The Beekeeper’s Apprentice by Laurie R. King

Mar17

This Sherlock Holmes tribute starts off slowly, but the pace picks up about halfway through when the author has finished setting up the relationship between Holmes and his teenage, female apprentice, Mary Russell. Mary, a sharp-eyed, feminist mirror image of Holmes himself, is, from the beginning of their acquaintance, mach more actively involved in Sherlock Holmes’ experiments and detection than was the ever-admiring, but frequently dim-witted Watson. Russell, as Holmes calls her, becomes Sherlock Holmes’ protege, and eventually his equal partner in sleuthing as the two of them face off with an enemy even more subtle and diabolical than the deceased Moriarty.

I had a good friend in high school/college days who was a great fan of Sherlock Holmes. I preferred Nero Wolfe or Miss Marple. I wish I knew where Winona was. I would definitely recommend The Beekeeper’s Apprentice to her—and to any other Sherlockian mystery fans, at least those who aren’t offended by the non-canonical addition of a female genius apprentice who sometimes outdoes even the Great Sherlock Holmes himself in her deductions and observations.

I’m in the middle of the second book of the series, A Monstrous Regiment of Women, and the feminist themes are definitely predominating in this one. However, the plot and characters and the writing are all stellar, and I’m definitely in for the long haul, unless the quality goes down or the feminist* propaganda gets to be too much. I’m looking forward to getting to know Ms. King’s version of Sherlock Holmes and his (now) partner, Mary Russell, over the course of twelve books.

*I would never use the word “feminist” to describe myself because the term has way too many connotations and associations that are anti-Christian and anti-male. However, Mary Russell’s version of feminism, so far (only in the second book), has much to recommend it. Ms. Russell is an independent and highly intelligent young woman who is learning how to relate to and older male mentor in a way that is dignified and and at the same time grateful for the things that he is able to teach her. So far, I like Mary Russell very much.

Fabulous Fashions of the 1920’s by Felicia Lowenstein Niven

Oct30

This book is one in a series of books called Fabulous Fashions of the Decades, published by Enslow Publishers. I found it on the “new books” shelf at my library in the children’s section, and thought I’d give it a try as a part of my ongoing twentieth century history studies this year.

The book includes lots of good information and photographs, and I learned a few things. I already knew about bobbed haircuts and cloche hats and flapper beads and raccoon coats. But I never connected “bobby pins” with bobbed hair.

“The bobby pin was invented to keep bobbed hair looking neat.”

And did you know that one actress in particular was famous for her “Dutch boy” haircut?

“Actress Louise Brooks was famous for her Dutch boy haircut.”

It also never occurred to me to connect the silky, Egyptian tunic-like fashions of the twenties with the discovery of King Tut’s tomb in 1922.

“People became fascinated with all things Egyptian. There were clothes and shoes with heiroglyphics. Women wore Cleopatra earrings, snake bracelets, and scarab-shaped jewelry.”

There’s a bibliography in the back of the book for the purpose of more research, and there are addresses in the back of the book for a couple of websites where readers can see more fashions of the twenties:

Fashion-Era, Flapper Fashion 1920’s
1920-30.com, Women’s Fashions 1920s

This book, and others in the series, provide a good introduction to fashion history in the twentieth century.

This post is linked to Nonfiction Monday, hosted this week at Jean Little Library.

Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction Set during the 1920’s

Oct24

The Night of the Burning: Devorah’s Story by Linda Press Wulf. Haunted by the loss of her parents to war and typhus, and driven from her Polish shtetl during the murderous anti-Semitic pogroms of 1921, Devorah, 12, and her younger sister, Nechama, are taken with 200 other Jewish orphans to safety in South Africa’s Jewish community.

An Ocean Apart, a World Away by Lensey Namioka. (Laurel Leaf, 2003) Xueyan, a privileged Chinese girl, is given the opportunity in 1921 to attend Cornell University in the United States. A sequel to Ties That Bind, Ties That Break by the same author.

Celesteâ€™s Harlem Renaissance by Eleanora E. Tate. Celeste goes to visit her almost mythical Aunt Valentina who lives in a mansion in Harlem, an actress who drives a big car and wears fancy clothes.Semicolon review here.

Witness by Karen Hesse. (2001) In a small Vermont town in 1924, the Ku Klux Klan moves in, and citizens are reluctant to do anything about the Klan until a shooting occurs.

