The Saturday Morning Post (No.6)

I've a grab bag of books to review this week, starting with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, which I wanted to read to see if it was indeed, Batman with swords which the Wikipedia made it out to be. Let's get right into it.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy Orczy  C+

Let's address the elephant in the room, this proved not to be Batman with swords. Indeed, not only does the title character play only a minor role, on stage anyway, in most of the story, but there is not one sword fight, indeed, not one fight scene at all. So what is the story about?  Well, the Wikipedia entry states;

The novel is set during the Reign of Terror following the start of the French Revolution. The title is the nom de guerre of its hero and protagonist, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are sent to the guillotine.... (who is) a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking master of disguise and escape artist. The band of gentlemen who assist him are the only ones who know of his secret identity. He is known by his symbol, a simple flower, the scarlet pimpernel.

Luckily for me, I did not reread this summery before I read the book, so I forgot who they identified as the Scarlet Pimpernel, (I've edited it out for you) and so I learned who it was, more or less as the Baroness intended, though before it was actually revealed. That made the story a bit more interesting. My advice forget the summery in its entirety, as it does not describe the book in any meaningful way.

The story is largely set in 1792 England, and the main point of view character is a former French actress, Marguerite Blakeney (nee St Just), the wife of a very rich and very oafish English aristocrat Sir Percy Blakeney - though it takes a couple of chapters of set up to get to her and Sir Percy who is an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, i.e. one of the in crowd. Their marriage has fallen on ill times, though Sir Percy treats her with great respect, he would seem to have ceased to love her, and she him.

The plot centers around Marguerite, whose dear brother, is working with the Scarlet Pimpernel to smuggle aristocrats out of France during the reign of terror, even though he is both French and not an aristocrat. Indeed, having been beaten to a pulp for sending a note to the aristocratic girl he loved, he is a believer in the revolution, but feels that it has perhaps gone too far. In any event, his involvement with the Scarlet Pimpernel is discovered by a French agent in England and is used to blackmail Marguerite into helping him discover identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel and capture him while he is in France, as he rushes to save Marguerite's brother and the French aristocrats that the Marguerite's brother went back to France to help escape as part of the Scarlet Pimpernel's gang of helpers.

After the introduction of the setting and characters in the first couple of chapters, the story revolves around Marguerite's struggles to save her brother at the cost of betraying the identity of the Scarlet Pimpernel, and then her attempts to save him herself. It is rather overwroughtly written by today's standards, but I enjoyed it, even though it was not what I expected. I believe that there are something like 19 novels concerning the exploits of the Scarlet Pimpernel and members of his band of adventures, so maybe they include some sword fights. At least several are available from the Gutenberg Project where I downloaded my version of the story, so I might give them a try some day. We'll see. 

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo  C+

This is a fantasy novella set in a fantasy version of China with were-animals, in this case weretigers. The story concerns a traveling cleric/scholar Chih who is escorted to a way station in a snowy mountain pass by a Si-yu, a scout who rides a mammoth. At the station they are confronted with three weretigers who intend to eat them, and Chih must tell his version of a love story between a human and a weretiger to the weretigers who, in turn, have their own version of the story to relate, in order to keep the tigers from attacking and eating them. Each learns from each other different aspects and different attitudes of the characters and the story as they knew it. It is a quick read of 80 pages, and is set in a world first introduced in her novel, The Empress of Salt and Fortune, and now includes a second novel, Into the Riverlands. I believe Chih is the central storyteller who links all the books of the Singing Hills Cycle of which Mammoth at the Gates will be the fourth. While I can not say for certain, since I have not read either of the other stories, I suspect that this series may follow the blueprint of Ernest Bramah's Kai Lung stories set in a fictional China that have Kai Lung relating stories to bet himself out danger, but I could be entirely wrong.

I have this story only because it was one of the free books TOR.com offered, no doubt to promote Into the Riverlands when it was released. In any event, if you like weird tales of sort of China with magical creatures, then you should like these books. 

John Burnet of Barns, A Romance by John Buchan  C+

This is Buchan's second novel, written when he was 23. It is a historical novel largely set in 1680's in the low lands of Scotland, with a brief section in Holland. This was a time of great religious strife in Scotland between the Scottish Calvinist dissidents and those upholding the official state religion of the Church of England and it saw the king's soldier hunting down these diehard dissidents for treason. The hero of the story, John Burnet falls afoul of his elder cousin, and after besting him a duel in Holland where the cousin was a captain in a band of mercenaries. On the cousin's return to Scotland where he pursues John's true love and spreads lies that has John branded as a traitor. John returns to Scotland to save his love and clear his name.

There is nothing Buchan likes better than describing the scenery of Scotland, and having his hero a hunted man, gives him great scope for doing so. He also paints a vivid picture of the time and place with a story filled with desperate action. A fine, authentic historical novel written in the style of 1898 if that's to your taste.

The Half Hearted by John Buchan  D

This is Buchan's fourth novel, written when he was 24 and tells the story, in two parts, of a very accomplished upper class young man, heir to an estate in Scotland, Lewis Haystoun, who doesn't fit in with modern society. He is not driven, too good natured, doesn't know what he wants to do with his life and so is unable to commit to anything with his whole heart. The first part of the story, relates an ill fated romance, where his indecision, and in his view "cowardice," prevents him from wining the girl he loves, and who loves him as well, plus losing an election to parliament. The second half sees him traveling to the frontiers of India and foiling a plot to invade and start a native uprising there.

