Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Picture the quintessential English country village, complete with uppercrust society and town folks mixing it up (a bit) in contemporary times.  That's the setting for this witty, yet at times profound, love story by Helen Simonson.

Our "hero" is Major Ernest Pettigrew: retired, living quietly, and still mourning the loss of his wife after six years.  I loved his wry, opinionated one-liners as he interacts with the village "ladies" as they bustle about running the social lives of everyone in their rather tightly held circle of friends and acquaintances.  Think of Major Pettigrew as a male version of Maggie Smith as Lady Grantham of Downton Abbey, dropping those fabulous, yet very civilized, remarks that put everyone quite clearly in their proper places.

Major Pettigrew and Mrs. Ali, a Pakistani shopkeeper in the village, develop an unexpected friendship based on their shared love of Kipling as well as their sense of being cut adrift after both losing their much-loved spouses.  . Unfortunately, Major Pettigrew's social circle does NOT approve of their blossoming friendship and the Major has to decide whether or not to pursue his growing affection for Mrs. Ali.

It's really a charming love-story with lots of subplots thrown in that were also engaging and well-connected to the main attraction of the Major and his pursuit of happiness in the face of societal pressure and tradition.

The Major's son, living what appears to be life in the fast lane in London has some deep-seated issues with the somewhat demanding, uptight parenting he experienced as a child, and he and the Major are still as odds in many ways:  at one point the Major thinks "it was frustratingly common that children were no sooner gone from the nest and established in their own homes, in Roger's case a gleaming black-and-brass decorated penthouse in a high-rise that blighted the Thames near Putney, than they began to infantilize their own parents and wish them dead, or at least in assisted living.  It was all very Greek..."  The power-struggle between them is is a running thread throughout the story.

Mrs. Ali has her own challenges: the day-to-day prejudices of the villagers not the least of them.  Totally acceptable as a shopkeeper, but as the Major's love interest? Not so much.  Additionally, her husband's family is mounting a full-court press to have her sign the shop over to them and take her "rightful" place as a stay-at-home, much honored Auntie, which Mrs. Ali is not at all eager to do.

Things come to head at the annual Dance and the Major gets caught up in the "expected behavior" of his social class.  Will love prevail? Will the Major's sense of decorum outweigh his deep seated sense of honor and his dawning realization that his friendship with Mrs. Ali is so much more than that?

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand has been a very popular Book Club choice and I can see why: daily life in a tradition-laden English village replete with the out-of-sync and somewhat questionable village Reverend, the gossip of busy bee ladies, and their entrenched biases lead to plenty to talk about.

It doesn't hurt that the author makes falling in love at sixty rather than sixteen sound pretty darn sweet!

Rules of Civility

Did you know that as a sixteen-year-old schoolboy in Virginia, George Washington transcribed a list of 110 maxims that eventually were published as "Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour in Company and Conversation"?  According to npr.org, these rules were based on a sixteenth century set of precepts compiled for young gentlemen by Jesuit instructors.  

This debut novel by Amor Towles borrows not only George Washington's publication title but the Rules themselves in this story  of two working-class girls trying to make a go of it in New York City in the late 193os.  

We see NYC, just starting to come out of the Depression, through the eyes of Katey Kontent (I know,  I think her name is weird, too, but it plays well in the story).  Katey is prepared to work hard, very hard, to make it as a secretary in the business world (remember this is in 1938).  She and Eve Ross meet in the boardinghouse and become fast friends.  That is, until they meet Tinker Grey (I know...these names), a very handsome, debonair, successful and somewhat mysterious banker.  A love triangle ensues along with several twists and turns that kept me turning the pages.  Not everything about the fabulous Tinker Grey, or for that matter, about Katey and Eve, is as it first seems. 


While trying to untangle the mystery of Tinker Grey, Katey comes across his well-thumbed  copy of Washington's "Rules of Civility" and is fascinated by it.  That book, and the role it plays in Tinker's life, becomes an integral part of this entertaining story. 


I liked reading about 1930s New York and the very different lifestyles of the rich and the poor (not unlike today).  Katey, somewhere in the middle, gets a taste of both, and finds some things very much not to her liking and others very hard to resist.  


I thought the novel was really well-written and although the theme is not necessarily new ( 20-somethings reinventing themselves as they snappily make decisions that will impact the rest of their lives), the story never grows old if told with panache as it is in this case. 


By the way, the author includes all 110 of George's "Rules of Civility" as an appendix to the novel.  Here's just a couple of my favorites:


60. Be not immodest in urging your Friends to Discover a Secret.  (I guess that eliminates gossiping; hmm, that's no fun.)


82.  Undertake not what you cannot Perform but be Careful to keep your Promise. (Put your money where your mouth is!!)


And my top choice:


110. Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Celestial Fire called Conscience.


Well said, George!

Stone Arabia

The writing of Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia, has been favorably compared by many critics to Don DeLillo (Falling Man, 2007, among many others) and Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad, 2010 and The Keep, 2006).  Since I thought highly of those novels, I decided to read Stone Arabia.  I liked Falling Man and I absolutely LOVED A Visit from the Goon Squad ("time is a goon, man") and now the question is: how do I feel about Stone Arabia?

I was very intrigued by the basic premise of the story.  It focuses on a brother and sister, Nik and Denise, who are battling middle-age crises of identity.  Nik is a reclusive, self-documenting musician. Denise is his most faithful fan (among very few) and has been since they were children.  

As the narrator, Denise begins with the ending: Nik has disappeared on the occasion of his 50th birthday.  It's not unexpected: Denise has been fearful of this very event.  Nik has become the quintessential artistic eccentric: for the last 20 years or so, he has been creating an alternate story of his life called the "Chronicles".  The Chronicles satisfy Nik's mantra of "self-curate or disappear" and are an obsessively detailed version of a mostly fictitious career and life.  Nik will live on in his Chronicles in a way that he desires and that is also in stark contrast to his impoverished, aging, never-quite-made-it rock star reality.  He looks forward to the end of his life and has no regrets;  it's all for the best. 

Denise, on the other hand, obsesses about the aging process.  She sees their mother in the beginning stages of Alzheimers and is sure she is headed in the same direction.  She envies Nik in many ways: his detachment from reality and materials goods, his ability to recreate his history, his seeming contentment with his strange, reclusive self-documenting behavior. Denise spends much of her time in a somewhat "parallel" universe too.  But she is aware of it and struggles with her behavior.  Denise is fascinated and deeply affected by global news events; she can't get enough information about tragic events she sees on TV and spends hours searching the internet for additional information.  The title of the novel refers to one of these obsessions.  

If I were forced to rank DeLillo, Egan and Spiotta, I would put them in just that order.  Someday I think Egan may outrank DeLillo, but not just yet.  By the way, if you haven't read A Visit from the Goon Squad, you should give it a try.

Friends (you know who you are) have pointed out to me that I seem attracted to "darker" stories and I must admit this is a true observation.  Stone Arabia would have to be placed in that category.  Like A Visit from the Goon Squad, it illuminates our obsession with aging and decay.  I find that comforting; it's the the constant blitzkrieg of anti-aging vitamins, cosmetics, and miracle foods that I find depressing.  

We are not meant to live forever; and that's a good thing.  

In One Person

John Irving's latest novel did not disappoint me.  It did not overwhelm, entrance, or move me to tears as a few of his earlier novels have done, but it did not disappoint me and for that I am grateful.

You need to know that I have LOVED John Irving for a very long time.  Not as long as I've loved my husband, but still...1978...that's a long time to love someone from afar (that's Irving, not my husband).   That's the year The World According to Garp was published and I was completely enthralled by Irving's storytelling mastery.  Thirty-four years later (OMG) I still recall the "Under Toad" and its incredible, disastrous pull on Jenny Garp, her son, and his family.  If you've never read The World According To Garp, it's not too late!

But back to my infatuation: I continued to read and greatly enjoy Irving's subsequent novels.  The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany, and A Widow for One Year were all, in my opinion, well-crafted.  Critics seem to become increasingly disenchanted with his later novels, and I skipped the next three or four, but then picked up Last Night in Twisted River, the novel just previous to In One Person, and I was happy to have read it.

Almost all of Irving's novels share elements of the same theme as well as character "types."  His novels never veer far from Vermont or New Hampshire and many of his characters are what he describes as "sexual suspects."  In One Person is no exception.

The novel is structured as a memoir of bisexual Billy Abbott, an extremely likable and, as you might imagine, tortured "hero." This story is not for the sexually "faint-of-heart" as I mentioned to my husband while reading it.  Billy's sexual encounters with both men and women are described fairly graphically, and while they are definitely NOT the focus of the story, they are described in detail.

The story, as Irving's stories always are, is peopled with many quirky personalities and diverse sexualities.  Billy's grandfather, well-known and respected in the small town of First Sister, Vermont as a successful businessman is also the town's leading actor in the community theater.  However, he only plays women's roles and is obviously very comfortable in that niche.  Suffice to say, Billy grows up surrounded by family members, friends and role models who are as sexually diverse as they are loving and supportive (mostly, with a few notable exceptions) of Billy's quest to find his sexual identity.  There is a lot of mystery attached to the man Billy is told is his father, whom he hasn't yet met as the story opens (Billy is 11 or 12).    Irving is a top-notch storyteller and his novels always incorporate many side stories and forks in the road.  The good news is they all lead back to the main story; the bad news is not everyone will enjoy the meandering.

I've always thought one of this author's greatest talents is how FULLY he tells the story.  There simply are no loose threads.  There are no unimportant characters or meaningless plot twists.  There ARE plot twists, though, and as a fan of Irving's I am able to trust that this unexpected turn or "random" appearance of a character will be connected eventually; but I'm not sure that all readers might have the patience to stick with some of the more convoluted story lines.

A good portion of the story takes place in the 90s in New York, as the AIDS epidemic devastates the gay community and Billy, by now a successful author, loses several friends and ex-lovers.  Irving excels at pulling the reader into the heartbreak and loss experienced during that time.

I noticed, for the first time in an Irving novel, the author's redundant characterization and summarizing and it did start to wear on me.  As Irving ages (he just turned seventy) perhaps he doesn't trust the reader's recall of the various characters and feels the need to remind us; I'd rather he didn't. His descriptions and turns of phrase are memorable and stay with the reader, making the repetitiveness unnecessary.

But Irving has some important points to make and he wants to make sure his audience gets them.  The same message is delivered by two different characters (Billy and the town librarian, Miss Frost, who has sexual secrets of her own): "My dear boy, please don't put a label on me---don't make me a category before you get to know me!"

Sexual tolerance is Irving's message and it certainly is a timely one, isn't it?