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Love, Charleston by Beth Hart Webb

Aug16

This novel had a couple of strikes against it going in as far as I’m concerned: I don’t read romance novels, and I especially don’t read Christian romance novels, even though I am a Christian. However, it was nominated for the INSPY awards in the “general fiction” category, and although it turned out to be what I would call a romance novel, it was a pretty darn good romance.

Charleston’s Anne Brumley has long dreamed of romance while ringing the bells at St. Michael’s, but those dreams are beginning to fade. Her sister Alicia and cousin Della encourage her to strike out and make her own way—after all, she’s thirty-six. But the tall redhead is sure God said, “Stay here and wait.”

Widower Roy Summerall has happily ministered to the country folks of Church of the Good Shepherd for years. So why would the Lord call him and his daughter away to Charleston—the city that Roy remembers from his childhood as pretentious and superficial? Surely the refined congregation of St. Michael’s won’t accept a reverend with a red neck and a simple faith.

Meanwhile, Anne’s sister, Alicia, struggles with her husband’s ambition which seems to be taking him further and further from their dreams of a happy family together. And Cousin Della’s former fiancé has returned to Charleston, making her wonder if she chose the wrong path when she married her gifted but struggling-artist husband.

So the strongest part of this three strand plot is the story of Licia, who, spoiler here, ends up suffering from postpartum depression. Of course, mental illness manifests itself differently in different people, and Licia’s illness turns out to be a particularly vicious and hard-to-cure form of postpartum depression. She needs the help and support of not only her doctors, but also her husband and her life-long friends, Della and Anne. I applaud Ms. Hart for tackling this difficult subject, and I believe she did so quite realistically and sympathetically. As I said, Licia’s part of the story is the strongest and the most engaging.I really wanted to know what would happen to her and her husband and their three children.

Anne and Della have issues, too. But I didn’t sympathize with Della much, and Anne’s problem was resolved a little too neatly and predictably. Still, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this story of three friends coping with life through faith in Charleston, South Carolina.

Small Town Sinners by Melissa Walker

Aug3

Nominated for 2011 Cybil Awards, Young Adult Fiction category. Nominated by Ashley at Book Labyrinth.

This YA novel featuring small town Christian young people gets many things right. The story is absorbing. The characters are believable and interesting. The themes and issues in the book–teen pregnancy, homosexual temptation, drunk driving, etc.—are issues that young people do face; the presentation is realistic and sensitive. The author shows respect for the beliefs of conservative Christian people. I thought the parts of the book where the main character and narrator, Lacy Anne Byer, is experiencing God through her “prayer language” (charismatic speaking in tongues) were particularly well written and understanding.

However, (you knew there was a however) I am somewhat annoyed by books in which it is assumed that Christians, young and old alike, have never thought about the things that they believe, and it takes some enlightened outsider to bring them to their senses and make them realize their parochialism and blindness. In this book, Lacey’s new boyfriend is that enlightened, understanding, broad-minded outsider who makes Lacey Anne see that the Christian answers that her parents have given her are inadequate and unsatisfying. I don’t have a problem with Lacey Anne questioning the things she has been taught; I would question some of things that Lacey Anne has apparently been taught. And often it does take a new person’s perspective or a new experience to jumpstart that questioning process. Tyson, Lacey’s new friend in the book, is so perfect, however, that his answers seem obviously right and good while Lacey’s conservative Christianity comes off looking ineffectual and untrustworthy.

It doesn’t help that the adults in the book are mostly hypocritical, in a mild, unthinking way. There are no real villains in the book (other than Satan); even the bully is seen to be reacting to the abuse he receives at home from his alcoholic father. However, Lacey’s parents have difficulty dealing with her friendships with kids who are not perfect Christians from perfect families, and Lacey’s dad, a pastor, is quite over-protective. I have dealt with what I consider to be over-protective families in my church and in the homeschooling community, and Lacey’s dad is not uncommon. However, he is something of a caricature and his views on homosexuality, dating, and teen pregnancy are not very nuanced or well articulated.