Jake’s Orphan by Peggy Brooke. (2000) A twelve-year-old boy takes a job on a North Dakota tree farm in 1926 to escape the Minnesota orphanage where he lives. Recommended for ages 9-12.

Dave at Night by Gail Carson Levine. (1999), An orphaned boy sneaks out of the Hebrew Home for Boys and discovers Harlem’s world of jazz in 1926. Recommended for ages 8-12.

Moonshiner’s Gold by John Erickson. A mystery/adventure novel set in the Texas Panhandle in 1925-27. Fourteen-year-old Riley McDaniels’s father has just died, and he and his mother struggle to keep their ranch going. Riding home from school one afternoon, Riley discovers that moonshiners have built a still in a nearby deserted canyon on their property and are making whiskey.

Black Duck by Janet Taylor Lisle. (2006) A fourteen-year-old boy who discovers a dead body on the beach in 1929 and suspects it has something to do with bootlegging.

Bright Young Things by Anna Godberson. YA, probably skews older. Letty Larkspur and Cordelia Grey leave their Midwestern home for the bright lights of Manhattan.

Vixen by Jillima Larkin. Also looks as if it would be best for older teens and twenty-somethings. 17-year-old Gloria Carmody wants to live it up as a flapper in Jazz Age Chicago.

Choosing Up Sides by John Ritter. (1998) An athletically talented thirteen-year-old boy in 1920s Ohio whose father, a fundamentalist preacher, opposes his wish to play baseball. Recommended for ages 10-14.

The Storyteller’s Daughter by Jean Thesman. (1997) A fifteen-year-old girl in Seattle during Prohibition suspects her father may be illegally smuggling rum into the country, just before he disappears.

Chief Sunrise, John McGraw, and Me by Timothy Tocher. (2004) A fifteen-year-old boy leaves his abusive father and goes to New York in to try out for the New York Giants baseball team.

Crossing the Tracks by Barbara Stuber. In the 1920s, Iris’ emotionally distant father sends her to rural Missouri to act as a companion to an elderly woman while he heads to Kansas City with his fiance. Iris’ mother died when she was five, and it takes her some time to learn to care for Mrs. Nesbitt and see her own future with optimism.

The River by Rumer Godden. YA before there was YA, The River tells the story of a young British girl coming of age in India.

More suggestions?

1920: Events and Inventions

Oct7

January 16, 1920. Prohibition officially takes effect in the United States. The sale of alcohol is banned in an attempt to end alcohol related deaths and abuse.

January, 1920. The newly formed League of Nations meets in Paris, France. The League consists of 29 countries, and although it is the brainchild of American president Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. is not a member since the U.S. Senate has not yet ratified the Treaty of Versailles. On January 19 the Senate votes against joining the League of Nations.

April-October, 1920. In the Polish-Soviet War the Poles and the Bolsheviks (Communist Russians) fight over territory and ideology. The Treaty of Versailles had not defined the frontiers between Poland and Soviet Russia, and the revolution in Russia created turmoil with the Bolsheviks wanting to spread communism and assist the communist revolution in neighboring countries. The Polish victory secured Polish independence and made the Bolsheviks abandon their cause of international communist revolution.

August 26, 1920. The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is passed, giving women the right to vote in national elections, including the presidential election in November, 1920.

September, 1920. The first domestic radio sets come to stores in the United States; a Westinghouse radio costs $10.00.

September, 1920. Indian nationalist Mohandas Ghandi launches a peaceful noncooperation movement against British rule in India.

November, 1920. Civil war ends in Russia as the Red Army, led by Leon Trotsky, achieves victory for the Bolsheviks.

November 21, 1920. Bloody Sunday: British forces open fire on spectators and players during a football match in Dublin’s Croke Park, killing 14 Irish civilians. This violence follows the assassinations of 12 British agents by the Irish Republican Army in an earlier attack elsewhere. The country has been in a state of insurrection since Britain declared its intention to split Ireland into two states, predominantly Catholic southern Ireland and mostly Protestant Northern Ireland.

December 11, 1920. Martial law is declared in Ireland.

Slang of the 1920’s. Can you translate the terms bearcat, copacetic, cheaters, flivver, speakeasy, jitney, hooch, ducky, palooka, ritzy?