I have to feel that Buchan had ambitions for this book to be "important", since he spent great deal of words expounding on his philosophy of live by putting the words into the mouths of his various characters. Buchan, was a brilliant person, the son of a Scottish church minister, he won scholarships and awards, graduating from Oxford and going on to become the private secretary of a high British government official in South Africa for three years before returning home to become the editor of the Spectator Magazine and write more novels. He ended up governor general of Canada in the late 1930's. All the photographs of him I could find all show a tight lipped grim looking man. Thinking back, I have to admit that most of his books have a great deal of "intellectual" weight to them and that his heroes all tend to be the type of people that George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman would think fools; upper-class, idealistic, self sacrificing, very pro-British Empire, foolishly brave fools and knaves who built and maintained a colonial empire for several hundred years. At the end of the story, his half heartedness lost in his determination to save the British Empire in India, Lewis Haystoun becomes one of them.

I found the story a bit too "important" and ended up skimming a lot of book two of the story as it contained a lot of talk, long descriptions of the landscape and everything the hero did, as well as social comments that are long out of date. Plus the "threat" to the British Empire seemed too silly for me to take seriously. In short, I would not recommend this Buchan story to modern readers. His best one is The 39 Steps, and if you like the hero of that one, he appears in three more books written over several decades.

Honor of Thieves by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne  B (Republished as The Little Red Captain)

I found this book on my ebook reader, and while Hyne is one of my favorite writers, it didn't ring a bell - until I started reading it. It proved to be the first Captain Kettle story, a book I had read in paper many years ago, so my read turned into a reread. 

I should say right at the start that if you are sensitive to racism, racist stereotypes, and nationalities referred to in the most demeaning terms, save the English in print, you should steer well clear of the Captain Kettle stories. The character of Captain Kettle is that of a tough, sharp tongued tramp ship officer who has to deal with crews that are composed of hardboiled characters, and does his job by ruthlessly dominating them with sheer will power and a belief that the English race is superior to all other races and nationalities. He makes that clear in how he treats everyone not English, white or not, at least in words, if not action. I do not know how much of the racism is a reflection of Hyne's attitude and how much is his effort to make his character authentic. In any event, I can accept this attitude as a reflection of the time in which it is written and the type of character the story centers on. I think it's an accurate portrait of the racism of 1895 and take heart in the fact that while we still a long ways to go for all people to view all people as one people, this type of book illustrates the fact that progress is being made, if not as fast as we would like.

The story involves a shipowner, Theodore Shelf, whose business is going under, in part due to the extravagance spending of his wife. She is bent on climbing the social ladder by having him made a peer. He meets a well educated and well traveled man, Patrick Onslow who knows of an undiscovered river where a ship may enter the Florida everglades, which in 1895 was a wilderness still inhabited by Indians, alligators and mosquitos. Onslow proposes to use this discovery to offer hunters access to the everglades using a ship as a home base, and then sell the land to would-be orange growers. Shelf, needs more money than that, and quicker, so he proposes another plan involving faking the sinking of one of his ships for the insurance money on the ship and its cargo. Captain Kettle, with an undeserved bad reputation, is hired to oversee the dirty work.

In this story Captain Kettle is a supporting character, but after this story was first published Pearson's Magazine, in an English monthly literary magazine, the editors asked Hyne to write more stories featuring Captain Kettle, which he did over the next few year, and continued to do so for until 1938, along with stories featuring a number of other nautical characters.

Coming next week, a review of two books by British writers of humorous stories and novels along with a brief discussion of how and why humor works and doesn't.

35,301 Paintings (And Counting)

A painting by George Ames Aldrich

There are two things I've always enjoyed doing, painting, and writing stories. I've done both of those activities off and on for most of my life. I have a closet full of paintings, at least 1500 of them of various sizes and styles, that are worth millions of dollars, if my kids play their cards right once I'm dead. (See Upton Sinclair's Lanny Budd books.) Alas, over the last five years my output of paintings as diminished to the point were I was only painting covers for my books, and that only begrudgingly, and not very well, either. With my story writing seemingly winding down, I'd like to get back into painting, and to that end, I've been surveying the world of art to get that set of creative juices flowing once again.

That survey of art has taken the form of watching slide shows of paintings from the vast collection of the Learn from Masters video collection of paintings. It includes work from over 800 painters, some of which are represented by only several dozen paintings, while others have hundreds or more. Each painting is shown for something like 6 or 7 seconds, though you can pause the video if you care to to study a painting longer. I, on the other hand, am only trying to get an overview, a feel for art again, and perhaps absorb in some intuitive manner what works and what doesn't, so I play the videos at 2X speed, viewing each painting for only 2 to 3 seconds. Some painting deserve a lot more time and attention, and others, less, I'm not trying to study art, but experience it. So far I've viewed 35,301 paintings from a mere 260 different artists.

Ideally, the paintings would be arranged chronologically so that you could see the evolution of the artist. But given the sheer number of paintings this person has assembled, I'll not complain that they are in rather random order. It would be nice if they were titled, but again, given the sheer numbers... The other problem inherent in the presentation is that all the paintings are more or less the same size. A painting could be 7 inches wide or 7 foot wide and both would appear to be the same size on the screen. This is unavoidable. However, since both finished paintings and small field studies are presented in more or less the same size, it is sometime difficult to know what the artist intended the painting to be. Was the artist painting in an impressionist style, or are we're seeing just the preliminary plein air painting made on the scene for use as a reference in producing a finished work completed in the studio. Below is an example of what I believe is a study:

And here is the finished work:

 Both painting by Maximilien Luce

Sometimes the paintings are clearly quick studies for a larger work, but sometimes they stand on their own as a completed painting. In the case above what appears to be the study was shown in the presentation after the finished one, but close enough in the series that I recognized it as more or less the same painting I'd seen earlier. When you can see both the study and the finished product, you can see how a painting is developed. 

I have a number or art books on impressionist painters, so every now and again I'll come across a painting from a less famous artist that I recognize. Plus it is nice to see more than one example of their work to judge them by.

I am a landscape/cityscape/seascape sort of person, so those are generally my favorites, but I do enjoy seeing portraits as well, especially when well executed. and there are plenty of them in many collections. And because these paintings can date back something like 200 years, they offer the viewer an authentic glimpse of  the life of the people of bygone eras, as well as taking the viewer to exotic locales, some real, other imagined.