I also didn’t like the way the book strongly implied that if a guy is a nerd and artistic and creative in his clothing choices, and if he hangs out mostly with girls and gets bullied, then he might be suppressing his homosexual identity. Especially, he might be smothering those tendencies if he has grown up in a small town and been taught that homosexual behavior is immoral. Talk about stereotypes. Artistic men are not naturally gay and do not necessarily, or even probably, have same sex desires. And if one does have those temptations, I would argue, like the people in Lacey’s church, that it’s not a bad thing to reject homosexual behavior for yourself. In fact, I would still maintain that the repudiation of homosex is what the Bible teaches and what is best for a man or woman who is tempted in that way.

Overall, Small Town Sinners is a good book, but it does encourage the view that there are no answers, only questions. And parents are not the ones to go to with your questions; a kid your age from out of town who has experienced so much more of Life is more likely to know the meaning thereof than your small town, uncomprehending parents. My final complaint is that there is very little or no gospel in Lacy Anne’s church or in her ideas about Christianity, only rules. Ty, who encourages Lacey Anne to question that legalism, doesn’t have much concept of what to replace it with either. Forgiveness is discussed, but staying “pure” and avoiding sins (of the flesh) are the main focus of Lacey’s brand of Christianity.

I didn’t even get into the “Hell House” aspect of the plot, which provides an interesting bit of evangelical Americana for those interested, but you can read more about that drama at Linus’s Blanket or at Presenting Lenore. Take it with a grain of salt, and some questions of your own, but Small Town Sinners provides a good story and some challenging ideas for evangelical Christian teens and non-religious ones alike.

Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce

Aug1

About halfway through Amy Inspired, I had to look at the author blurb to see how autobiographical the novel was. The book is about Amy Gallagher, an almost-30, single, Christian, adjunct professor of English at a small college in Ohio Ms. Pierce is married, but she must have taken some of the characters and scenes in Amy Inspired from her own life as a single person before marriage. True-to-life and yet romantic describes the book perfectly.

Amy Gallagher so reminded me of my own Eldest Daughter and her friends who are also trying to navigate the waters of Christian single-hood. It’s not easy. Christian young women are supposed to be chaste but not frigid, open to marriage but not desperate, intelligent, beautiful, but not intimidating or vain, confident and independent but also submissive and selfless, and it goes on and on until a woman can get lost in all the expectations.

Amy is, frankly, a little lost. She’s a Christian, but she doesn’t know how to approach God except through the expectations that she believes He has for her life and behavior. Amy lives her life in lists–to do lists, grocery lists, lists of the rejection letters she’s received for her writing submissions, lists of former boyfriends lists of her lists–and when she meets Eli the artist who’s more of a free spirit with a checkered past, Amy isn’t sure whether it’s love or fear at first sight.

I don’t know how to convey the sheer goodness of this novel because I’m just not as skilled a writer as Ms. Pierce. It made me laugh out loud a couple of times. I never knew exactly what would happen or how the novel would end. I know some of the characters in the book—Amy’s annoying but lovable Mrs. Malaprop Mom (OK, maybe I AM the mom, a little), her tofu-loving roommate Zoe, the men in her life, self-centered and shallow, but trying to grow up, too. Amy herself reminds me, as I said, not only of Eldest Daughter, but also of several other single young women I know. The novel felt Real in a way that many Christian novels don’t manage to accomplish.

Amy Inspired made it onto my TBR list because it was nominated for the 2011 INSPY Awards in the category of General Fiction. I’m trying to read all of the nominated books that I find of interest, and I hope Amy Inspired makes the shortlist for the INSPY’s. It’s that good.

The Ambition by Lee Strobel

Jun13

Nominated for the INSPY awards in the category Mystery and Thriller.

Written by the best-selling author of The Case for Christ, The Case for Faith, The Case for a Creator and many other nonfiction books of Christian apologetics.

A legal/journalistic thriller in the tradition of John Grisham, with more emphasis on the journalism and on Christians in politics than Grisham’s books.

