Book Review: TO SAY NOTHING OF THE DOG by Connie Willis

Connie Willis’ To Say Nothing of the Dog introduces readers to a near future when Oxford historians routinely travel through time for investigative purposes. Their work is underwritten by a wealthy, overbearing American – Lady Schrapnell – whose pet project is the rebuilding of the Coventry Cathedral to reproduce its appearance on the day her revered Victorian-era grandmother saw it for the first time, and thereby changed the course of her life, as well as the whole family’s. But the small-scale interactions of the historians and their environment set up the possibility of large-scale disasters down the proverbial road: like the possibility of the Allies losing World War II.

The book represents a loving homage to Jerome K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, whose subtitle was “To Say Nothing of the Dog.” Ned, the time traveler tasked with finding an artifact from the Coventry Cathedral called “the bishop’s bird stump,” has made so many time jumps that he has a form of the bends, and misunderstands the mission he’s on. And like Jerome’s crew, Ned and new found friends Terence St. Trewes and his absent minded Oxford don Professor Peddick travel the Thames in a skiff, and find more adventure than the relaxation they so desperately need.

I think it’s taken me seemingly forever to review the book because this Hugo-award winning novel defies simple description. Yes, it’s a time travel story. But after reading it, I’d probably categorize it under “humor,” before “science fiction.” Because unlike other novels that might focus on the mechanics of voyages in time and space, this book shoves those aside, focusing instead on the truly hilarious consequences of unintended actions. I adored the way Willis took a beloved classic and retrofitted it – even allowing the characters from the original to make a cameo appearance! Oh, and there’s even a couple of love stories.

In fact, if there’s any downside to the book, it’s that Willis seems to gloss over some information about the “world” she’s created that the reader could really use. For example, what is the new time traveling ability based on? Why do individuals react to it so differently? If I was in a mood to be particularly persnickety I’d call it somewhat troublesome that the book’s ending reveals that one of the science fiction “premises” the story was based on was completely unfounded. But it feels like quibbling, because those things didn’t diminish my enjoyment of the book.

If you’re looking for a light and amusing sci-fi title, this is definitely it. I’d also suggest it to those who love contemporary humor titles, especially Douglas Adams (although I’m certainly not promising you’ll love it as much as Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) and Christopher Moore (and I’d call this a clear winner over his Fluke). I was planning on counting this for Carl V’s Science Fiction Experience in January, but couldn’t get my act together to get the review up in time. Reading this did inspire me to seek out a few more sci fi titles, so it’s still a win!

In 140 Characters or Less: Time travel hijinks, in search of a cantankerous cat.

Book Review and Simul-blog: James Hamilton-Paterson's Cooking with Fernet Branca

Take a snarky British gourmand; mix with a bohemian composer of Eastern European extraction; add a self-important British pop star and an aging Italian movie director, each with delusions of grandeur; ply with a seemingly unending supply of an obscure liqueur; place on the top of an Italian mountain and watch what happens next! This recipe for disaster is the essence of James Hamilton-Paterson’s Cooking with Fernet Branca.

Cooking with Fernet Branca is the funniest thing I have read in a long time. So funny that I wound up with tears running down my face. So funny I gasped while trying to read passages aloud to explain said tears. Not to be maudlin or anything, but ever since Douglas Adams left this world far too young, I have honestly believed no novel could ever make me laugh that hard again. It was a delight to find out how very wrong I was.

Of course, the problem with humor is that it is so darn personal – why did Gerald Samper and his former-soviet nemesis Marta crack me up so? In my case, it all comes down to a subtle, sarcastic and deadpan writing style that only a few writers can deliver on. And almost all of them are British. At one point, Marta describes the take over of her home (and her neighbor’s yard) by an Italian film crew:

And all the time there came suggestive sounds from outside and glimpses through the window of poor Gerry’s fence being forcefully dealt with. There were some loud splintering noises which did not at all imply intactness. There were also some blasphemies new to me – the men were all-too-clearly native Tuscans – the gist being that the Madonna was unpopular for having yielded her virginity to a series of farmyard animals and the absent Gerry for having used a nail gun instead of an ordinary hammer. p. 182

James Hamilton-Paterson wrote Cooking with Fernet Branca with alternating narration between “Gerry” and Marta. Amazingly, both “voices” are hilarious, barreling along the path to what they believe can only be glory, Marta through her dissonant musicality and Gerald through his bizarre gustatory endeavors.