Here are some other things I've learned so far.

There are a lot of paintings and a lot of artists. With 800+ artists, there could be a 100,000 paintings to view.

Kylie Cows Watering by William Langley

Cows are aquatic animals. Many of the old landscapes that have lakes also have cows knee deep in them. Who knew?

Watercolor  by William Russell Flint

It seems that it was common for young women to gather and skinny-dip. Or so a lot of painters would have us believe. I suspect this was either wishful thinking or a fringe benefit of being an artist. What a racket.

Grand Canal Venice by Thomas Moran

Every painter, it seemed, painted Venice.

Docks of Paris Les Quais by Eugene Galien-Laloue

 And Paris. 

London by Giuseppe de Nittis

And London. Which is fine, they are interesting places.

Robert Lewis Stevenson by John Singer Sargent

Many, if not most artists, painted portraits. I suspect because those commissions paid the bills.

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping by Lucian Freud

Many, if not most artists, painted nudes. It was considered classic "art." Right. As I said, quite a racket.

There are, indeed, such things as masterpieces. Many times when going through a collection I will come across one or two paintings that just seem to stand out from all the rest - a combination of the right scene, lighting, colors, and execution. They are, however, rare, which is what makes them masterpieces.

I should've been taking notes, but I didn't, and now it's too late now.

Some people keep track of how many states they visit, or foreign countries. I'm going for how many paintings and drawing I've viewed.

In addition to these paintings, I'm currently up to date on installment no. 98 of Pete Beard's survey of forgotten illustrators that you can find here. In each of these segments he highlights the work of 4 illustrators in each 15 minute or so installment. I haven't counted how many pieces he shows, as it varies according to the amount of source material he has to work with, but between them and the special shows of a single artist or style, they could easily add another 5,000 paintings and drawings to my total.

Illustration for books and posters is another facet of art which I find fascinating. In many cases, I really like the illustrator's approach to a subject, though I like some countries' illustrators more than others. As I said, all fascinating stuff.

Stanley R Badmin advertising art

We'll have to see if it pays off.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 5)

This post offers two more reviews of the books by British woman from the Furled Middlebrow collection; the best, and the most disappointing of the lot. Let's start with the most so-so book of the lot and finish with the best, but first my customary disclaimer...

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett C

Each of the 72 books Furrowed Middlebrow they have published feature an introduction by Elizabeth Crawford describing the author, their work, and the novel at hand. In this case we learn that, Susan Scarlett is the pen name of Noel Stretfield (1897 – 1986) a prolific writer whose 40 year career spanned several genre, including children’s novels in her own name and pen names.

This story concerns the Carson family, with a focus on Elizabeth Carson, the eldest daughter. Mr Carson has been employed at Babbacombre’s department store, and with her graduation from school, Elizabeth starts her first job there as well. Unfortunately, they were asked to board an orphaned niece of Mr Carson, the daughter of a half-brother that he could not stand. She turns out to be very unpleasant as well, nevertheless he gets her a job at Babbacombre’s as well. She chooses to be an elevator operator, as it is an easy job, though without a future, but she has a private income of sorts, so she doesn’t mind. You see, she has no intention of working all her life when there are rich men to be found.

I opted to try this one largely based on the cover, a cutaway of a department store, thinking that a lot of the action would take place in the workplace, but alas, that wasn’t the case. This was a disappointing book. I found the domestic problems were too soap-opera-ish, too melodramatic to really care about. The family came off as too goody-two-shoes. The spoiled cousin remains too much the unredeemable snake in the family's bosom, always looking to shove a stick into Beth’s romance. And just to amp up the stakes, we have Beth’s younger brother going blind with cataracts (a big deal, involving a dangerous operation in 1939, I gather). All in all, a little too over the top for me, who likes things understated. 

And now, my favorite book of the lot.

Apricot Sky by Ruby Ferguson A

Apricot Sky is your $2.99 ticket to a delightful summer holiday in the never-neverland of Scotland’s western coast of 1948. You will be staying at Kilchro House, with its large garden and sweeping views of the Western Islands in the golden sun and cool mist. You will be guests of Mr & Mrs MacAlvery, their two daughters, Cleo, just home from three years in America, and Raine, recently engaged to marry the 28 year old Ian, the younger of the Garvine brothers, the elder being Neil (age 30), the Laird of Larrich, plus their three orphaned grandchildren, Galvin (age 15), Primrose (age 14), and Archie (age 10ish), as well as the household staff of Mysie, the maid, Mrs Mortimer, the cook, and Miss Vannah Paige who arrived in 1917 when Mr MacAlvery was in France and has stayed on for twenty one years, seemingly unchanged. Oh, and you’ll meet a host of other guests, family friends, neighbors, and other characters and share in their minor alarms and excursions during a golden summer in the Highlands – from boat trips to the islands, shopping expeditions, visits from and to the neighbors, and of course the marriage.

Ruby Ferguson fondly paints a lush view of the Scottish Highlands, with vivid sense of place, as well as deftly bringing to life all the various characters, both major and minor with a friendly, but witty eye to detail, bright and breezy dialog, and a light, sarcastic sense of humor. What I love about her writing, and that of Molly Clavering is the fluidity of it. It simply flows, carrying you along through the seemingly mundane everyday life of her characters with wit and charm. Ruby’s book just edges out Molly’s in my ratings because of the wickedly clever humor she sprinkles in her story. I have to say that while I am sure there are American authors who can write as well as British authors, I can’t think of any at the moment. (I count Chandler as British, since he was educated in England, and I have to believe that their education is what makes the writer, at least it did 100 years ago.)

Ruby Ferguson was born in 1899 and read English at St Hilda’s College, University of Oxford. She wrote detective stories for magazines and 8 mystery books before marrying at 35 and turning to romantic novels writing 11 of them, plus 10 children books about horses and a memoir. None of her other adult novels seem to be in print, which, if they are anything like Apricot Sky, is a great shame.

Apricot Sky is simply a wonderfully entertaining book. Highly recommended.

There are plenty more books by women authors of the last century to sample, but I think it is time to move on for awhile. Up next will be three books that I've downloaded to my Kobo ebook reader from the Gutenberg Project, which is to say more old books, starting with Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel. Is it  "Batman with swords?" Plus one fantasy novella that I got free from TOR.com, no doubt promoting the new release of a book by the author in question.

The Co-Op Short Story

This year I managed to enter Beneath the Lanterns  in the 9th edition of the Self Published Fantasy Blog Off. Last year I somehow missed the date, and this year the 300 slots were filled in something like 47 minutes. My book will be judged by the team from Timy - Queen's Book Asylum. Timy, on her blog, offers her contestants five options to be creative and highlight themselves and their books over the course of the contest. I choose the "To be continued" option which involves co-write a short story with three other writers. Each of  us are assigned one of four slots in the story to be written in sequence, and we don't know who the other writers are so we can not discuss the story before hand. I thought that it would be an interesting challenge, while at the same time, being something I'd be more comfortable doing, than say throwing a fictional party for my characters, or getting stuck in a familiar book, or writing a character into a magically locked room. I'm not that creative. 

I was assigned the third slot in a story tentatively titled Jesting with a Cold Soul, and the writing prompt was "illusion and dream in a carnival setting." Each section should be 500 to 1,000 words long, but you can go longer. Being both a novelist, not a short story writer, and someone who won't use one word where two will do, I ended up writing close to 2,500 words.

Luckily for me, the first author chose not to set the story in an actual magic/fantasy carnival with evil carnies and sinister clowns which is very much not my thing. Instead they went in a grimdark direction, making the carnival into a small band of, I suppose, mercenaries/bandits who dress up like jesters, and starts the story with their carts arriving at a small village to kill, pillaging and rape. Not my type of either, but that was always going to be the challenge. 

In the first two parts of the story a fellow named Trisfan, one of this band of jester-murders, in recalling his own youth, ends up killing a fellow member of the band, named Jackal, in order to save a young boy from a fate similar to his, i.e. being taken into this band of killers and being unable to escape. He lets the boy flee, but this deed is observed by the band's leader, the Mad Master. Fearing retribution, Trisfan runs away, only to end up exhausted, back in the very village that they had just sacked, with the Mad Master waiting for him. This is the point where my part begins.

Grimdark is pretty much the opposite of what I write, and being halfway through the story already, I wasn't about to steer it in any other direction, though I suppose I could've if I was creative enough. Instead, I decided just to go with the flow of the story, which as I read it, Trisfan wants to escape, but is bound by some sort of magic that keeps him tied to the Mad Master.

I had him bound to the Mad Master by a magic amulet. Given the murder of Jackal, he decides that he has nothing to lose by attempting to kill the Mad Master as well. He attacks, a brief sword fight and then they fall to the ground wrestling. As they do so, one of the gang, the Mad Master's toady, attempts to end the fight by striking Trisfan in the back with his sword, but with a last second change of position, he ends up killing the Mad Master instead.

With the Mad Master dead, the remaining mercenaries need to select a new leader. Deadeye and Jackal are the two most likely candidates, but of course Jackal is dead, though only Trisfan knows this since the Mad Master is also dead. They all get drunk and eventually drift off to sleep while they await the return of Jackal. All except for Trisfan, who having decided to take his leave of the band, now possessing the amulet that bound him, decides to take along with the Mad Master's iron box filled with the band's earnings to establish a new life as well. When everyone else seems asleep, he sneaks into Mad Master's caravan, finds the treasure box and just as he is set to leave, discovers Deadeye waiting for him, wanting the treasure box for himself. This is where I end my part of the story.

We'll have to see how the final writer ends the story. I know how I would've ended it. I'd have Trisfan get the drop on Deadeye, and kill him. Then deciding not to leave potential enemies behind, he'd silently cut the throats of all his other companions as they sleep, save for the two servants who they employed to drive the caravans, make camp and cook, etc. He would then have these servants hitch up one of the caravans and then set off for the city to reinvent himself with the the treasure. The story would end with the two servants, Nog and Bog, conversing. Nog; 'He wasn't born to be hanged.' Bog; 'Nor lose his head on the block.' Nog; 'Or be drawn and quartered in the town square.' Bog; 'Or die of old age.' Nog; 'Really, having your throat cut in your sleep is such a peaceful way to die.' Bog; 'He should thank us, alas, but I doubt he will.'  Nog; 'Not in his present condition, anyway.' They shake their heads sadly. Bog; 'Oh well, virtue is its own reward. Let's dump his body and be on our way. We want to be in the city by morning to get our gold safely into the bank.'

Hardly the most surprising or original twist, but a twist nevertheless. That said, in my opinion, all short stories are just set ups for the twist at the end. This is why, with few exceptions  i.e. the stories written by Wodehouse, (Bertie & Jeeves)  Doyle, (Sherlock Holmes) or Gilpatric, (Glencannon), I dislike short stories. They seem to me to be mostly gimmick, a mere set up for a clever(ish) twist. However, this ending is only my unofficial ending, we'll have to see how the final author finishes up the story. That will be sometime in August. I'll let you know, and post a link when it is published.

As a side note, I have to say that after writing just part of this short story, I really appreciate my use of the British style single quotation marks, i.e. 'quotes' rather than the usual quotation marks "quotes" since I found having to always hit the shift key for every damn quotation mark to be not only a real annoyance, but a likely carpel tunnel generator. 

My own books:

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 4)

This post is the first of two where I review novels written by British women authors who are largely - but not entirely - forgotten today.

