Book Review: THE FORRESTS by Emily Perkins

I love big novels about small things. Because no matter how strange the events and circumstances surrounding individuals are, it’s a person’s relationship to those events that imbues them with meaning in the end. I think my predilection for those kinds of small insights in writing explains why I was so totally captivated by Emily Perkins’ latest novel, The Forrests.

Lee and Frank Forrest grew up in wealthy households, but by the time we meet them the money they had counted on has been squandered away. They leave the US with their four children – Michael, Evelyn, Dorothy and Ruth – for an unconventional life in New Zealand. The third-person narrative focuses on the two middle children, Evelyn and Dot, and their attempts to make a life for themselves despite the uncertain, hand-to-mouth existence their parents have provided – a lifestyle that seems to be fine with Frank, but which is increasingly difficult for the children’s mother, Lee. It also focuses on Daniel, a child taken in by the Forrests, whose presence at first anchors the family, and then pulls it apart.

The Forrests live a patched-together life, which Perkins emphasizes in the patched-together chapters of the novel. I’m not usually of a fan of non-linear narrative, but in this case the device gave me real sympathy with the Forrest siblings, whose circumstances were constantly changing because of their parents’ inability to plan for them. I had to figure where I was and what had happened to get me there at the beginning of each chapter, reorienting myself to new circumstances like an often-uprooted child must have to do. At times, I admit, it was slow going, but it kept me focused, trying to understand their world.

To say that The Forrests is beautifully written doesn’t really do it justice. Reading it is like driving a circuitous route through varied terrain, each vista totally gorgeous, but not wholly connected to the last. Perkins’ words spill together, leaving the reader awash in emotion, stretching to reach the plot beneath it:

The mention of his name made Eve want to rip a hunk of grass from the earth. This could not be done, and nothing could be said to her sister. Better to bury Daniel because face it, she’d had no right to him and she’d wanted him for so long and followed him across the world and by anyone’s standards she probably deserved to have him leave her but she could never, never tell Dot. How to know whether the secrecy – really the lying -- came from love, or shame, or the sheer envy of having been the one left out by those two for all that time? They’d never talked about it but she knew, like she knew Michael being a pot fiend when their parents insisted it was just that he was shy. Could she judge whether or not Daniel had been worth it? She was frightened that, if she looked in her heart, she would discover that he was, and would have to face up to what that meant, now he was gone. “Actually, I should get home. I’m on dinner. What should I make?”

I cannot recommend this book highly enough for lovers of contemporary literary fiction. Perkins is inventive and daring with language, describing in extraordinary detail what might have been ordinary, even tawdry lives, if they had not been examined closely. I will definitely be seeking out her previous books.

I read this book – albeit in delayed fashion – as part of TLC Book Tour. I received a galley of the book in return for my honest opinion. Many thanks to Lisa Munley at TLC for shifting around some deadlines to accommodate my unexpectedly difficult schedule this summer. I’m glad to be back blogging, and I’m looking forward to seeing what has been going on while I’ve been away!

For other reviews of this book, check the TLC links here.

Audiobook Review: COLOUR SCHEME by Ngaio Marsh

I fell in love with Ngaio Marsh last year when I read Vintage Murder for the Vintage Mystery Challenge. How can you not love a writer who devises a death-by-champagne-bottle plot? So when I put together this year’s list for the Vintage Mystery Challenge 2012, I created a “Vicious Vacations” theme (murders that take place in a location I’d kill to visit!), and knew I had to put another of Marsh’s New Zealand-based books on the list. The only one I was able to find on audible was Colour Scheme, so I downloaded it. And it finally came up on my gym cue last week. The fact that I logged an extra hour and a half on the treadmill indicates that my second Marsh title didn’t disappoint.

Maurice Questing is an insufferable, conniving, lascivious man. A long-term resident of Wai Atta Tapu*, a small thermal spring resort, it’s clear from the beginning that Questing has some kind of hold over Colonel and Mrs. Claire, the stuffy but good hearted expats who own the spa. The book takes place during World War II, and the daily blackouts and shipping reports that were part of the daily life of New Zealanders at the time feature prominently in the book. The setting allows Marsh to put together a fascinating group of characters and possible motives for Questing’s inevitable – and quite gruesome – murder.

