lying game

 

The Lying Game is by Ruth Ware, and English author who brought us The Woman in Cabin 10. I saw this book at my library's book sale and because I thought the Cabin book was good I picked this one up.

The book cover, which is similar to the illustration shown here,* also notes that this book was featured in a book club with Reese Witherspoon's name on it. I'm not sure what that means, I didn't know she had one, and this book is from 2017, although the paperback was probably printed a year or so later, and I'm not sure if Witherspoon still has a book club or not. Looks like she does and it looks like the club features books by women authors, so good on you Reece.

Not only is this book written by a woman, it focuses on the story of four women, that have know each other since their high school days at a boarding school near the coast, not too far from London. The story is about friendship, secrets, and lies, and how they shapes the young women in the story into the adults they become, and what it means when part of their youth, that they may have been hoping would stay in their past, catches up with them.

Its tightly written, with tension, mystery, and an interesting look at the things we share, and the things we don't. Ware did a pretty good job with this one too.

 

* Mine looks like this; the badging is different. 

 

 

eye of the needle

Eye of the Needle is a Ken Follett World War II novel from 1978. I picked this up from the book sale at the Bigelow Free Public Library in Clinton, MA. The Bigelow is a pretty little library built with Guastavino vaults about 100 years ago. It was built with funding from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and opened in 1902. The library director gave me the thumbs up on this book, and altho I've read Follett's cathedral stories, I haven't read any of his spy thriller work (or maybe anything else he's written?)

Anyhoo, this is a well paced, inspired by reality kind of thriller, and it certainly checked off all the boxes for me. It was exciting, believable, seemingly well researched, tense, and in some cases brutal, and in other cases sad, and still others, sweet. The story is set mainly in the UK, toward the end of WWII, with glimpses of what was happening in Germany at the time, or at least what Follett speculated could have happened based on the information we do have, both about the events in the UK and Germany. He comes right out and says up front that we all know the results, but it was close there for a while, and while we don't know all the details something like this could have happened. I'm paraphrasing. because I didn't want to get up and get the book

 Its crazy to imagine that in 1978, the world was much closer to the end of WWII, than we are now to 1978. Follet wrote this just 30 or so years after the end of the war, and its getting close to 50 years since he wrote it. The story holds up however, probably because its set in an earlier period and it seems that Follet was careful to avoid modern terms and lingo in his writing (at lest to my eye.) This is James Bond without the tuxedos. Its gritty, and the story is wrapped up in everyday life, and the struggles of people living through a war, and doing the best they can in crummy circumstances.

dombey and son

Dombey and Son is not a book I’d heard of before. It was written by Charles Dickens beginning in 1846, and published as a serial, with pamphlet size installments issued once per month for 19 months between 1846 and 1848 by Bradbury & Evans, with illustrations Henry Clarence Pitz. Shortly after the last (double-issue) pamphlet was released, the entire book was published in hardback. Serialized books read differently than other books, in my mind anyway, as they can be had in one go without having to wait. And because one had to wait, there could be cliffhangers at the end of a monthly installment; but there also needs to be a way to make sure your readers will remember where they are in the story, and who the characters are. This is why, I believe, the characters are almost caricatures, or archetypes, which makes their personalities so striking, especially when contrasted to other characters in the story. The character names are also a clue, and consequently can be very amusing. One can imagine that a gruff imposing landlady named Mrs. MacStinger, should not be crossed without some consequence.

Reading a serialized novel is similar to spamming a television series that was designed to be broadcast once per week. The regular pacing of a weekly TV show, its alignment with holidays, and the passing of seasons, felt in many ways that you were following these characters along in their lives at the same pace you were living along with them. While Dombey and Son takes place over a longer story arc than the 19 months in which it was originally published, I’m sure that span of time helped with the pacing as the story stretched through the years. Reading it all in one volume is the 1840s equivalent of the spamming.

I picked up this volume at the book sale in my local library. It had no book jacket, although I assume it probably did,* and there was a small leaflet tucked inside the front cover which I thought was a found bookmark. Because I didn’t know about it, and had no book jacket to consult, I read the first line and I was sold. Between that first line, and the handsome binding, it was clearly worth the $2.00 I paid for it. After getting it home, I found that it is a Heritage Club edition. The Heritage Club published books with quality bindings, using their own editing staff, illustrators, and bindery, and made them available at an affordable price to their members. The leaflet tucked into the front is a small newsletter to the club members called  "Sandglass" that discusses the book, the printing, and Dickens himself.

The original title was Dealings with the Firm of Dombey and Son: Wholesale, Retail and for Exportation. yeah, glad they shortened that up It’s a big book but I really enjoyed it. I can’t say that I couldn’t put it down but I did find myself picking it up more often that my usual reading times at breakfast and before bed. Not only that, Dickens had me emotionally tied up with these characters. It may be because of the serial format, or it may just be a literary tool, but the characters had such clear personalities that you could almost guess what they might do, and when wrong, it was either much worse or much better, depending on the character, than you may have guessed.

There are some familiar themes here that Dickens is examining. Themes that we’ve seen him mull over before in books like A Christmas Carol, and David Copperfield. Paul Dombey could be compared to Ebenezer Scrooge, and James Carker would give Uriah Heep a run for his money. What I especially liked is how Dickens examined insidiousness in his evil characters. They aren’t as smarmy or blatantly vile as they are in more modern stories; Dickens’ baddies use the very etiquette of a polite and civil society, especially the higher class norms, as the pool in which he has these creatures wriggle about like eels or prowl like sharks, outwardly smiling and nodding as they watch their prey twist in agony. By contrast, Dickens’ good characters are personifications of the divine upon the earthly plane. It doesn’t matter what happens to them, how terrible their misfortunes, how bleak their outlook may be, they smile or simply tighten their belts, and push on, with endless reservoirs of love, kindness, understanding, and forgiveness. Maybe that’s putting too fine a point on it, and perhaps it’s a bit of a spoiler, but if you’ve read Dickens, I don’t think this will come as a surprise.

I really enjoyed this one, and I can imagine reading it again at some point to see if it still holds up, like I’ve done with similar books, like The Count of Monte Cristo. After a quick look online, it seems as though Dombey and Son is not unknown in the UK; I found many different adaptations of the novel in British movies and television programs. 

Read this book. Maybe twice!

 

 

 

* After writing this, I discovered the Heritage Club edition came in a red slipcase as shown in the photo. This wasn't there at the library box sale, where I got mine.