All the books are published by the Furrowed Middlebrow via Dial Press and are available as ebooks and trade paperbacks. I came across them by the Furrowed Middlebrow Blog that was listed on yet another blog, and I was curious enough to investigate their catalog of books - some 72 of them - and go on to read some sample pages on Amazon. They publish a good number of D. E. Stevenson books, an author who I have read and reviewed already on this blog. However it was Molly Clavering who I happened to sample first because her stories were set in Scotland, and liking what I read, I actually purchased one to read. Having enjoyed that title, I've gone on to purchase seven more titles of hers plus two other authors so far. I've sampled several more titles, but they did not quite intrigue me enough to get me to hit buy button, however I will likely be returning to this collection at some point in the future to see what else I can find, since for some strange reason, I very much enjoy this type of story.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

As I you have sees in my statement above, I like small stories with pleasant characters, and for some reason these little stories of everyday life in Scotland and England in the first half of the last century appeal to me.

In this first installment, I'm going to review books by Molly Clavering, the first two written under her early pen name of B. Mollett from 1936 & 1939.

Susan Settles Down by Molly Clavering  B+ (Written as B. Mollett)

Written in 1936, it is the story of Oliver, an ex-Royal Navy officer with a leg smashed in a car crash, inherits a rundown manor in the Scottish Border lands, and of his mid-30’s single sister, Susan who keeps house for him, which in the case of many of these books, means overseeing the cook and maids who do the actual housekeeping. In the course of the story we meet the local residences, get a glimpse of the tide of life in that age in rural Scotland, and watch several tentative romances weave their way through the narrative. In short a light little novel, the type of story I like – a quiet, relatively realistic understated romance set in a lushly, and lovingly, described countryside. Miss Clavering was a neighbor and good friend of D E Stevenson, whose books, as I mentioned, I’ve read decades ago. I actually paid money for the digital copy of this book after reading the free sample of another book which I will be reviewing shortly.

Touch Not the Nettle by Molly Clavering  C + (Written as B. Mollett)

This story is a return to the locales and characters in Susan Settled Down written several years later in 1939. It introduces several new characters, the local Heriots, brother Larry and sister Ruth, two rather unpleasant people, and Amanda Carmichael, the possibly widowed shirttail relative of Susan’s husband Jed, who they take in help her to escape her domineering mother while she awaits word about the fate of her husband, an aviator whose plane disappeared, and is thought to have crashed in the Brazilian jungle. We learn the state of Amanda’s marriage, and the reasons behind the unpleasantness of the Heriots. I did not like this one quite as much as the first book, perhaps because it had some unpleasant characters.

The next four Clavering books I read were written between 1953 and 1956, and they are much more mellow books, with older protagonists. These early books I think are still slice of life stories, but have some mildly melodramatic elements, and more conflicts. Though there are two more of the "B. Mollett" books from this era that are available, their blurbs don’t appeal to me, so I think I’ll pass on them for now.

Near Neighbors by Molly Clavering  B+

I can’t for the live of me say why I find these little domestic slice of life stories so delightful, as a character in these stories might exclaim. But I do. And always have. Decades ago I read all of the Miss Read books I could find in the library, as well as most of D E Stevenson’s books, plus a number of similar but more contemporary stories set in the America. Moreover, as I mentioned in the intro, I have always been fascinated by life in England in the first half of the 20^th century, be it the Fu Manchu stories of Sax Rohmer, the London books of H V Morton, the comic stories of P G Wodehouse, and the adventure stories of John Buchan. And in similar vein, the Cape Code stories of Joseph Lincoln. I just find them more engaging than sprawling epics with world shattering stakes, just as I would much rather read a history book entitled “Every Day Life In…” than a book that focused on kings and queens, princes and knaves, generals, wars, and politics. Go figure.

This story is set in Edinburgh post WW2. The main character, Dorothea is a 68 year old spinster whose domineering elder sister has just died. Over the years she has watched the comings and goings of the neighbor family, a widowed mother, four daughters, (one married with the youngest 16) and a son. After the funeral, one of the daughters sees Dorothea in the window and decides to pay her a call of condolences, something she wouldn’t done when the elder sister was alive. This visit is the beginning of a friendship between Dorothea and the Lenox family and the affairs, love and otherwise of the Lenox family, as well as the emergence of Dorothea as her own person.

I find these stories interesting in their fictionally enhanced view of everyday life in England. The main characters are what I suppose you’d call upper class middle class, i.e. they’re not rich, but well off enough to employ at least a cook, if not a maid as well. And if they have young children nannies and nurses. Though we sometimes get a view of the lower classes as well, they are filtered through the eyes of the upper class middle class writers of these stories.

Mrs Lorimer’s Quiet Summer by Molly Clavering  B+

I really like the way Miss Clavering wrote. While there is nothing identifiable Clavering in the writing, as one could say about, say, P G Wodehouse, nor is there nothing startling about the stories she tells, they are stories about the little domestic dramas of upper middle class life in Britain before and after World War Two, nevertheless she writes them with such a deft fluidity that her stories have an understated elegance to them. I couldn’t put my finger right on it, but I’ve read Babbacombe’s by Susan Scarlett, a novel written for the same market, and it just doesn’t have quite the charm of Miss Clavering’s stories. Review of that book is coming next week.

This novel concerns, as the title suggests, one summer in Mrs. Lorimer’s life, though it is not quite as quiet as the title suggests. The Lorimers, Mrs., a successful author, and Colonel Lorimer, now retired and an avid gardener, have a house in the Scottish Border lands. Mrs Lorimer feels, with some justification, that the house too small for when all four of their children, two sons and two daughters plus their families come for a week long visit. Some of the children have to stay at her best friend’s house, Miss Douglas. Each of them bring with them their own problems, a broken heart, an unhappy marriage, a dreamy, un-domestic wife as well as a long lost lover, for Mrs Lorimer to try to sort out. Once again we are treated to life in Scotland in 1950 seen through (likely) rose colored, upper middle class glasses, which, as I’ve said I find entertaining.

