Category Archives: Reviews

Fiction, Reviews

‘Portrait of Jennie,’ by Robert Nathan

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From then on, the sky seemed made of another blue, and the clouds, too, were a different white, with tones of yellow in them. Yellow is the true color of spring, not green, the new grass, the clouds, the misty, sunny air, the sticky buds like little feathers on the trees, are mixed with yellow tone, with the haze of sun and earth and water. Green is for summer, blue for fall.

***

I smiled at him across the table. “I’m only beginning to think about things like that,” I said.

“Well,” he said unhappily, “I wish you wouldn’t. The artist ought not to think so much. It’s bad for his color sense.”

Having watched and reviewed the old movie, “Portrait of Jennie,” a few days ago, I went and got the original novella. It’s better than the movie, even better than I remembered.

The film veers off from the book toward the end, but it starts pretty much the same. On a winter’s day in Manhattan in the 1930s, Eben Adams, a struggling artist, meets a strange little girl dressed in oddly antique clothing. The sketch he draws of her the next day becomes the first work of his that a particular art dealer finds interesting. On the basis of this sale, he begins an increasingly successful period of his career. Occasionally through that winter he meets the little girl again, and each time she is visibly a few years older. Gradually he realizes (as she seems to know from the start) that they are living in different timelines, which cross occasionally. She is “hurrying,” she tells him, to grow up in time to catch up with him.

In the movie, Eben goes to visit the convent school she attended, where he learns from a sympathetic old nun that Jennie studied there decades before, but died in a hurricane on Cape Cod. That is a departure from the book, where Eben goes to Cape Cod for artistic inspiration, and has his final encounter with Jenny there unexpectedly. In my opinion, the book’s ending worked better. (Another change the film made is changing Eben’s friend Gus from a Jew to an Irishman. Thus we lose Gus’s ruminations on the “tough break” God handed his people.)

Aside from the entrancing, fantasy love story, the great pleasure of Portrait of Jennie is the prose. Robert Nathan was a superb literary craftsman. His descriptions reminded me of Sigrid Undset – he revels in detail, in texture and scent, but especially in color – as is entirely appropriate for a story narrated by a painter.

I highly recommend Portrait of Jennie. Robert Nathan was Jewish, but there was almost nothing in his meditations on God and eternity that I disagreed with.

Fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘His Eyes,’ by Mark Charles Powers

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Sometimes you read a book that’s so well-meaning that you just want to root for it. Especially if it’s a Christian book. I wish I could say that Mark Charles Powers’ His Eyes was a successful work of art, but I’m afraid I can’t.

As the book opens (the opening is quite well-written), Michael Judson, a teenager in a suburb in an unnamed southern state, is in shock. His younger brother Lucas has just died in a freak gun accident, and Michael doesn’t know whether he, his (single) mother, or Lucas himself pulled the trigger.

This is the most successful part of the book, as the horror and finality sink in and he and his mother deal with it, each in their own ways. Michael finds some comfort in the friendship of an old neighbor, who lends him a cassette tape (this story is set in 1997) featuring a Christian song that’s brought him comfort. He also makes friends with a neighbor boy who has unspoken problems of his own. Meanwhile his mother sinks into depression and guilt, becoming increasingly dependent on prescription tranquilizers. Their grief is only aggravated by her ex-husband’s accusations that she’s responsible for Lucas’s death.

I think it’s a general truth that in fiction it’s easier to portray grief and pain than to portray comfort and healing. That problem is only aggravated when a Christian message is being proclaimed. One tends (and I know this from experience) to fall into preachiness. One’s words sound like platitudes, even when the truths expressed have been hard-learned through suffering and tears. Such scenes require a deft handling of dialogue – and I regret to say that author Powers hasn’t quite mastered that skill. Michael, in particular, tends to fall into verbiage that sounds nothing like a teenager talking.

I wish Mark Charles Powers well. I think he has talent, and is capable of very good things. But he’s not ready for prime time. I fear that His Eyes, well-intentioned though it is, will not do the good he intended (though it certainly may in some cases, with readers less picky than I).