The Ambition is not a subtly nuanced novel about ambition and its insidious effect on the Christian believer. That’s there to some extent, but this is a thriller: lots of action, plot twists, intrigue, and corruption in high places. Strobel is not Grisham–yet–but on the other hand, Mr. Strobel’s first novel does deliver a readable story with interesting and unpredictable characters. Since my main complaint about Christian fiction is its predictability, the depth of characterization in what could have been a action-packed story full of cardboard characters was welcome. The mega-church pastor/protagonist is neither a saint without fault nor a hypocritical money-grubber, although he’s suspected of being one or the other throughout the novel. The cynical reporter is cynical, but not unlikeable, and he doesn’t have the come-to-Jesus moment that we tend to expect for this kind of character in a “Christian” novel. By the end of the novel, reporter Garry Strider may be a bit more open to considering the claims of Christ and the church, but that’s all. And it’s OK. Strobel has left room for these characters to grow and change and perhaps surprise us some more in another book. Or maybe we get to finish the story in our own minds, not a bad way to end a book either.

I have a couple of complaints. Pastor-turned-politician Eric Snow seems a a little too eager to jettison his association with the church he helped to build without adequate motivation. If he still sees himself as committed to Christ and to Christianity, no matter how rusty and secondary that commitment has become, would he really agree to not even set foot inside church after his resignation from the pastorate? And Garry’s girlfriend who has become a Christian is a little too didactic and too unquestioning in her immediate commitment to chastity. “Not to be unequally yoked” sounds perfectly reasonable to me since I’ve grown up in the faith, but I’m not sure it would be so immediately understandable to a new convert who has been immersed in our culture or to her boyfriend.

Those are minor points, however. For a beach read this summer, The Ambition would be a good pick. It’s well-paced, intricate, and unpredictable. Thanks, Mr. Strobel.

Sunday Salon: It Takes Darkness and Light to Make a Good Book

Jun11

First, Meg Fox Gurdon wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal about a mom who was having trouble finding an appropriately bright or upbeat book as a gift for her thirteen year old daughter. The piece was called Darkness Too Visible.

Others responded.

So how does all this discussion about the “darkness”, or lack thereof, the language, the explicit sexual perversion, or lack of it, and above all the critical questioning going on in both young adult literature and in so-called “Christian” fiction come together in my mind? Glad you asked.

I don’t think it’s as simple as the anti-book-banning crowd or the hyper-cleanliness squad or anyone else has tried to make it.

The lady in the WSJ article just wanted a book for her thirteen year old daughter. And she wanted a book that wouldn’t feature vampirism or rape or incest or (probably) profanity or other nasty stuff that she judged either her daughter wouldn’t want to read about or that the mom wouldn’t want her to be spending her reading time on. This request is not unreasonable, and a book, YA or adult, does not have to feature dark and corrupt themes and characters in order to be a good piece of literature or to be worth reading. If some people want to write about those things and if other people want to read their books, that’s their choice. But if someone, particularly a mom, comes along and says he or she wants something different, lighter, more hopeful, they are not censoring, banning or infringing upon anyone else’s freedom. They are simply saying that they prefer to have choices, too, and it seems to some of us that the darkness is overwhelming the light in Young Adult literature.

Yes, resolutions in novels can be “too neat” and unearned. But just because a novel resolves at the end, ends with a wedding rather than a death scene, doesn’t mean that the novel is unworthy or superficial. Comedies are just as literary as tragedies. And the unearned resolution happens in both stories written by Christians and stories by non-Christians. In the non-Christian variety, characters make all sorts of sinful and destructive choices, often described in gruesome detail, but they are rewarded with life, health, and happiness because underneath they’re really good people who mean well.

One-dimensional characters and sentimentality are both examples of poor storytelling techniques that are again found in all sorts of books from all sorts of publishers for every age group.

As for cleanliness, I believe that it is possible, and even advisable, to tell stories without an over-abundance of profanity and sensuality, but never without critical questioning. If YA authors or authors in the Christian publishing realm are putting gratuitous violence, sex, and language into their novels simply to titillate and thrill readers and sell books, then those writers are bad writers, no matter how many books they sell or how many accolades they receive. And if YA authors or Christian fiction writers take the sin and questioning and controversy out of their novels in favor of a sanitized version of reality, they are also poor writers who may have an audience but who have lost their message and their integrity.

Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Tolkien–all of these men wrote novels without the kinds of gratuitous depiction of intimate sexuality and sin that is thought to be necessary for good literature these days. (Although Hugo did descend into the sewers for a good while in Les Miserables.:)) Yes, the books of all three of those authors contain all sorts of darkness: prostitution, violence, adultery, lies, and deception. But there is also goodness and joy and, dare I say it, a grace-filled resolution. Part of the problem is that when a book does not come with a “Christian” label or doesn’t have an explicitly evangelical Christian conversion scene, we cease to describe it as a Christian novel (or movie). So then the really good “Christian” movies or books never get factored into the discussions about bad Christian art. There are good movies and books out there, made by Christians and others with grace-filled themes and characters and ideas, but they may not fit the template of a Christian movie or book marketed to Christians. And there are good Young Adult fiction books, tastefully and honestly dealing with the messiness of life in the twenty-first century, either from a Christian or a non-religious point of view. But there aren’t enough of either, and sometimes you have to look really hard to find the good books, the ones that satisfy our need for a candid portrayal of truth without pandering to our sinful and fallen nature.

A Canticle for Leibowitz

Jun11

The current Faith ‘n Fiction Roundtable book is A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller, Jr. I read the book a few years ago and honestly didn’t feel like a re-read. So this post is what I wrote back then, edited to include some discussion points that came up as the other people in the group read the book.

I thought the book was . . . interesting. In some ways, the ideas were fascinating. The plot was somewhat outdated; published in 1959, the book posits a world decimated by nuclear war in which culture and literacy are preserved only by a small group of Catholic monks. And even the monks don’t understand half of what they’re preserving. The barbarians have taken over the world, and only a few isolated outposts of civilization remain. Near the end of the book, euthanasia is a major issue, and that section was startlingly relevant to contemporary culture.

Some questions brought up in this novel:

Is it possible for an entire culture to be destroyed or lost and then revived or regained?

Long ago, during the last age of reason, certain proud thinkers had claimed that valid knowledge was indestructible–that ideas were deathless and truth immortal. But that was true in only the subtlest sense, the abbot thought, and not superficially true at all. There was objective meaning in the world, to be sure: the nonmoral logos or design of the Creator; but such meanings were God’s and not Man’s, until they found an imperfect incarnation, a dark reflection, within the mind and speech and culture of a given human society, which might ascribe values to the meanings so that they became valid in a human sense within the culture. For Man was a culture-bearer as well as a soul bearer, but his cultures were not immortal and they could die with a race or an age, and then human reflections of meaning and human portrayals of truth receded, and truth and meaning resided, unseen, only in the objective logos of Nature and the ineffable Logos of God. Truth could be crucified; but soon, perhaps, a resurrection.

Is there meaning in suffering? Particularly, why do children suffer?

“I cannot understand a God who is pleased by my baby’s hurting!”
The priest winced. “No, no! It is not the pain that is pleasing to God, child. It is the soul’s endurance in faith and hope and love in spite of bodily afflictions that pleases Heaven. Pain is like negative temptation. God is not pleased by temptations that afflict the flesh; He is pleased when the soul rises above the temptation and says, ‘Go Satan.’ It’s the same with pain, which is often a temptation to despair, anger, loss of faith –”
“Save your breath, Father. I’m not complaining. The baby is. But the baby doesn’t understand your sermon. She can hurt, though. She can hurt, but she can’t understand.”

Maybe this book isn’t outdated at all. Maybe the barbarians are at the gates. Maybe we are danger of destroying ourselves and our culture either with our nuclear weapons or with our gene-tampering technologies or in some other way that I can’t foresee. Perhaps we are becoming so illiterate and TV-obsessed that the treasures of Western culture and of Christianity may only be preserved in isolated communities and homes. Or maybe the sky isn’t falling. It’s worth thinking about.

Several of the characters in A Canticle for Leibowitz seem to carry deep symbolic meaning but I’m not really sure what that meaning is. There’s a Mad Poet, who is either a prophet or a fool. And Benjamin the Old Jew of the Mountain who lives out in the desert alone, waiting for the Messiah, or waiting for something, is intriguing, but I can’t exactly tell you what his character is supposed to signify either. Some of my fellow readers thought he was Lazarus, and others thought he was drawn from the legend of the Wandering Jew. Then at the end of the novel there’s an old “tumater woman” with two heads. Is she significant or just odd? (The other FnF roundtable readers struggled with the meaning of the two-headed tumater woman, too.) My guess is that all these ambiguous characters are thrown in to hint at meaning, maybe to tease the reader. After all, the question that runs through the entire novel is that of whether life has any meaning at all. I think the novelist intends us to keep asking.