1920: Books and Literature

Oct4

Hercule Poirot appears for the first time in 1920 in the Agatha Christie novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles. He is a Belgian retired police detective and genius, living in England as a refugee from the recent war. Captain Hastings describes Poirot in chapter two of The Mysterious Affair at Styles:

“He was hardly more than five feet four inches but carried himself with great dignity. His head was exactly the shape of an egg, and he always perched it a little on one side. His moustache was very stiff and military. Even if everything on his face was covered, the tips of moustache and the pink-tipped nose would be visible.
The neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused him more pain than a bullet wound. Yet this quaint dandified little man who, I was sorry to see, now limped badly, had been in his time one of the most celebrated members of the Belgian police.”

Also published in 1920:
This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald’s debut novel was a critical success, but it has been somewhat overshadowed by his most famous and successful book, The Great Gatsby.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis. Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but it was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury’s decision. Semicolon review here.

Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Newland Archer is torn between the expectations of society and his own desire for stability and respectability and the passion and adventure he experiences with the exciting and forbidden Countess Olenska. He must choose between May Welland, the woman whom all New York society expects him to marry, and Ellen Olenska, the woman who needs his love and awakens his passion. This novel actually won the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature after Main Street was rejected.

Women in Love by D.H. Lawrence.

The Story of Doctor Dolittle by Hugh Lofting.

The Bridal Wreath by Sigrid Undset. This novel about a young Norwegian girl in the Middle Ages is the first in a trilogy of books about the life of the fictional Kristin Lavransdatter. It is a lovely set of books, well worth the time and energy that it takes to read them in translation. Sigrid Undset won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1928. Semicolon review of Kristin Lavransdatter. More on the novel here.

For more book suggestions check out Reading the Twenties by Dani Torres at A Work in Progress.

Quick Movie Notes

Sep2

Inspired by At a Hen’s Pace:

Sweet Land was recommended to me by someone, a blogger I think. It was a sweet little movie, set in 1920, in rural Minnesota, about a mail-order bride and her life and difficulties in the U.S. Since Inge is German, and the community she comes to join is mostly Norwegian, and since the U.S. has been recently at war with Germany, the difficulties are many. The kids found it somewhat confusing, but not inappropriate. Elizabeth Reaser who plays Inge is a beautiful and talented actress.

Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce and the abolition of the slave trade in England. I saw it when it first came out in theaters, but Blockbuster offered me a coupon for a free movie, not a rental, but a previously viewed movie to own. I chose Amazing Grace, and tonight we watched it again. I found it not only educational, but moving and romantic and inspirational.

Computer Guru Son and I watched the movie Frequency the other night, and both of us found it stretched our ability to suspend disbelief past the breaking point. And I’m pretty good at “six impossible things before breakfast.” The most interesting thing about the movie, for LOST fans, is that one of the main characters is played by actress Elizabeth Mitchell who plays Juliet in LOST, and that the main character is named Jack Shepherd. Also, the movie is about time travel, or at least communication through time. Coincidence or is there some connection between this movie and the writers on LOST?

Speaking of movies, here’s a list from Inside Catholic of 50 Best Catholic Movies of All Time. I found it useful.

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

Aug17

This is America–a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn and dairies and little groves.
The town is, in our tale, called “Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.” But its Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, and not very differently would it be told Up New York State or in the Carolina Hills.
Main Street is the climax of civilization.

So begins Sinclair Lewis’s novelistic critique of the manners, mores, traditions of Main Street, USA. Published in 1920, Main Street is proto-feminist, liberal in its politics (to contrast with the no doubt conservative politics of 1920’s small town businessmen), and agnostic in its religious views. Our protagonista, Carol Kennicott becomes the wife of a small town doctor, and finds, to her dismay, that she cannot find a place for herself at all in Gopher Prairie. At one point she calls herself a “hexagonal peg.” (“Solution: find the hexagonal hole,” she says.) She tries to reform the town, to bring culture and refinement to her neighbors and to her husband, then to reform herself to appreciate village life, but all to no avail. For 479 pages Carol struggles, fights, regroups, hides, ventures out again, runs away, and finally resigns herself to being the perpetual aginner, in an overwhelming sea of mediocrity and traditional (hypocritical) family values.

“I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith.”

