Small Wars

Sadie Jones' Small Wars is a stealth book. At first, it seems like it's going to be your typical slow-to-build story with lovely writing, kind of a dull plot, but something you'd learn from if you read carefully--a style that could also describe a certain kind of Englishman, really. I didn't always feel like picking it up, but I could never put it down and I ended up loving this story of family life in war-time Cyprus, a time in the 1950s when the British were still trying to hold onto "their" little Mediterranean outpost.

Clara Treherne is a good wife who goes out with her two young girls to join her army major husband in Cyprus, She really is a good wife and tries to be brave and tries to not mind that he's off interrogating the locals for terror connections. She tries to become friends with the other wives even though they are not nearly as good as she is. And her husband is a good, good man, too. Hal is one of those morally upright career soldiers who believes in duty and country without being pedantic or insufferable. He's a good leader of men and believes himself to be a good husband, though he definitely depends on Clara's efforts not to cause a scene or a fuss or to complain or to admit to being scared.

So, these are good people, trying to do what they believe is right and just. It turns out, of course, that there is no good and just in war, particularly not in the guerilla type war that the Greeks and Turks, the Cypriots, are waging against each other and against, especially, the British presence. Bad things happen. Bombs are laid on pristine beaches, old men or boys are beaten for information and women are their usual casualties of war. Things degenerate in a slow but steady slide, leaving Clara and Hal slightly bewildered at how this all could happen, how they could find themselves at such cross purposes from all they believed about their jobs, their country and their love for each other.

There are some fairly brutal and sad scenes, though Jones never makes us feel like voyeurs to a horrific highway accident. Instead we share first Hal's and then Clara's fear or disillusionment. When it all becomes too much, when they are lashing out at one another to avoid admitting to their fear and confusion, Hal finally sends Clara and the children to safety in Damascus. But of course, that turns out to be where danger lies and their world is turned suddenly upside down.

This is not a tragedy in the classic sense. There's no grand and dramatic ending. It's more like life and growing up. Both Hal and Clara have to come to terms with the reality of their roles and to let go of the blind optimism they once held. On a grand scale, it feels a little like the cultural shift from the golden-hued nostalgia of the 1950s to the grungier, earthier 1960s. It's not that the shift is bad in itself, but it's a dramatic change in thought and style of living. So it is with Hal and Clara at the end of Small Wars.

One of the things Sadie Jones does brilliantly is to show us two sides to events. She manages to pull off sympathy for both Clara and Hal (and for various other characters), even while we see how poorly they go about executing their decisions. There's a constant theme of misunderstanding, or at least, misinterpretation of each other's moves. When Hal finds a talisman given to Clara by another soldier, what is he supposed to think? But we know the truth. When Hal sends Clara to Damascus, she feels it is a dismissal because he doesn't want to be with her, that somehow she has failed him, but we've already seen what leads Hal to this heart-wrenching decision. The lack of communication is evidence enough to how bad things have gotten for both of them, and there's some question near the end if they'll ever find themselves or each other again. These are the "small wars" that they're fighting, I suppose, but they all add up to the big one.

I wasn't completely happy with the ending. I really wanted the bad guys to get what they had coming and I wanted the good guys vindicated and treated as heroes. Sadie Jones does it better, though. This is a British book, after all, and not everything is black and white, so the characters are left reshaping their lives to fit the new reality of the day. A beautifully written, unsentimental book about the every day shifts in marriage and the inevitable sadness there is to any kind of war-time life.

The News Where You Are

I had a really smelly copy of this book which made it hard to get into. Sometimes library copies have obviously been in the home of a smoker, or several smokers, but Catherine O'Flynn's book The News Where You Are smelled like someone had rubbed it up under their armpits and only then had they blown second-hand smoke through its pages.

So, yeah, it was hard to pick up. I was also afraid it would be yet another book about a man having a mid-life crisis, which seems to be the rut I've fallen into for some reason. And yes, it turns out it IS about men having crises--not necessarily mid-life, but certainly about life. It's about vanity and lack of vanity and whether or not we should cling to the past or embrace the future. The story opens with a murder--a hit-and-run--but the mystery behind that is less interesting than you think it's going to be. Our symbol for all that is right or wrong in life is in the form of protagonist Frank Allcroft.

Frank is a local news anchor who has stayed local well past the time most in his profession move on to bigger and better. Frank is happy enough where he is, though contented is more of the word. Or maybe lazy? Or is it stuck? He's not unhappy, in spite of some sad or stumbling events at the moment. His mentor Phil has just been killed in a car accident at the age of 78 and at the same time, Frank's famous father's buildings are slowly being demolished around Birmingham, UK. The juxtaposition of losing his father figure and the architectural link Frank had to the distant father he barely knew would be enough to send anyone into a tailspin. But Frank doesn't really spin. He's too solid in his outlook. His depressive mother does her best to finish him off (mentally), but she's too amusing for him (or us) to really believe she's depressive. His wife wins the award for the least jealous, most supportive wife in literature and so it is his various female co-hosts who are left to express anger and resentment at the slow slide women feel in a profession built on looks and youth. As well as to point out how stupid TV news--with local color! --is becoming.

Frank takes his job very seriously and seems to enjoy it and his life. He answers every letter and email unless they are "outright abusive or threatening" (company policy). One letter, written in all lower case is from someone who claims to have seen him going into a liquor store and then to have followed him to a house of ill repute. The "friend" reminds him that "jesus is watching and so am i."

Frank obviously isn't a shabby, closet drinker who pays for prostitutes when off air. No, Frank is the sort of man who pays for someone else to write really bad jokes that he then bungles on air. This is what Frank is known for (to everyone except the letter writer, obviously). He inherited his joke writer from mentor Phil and felt too kind and obligated not to continue the arrangement, knowing full well that he can't deliver humor the way Phil could. He's earnest in an non-annoying way and he's not much of a trouble maker at all so he's not sure how to answer this particular email.

Frank wondered if he should mention in his reply that he'd never been in that branch of Oddbins. He wondered if that mattered...He thought about the shabby man who had been followed in error. He liked the idea of having a double out there absorbing the sidelong glances and the harmful thought waves. He imagined the man as his tireless protector, his clothes shabby from pounding the city streets 24/7 as Frank, taking the odd drink to fortify himself against the baffling comments people shouted out to him.

This sort of thinking is exactly why he ends up doing PA events for just about anyone who asks, and why he is still happy enough at his job. In some ways, Frank is a refreshing character--someone who is just as he appears to be, without being dull. A tricky balance for a writer to pull off, but I think O'Flynn manages it well.

The mysterious death of Phil was a bit of a let down, but this book never was about Phil anyway.In the end, the important characters come together unexpectedly, Phil's death is resolved, Frank grows up, and all is well in the heart of England.

The Three Weissmanns of Westport

I'm one of those people who reads Jane Austen as if making a yearly pilgrimmage. I'm devoted to her books, having read Pride and Prejudice something like 10 times, though I'm not nearly as obssessed as some people. I don't, for example, generally pick up books that are continuations of her books, sequels, or books in which the new author has thrown in some superfluous sea monsters or zombies. No, I'm a bit of a purist, but I'll admit I like the predictable romance. Cathleen Schine's The Three Weismanns of Westport is not a predictable romance, but it is a retelling of Sense and Sensibility, molded to fit a modern age, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Betty Weissmann and her two middle-aged daughters are exiled to a run-down cottage due to impending divorce and career implosion. Actually one daughter goes along simply to keep an eye on her sister and mother who happily float outside of reality, particularly economic reality. This is the Eleanor character while Miranda plays flighty, romantic Marianne. The matriarch has a much bigger role here than in Austen's book and she's very entertaining, for example as a lady of leisure and wealth discovering infomercials for the first time. Betty had begun watching daytime TV and found it extraordinarily informative and reassuring. There were so many problems in the world she had never though of, and so many products to solve them.

