hometown in addition to her children's hometown; she was visibly affected. Her shoulders slumped and she seemed to become physically smaller as she quietly told the clerk that yes, we could pay. It was the only time I saw my mother shamed.

The characters shopping at the commissary took me back to our marathon monthly shopping sessions on base, trudging up and down endlessly long aisles and looking at loads of things we never put in the cart -- whatever we bought that day, including milk and bread, had to last the month until next month's money came through. There were nights we had creamed hard-boiled eggs over toast and didn't realize that was the only food left.

The characters at the base hospital took me back to other corridors that also seemed to never end and always being sent here, there, up and down and around whenever we went -- check-in here, records there, X-ray over in that wing, the examining room in another area.

Just as my mother had to cope and make do while Dad was off on the other side of the world, the women and children in Fallon's stories, decades later, do the same. A mother, uncertain if her cancer has returned and due for a doctor's appointment, leaves the hospital when her angry teen-age daughter trots off with her kindergarten-aged brother. Calling the MPs brings an ineffective youngster whose report may reflect on Dad's record, Dad is on base but can't leave because of trouble in the Green Zone, the doctor is ready to tattle on her because she missed the appointment when the schools' secretaries called about the kids.

Many of the characters are on the edge; their lives could fall apart if they let them, if they believe something other than the best of their mates (regardless of the truth), if they fail to hold on any longer. When the worst that can happen does, the character most affected is not left alone to fall apart.

Most of the characters at home don't reach out for institutional help, and it's not primarily because of possible strikes against the active duty soldier. It's because of pride, of not wanting to be looked down on for not coping better, of not being shamed in front of the others also going through hardships, of not being pitied by the others when they talk about you.

That's when it occurred to me. These huge institutions such as the military will not and, as they exist now, cannot, serve the individual. Yet the individuals and their families are required to give and give and give.

An individual can rarely give enough and the least failing, the smallest inability to go above and beyond because of other circumstances, the least attempt to bring different thinking or acts into the mix, are deeply frowned upon. The repercussions can be out of proportion to the action taken or not taken, in order for the institution to continue to function as it has.

It's not that this is new to me; I've seen it happen during the course of three different careers. But the impact of the calm way in which Fallon describes the lives of the dependents of those in active service (imagine how impersonal it is to be called a "dependent" and not even a wife or child or, gracious, a human being in one's own right) brought it into sharp focus.

And that's especially true for someone who believes some institutions need to exist because of the possible benefit they can provide to individuals in a more perfect society -- public education, improved infrastructure, public safety and health care. How can institutions continue to function in a personally stifling way when their existence came about in order to improve people's lives?

It's not like I have an answer, but it is something I'm going to continue to consider. But I'm also going to continue to be proud of the families who wait for their service members to return home.

©2013 All Rights Reserved CompuServe Book Reviews and reprinted with permission

Sunday Sentence: 'Three Times Lucky'

As inspired by Fobbit author David Abrams at The Quivering Pen, the best sentence(s) I read this week, presented without further commentary or context:

That's another thing about a small town: Everybody knows everybody's schedule. We spin around each other like planets around an invisible sun.

-- Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage