January Reading 2

Here is the second half of my January reading wrap-up.

The Silkie by Gill Edmonds (borrowed from a friend)

In December, a friend handed me this book and said she thought I'd like it. She said that she was in no great rush to get it back so I brought it with me and read it with a dog on my lap. It was fascinating. It's a layered novel based on folklore and with more folklore embedded in the story. I found the structure quite interesting. It's not the kind of thing I usually read so I did have to pay attention to what was going on. I was reminded of the time Bill and I were doing an independent study class in Inupiaq Eskimo language and one of our assignments was to translate some stories from Inupiaq to English. This was somewhat tricky at times because of the folkloric nature of the stories and we would be wondering, for example, whether the rug really was turning into a polar bear or whether we were way off in our translation. But back to the book, which starts out with a disturbing rape by a water person against a woman who lives on land. When a pregnancy results from intercourse between sea males and land women, eventually the sea male comes to claim 'his' child. In this case, there are twins and one is claimed and the other hidden. Neither knows their origin story and neither fit into the cultures and societies in which they're brought up. The sea hominids have their own cultures and ways of being. They interact and befriend other sea creatures. At times they attempt to befriend land humans, but mostly they hang around with each other and other sea creatures observing and trying to come to grips with the devastation of the sea and her creatures by the land people. I found this book very engaging and I'm glad I read it.

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace (my e-book)

An episode of the Shedunnit podcast dropped with this as the subject, so before I listened to that, I read the book. I loved it. It's the only novel that Sayers collaborated on and the only one of her novels that doesn't involve Lord Peter Wimsey. It's an epistolary novel, written in the form of letters between various people. We first meet the Harrisons--an older gent and his much younger second wife. Also present in the household is her live-in companion, Miss Milsom. In the downstairs flat, an artist, Lathom, and a poet, Munting, move in. Munting is engaged and many of the letters are from him to his fiancee. The Harrison's marriage is not in great shape. In addition to being much older than his wife, Harrison is quite controlling and doesn't want her to have friends outside of those that are mutual, nor does he want her to have a job outside the home. She's bored and stifled and reads voraciously. The Harrisons do not have any interests in common, but he will defend her and shows affection for her when speaking of her to others and when writing to his grown son (from his late wife) who is abroad. It is this son who, after his father's death, believes there is foul play at work. He collects the documents and talks to people and eventually gets the police involved. Published in 1930, this is an excellent Golden Age mystery, which includes newfangled (at the time) discoveries in science and thoughts about psychotherapy.

The Aloe by Katherine Mansfield (Serial Reader app)

This novella was apparently autobiographical. Set in New Zealand, it follows the Burnell family as they move house and settle in. It's a quiet book about the daily lives of the different people in the family--mother, father, three daughters, grandmother and sister/sister-in-law. There's no great plot or intrigue--just ordinary lives and in that way, quite an interesting read.

Taking Chances by Molly Keane (published under the name MJ Farrell) (personal copy)

This one one of Kean's earlier novels, published in 1929. The story revolves around the aptly named Sorrier siblings (and it'd be hard to find a sorrier trio). They live in the big house called Sorristown, their parents having died. They're all adults--Roguey is the oldest, Maeve the only woman, and Jer is the youngest. Maeve worships Roguey, and Jer worships Maeve. The dynamics of the relationships change when Maeve becomes engaged to Rowley. With the wedding fast approaching, Maeve's bridesmaid, Mary arrives. It's clear that her arrival will be the cause of much upheaval, the ripples of which will impact several people. At first I wasn't sure that I'd like this book all that much because it seemed pretty predictable. In a superficial way, it was. Deeper into the layers though, it became a page-turner and one that I quite enjoyed. This is, I think, the third Molly Kean novel I've read and I'm keen to read more. 😉😏

A Dangerous Train of Thought by Faith Martin (BorrowBox audiobook)

This is the latest in the Arbie and Val mystery series. I'd read the first two and enjoyed them well enough, so when I saw this had been added to BorrowBox and was available, I checked it out to listen to whilst stitching at night. It was a fun book. Arbie is a young man who doesn't really need a job but on a lark wrote a book called The Gentlemen's Guide to Ghost Hunting, which was about ghost hunting tourism, basically. We're talking 1920s. This was the foundation in the first book. By the second book, Arbie was a bestselling author working on book two. In this book, he's working on book three and he and his childhood friend/literary assistant and vicar's daughter Val, are off to a big house party. In the nearby village, there are stories about a ghost train and they're going to investigate. It's quite a coup for the hostess to have the bestselling author as a guest at her weekend party of people who probably shouldn't be together at all. But together they are until one of them doesn't make it to the second day. It looks like suicide but there are things that bother Arbie and Val about the situation, so their sleuthing skills will be needed once again. These are fun books, but this one was also a bit sad as far as one of the characters went. The ghost hunting aspect seems to take less of a role as the series goes on, other than being a reason for the pair to be in various places. That said, there is a storyline associated with the ghost train. 

And this concludes my January reading wrap-up. Three weeks left in February, which I hope are filled with many excellent books! Happy reading.

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