A Train of Powder, by Rebecca West

A group I belong to was doing a challenge throughout the month of October to read books by or about people or places in Ireland.  Since Rebecca West, the journalist, travel writer, and novelist was part Irish and she was born in Kerry, this was one of the books I read for it.  As is probably obvious from the cover art, <i>A Train of Powder</i> is a collection of six articles she wrote while covering various criminal trials.  They read more like short stories than like magazine articles because the author really develops the characters, their background, the circumstances of the crimes, and also her own thoughts on the situations.

Three of the articles make up a series called <i> Greenhouse with Cyclamens</i>, where she relates her thoughts during the closing sessions of the Nuremberg Trials and the rebuilding of Germany, including her observations of the personalities of top Nazi leaders like Goering and Hess as they sat in the dock, differences between German and American/British law, growing tensions between the Soviet Union and the other three Allies who shared control of Germany, leading up to the Soviets’ attempt to isolate Berlin from the West and the resulting Berlin Airlift, and the nascent West German government’s insistence on a free market economy despite pressure from the occupying Allies to adopt a more statist model.

 <i>Opera in Greenville</i> is about a lynching in Greenville, South Carolina in 1947.  A mob of about 30 people, mostly cabdrivers, convinced the prison warden to hand over a young black man named Willie Earle, in jail on suspicion of having killed the disabled white cabdriver who was driving him home.  After some days of no results from the local police, the FBI was called in to find the perpetrators.  West does a good job of sketching out what life was like in 1940’s Greenville and situating the crime in a society undergoing a transition in its attitudes towards race relations and vigilante justice.  

<i>Mr. Setty and Mr. Hume</i> is about a 1949 London murder case.   A man who enjoys hunting on weekends goes out in his boat to the marshlands at the mouth of the Thames hoping to bag some duck.  Instead, he comes across a bag full of a more grisly type of meat.  The remains turn out to be those of Mr. Setty, a shady businessman and member of a well-to-do immigrant family.  Mr. Hume is the ex-R.A.F. pilot with a checkered past charged with the murder and disposal of the body.

<i>A Better Mousetrap</i> is the story of an espionage case involving a young British radio telegraph operator employed at the Diplomatic Wireless Service suspected of passing information to a high official in the Soviet embassy.

Sad Cypress, by Agatha Christie

I was motivated to read this book after watching the very well done BBC adaptation as part of their Hercule Poirot TV series with David Suchet (who will always be the definitive Hercule Poirot to me!).  One of my favorite episodes so far, although they did change a few things to make the story more dramatic and to give Poirot a bigger role to play.

Basically, here we have a love triangle:  Elinor and her fiance Roddy, young sophisticated Londoners with expectations from a wealthy invalid aunt, who so far in their lives have not had much to worry about, and Mary Gerrard, a childhood friend, the daughter of their aunt's gardener, who reenters their lives as a very attractive young woman after finishing her education in Germany.  Roddy falls in love with Mary, and shortly after their aunt's death, Mary turns up dead and Elinor is accused of poisoning her out of jealousy.  As in the film, it's presented as a courtroom drama, with Elinor in the dock, and flashbacks to tell the reader what happened.  The solution to the puzzle is not what you'd expect, and it was an enjoyable quick read.  Classic Agatha Christie.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

This is one of those books that I always had the impression of having read, but had not, until now.  The reason is that movies have been based on it and allusions to it are made in many other books, movies, and articles.  My favorite film version is the 1945 one with Hurd Hatfield as Dorian, George Sanders as Lord Henry, and Angela Lansbury as Sibyl Vane.  I watched it lots of times on as a child and Lansbury's song <i>Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird</i> was a favorite.  And no, it's not in the book!

Oscar Wilde was a great storyteller, and <i>Dorian Gray</i> is a morality tale.  Dorian starts out as a very handsome innocent young man who sits for a portrait for his artist friend Basil Hallward while urbane, sophisticated, cynical Lord Henry whiles away the time chatting and introducing subtly corrupting ideas into Dorian's head.  Such ideas and his continued friendship with Lord Henry ultimately lead Dorian into a life of hidden vice.  Meanwhile, Dorian discovers that by some miracle, he has become mysteriously identified with his portrait.  It begins to show signs of each vicious deed he commits, while he remains physically unchanged to the point where he does not even age.  The portrait, which might have helped moderate Dorian's lifestyle by serving as a visible conscience, actually helps to accelerate his corruption because it detaches him from the physical consequences of his vices.  The problem is that the physical consequences of vice are not the only ones: there is the damage to his reputation, damage to other people's lives, and also damage to his own soul.

I think Wilde may have meant this story to criticize how society places too high a priority on appearance and not enough on substance, and also to show how a growing discrepancy between appearance and substance becomes impossible to keep up in the end.

Beowulf, translated by Seamus Heaney

I found Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf to be quite easy to read.  The story was fast paced and his wording somehow had a terse, majestic style that really helped me to visualize the events in my head.  This edition has the original Old Anglo Saxon English text on the left page and the translation on the right, and I did think that since I know English and have some knowledge of German, I would be able to read some of the original, but picking out an occasional word or phrase here and there was all I could manage.

Beowulf is set in a time of small kingdoms that alternately carried out wars of conquest or raids, and formed alliances with one another. Christianity had been well established, but it was still new.  The atmosphere kind of reminded me of Sigrid Undset's [book:Gunnar's Daughter|6226] that I read some months ago.  Beowulf is a warrior of noble birth who lands with a small army to help the Danish king get rid of the monster Grendel who has been terrorizing the people by carrying out nighttime raids and killing people in gruesome, X-rated ways. Basically, it's the story of his achievements as the protector of the people and teaches the lesson of courage, self sacrifice, and resolve in the face of evil.  Let's just say this guy is no vacillating Hamlet, forever deliberating on what to do.

