Betsy and the Great World – Maud Hart Lovelace

I only discovered Maud Hart Lovelace after I started blogging.  Her Minnesota-set Betsy-Tacy series of children’s books have insipid titles that would have earned my contempt if anyone had tried to press them on me when I was young (Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill, Heaven to Betsy, and Betsy Was a Junior) but she had so many fans in the book blogging world that I had to try her for myself.  I started with a non-Betsy-Tacy book (Emily of Deep Valley) and thought it was fine.  At the time, I remarked that I didn’t think, based on the brief glimpse of Betsy provided in Emily of Deep Valley, that I could face any of the books focused on her.  But then I found a copy of Betsy and the Great World for sale at the library for 50 cents and decided to take a chance.

After two years of university, Betsy Ray has had enough.  She convinces her parents that, as an aspiring writer, she is not getting a lot of value from her math and science classes.  They agree and instead offer up an education of a different sort: a year abroad, travelling in Europe.  (Note: this was not the offer my parents made to me whenever I complained about my university classes.  Tragically.)  Unsurprisingly, she is ecstatic and, in possession of a flashy wardrobe and lots of enthusiasm, she sets off for Europe.  It is January 1914, she is twenty-one years old, and the world seems full of possibilities.

The book follows Betsy through her shipboard adventures, her travels on the continent (Germany, Italy, Switzerland, France), and her arrival in England – just in time for war to be declared.  Through it all, she does her best to make new friends and keep up her writing even as she struggles with homesickness and a longing for Joe, the boyfriend she had parted from before leaving and is now fearful of having lost forever.

The highlights of the book for me were the descriptions of the places Betsy visits.  Betsy herself was wildly uninteresting but I loved hearing about her walks through Munich, her wanderings around Venice, and her instant love affair with London.  The only part of Betsy’s journey I did not enjoy was her brief stay in Oberammergau, where the piety of the citizens, many of them actors in the village’s famous Passion Play, was taken far too seriously by the young American (and her creator).

Though I developed absolutely no interest in or attachment to Betsy over the course of the novel, I was impressed by Lovelace’s descriptions of Betsy’s mood changes and the frequent waves of homesickness that plagued her.  Lovelace has a disarmingly honest was of talking about unpleasant or negative emotions (which were also a feature of Emily of Deep Valley).

But there were things that outweighed the honesty and the enchanting travel details: so much of the story is focused on Betsy’s new friendships (both platonic and romantic) and the episodic and repetitive nature of these relationships felt lazy.  Yes, Betsy seems to be a young woman who makes friends (and conquests) easily but I longed for some more substantial development.  Her need to surround herself with a group of people, to form a clique (or, in her words, a Crowd) in each new place, saddened me.  By the end of the book, Betsy has seen many places and had many wonderful experiences but it is not clear how much she has actually learned, particularly about herself.

There is one feature I cannot decide if I should classify as a positive or a negative: Betsy’s garish wardrobe.  Maud Hart Lovelace describes her heroine’s costumes in loving detail and the vast majority of them are awful – laughably so.  Betsy has a particular fondness for a red-green hat, worn with a pale green dress and a scarlet jacket.  There is also a matronly-sounding maroon silk evening dress.  And she wonders how people know she is an American even before she speaks!  The illustrations don’t help either, making her look either ten years behind the fashions or forty years ahead of them.

Clearly, this was not an instant favourite with me, though there is something intriguing about Lovelace’s writing, though it is very uneven.  I am even a little bit tempted to read the final Betsy-Tacy book, Betsy’s Wedding.  But while I can somewhat stomach grown-up Betsy, the idea of reading about her childhood escapades sends a shiver up my spine.  No.  Just…no.  I cannot face that.

Library Loot: May 22 to 28

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Reading has been put to the wayside lately in favour of practical, career-related activities.  I have to admit, I was having so much fun with those tasks that I didn’t even notice that I hadn’t picked up a book in four days!  Sometimes it is fun to read and sometimes it is fun to be productive: the two don’t necessarily overlap well.  But I’ve worked through what I really needed to get done and should be able to spare a little more time for books going forward.

The Mind’s Eye by Oliver Sacks – I need to finally read something by Sacks and this sounds like a fun place to start (but then all his books sound fun).

Does This Church Make Me Look Fat? by Rhoda Janzen – I am incapable of passing by any sort of personal narrative about faith.  It is an entirely foreign concept to me and, probably for that reason, endlessly fascinating.

The Sunshine Years by Afsaneh Knight – Alex in Leeds reviewed this book about angst-ridden 30-something Australians last month and I immediately placed a hold on it.

Me Before You by Jojo Moyes – Simon S’s review of this last year brought it to my attention and Library Loot co-host Marg’s equal enthusiasm for it made me certain that I had to try it.

A Thousand Farewells by Nahlah Ayed – I borrowed this last September when I already had too many other books checked out and too many reviews needing to be written.  Now I have the time to do this book, a memoir about Ayed’s experiences in the Middle East, justice.

Capital by John Lanchester – I borrowed this at the same time as I first picked up A Thousand Farewells and ran into the same problems.  This is one of the only books published in 2012 that I was really excited about so I am looking forward to it.  What I’ve read so far has been very promising.

 What did you pick up this week?

The Bannister Girls – Jean Saunders

How to review a book that skirts the line between being a ”good bad” book and simply a “bad bad” book?  Most of my reading falls into the good bad category: books that are not going to win prizes for their experimental structure or complex themes but which, as Orwell wrote, remain “readable when more serious productions have perished.”  The Bannister Girls by Jean Saunders, originally published in 1991 and recently reissued as an e-book by Bloomsbury Reader, aspires to be a good bad book; it doesn’t quite get there but it is a fun, more than slightly soapy historical romance.

Set during the First World War, The Bannister Girls follows the members of the Bannister family from 1915 to 1918, focusing in particular on Angel, the youngest daughter.  The novel opens with Angel meeting a young French pilot currently on leave in London.  Within a few hours, she has abandoned the rigid social rules her mother tried so hard to instil in her three daughters, finding herself with him first at a nightclub and then at a hotel.  Their relationship builds from that day forward and is a dominant feature of the story…which would have been more enjoyable if either Angel or Jacques had been remotely interesting.  Angel becomes a far more interesting person when she’s interacting with her sisters (though, since she spends most of the war nursing in France, that’s rare) or with her father.

The eldest sister, Louise, is largely absent from the story, with other characters providing updates on her life while the middle sister, Ellen, is still seen all too rarely for my tastes.  Ellen is a passionate and idealistic young woman, attracted to controversial social issues: she begins the book as a vocal supporter of women’s rights and, after a German shopkeeper is murdered in the village near the Bannister’s country home, begins advocating for the rights of foreign-born residents.  But before too long, the war does intrude on her causes and she takes up work at one of the neighbouring farms, becoming even closer friends with the farmer there, having initially befriended him while protesting.  Unlike Angel, Ellen’s love life is actually interesting: she makes a bit of a muddle of her relationship with her farmer and her embarrassment at having confused attraction and love felt more real than most of the emotions in this book.  Her struggles are less dramatic than Angel’s but more impactful for that reason.

While I would have preferred more of a focus on Ellen and cheered if any attention at all had been given to Louise, I must say that Saunders does do an excellent job of describing the hospital and nursing conditions in France, where Angel spends most of the novel working.  This partially makes up for the general flatness of the characters and the ridiculously overdramatic twists in Angel and Jacques’ love story.  For all my complaining, I did have fun reading this.  I may not remember it a month from now, but I also couldn’t put it down when I was reading.

Library Lust

credit: Eric Staudenmaier

I love a good book-lined hallway but I always wonder: would I ever get to where I’m going if I had to pass along one? Or would I just end up distracted by all those beautiful books?