Fiction, Reviews

‘Some Sort of Justice,’ by Peter Grainger

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My ardor for Peter Grainger’s King’s Lake police procedural series, set in northern England, has waned slightly in the time since he made the (probably inevitable) decision to let his previous main character, the enigmatic Detective Inspector D.C. Smith, retire (though he remains a presence in the stories). The team has a more modern look now, headed up by DI Cara Freeman (the obligatory Strong Female Lead), and including a black woman and a “gay” guy. (There may be other ethnic or societal subtleties that I missed because author Grainger is shy with character descriptions.) Nevertheless, I found Some Sort of Justice, book 17 in the series, engrossing and effective.

DI Freeman’s superiors offer her a case, implying strongly that she might be wise to turn it down. It’s a reinvestigation of a death more than a year old, and it’s also a potential minefield. The victim was an earl, whose sister is unsatisfied with the police’s conclusions. He was found dead in a pool after a party at the home of a high-level entertainment agent. Accepting the case, Freeman soon learns that the facts are very hard to determine. The cremated body is no longer available for examination. The host’s story doesn’t make sense. And it appears that a prominent politician was present and desires very much to cover that up. As the investigation goes on, the team is confronted again and again with the choice between doing the easy, political thing or seeking the truth. They choose to seek the truth, but they’ll lead a lot of intelligence, some shrewd strategizing, and a little plain luck if they’re to keep their careers when it’s all over.

I was highly pleased with more than one conservative sentiment expressed in passing. I enjoyed Some Sort of Justice. Cautions for adult themes.

Fiction, Reviews

Saga reading report, three sagas

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A venerable custom on this blog is my post-Viking event saga review. During reenactment events I like to (at least most of the time) read from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, to keep myself from (further) violating authenticity standards through reading off my Kindle device. During the Scandinavian Festival in Moorhead I read three sagas, two of them connected, all of them weird to various degrees. We’re getting into late sagas here, and weirdness goes with the territory.

The Saga of the People of Kjalarnes

The first one is The Saga of the People of Kjalarnes, which deals with early settlers in the area around Reykjavik. It’s also interesting because it depicts early Christian-heathen conflicts, and features one of the few saga descriptions of a heathen temple (historians consider this description pretty much worthless as evidence).

Helgi Bolan is an early Iceland settler, and we’re told he welcomed a group of Irish immigrants who were Christian. (I believe these people should probably be considered mixed Norse-Irish, ones who fled Ireland following military reverses in the Emerald Isle. These people would have thought of themselves as Norse, but had converted to Christianity.)

Every saga begins with a can of genealogical worms, and this can finally brings forth the saga’s main hero, Bui Andridsson. Bui is an open “Christian,” and is actually prosecuted at the Thing assembly for false religion. He is outlawed but (interestingly) simply ignores it. Nobody seems to be able to do much about it, because he’s such a skillful fighter. He has a foster-mother who keeps egging him on to desperate acts, justifying it by saying that his fate is already determined, so there’s no point playing safe. He finally burns Helgi Bolan’s temple down, killing a man in the process. (I think we’re supposed to sympathize with Bui, but objectively he sounds like a jerk.)

Outlawed, he flees to Norway, where the king sends him on a quest to the giant Dofri (identified with Dovre mountain in Norway; this element connects this saga to lesser-known legends about King Harald Fairhair). While staying with Dofri, Bui cohabits with the giant’s daughter, who is (we are told) very tall but very beautiful. (The mind boggles.)

Later he returns to Iceland where he’s finally killed fighting with Jokul, his own son, born to the giant’s daughter, whom he’s never met. The saga ends by telling us that they don’t know what happened to Jokul, but read on…

Jokul Buason’s Tale

Somebody must have wanted a sequel about the patricide Jokul, because that’s the next story in the collection. This is a saga that seems to have no historical basis at all, and so it runs wild along fairy tale lines. In his adventures, Jokul encounters a couple of giant sisters. He and his companion kill one, but spare the other, and she becomes their useful and devoted slave (giant psychology would seem to be somewhat different from human psychology).