Perelandra, by C.S. Lewis

In <i>Out of the Silent Planet</i>, C.S. Lewis speculated on what visiting a different world (on Mars) might be like, particularly an older, more established, and less corrupt one than our own.  This second novel of the space trilogy is C.S. Lewis's idea of what the Genesis story might be like if God chose to create a newer world of living creatures, including persons, on the planet Venus.  It is also a speculation of how human beings, with our own sad experience, might help them avoid our mistakes.  Lewis's talent for creating believable characters, creatures, and fantasy environments is just as good and as absorbing here as in the <i>The Chronicles of Narnia</i>.  As with the first book the main themes of the novel are of course the struggle between good and evil and the great privilege and responsibility of free will.  Already looking forward to reading the third book in the trilogy.

The Brothers Karamazov

This big doorstop of a book was one of the longest term residents of my TBR shelf, subjected to endless procrastination, until it became the book of the month for one of the groups I belong to.  I'm sorry I waited so long to read it, because it's a very absorbing book. It's like Dostoyevsky crammed a whole world of people, ideas, and situations into it that just draws you in so that you find yourself reading much bigger chunks than you really had time for that day.

The main plot line is of course the family story of the Karamazovs: Fyodor, the vicious, womanizing father who is found murdered in his home one night, and his four sons Dmitri, Ivan, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov, all very different from one another in character and personality, who are suspects.  Along the way we also get to learn about their friends and romantic interests, like the saintly priest Father Zosima, the good hearted but calculating courtesan Grushenka, the proud but self-sacrificing lady Katya, the precocious fatherless boy Kolya, garrulous widow Madame Hohlakov, and the impoverished Snegiryov family.  Dostoyevsky's famous prose poem, "The Grand Inquisitor" is a chapter in this book--presented as a composition of Ivan's.

This is not a tidy novel where all the plot lines are neatly ended and tied up with a bow at the end.  It's a big sprawling thing with a lot of loose ends, like in real life.  But I was interested enough in the characters to wish that Dostoyevsky wrote a sequel, to continue some of their stories.

Black Rednecks, White Liberals, by Thomas Sowell

Thomas Sowell challenges a lot of popular misconceptions about the real origins of African American ghetto culture, the global history of the slave trade, racism and how it relates to slavery, the role of the West in its colonial period, disparities of accomplishment among different demographic groups, and the reasons why some groups of people achieve more than others even in the face of adverse conditions.  It's a well-reasoned, well-researched book, and Sowell supports his arguments with real world examples.  Excellent antidote for habitual victims, moral poseurs, the professionally offended, and grievance-mongers of all stripes--if only they would read it.

Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography

Benjamin Franklin's <i>Autobiography</i> only covers up to the time when he was establishing himself as a printer in Philadelphia before his marriage, including a brief mention of his experiments with lightning, so if you are looking for an account of his activities during the War of Independence, Constitutional Convention, or as ambassador to France, this is not the book for you.  It's an interesting account of his early years, from his childhood, education, and apprenticeship in Boston, moving to Philadelphia, dealing with rivalry between the printing houses there, then becoming a business owner himself, starting a newspaper, traveling to England to procure printer's equipment, and his start in Philadelphia politics.

Throughout the <i>Autobiography</i>, Franklin emphasizes the lessons he learned along the way, including the high value of the qualities of thrift, resourcefulness, hard work, taking the initiative in one's own education, avoiding debt, refraining from the development of expensive habits, as well as how to get along well with others, especially how to debate in a reasonable and non-arrogant way.  These are definitely lessons on which we could all use a refresher course.  Despite being a rather vague and non-denominational Christian, Franklin was very interested in moral self-improvement, even developing a list of rules to live by that would be acceptable to any reasonable person of any denomination.

It's a shame he didn't get further along in writing the <i>Autobiography</i> than he did, but as we all know, he was a very busy man!

Confusion, by Stefan Zweig

I was in the mood for a mystery story of some kind, and this short novel hit the spot.  In it, an elderly literature professor reminisces about his youth--about his upbringing as the son of a schoolmaster in a country town, the initially rocky start to his college career in Berlin, where, like so many students in our days too, he neglects his studies and falls into a dissipated lifestyle, and how he transferred to a university in a smaller town with fewer distractions and met the professor whose passion about Elizabethan literature inspired his own career.

There is a mystery about this professor, whose brilliant lectures about his subject on some days alternate with humdrum, ordinary teaching on others, and his lack of major publications.  Then there's his unlikely choice of wife, an athletic woman much younger than himself who shares none of his scholarly interests or habits and whose relationship to her husband seems strangely detached.  Add to that a habit of sudden, unexplained absences for days at a time, when even his wife has no idea where he is, and erratic behavior, when he alternates between obvious enjoyment of teaching and working on his book with his student and brusque dismissal, and you can see why the student is confused and becomes determined to figure out what's going on.

Fear by Stefan Zweig

Irene is a beautiful, self-centered, spoiled woman, the wife of a wealthy lawyer who takes everything for granted.  From childhood, she has lived the kind of life where everything has been handed to her on a silver platter.  She decides to indulge in an extramarital affair with a poor musician, which leads to blackmail.  It's a new experience for her, as this is a difficulty she must handle all on her own or risk losing everything she has--husband, children, luxurious lifestyle, social standing, all of which she only learns to appreciate when threatened with losing them.

Very entertaining story of a woman who gets her comeuppance with an unexpected twist at the end.  As always, Stefan Zweig displays his talent for creating realistic characters and interesting plots.

Apparently there's a Roberto Rossellini movie made in the 1950's based on this novella called <i>La Paura</i> starring Ingrid Bergman, which I'd love to see if I can find it.