May Flowers and Showers and Books

I woke up this morning thinking “yes, today I will finally blog about one of the many, many books I’ve read recently.” I really did have the best of intentions, planning to talk about The Bannister Girls by Jean Saunders, a light romance from Bloomsbury Reader which I sped through Thursday morning about the lives of three sisters during the First World War, but then I got a better offer: to take advantage of the rain-free morning (a rarity this week) and go tour the local botanical gardens.  So, instead of a review, here are a few photos:

I may (still) not be reviewing but I am reading.  Right now, I’m in the midst of Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey, a profile of Saudi Arabia from the 1970s to the present, and Betsy and the Great World by Maud Hart Lovelace, in which twenty-one year old Betsy leaves Minnesota in early 1914 to tour Europe.  I am loving the Lacey so far and, when I need a break, Betsy is a most entertaining distraction, although the frequent descriptions of her outfits are driving me slightly mad.  (These sartorial details were also a distraction for me in the only other Maud Hart Lovelace book I’ve read, Emily of Deep Valley.)  Betsy, bless her, has some truly horrific sounding outfits in the most garish colours.

Tonight I’m off to the theatre but I really (honestly!) will spend some of this weekend working on reviews.

Library Loot: May 15 to 21

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.

Marg has the Mr Linky this week!

I am working hard at writing reviews but I have a truly overwhelming number of books I want to review and barely know where to start.  Do you want to hear about Trollope?  About what matters in Jane Austen?  Or perhaps about one of the many, many D.E. Stevenson books I’ve read but never got around to reviewing?  So, instead of trying to beat my backlog of reviews into submission, I shall just continue reading more than I should and perpetuate the problem.

Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles – when I was younger, my reading diet was almost exclusively devoted to pioneer stories.  I read a few of Janice Holt Giles’ books then (The Kentuckians and a few others) but never Hannah Fowler.

Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner’s boyhood was spent on the beautiful and remote frontier of the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where his family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920. In a recollection of his years there, Stegner applies childhood remembrances and adult reflection to the history of the region to create this wise and enduring portrait of pioneer community existing in the verge of a modern world.

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey – Though Saudi Arabia sits on one of the richest oil deposits in the world, it also produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. In this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of medievalism and modernity. Moving from the bloody seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979, through the Persian Gulf War, to the delicate U.S.-Saudi relations in a post 9/11 world, Inside the Kingdom brings recent history to vivid life and offers a powerful story of a country learning how not to be at war with itself.

Letters from Berlin by Margarete Dos and Kerstin Lieff – When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia…

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall - This summer the Penderwick sisters have a wonderful surprise: a holiday on the grounds of a beautiful estate called Arundel. Soon they are busy discovering the summertime magic of Arundel’s sprawling gardens, treasure-filled attic, tame rabbits, and the cook who makes the best gingerbread in Massachusetts. But the best discovery of all is Jeffrey Tifton, son of Arundel’s owner, who quickly proves to be the perfect companion for their adventures.

The Bannister Girls by Jean Saunders – The bright dawn of the twentieth century finds itself shadowed by the strictures of the Victorian Age. Women, whatever their status in society, are still women and are expected to conform to their well-defined role in life as a mother and wife. For the Bannister girls, daughters of a wealthy and respected family, this is not enough.

 What did you pick up this week?

A Mother’s Day Feast

It is Mother’s Day today, which in our house means it is time for mom to relax (or, you know, for us to drag her out of her office and force her to relax), for dad to open a bottle of celebratory champagne (we are incapable of having any kind of family gathering without it), and for my brother and I to pull together an appropriately festive meal.  Then we all settle down at the table together for a few hours to enjoy the wine, the food and the company.

Menu

Carrot Soup with Orange

Banana Coconut Bread

Fruit Salad

Spring Frittata (with Asparagus, Spinach, Peas, Mint and Goat Cheese)

It was a very girl-y meal – as my brother teased, there was no dead pig anywhere – and very delicious.  I love to celebrate my mother but I d0 also love to work in the kitchen with my brother.  One of my mother’s proudest achievements is having raised two children who are so happy in the kitchen: she spends as little time there as possible and loves to know that when my father is away she now has two more people who can be called upon to feed her!

But not all my time today has been Mom-focused: early this morning, when I was baking the (insanely delicious) banana bread, I started reading Heat Lightning by Helen Hull; though I’m only three chapters in, it is wonderful and extraordinarily well written.  I can’t wait to get back into it.  After some unseasonably spectacular weather, it is finally raining here so I have the best excuse possible to stay inside with my book!