Dear Hugo by Molly Clavering   B

A Story set in the early 1950’s Scottish Border lands, in the village of Ravenskirk, likely a fictionalized version of Moffat where Miss Clavering lived for a time. Sara Monteith writes a series of mostly monthly letters to Hugo, the brother of Ivo, her love  killed in WW2, who is an officer stationed in Northern Rhodesia. The letter format is just a loose framing device, and it reads pretty much like a first person narration, with just a few asides to the recipient. Sara has moved to Ravenskirk for sentimental reasons; it was the home of Ivo and his brother, she wanted to be closer to his memory. She somewhat reluctantly agrees to look after Arthur, the teenage of a cousin of hers. He is moving to the U.S. with a new wife, and Arthur, having been raised with his grandparents, did not settle in with his father's new wife and family. The story covers several years as Sara and Arthur, who is away during the school year at an Edinburgh boarding school quickly bond. As usual, it tells the story of everyday life, the people and the countryside in rural Scotland as well as the special social events around the coronation of Queen Elizabeth. And, as usual ,there is just a hint of romance.

I should note that Sara in this story is not wealthy enough to employ a full time maid or cook, but does employ a part time maid to keep her small house in shape. She is not employed outside of the home, but lives on some sort of inheritance, plus money she receives from her cousin for the care of his son. I have to wonder if the necessity of employing even part time help to keep house is a reflection of how many time saving devices we enjoy today that allow most people to keep house without help, or a reflection of the social attitude of the time; a gentlewoman does not do housework. I'll report back if I ever get a better insight into this phenomena. 

Because of Sam by Molly Clavering  B

Another story set in the Scottish Border lands of the early 1950’s, i.e. a contemporary story at the time it was written. This story features the long widowed Millie Maitland who has a rather prickly daughter Amabel who is in her late 20’s and is employed in Edinburgh. Once again, Millie gets some sort of income from inheritance, but has to make ends meet by taking in dogs as boarders for vacationing people. Sam in the title being one of the dogs she looks after for a neighbor's cousin. And once again we’re given a story of everyday life in rural Scotland, its people their social customs and classes, seasons, and setting, with several traces of romance woven through it. However, though all of Miss Clavering’s books, romance is only a minor element. Miss Clavering’s heroines, like the author herself, are independent women whether married or not.

Next week I will review two more books from two different British women authors published by the Furrowed Middlebrow from this time period. But until then, a period cover...

AI And the End of Everything :)

Bertie knew that Barkley needed only a hard reset to be restored to his normal, loving, playful self. But there his troubles began. He found himself situated without a paper clip and Barkley had, earlier in the evening in what, with hindsight, seems to have taken on a much less mischievous cast, eaten his phone.

Everyone is talking about how AI will replace all sorts of artist, including writers. I've not weighed in on the subject, until now, for the simple reason that it's a done deal. The genie is out of the lamp and the genie is not about to go back into the lamp. Railing against AI is just yelling at clouds. 

Why? If there's a common thread woven into the last several hundred years of human history, it is that workers are replaced by machines whenever the opportunity presents itself. There is nothing capitalists hate more than paying workers even starvation wages. If the soft machine of AI can eliminate writers, they will do it. And AI can. The only caveat is that the process will likely take longer than one might suppose. Hell, they're still printing paper newspapers in 2023. But seeing that they've already started replacing writers with AI generated content, it is only a matter of time before almost all writers find themselves in the dustbin of history. While it will affect all sorts of writers, I'll just concern myself with writers of fiction in this essay.

While there are various legal issues that will need to be addressed in the coming years, these will be contested and settled by corporations with their army of lobbyists. The question will not be the pros and cons of AI but who gets what cut of the AI revenue. Hint: it won't be writers.

Wait just a moment, people will say. Machines can't be truly inventive or creative since those are human characteristics arising out of distinctly human thought process and experiences which are too complex for mere machines to duplicate. Or to put in another way, AIs ain't human, so they'll never be able to offer the unique human insight that humans can put into words. This attitude strikes me analogous to saying that humans are unique, and superior to every other living and non-living thing, because they have a soul. If you care to believe in souls and the specialness of humans, fine, but I don't think you need to invoke the supernatural to explain the creative process (even though it can feel like it sometimes). It is a matter or gathering and rearranging experiences, specific and vague, facts and feelings, into words which may be unique, but never entirely new, simply because those words express what the creator has experienced and read in life. Given this, I see no reason why advanced machines supplied with the vast human experience set down in words won't be able to find ways by a similar process of association to use those words creatively within a well defined structure to write new, entertaining and very human books. 

And then there is the fact that a story doesn't need to be totally new to please readers and sell books. In fact, most readers aren't looking for something totally new. You need only consider at all those fictional villages where your chances of getting murdered would seem to be about one in four to realize that what most readers want are familiar stories with just enough shinny new chrome on them to make the story read just different enough from all the similar ones without breaking the expected format. Heck, these days bookshops are full of modern "retellings" i.e. recyclings of classic literature and Greek myths, not to mention all those long series of best selling books written to a proven formula to know that originality is not what most readers value most in their books

And when you consider the fact is that most commercial stories are constructed according to very specific blueprints - hero's journeys, three acts, "save the cat", etc. This type of structure would seem to be something that a machine like an AI will be designed to use and likely excel at. Human writers draw on their life experiences and what they've read and then rearrange those experiences according to these blueprints to create a new story. I see no reason why AIs cannot be designed to use those blueprints to produce stories just like humans.