In addition to the Claires and Questing, other expats include the Claire’s adult children, ugly duckling Barbara and son Simon, who is working to perfect his Morse code in advance of being called up to the air force. There’s also the famous (and high-maintenance) Shakespearean actor who is taking a cure of lumbago in the mud baths, Geoffrey Gaunt, along with his entourage: personal secretary named Dikon Bell, a New Zealander, and his British dresser and man-Friday, Calley. Another guest at the hot springs, Septimus Falls, is totally agreeable, but evasive about his background. Spa handyman Smith is known to hate Questing openly, even accusing him of attempted homicide.

One of the things that made this book particularly interesting was the inclusion of Maori characters, including a retired Member of Parliament, Rua. Marsh treated the Maori characters and their traditions with dignity, while still illustrating the tensions between the three cultures: Brits, “colonials,” and native New Zealanders. One of the possible premises for Questing’s murder stems directly from the Maori element in the novel, since he is accused of stealing Maori artifacts for illicit sale to collectors. The second premise is indirectly related to the Maori, as there appears to be a fifth column spy signaling from the Maori reserve lands where Questing is known to wander in the evenings.

I never figured out the murderer, in part because I didn’t pay as much attention to the title as I should have. There are a couple of interesting twists toward the end, and more than a few red herrings, but I love it when I think back and the solution to a mystery was difficult but fair, which has been the case in both of the Marsh titles I have read. I’d call it good fun.

I am finally on the board for another challenge, Vintage Mystery Reading Challenge 2012, hosted by Bev at My Reader’s Block! I have some catching up to do, but that’s what summer is for, isn’t it?

*An apology – since I listened to the audiobook, and couldn’t find a complete list of characters online, I have likely spelled some names wrong. I have gone with the most common spellings.

Book Review: Vintage Murder

When I decided to take The Golden Girls Challenge in Bev’s Vintage Mystery Challenge at My Reader’s Block, Ngaio Marsh’s Vintage Murder was one of the first books to go on my reading list. Murder-by-Champagne-bottle sounded so darned classy. But what I hadn’t anticipated was the technical complexity of the mystery presented by Marsh, which made the book quite unique among the others I’ve read for this challenge.

The story is set in New Zealand – famed detective Roderick Alleyn is taking an extended holiday, apparently recovering from some surgery. He winds up sharing a train carriage with a troop of London actors, one of whom recognizes him from a previous case. They befriend him, inviting him to the opening night of their performance and the after-party, celebrating the birthday of company star, Carolyn Dacres. However the party comes to a frothy halt when the theatrically planned release of a jeroboam of Champagne is re-rigged to kill the party host, Dacres’ husband and the owner of the company, Alfred Meyer.

I admit was a bit concerned when the book started with both a diagram of the theater and an extensive list of characters. And I wasn’t wrong in figuring out what this meant – the mystery gave me a lot to track. Marsh apparently started her career in theater, and her extensive knowledge of stagecraft is the key to the murder, as well as its solution. Having no such knowledge, though, I had to go back over the details of the weights and counterweights used to raise and drop scenery more than once. But don't let that put you off. Marsh must have known that readers might find the arcane nature of the crime a bit off-putting, so she helps out the reader with some well-placed letters from Alleyn to his buddy Detective Inspector Fox at Scotland Yard.

Like many books from the time period, this book contains some disturbingly racist and colonialist elements. I’m still amazed by how easily characters in early 20th century novels discuss the inferiority of “brown” people and “colonials,” although I understand it represents the prevailing sentiment of the time – and I agree there’s value in remembering that. There’s particularly dreadful treatment in this book of an English-educated Maori physician, who’s referred to by a local policeman as “ninety per cent civilised.” – and it’s clearly meant to be a compliment. It really made me squirm.

That aside, I think this is a vintage mystery that many readers will love discovering again. I’d especially recommend it for those readers who enjoy a complicated plot. This was my first Ngaio Marsh title, and I definitely plan to read more of her works. So thanks once again to Bev at My Reader’s Block, the host of the Vintage Mystery Challenge. I’ve had a ton of fun with that challenge this summer!