I did a little research and read that not only did Mr. Miller renounce his Catholicism later in life after the publication of A Canticle for Leibowitz, he also suffered from depression and finally committed suicide. It’s a sad ending, and it contradicts the hope inherent in A Canticle for Leibowitz. But the book also indicates that men are inconsistent at best.

More discussion at the following blogs participating in this round of Faith ‘n Fiction Roundtable:

  • Book Addiction
  • Book Hooked Blog
  • Books and Movies
  • Crazy-for-Books.com
  • Ignorant Historian
  • Linus’s Blanket
  • My Friend Amy
  • Roving Reads
  • The 3 Rs Blog // Reading, ‘Riting, and Randomness
  • Tina’s Book Reviews
  • Victorious Café
  • Word Lily

    • After the Leaves Fall by Nicole Baart

    Apr22

    I began to exist in a tension between wanting and not wanting–waiting for something I couldn’t even pin down in my most naked and honest moments. Waiting for a balance where I neither ached nor forgot, regretted nor accepted. Waiting for my heart to be light again yet fearing the implications of that same lightness. I suppose I waited for peace–an end to my own personal warfare. . . . Grandma and I stood hand in hand until the graveyard was empty and the rain had all but ceased to fall. Her lips moved faintly, and I knew she was whispering prayers for me. I couldn’t join her –I had forgotten how; the ability to pray had slipped out of my soul like the dirt had tumbled from my fingers. I wasn’t angry at God or anything–that would have been far too cliched. He just seemed irrelevant.

    The narrator of this novel makes this self-observation in the aftermath of her father’s death, and in fact, our protagonist/narrator, Julia, is not only self-observant, but also somewhat self-absorbed. She has excuses: her mother was completely selfish and deserted the family emotionally long before she left them physically. Her beloved father dies after a long, painful illness at the beginning of the novel when Julia is only fifteen years old. Julia feels abandoned and rejected. However, she has a loving grandmother who picks up the slack and prays for her and teaches her to love God. So why is Julia such a mess?

    She sees God as irrelevant. There’s an epidemic of that attitude going around. Is God irrelevant? Unconnected? Peripheral to my life and decisions at best? Sometimes I would have to admit that I, too, see God as an afterthought, or more accurately don’t see Him as central, vital, the source of all that makes life worthwhile.

    By the end of the book, Julia has sown her wild oats, made some serious mistakes, looked for love in all the wrong places, and she’s in need of a God who loves and forgives and gives second chances. The resolution isn’t neat and tidy; Julia doesn’t have a Damascus road, five-star, turn-around conversion experience. It’s more as if the prodigal daughter comes home and realizes that her grandmother has always loved her and that God may not be so irrelevant after all.

    Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset

    Mar16

    40 Inspirational Classics for Lent

    Yes, I’m including fiction, too, in this series of posts about recommended reading for Lenten learning and devotions. I learn a lot from fiction.

    Because I have been so steeped in our own 20th/21st century cultural milieu and, of course, in stories with Hollywood endings, I truly thought that this novel of a medieval Norwegian teenage girl who “follows her heart” and marries the man who sweeps her off her feet (and also seduces her) would end in a happily ever after for the couple. Even though I know that’s not usually the ending in real life for that sort of beginning, I also have seen enough movies and read enough books in which following one’s emotions in disregard of parents, church, and community is rewarded.

    Undset is more realistic than all of those Hollywood-influenced writers. Not that Kristin lives a completely horrid and pain-filled life after her youthful fall into sin and indiscretion; she doesn’t. She simply reaps what she has sown. Kristin chooses to marry an irresponsible but charming man, and as the two have a family and grow old together, her husband remains untrustworthy and quite attractive at the same time. Kristin remains both willful and desirous of spiritual riches. This combination makes for a life and marriage filled with joy at times, but also plagued by disaster and the consequences of poor choices.