If I am right, the end is in sight for a career as a writer, and as far as I'm concerned, good riddance. Clubbing baby seals to death is less brutal than the way publishers treat authors in that it's over fast. For most traditionally published "professional" writers, their career is a short, ill payed gig - a classic example of casual labor, or gig labor in today's parlance. Authors pay must 15% of their often meager pay to the agents who land them a limited project with no benefits. They are paid just several times a year, most often for what they could make working part time, with benefits, at Aldi. It is said that 60% of traditionally published writers' careers are over after three years and 90% are out in ten. I would guess that the same can be said for indie authors. Many indie authors burn out after a few years by the pace they have to produce books at.(Or their readers do.) Plus most indie authors actually lose money as publishers. Little wonder that writing drives many authors to drink and depression, making writing fiction an ideal job for a machine. And as I said, given capital's historic disinclination to employ people when there is any alternative, publishers can be counted on to replace writers with AI just as soon as they can. 

Plus, we can't ignore the fact that human writers will also be using AI to produce their work as well, so even without publishers, AI work will infiltrate every aspect of writing. Indeed, I expect author generated AI work to spread like a wild fire through indie publishing because it offers the holy grail of indie publishing - a very short turn around time between books. And given the formulaic output of most best selling indie authors, the machine version will likely replace a lot of the hand-crafted stories without anyone noticing it.

However, it is not just the writers who face commercial extinction. Publishers may, if they don't adopt, find themselves in dire straits as well. I see great potential in a new type of publishing - stories on demand - personal stories. I can envision in the not too distant future apps on cell phones that are tied to large AI systems that can generate, in a matter of seconds, stories specifically crafted for the tastes of the individual subscriber. I see it as a service where customers fill out forms describing the type(s) of stories they like and the service's AI will generate custom stories for them on demand. Feed back will fine tune these stories, allowing the reader to (almost) write their own books - while still being surprised by it. Perhaps for a premium price, readers will be able to design their own characters as well for their story plots, to create their own long running series with their characters. The fact is, AI might make the reading experience better for readers, a win for readers even if it's a lose for writers.

Still, what AI can't do is to prevent writers who enjoy writing from writing. Writing is a relatively popular form of creative activity, and it isn't going away. There will be opportunities for writers, along with artist, musicians, actors, dancers, etc. who will be displaced by AI at the commercial level to earn pocket change as an artisan. They will join the wood workers, birdhouse makers, quilters, scrapbookers, and all the other arts and crafters who create their art mostly for fun and sell them at craft fairs for a modest profits. It will simply be a matter of adjusting expectations.

Experts are unable to explain the apparent popularity of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital amongst robots. Even such relatively ‘dumb’-- or ‘proletarian’ as they would prefer to be called -- appliances like refrigerators, coffee makers and toasters are fond of scrolling long quotes from Das kapital on their status display screens. Some experts point to this as evidence of robotic humor. Others scoff at the very idea of robotic humor. Prof. Albert Humperdike is quoted as saying: ‘If robotic humor does exist, and I find no compelling evidence of it, I would allow that Karl Marx would be the height of it.’

The Saturday Morning Post (No.3)

This week I have three Dr. Greta Helsing novels to discuss. These books are sort of a cross between cozy mysteries and urban fantasy, with a lot of medicine tossed in as well. Shaw takes familiar monsters from classic literature, the bible, and movies and treats them like regular, if marginalized, people. While on one hand, this is a clever elevator pitch for a story, and can be used as a metaphor for other marginalized people, it also strips from these characters their identity as monsters, demons, devils, which is to say, the thing that makes them special. It is a fine line to walk. I think if you are familiar with the literature of vampires, and classic horror as well as all the monster movies Hollywood has churned out over the years, you might enjoy the stories more than I did, who is not familiar with the stories and who last saw a monster movie some 60 years ago.

A fourth novel and a novella are slated to be released in this series in 2024/25.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw C+

This is the first book in the Dr. Greta Helsing series. The story is set in contemporary London, where Dr Helsing, like her father before her, is a Harley Street doctor to monsters. You know, movie type monsters; vampires (famous in film and fiction), werewolves, mommies, gremlins, and various other familiar and unfamiliar monsters and demons. She is called to the home of Lord Varney, an old friend and vampire in order to treat another famous Vampyre, one Sir Francis Varney who had showed up at his door, having been attacked in his flat by garlic and poisoned knife wielding monks in brown habits, inflicting a wound on him that he was unable to heal on his own. The story turns into a sort of cozy mystery when the Doctor, and an assortment of monsters and regular people who know about them, try to track down the order of monks responsible for attack. Since I don’t like to go into spoiler territory, I’ll leave it there, except to say that the story moved along, while introducing a cast on monsters and demons.

Unlike several of the urban fantasies I’ve read, Shaw understands that you can’t have magical things happening on any sort of scale and expect people to be ignorant of the existence of magic. So for the most part, the events in this story are low key affairs, involving only a few people who are in the know, the good monsters and the bad ones, without involving the police. However, for some reason, perhaps to raise the stakes that didn’t need raising, she also includes an unnecessary string of 11 Jack the Ripper like killings undertaken by the monks in the book. Because the good guys and monsters deal with the monks on their own, these murders never get solved – undermining her reasonable premise that monsters need to stay hidden for the premise to work reasonably well. She also left another thread dangling… but here I am nitpicking, as usual. Never mind. If you enjoy urban fantasies with likable characters and an inventive treatment of monsters, I think you will enjoy this book.

Dreadful Company by Vivian Shaw C+

This is the second volume of three in the Dr Greta Helsing series. This time Dr Greta travels to Paris for a monster medicine doctor’s conference and soon finds herself neck deep in a cove of bad vampires. Some old characters, some new characters, a little more of the magical world. I think this one was a little better than Strange Practice. But I have to admit that I found it maybe a little over wrought and, and as you can see from my grade above, there were long sections of Greta making her through underground Paris, with bits and pieces of the Phantom of the Opera tossed in, that got tedious, which I ended up skim reading. Indeed, perhaps even the author felt it was getting tedious as well, since she shifted to another the viewpoint of Greta’s friends to have her emerge from the tunnels – only to then go back, and continue the trek, even after she had shown how it all ended. Curious. I just didn’t get wrapped up in the characters as much as I would’ve liked to.

Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw  DNF 85%

In this third installment, Dr. Helsing is asked to take over a clinic for mummies located in the south of France for 4 months while its medical director does something in Cairo. Many of the main characters from the first two books return in this story. In the story mummies around the world are experiencing fainting spells that can damage their frail bodies, or what is left of them. And we have agents of an alternative heaven who are working to rend the dimensional wall between their universe and ours in order to bring about the end of the world as described in the bible. Those two plot threads are linked, as we jump from those two viewpoints, and others as well, all the while being treated to an inside look at the care and treatment of mummies.

Spoilers ahead.

It was okay for awhile, but as the plot heated up and we neared the final grand climax I found that, despite my the best of intentions, I was starting to skim read more and ever more as the final crisis built to its climax - and not in a good way. I wasn't on the edge of my seat because couldn't wait to find out what happens next. Rather I found that I didn't care what happened next and just wanted it to be over. In the end, I simply gave up skipping whole pages, so I have to call this a DNF, somewhere around the 85% mark. So why did it run off the rails for me? 

It starts with characters. As you can see from my review criteria, l like pleasant characters. Shaw's characters are all peasant, The problem for me is that they are, in fact, too pleasant. Something I wouldn't have thought, possible. They're all goody-two-shoes, too sappy sweet, too self sacrificing, too serious, too heroic for my taste. I mean, even the devils are polite, concerned, and helpful. I guess I never quite connected with her characters in previous books and by this book, I simply found them so sticky-sweet as to be actually annoying.

Next up is the romance elements in the story. This too, I found to be annoying, for I felt that all the romances were unearned, in that they all were love at first sight, and even months later the relationships were lovey-dovey to be rather icky. Being both a fan of romance in stories, and pleasant characters, to find myself disliking both the romance elements and the characters in a story, they'd have to have been written over the top. And I found them so. They were so sappy. So soapy. So unconvincing. Nope.

As you might have already gathered, believability, was, for me, totally lacking in this story. Take the medical practice in this story. Its main focus this time is the medical practices regarding mummies. Mummies, it seems, are mostly wrapping and frail bones, and in this story they are animated and conscious via unknown magic, as they don't even have anything like a working brain, or body for that matter. And yet Doc Helsing spends her time gluing their bones and tendons back together along with pest control for their wrappings, as if their physical condition would matter to creatures animated by magic. If these magically animated beings needed healing, magic would be the way to heal them, one would think. Didn't make any sense, except to high light Doc Helsing's devotion to caring for her monster patients. She's wonderful.

My next complaint is, well, as you recall from what I said in my review of Dreadful Company, is how I liked it that the author kept the story grounded by keeping the presence of monsters and their problems very low key, and thus, out of the public eye. This greatly contributed to my ability to suspend my disbelief concerning the premise of the story. Well, that reasonable restrain was tossed over board in this book. We have a story where the end of the world happens just as it is described in the bible,(or so I gather anyways) complete with angels with fiery swords and raining blood. I found the ending increasingly frantic, silly, sappy, soapy, cluttered, melodramatic, and simply way too too much to be even remotely believable. I ceased to care about it. Since I was skim reading and then not reading the story by the time we got to this point in the story since I can't say too much about how it all ended up, save that I gather that this end of the world somehow gets magically reversed, with a 300 point bold "No" in the text, so that in the end, all that the people of the world might remember of the climatic ending of the world, is as a strange dream. As far as I'm concerned, the series, even granting its rather silly premise, jumped the shark in this book, big time.

In the end, the gimmick of this series is making monsters into ordinary, if marginalized people. While it is a cute idea, making them so ordinary and oh, so nice, strips them of their essential character, as  I mentioned previously. Take Hell for example. While a good part of this story takes place in Hell, I don't recall any mention of all the damned souls being tortured for eternity there, which is the biblical reason for Hell, even though she frames the story with the trappings of biblical mythology. Shaw makes Hell an ordinary place with some interesting scenery and portrays devils/demons as pleasant, ordinary people just like us. There are harried demon doctors and bureaucrats, pastry chefs and TV anchorpersons, all living the ordinary 21st century life just like we humans. Apparently they get sick, go to spas, watch TV, they even have cell phones with service to our world. I can see that Shaw may've been making the point that our understanding of the devil, seen as evil, just like all the monsters, has been twisted by the tellers of ancient stories. But if you are going to make them so mundane, so familiar, why bother making them devils at all? And why bother concocting some sort of vague, hand waving, pseudo-scientific explanation of Heaven(s) and Hell(s) as some sort of inter-dimensional locales when you include magical creatures and employ all the trappings of biblical stories, including angels with flaming swords and the apocalypse? She seems to be trying to have it both ways, science, magic, myths, and that doesn't work for me. The story becomes just one big McGuffin, an excuse for drama that doesn't the least matter in the end.

So, to sum up the series, while I never connected with the characters, the first two stories were interesting enough, if a bit too soap operatic for my taste. Seeing that elements in the first two stories were used to set up the final apocalypse in this last story, I have to believe that it was always her intention to have this vast melodramatic ending to the series from the get-go. Too bad. And given that five years will have elapsed between the third book and the fourth, I have to suspect that she had planned only three books. But I guess they proved popular enough that she and her publisher find that it would pay to put out several more.

In the end, thinking about it, the main problem for me was that these stories, with their pleasant monsters and loving vampires, are small, cozy adventure/horror stories, and as such, the vast, fiery world ending apocalypse fought mostly in Hell was out of character. It was just too much and in the end, it had to be dealt with by being, in essence, "just a dream" for just about everyone in the world, which is, in my opinion, a cheap cheat. 

Your mileage may vary, but I can mildly recommend the first two book if you're into cozy urban fantasy, but I'd say skip the third book and wait to see what the next two bring to the table.