Betty pretty much pretends she's a widow when her husband of 50 years dumps her for a younger woman and she really doesn't have a head for playing poor, though she enjoys her Costco fake fire and the coziness of playing at widowhood, even while she tires of cooking for her grown daughters. Strangely, Betty is more planted in the world, more astute, than flighty Miranda. Miranda's literary Agency has imploded (in a James Frey sort of way, replete with Oprah visit), but she has no concept of money or what to do. When she finds the beach too short for mournful walks in foul weather, she buys herself a kayak in which to storm the seas, so to speak. Never mind that she's never been in a kayak before or that they have no money. How can she deny herself what she knows is so good for her soul?

Annie is the voice of reason, or tries to be, but she's often drowned out by her sister's histrionics and her mother's devotion to both her former husband and her new-found life of "deprivation." Besides, of course, Annie is suffering from her own problems and doesn't feel allowed to express them. She's the solid one, she's the one who pays the bills and expects exactitude, ever tamping down her family's excesses. It's a lonely struggle for all of them, even as they live unexpectedly cheek by jowl.

Men show up eventually, as they do in any good Austen novel. Some of them less appropriate than others, some that you think you can read a mile away (either because you know your Austen or because they're a type), but Schine twists Austen's plot to fit the modern age so that the ending isn't quite the one we expect. The characters and the hangers on are all fun, even the villains. It's especially fun if you know Sense and Sensibility because it was great trying to sort out who was who. If you can't face reading Austen, just rent the Ang Lee movie. Sure, Hugh Grant minces around in a rather strange way that I'm sure I used to find charming, but Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet make up for this, and it's all about the women anyway, isn't it?

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

My friend Liz had an open house for her 80th birthday at which she asked everyone to take a minimum of 5 books from her vast and excellent collection. I was happy to find Helen Simonson's first novel, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, as one of my "gifts." I was afraid it would be too precious--and the first page wasn't very reassuring--but I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can't wait to see what else Simonson writes. At 68, the British army major, or as he puts it, Major Ernest Pettigrew, Royal Sussex, retired. Rose Lodge, Blackberry Lane, Edgecombe St. Mary, loses his brother and falls in love almost simultaneously. He has complicated feelings left over from his relationship with his brother, some unresolved resentments over a divided inheritance, specifically in the form of a pair of rifles given their father by the Indian Maharajah, pre-independence. His new romance is also fraught with complications, namely in the form of object of his interest. Mrs Ali is not only Pakistani but a mere shopkeeper. Scandals all around, in both a British and inter-generational way.

What's wonderful is that Simonson is never condescending to any of her characters. Just when you think she'll resort to a bit of caricature, she pulls back and comes at the character in a different and unexpected way. I love that the poor Major, who could easily have been a buffoon of a "proper British gentleman (or a harmless old git, as one character calls him), but instead he is a polite man who gets pulled into increasingly difficult social situations and uses his politeness and his ready wit to sail through. He is a cautious man and resents having to deal with every new complication with his increasingly unhinged extended family and his new Pakistani friends, but feels he has no choice and so always does the right thing. His caution extends to the slow, almost painful courtship of Mrs. Ali. After inviting Mrs. Ali's dour and potentially fanatical nephew to stay in his guest room (thus, he hopes, further entwinning himself with the woman), he wants to celebrate, but he can barely allow himself this pleasure. He was tempted to celebrate his own boldness with a large glass of scotch, but as he reached the kitchen he decided that a large glass of sodium bicarbonate would be more prudent.

At times, the major appears more elderly than his 68 years, but as his life becomes more complicated with duck shoots gone awry, a vehement save our neighborhood contingent, the half-crazed sister-in-law, the naked greediness and social climbing of his son, and perhaps most disastrously, the annual dance and dinner at The Club, the major holds true to himself. In the end (his last stand), he seems more his age--solid, smart, and ready for action. His wit never deserts him so that in the most dire moments, he still responds in a British way, "I do try to avoid killing ladies, no matter how psychotic they may be."

And he gets on with his life.