The saga goes on to take Jokul, in the end, to the land of the Saracens, where he rescues a prince and princess. He marries the princess and succeeds her father as king of the Saracens.

To live, one assumes, happily ever after.

Gold-Thorir’s Saga

Gold-Thorir’s Saga returns us, tenuously, to some connection with the real world. Gold-Thorir is Thorir Oddsson, who as a young man vows sworn-brotherhood with a group of other young men. They go out to have adventures. They rob a grave mound, where the ghost prophecies great wealth but a bad end for Thorir. After that, we’re told, Thorir’s personality changes.

They go on to assault a clutch of dragons in a cave, managing to kill the dragons and seize their treasure. As their leader, Thorir is awarded the larger share of the loot.

[One peculiarity of this saga is that a few pages are missing. They weren’t lost, but were erased, probably with the intention of re-using them (not uncommon with old book manuscripts). Someone wrote in a summary of the missing material, but we don’t know if it’s authentic.)

In his old age, we are told, Gold-Thorir becomes increasingly sour and antisocial. Finally, according to the saga, he actually turns into a dragon. And his treasure disappears.

That, you must admit, is a dramatic ending.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Martinez,’ by Alan Lee

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I’ve been relishing Alan Lee’s bracing thriller series starring US Marshal/secret agent Manny Martinez, a native of Puerto Rico but the most patriotic man in America. Manny generally saunters through his stories like a James Bond with better hair (and more scars). The stakes are high, but the tone is light, mostly because Manny refuses (as Stonewall Jackson put it) to take counsel of his fears.

But Martinez, the fourth book in the series, has a different tone. Manny is still Manny, but this time he’ll take a trip into his own past, brought into confrontation with his dark origins.

One day in the Marshals’ office, Manny recognizes a prisoner being interviewed. In a moment, that prisoner murders a marshal, wounds Manny, and makes a clean escape. The prisoner was not the man they thought they’d arrested. He was Manny’s own (probable) half-brother, Julian. When they were boys, they’d been inseparable partners in crime. Manny had been (we learn) the heir apparent to the main crime family in Puerto Rico. But he decided he didn’t want that life, and escaped to the US. Julian felt deeply betrayed. He rose to become one of the top assassins in the world, and now he’s decided the time has come to get his revenge on Manny. But not right away. First he’ll kill everyone Manny loves. In the end, he lures Manny home to P.R. for a final showdown.

Martinez was not as much fun as the previous Manny Martinez (code name Sinatra) novels, but it was exciting and gripping, and the great theme is mercy. I recommend it. Cautions for violence and language.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Where the Bad Men Sleep,’ by Rowan Merrick

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I’ll relieve the tension right away. I did not like Where the Bad Men Sleep much.

It’s a psychological thriller, and like so many books of that subgenre, it borders on horror. Such books can be very good; think of The Silence of the Lambs.

But this book by Rowan Merrick falls far below that level.

The hero (sort of) is Ray Matthews, a former police detective who resigned under pressure. (There’s also talk about articles he wrote, as if he moonlighted as a journalist, which seems unlikely. It wasn’t really explained as far as I can recall.)

Now his old superior calls him back in to view a murder scene. The victim was tortured to death, words carved into his body. The words are from an old article of Ray’s, in which he wrote about the official malfeasance that led to the release of his (Ray’s) wife’s murderer. The present victim is one of the men culpable in the injustice.

Ray’s problem is that he can’t recall where he was at the time of death. He experiences blackouts occasionally, and it’s been happening more often recently. He’s terrified that he committed the murder and doesn’t recall it. As the first half of the book continues, his fears grow.

The second half of the book turns (mostly) to his sister Charlene. We learn their family history, how she’s been covering for Ray for most of their lives, and how she has curtailed her own life, partly out of love and partly out of fear.

The book ends with a Big Surprise.

And a cliffhanger.

I don’t like cliffhangers. I consider cliffhangers an offense to the reader.

Also, I found the psychology of this book dubious. I thought the decisions of several characters implausible. And I considered the “solution” unnecessarily complex.

In short, I was disappointed with Where the Bad Men Sleep. Not recommended.

Reviews

Old movie review: ‘Portrait of Jennie’

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YouTube, which grows more annoying as time passes, is now featuring old movies provided (for some reason) with the wrong titles. When one came up called “The Painted Memory,” featuring Joseph Cotton, I had an idea it was probably the 1948 film “Portrait of Jennie.” As is so often the case, I was right.

I watched it with great interest. I haven’t seen it since I was a kid, but it was one of those movies that stuck in my mind. When I first saw it, I was still aspiring to be a visual artist, so I identified with the main character. I little expected that the story would be formative for me in a way I never anticipated.

What do I think of it, after 60 years? Read on, if (for some reason) you care to know.

The film is based on a 1940 novella by Robert Nathan, an author who ought to be better remembered. He was a pioneer of what we call urban fantasy today, and his stuff is quite good. I found several of his books in a public library when I lived in Florida, and enjoyed them.

The plot: Joseph Cotten plays Eben Adams, a starving artist in Manhattan during the Great Depression. Dealers find his work competent but uninspired, and he doesn’t sell much. Then one day in Central Park he meets a little girl named Jennie Appleton (Jennifer Jones), who dresses strangely in old-fashioned clothes. They make friends, and he is charmed. When he looks for her the next day, however, she does not appear. He draws a sketch of her, and a gallery owner buys it immediately, saying it’s the first inspired thing he’s ever done. Throughout the year, Jennie shows up periodically, and each time she seems years older. Eben does research and discovers that she was the child of trapeze artists in old vaudeville, decades before, and was orphaned when they died in an accident. Then she went to a convent school and college. Finally she appears to him again as a young woman, and he paints her portrait.

He goes to the convent to talk to an old nun who knew her. She informs him that Jennie used to go out to a place on the coast called Land’s End, where she died in a freak tidal wave. As a present-day tidal wave builds out at sea, Eben rushes to Land’s End to meet her and – he hopes – to rescue her this time. He fails, but an epilogue tells us that Eben Adams achieved greatness as an artist after his “Portrait of Jennie.”

What did I think of it? The movie flopped on release, in spite of the popularity of the original novella. In the years since, critics have revised their opinions upward, and now it’s considered a minor classic.

For my own part, I was a little disappointed. (This is the way of things remembered from childhood. They never live up to your memories, do they?)

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Fiction, Reviews

‘Paradise Royale,’ by Alan Lee

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“You are enjoying this. Unbelievable.”

“Beck, look around. We’re in Jamaica. Our enemy is crafty and clever. She’s a beautiful former MI6 agent and chasing her has led us around the globe. This isn’t boring. This isn’t dull. We could be chasing some drug addict who skipped bail. We could be transferring prisoners, but we’re not. Ay, what else do you want out of your career?”

I can’t believe I delayed reading Alan Lee’s “Sinatra” books. Manny Martinez, code name Sinatra, US Marshal and part-time secret agent, is an over-the-top character who perfectly fits into the over-the-top world of movie-inspired thrillers. He’s unbelievable, but he’s got the ego to carry off implausibility. James Bond is never far from the reader’s mind here, and the author leans into the similarities, with tongue in cheek.

In Paradise Royale, Manny and his female partner, Beck, are assigned to intercept a defense department computer genius who’s absconding with secrets to sell to our enemies. The interception isn’t all that difficult, but a complication arises – a stunningly beautiful, rogue British Intelligence agent and her pleasant but deadly male associate. They neatly intercept the defector and carry him off. Manny, never dismayed, immediately commandeers a private jet to chase the fugitives to Jamaica, where the prisoner gets snatched back and forth like a basketball as the two rival teams grow increasingly impressed with one another. Especially Manny and Bronwen, the Englishwoman. She is Manny’s equal, just as good-looking and just as resourceful as he is. Even as they deceive and entrap one another, they fall into increasing mutual infatuation. (This is a very sexy novel, though nothing explicit happens.)

Generally, as you know, I don’t care for kick-butt female action heroines, but I liked Bronwen a lot. I hope she comes back, even though Manny (in a later book) proposes to Beck.