    I’m afraid that I’m not making this book sound good enough to induce you to pick it up and read it. The book is three volumes long, over a thousand pages, and it takes commitment to even begin such a hefty narrative. However, I believe you will be rewarded both intellectually and spiritually if you decide to read Kristin Lavransdatter. And I’m not the only one:

    Mindy Withrow: “The internal seasons of Kristin’s soul change with the frozen winters and golden summers of Jorundgaard. Here Nunnally’s translation abilities stand out—clearly Undset gave her unparalleled material in the original Norwegian—with gorgeous word choices in soaring descriptions of natural beauty, descriptions that are never extraneous but always reflective of Kristin’s heart.”

    Superfast Reader: “Despite the alienness of 13th Century feudal Norway, Undset’s books feel fresh, immediate, and alive, thanks to her depiction of Kristin, an exceptionally complex character.”

    Word Lily: “One of my favorite aspects of this trilogy is how it is set so long ago and yet so many of the characters’ lessons are applicable to life today. The portrait the story paints of life in the Middle Ages both confirms and challenges my perception.”

    Shelflove: “Kristin and her family step living from the pages, imperfect, stubborn, loving, exhausted, praying, scolding, laughing.”

    Carrie at Mommy Brain: “While reading Kristin’s story, I learned so much about the religious customs of the day, about the way government and legal matters were handled, about the day to day life of a woman on an estate, about how children were raised, about how the plague devastated complete towns.”

    Carol Magistramater: “I first heard of Kristin Lavransdatter reading a book list; I took note when Elisabeth Elliot named it her favorite novel.”

    Also: A Striped Armchair, A Work in Progress, CaribousMom, New Century Reading.

    And I’ve also written about this book before. So, if you haven’t read it, what are you waiting for? (I am told by very reliable sources that the Tina Nunnally translation is more complete, more literary, and more readable than the older translation by Charles Archer. Either way, it’s a great and valuable story.)

    The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

    Mar13

    40 Inspirational Classics

    It’s a hot topic (see Universalism as a Lure? The Emerging Case of Rob Bell): universalism, or to put it as a question, will everybody get to heaven in the end? Rob Bell repeats the old mantra, “If the gospel isn’t good news for everybody, then it isn’t good news for anybody.”

    C.S. Lewis answers this objection to divine judgement and heaven and hell as separate for the blessed and the damned in The Great Divorce.

    There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.

    “What some people say on Earth is that the final loss of one soul gives the lie to all the joy of those who are saved.”
    “Ye see it does not.”
    “I feel in a way that it ought to.”
    “That sounds very merciful: but see what lurks behind it.”
    “What?”
    “The demand of the loveless and the self-imprisoned that they should be allowed to blackmail the universe: that till they consent to be happy (on their own terms) no one else shall taste joy: that theirs should be the final power; that Hell should be able to veto Heaven.”
    “I don’t know what I want, Sir.”
    “Son, son, it must be one way or the other. Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it: or else for ever and ever the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves I know it has a grand sound to say ye’ll accept no salvation which leaves even one creature in the dark outside. But watch that sophistry or you’ll make a Dog in a Manger the tyrant of the universe.”

    However, these two excerpts are only the pertinent quotations in regard to universalism and the complaint that it’s unfair for anyone to go to hell. The book itself is much more, a wonderful story about an excursion bus from hell to the outskirts of heaven. I learned more about heaven and God’s mercy from reading The Great Divorce than from many a sermon listened to in my youth.

    Maybe I’m a better reader than listener. Or maybe I learn better through story. A little of both I think. Also C.S. Lewis is just a great writer and thinker. You’ll come across several of his books in this series of 40 Inspirational Classics that I’m recommending for Lent. Now go out and get The Great Divorce; it’s only 125 pages long, but there’s lots of truth in that small package.

    Edwardian, Turn of the Century and The Great War

    Mar8

    I’ve been spending a lot of my time in the years 1890-1920 for the past week or two, via fiction, nonfiction, a couple of British period TV series, and my history class. It’s a fascinating time period. I’ll tell you what I’ve been watching and reading, and then I’ll try to share some of what it all made me ponder and put together in my mind.