Through the entire book, Carol mostly stays just this side of being an obnoxious, supercilious snob, and when she crosses the line, she knows it, admits it, and laughs at herself. It’s worth reading the book for those moments of self-deprecation and realism. Carol never will admit that anything about Main Street or anyone who lives on Main Street is worthy or objectively beautiful, but she finds that city people and office life are much the same as Main Street and its denizens. The best parts of the book are Lewis’s observations, voiced through Carol, of the contradictory ways we think about ourselves and others. His psychological insight into the mind of a young married woman is keen and humorous. Carol tries to read poetry with her prosaic doctor husband, makes various people she meets into heroes, and then finds that they, too, are rather prosaic and ordinary. She’s something of an idealist and unwilling to become a cynic.

The writing and the tone are well done. It’s no wonder that Lewis won the Nobel Prize, ten years after the publication of Main Street, in 1930. However, Lewis’s inability to see any good at all on Main Street makes the book and the world it inhabits a rather unhappy and tedious place to spend reading time. Which Carol Kennicott would say is a good description of Main Street and of Gopher Prairie.

But I still maintain that there are a few kindred spirits in the wasteland, that some church-goers are both thoughtful and sincere, that there is more depth, and even poetry, to the average Main Streeter than Lewis and his mouthpiece would credit. Sinclair Lewis became an expert at showing up the limitations and hypocrisies of American life (see Babbit, Elmer Gantry, Arrowsmith), but he never got past that antipathy to traditional American values to see anything worth appreciating and preserving in the American experience.

Interesting side note from Wikipedia: “Main Street was initially awarded the 1921 Pulitzer Prize for literature, but was rejected by the Board of Trustees, who overturned the jury’s decision. The prize went, instead, to Edith Wharton for The Age of Innocence. In 1926 Lewis refused the Pulitzer when he was awarded it for Arrowsmith.”

Children’s Fiction of 2008: The Hope Chest by Karen Schwabach

Nov12

Heavy on the historical, light on the fiction. I think kids will spot the Educational Purpose in this story of the Women’s Suffrage movement a mile away, and if they’re interested in being educated and in the history of how women got the vote, they’ll enjoy the book. If not, then not.

I’m in the first camp. I like history. I like my history encased in fiction, even if it’s fiction with an overt message. The Hope Chest is fiction with a purpose. I learned a lot about the fight for ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the one giving women the right to vote. For instance the last state to ratify the amendment was Tennessee, and that’s where much of the action of this book takes place. Suffs (suffragettes in favor of giving women the vote) and Antis (traditional women and men who are against ratification of the nineteenth amendment) fight it out inside and outside the Tennessee legislature as the members of that body consider ratification. The political battle includes liberal amounts of bribery, illegal liquor, dining and dancing, and skulduggery.

The story that frames and weaves in and out of this political history is one of an eleven year old girl, Violet Mayhew, who runs away from hoe because her parents are treating her unfairly. She goes to New York to find her sister, Chloe, a women’s rights activist and nurse-in-training, meets another runaway, Myrtle, and they both end up in Nashville as the ratification battle shifts into high gear. Myrtle is a black orphan girl who doesn’t want to become a servant just as Violet doesn’t want to became a lady, and Myrtle’s race adds to the complications the girls face in the segregated South of the 1920’s. Author Schwabach uses all these characters, as well as an anti-war activist and labor union member, to represent the controversies and injustices of the time period. The Suffs are patronized and treated shamefully by the Antis and their allies. Legislators take bribes to change their votes and run away to avoid having to vote on suffrage. Mr. Martin, the labor unionist, is arrested by a couple of Palmer agents. And Myrtle is denied access to train cars, restaurants, hotels and almost every other convenience and accommodation.

Ms. Schwabach packs a lot of history into one book: Jim Crow laws, the 1918 influenza epidemic, World War I and the anti-war movement, the advent of Henry Ford’s automobile, the Palmer raids, Prohibition, hobos riding the rails, Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations, the labor movement, socialism in the U.S., and of course, women’s suffrage. It’s a lot to put into one story, and as I said, it gets somewhat didactic at times. The book contained lots of feminist propaganda, which I mostly agreed with, but not everyone will. Even if you don’t agree with the entire feminist movement, what’s a little edification and instruction among friends and history buffs?

Read and learn.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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