I can’t think of anything bad to say about Paradise Royale, except to caution you about occasional bad language. Hollywood hasn’t told an action story this much fun in many, many years.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Wild Card,’ by Alan Lee

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Since I’ve become a fan of author Alan Lee, I’ve decided to read his “Sinatra” books as well as his delightful Mac August novels. “Sinatra” is the code name of Mac’s best friend, Manny Martinez, a US Marshal who is also on call as a super-secret government agent (because why not?). Manny is an off-the-wall character, a genuine original – though, oddly, he’s kind of based on James Bond. Only in this case Bond is a Puerto Rican American (and super-patriot). He’s implausibly handsome and has impeccable fashion style. Basically, he does all the things Bond does, but in a very American and semi-parodical manner.

In Wild Card, Manny and his partner Noelle Beck (a sweet, wholesome Mormon girl) are given the case of Benjamin Curtis, governor of Maryland and brother to the vice president. Curtis has a gambling habit, and is deeply in debt to sinister people. So their job is to go to the casino, take him in hand, and get him out. Only, when they get hold of him, he explains that the situation is worse than anyone knows. The people he owes money to are more dangerous than organized crime, and killing the governor will be the least of their retaliations if they don’t get paid the millions they’re owed. Implausibly (but plausibility matters little in these stories), Manny finds himself taking the governor’s place at the poker table, first at the casino, and later on an offshore yacht. The fact that Manny has never played poker before is only a minor road bump compared to other challenges Manny and Beck will face, from international assassins to frenzied sharks.

It’s over the top, but great fun – more like a Bond movie than a Bond novel. It’s impossible (I think) to resist Manny as he strolls into the jaws of death with perfect confidence, knowing he’s the smartest, the best looking, the deadliest, and the Most American person around, and Americans always win.

I loved Wild Card. Recommended. Cautions for language and violence.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cocktail Time,’ by P.G. Wodehouse

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P.G. Wodehouse wrote five novels (as well as a timeless short story) about the Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred. Cocktail Time is the third in the series, placing the sequence somewhat later in time than I expected. One always envisions Wodehouse stories taking place in the 1920s or ’30s, but references here to television and World War II being in the past alert us to the fact that this one was actually published in 1958.

Instead of a précis of the plot, I think it will be more efficient to describe the story geographically. Imagine Dovetail Hammer, Berkshire, the stately home of Johnny Pearce, one of Uncle Fred’s godsons. Johnny wants very much to get married, but he doesn’t feel he can afford it. He’s not very wealthy, and upkeep on the manor is high. On top of that, he feels obligaed to pension off his imperious childhood nurse, who’s gotten accustomed to thinking of herself as major domo of the estate. He can’t expect his new bride to deal with that.

One measure he’s taken to increase his income is to turn Hammer Lodge, a smaller dwelling on the estate, into a rental house. It is now being occupied by Sir Raymond “Beefy” Bastable, the eminent London barrister. Beefy’s great secret, known to few, is that he is the author of Cocktail Time, a scandalous bestselling novel about today’s dissipated young men. (He wrote the novel after having his hat knocked off by a Brazil nut shot from a catapult (slingshot) out of a window of the Drones Club, unaware that the actual shooter was not a dissipated young man, but Uncle Fred himself). Beefy has persuaded his worthless nephew, Cosmo Wisdom, to take public credit for authorship, in order to preserve his own reputation. However, he has taken the precaution of writing a letter establishing his own authorship, in case it should be necessary. And now that his agent has started talking about film rights, Beefy is reconsidering his claim – only the letter has been stolen.

This covers only the high points. There are several cases of sundered hearts in this tale, and Uncle Fred is always keen on uniting sundered hearts, as part of his general life project of “spreading sweetness and light.” His usual method of spreading s. and l. is by telling bald-faced, shameless lies, gently shepherding the unhappy couples into proximity, and arranging for them to acquire sufficient resources to set up housekeeping. A novelty in this story is that several of the sundered couples consist of middle-aged people.

Lots of fun. Cocktail Time is about mid-level on the Wodehouse scale, which exists on an infinitely higher plane than any other humorist’s work. Recommended.