    Fiction:
    She Walks in Beauty by Siri Mitchell. I’m not sure exactly when this novel is set, about 1890 or the turn of the century. I read this one because it won the INSPY award for historical fiction this last year. It’s about New York City debutante, Clara Carter, who becomes the leading belle of the season with a little help from her overbearing aunt and her rich, social climber father. Unfortunately, Clara wasn’t really the “spunky, defiant heroine” that we all love and tend to expect in these sorts of historical romances. She’s a seventeen year old girl who’s been indoctrinated to believe that her only worth lies in her ability to attract a rich husband and restore her family’s honor. As Clara makes her way through the balls, dinner parties, and social visits of her coming out season, she changes very little and allows cultural expectations to mold her and pressure her to become what she actually hates. Only a family tragedy forces her to come to her senses and begin to make decisions that will give her a chance to live a real, authentic life. (The Kindle edition of this one is showing as free right now. Definitely worth your time if you like historical romance.)
    After the Dancing Days by Margaret Rostkowski. We read this YA novel for my English/History class at homeschool co-op. Annie is a thirteen year old girl living in a small town in Kansas at the end of World War I. As she begins to visit the returning soldiers at the veterans’ hospital where her father works as a doctor, Annie is at first repulsed and frightened by the severely injured men. However, she comes to be friends with them, one in particular, even though her mother is opposed to Annie’s hospital visits and wants her to forget about the war and its consequences.

    Nonfiction:
    Bold Spirit: Helga Estby’s Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America by Linda Lawrence Hunt. Semicolon review here. In this true story of a mother and daughter in 1896 who accepted a wager that saw them walk across the entire continent of North America, I found a couple of women who not afraid to strike out and do something unexpected and unacceptable to many of those in their community. Unfortunately for the two women, the book also tells how they paid a steep price in betrayal and social ostracism for their daring.
    The Great Silence: Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age by Juliet Nicolson. This book of social history covers the years 1918-1920 and tells lots of little stories, vignettes really, about people in Britain both great and small and their experiences in the aftermath of World War I. The book featured lots of fascinating people that I wish I had time to find out more about:
    plastic surgeon Harold GIllies who repaired and reconstructed the faces of thousands of wounded WW I soldiers,
    Joseph Enniver, inventor of Pelmanism, a secular program for strengthening of the mind and character,
    nurse Edith Cavell, who helped two hundred allied soldiers escape to freedom in Belgium during the war before she was captured and executed by the Germans,
    Coco Chanel, the greatest couturier of all time,
    Nancy Astor, the American lady who became England’s first woman Member of Parliament, and many more. Look for a post of quotable stories from this book in the near future.

    Television:
    Lark Rise to Candleford. This series from the BBC is set in rural England just before the turn of the century, c.1895. The story is taken from a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by author Flora Thimpson. In the novels Ms. Thompson tells about her experience as a young girl getting a job in a post office and seeing the changes that were coming to England as a result of industrialization and the new modes of transportation and communication that were coming into use during the time period. Laura Timmins, the character through whose eyes we see the stories of village life and cultural transformation, is a village girl and as such, much more adaptable than some of the upper class young women in these stories. She’s able to become independent and see the world as one in which she can rise above her circumstances and become an intelligent voice while retaining her femininity and her place in the community.

    Downton Abbey. While I was waiting for the DVD’s of the several episodes of Lark RIse to Candleford to get here in the mail, I began watching Downton Abbey, another period piece set in the years just before WW I, from the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 to the announcement that England was at war with Germany (1914). Downton Abbey is amazing in its deft characterization of both the upper classes and the their servants, and even the burgeoning middle class gets a nod in the appearance of Lord Grantham’s new heir, Matthew Crawley, a distant cousin who becomes the new heir after the death of a couple of closer relatives in the Titanic tragedy. Lord Grantham has only daughters, three of them, who are of marriageable age, but with very little inheritance to hook a husband since almost all the money in the family is tied up in the estate. The servants in this grand old English family are all intimately involved in family matters as well as in the working out of their own lives and relationships. Downton Abbey is something of a soap opera, but it just manages to transcend that genre because the problems and the issues that make up the plot are very real and identifiable and intriguing, leading to both reflection and a feeling of connection. The characters are appealing, sometimes frustrating, and the dialog is spot on and funny. I loved this series, and I was only sorry to see it end.

    I’ll have to leave the pondering and putting together for another post. However, I would recommend any or all of the above for your viewing or reading pleasure.