Hamilton-Paterson is obviously a great observer of contemporary culture, and he skewers a number of trends in this book – particularly fusion cooking. What else to make of recipes like Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream, Mussels in Chocolate and Otter with Lobster Sauce? But it’s Gerald Samper’s self-seriousness that takes it from ludicrous to comic genius. And that’s what makes James Hamilton-Paterson such a fabulous writer.

This was my first book for the Europa Challenge, but it is already making me rethink my list. I don’t know if I can wait to read Hamilton-Paterson’s follow-up titles, Amazing Disgrace and Rancid Pansies. This book is absolutely recommended for lovers of British humor – if The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is your idea of a great time, read this book!

I am simul-blogging today! Both Jess at Desperado Penguin and Colleen at Books in the City read this book with me, as part of the Europa Challenge. I can’t wait to see their take on Gerald and Marta.

Oops! Forgot to put this book into one sentence: Bitter liquor makes strange bedfellows.




Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book (novel, nonfiction) reviews, cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, fabulous quotations, photographs. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting!

Audiobook Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

If a book can be distilled to a chapter, a chapter distilled to a sentence, and a sentence distilled to a word, then the word for Winifred Watson’s Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is “charming.” I listened to Frances McDormand’s narration of the audiobook, and I have to say it was wonderful.

Miss Pettigrew is the literary equivalent of a screwball comedy, and it’s easy to see why Persephone Books chose to pluck it from obscurity. Unemployed and unaccomplished governess Guinevere Pettigrew reports to what she believes is an interview for another dull position, only to be thrust into the glittering high society world of actress Delysia LaFosse. Miss Pettigrew quickly becomes an ally to Miss LaFosse, and an asset to her circle of friends, because of her quick wits and straight-forward style.

The book takes place over a one-day period, and we watch the dowdy, downtrodden Miss Pettigrew blossom with every small triumph. She can hardly believe her luck, and dreads the end of the wonderful day, when she believes all her fun must come to an end:

For years she had lived in other people’s houses, and had never been an inmate in the sense of belonging. And now, in a few short hours, she was blissfully and serenely at home. She was accepted. They talked to her. And how they talked. She had never heard the like before. Their ridiculous inconsequence. Every sentence was like a heady cocktail. The whole flavor of the remarks gave her a wicked feeling of sophistication. And the way she kept her end up. No one would ever dream that she was new to it. “I never believed,” thought Miss Pettigrew with pride, “that I had it in me.” (1:54:58, Audiobook).

You can’t help but root for Miss Pettigrew to embrace this new lifestyle on a permanent basis!

I imagine this was a rather racy book when it was first published in 1938, what with Miss LaFosse maintaining three love affairs at one time – I suppose that’s what makes it feel so “modern,” overall. However, it also contains some shocking cultural signs of its times, including ethnic slurs aimed at Italians and Jews, that are decidedly out of step in 2011. The character of Miss Pettigrew – the spinster who’s sure life has passed her by, only to find she may have one last chance at happiness – is truly timeless.

Frances McDormand, who played Miss Pettigrew in the 2008 movie (I haven’t seen it, but would really like to), reads this book beautifully. You can practically watch prim Miss Pettigrew’s hair come down through her narration. The men are gruff, but not overdone. The women’s voices are all very unique, and capture their personalities perfectly. This was really a perfect match between book and reader – McDormand’s comic timing enhances the book tremendously. I highly recommend it for those who love literary fiction, humor, and fiction about women. And if you’re thinking of trying an audiobook for the first time, I would definitely suggest this one – it will give you an idea of how pleasant the experience of listening to a book can be. This is one of only four Persephones available as audiobooks, and I certainly hope they will do more.

This book counts for a Life Stage in the What's in a Name 4 Challenge. Thanks to Beth Fish Reads for hosting. I'll be posting a link to this review on Audiobook Jukebox – if you’re looking for audiobook reviews, that’s the best place to start!

Book Review: Supreme Courtship

Humor is about the hardest thing to translate. You have to really understand a culture to crystallize the humor in it. Christopher Buckley, ultimate Washington insider,* really understands life “inside the beltway.”** Which is why he manages to make “nine old farts sending footnotes to each other” –a.k.a. the US Supreme Court – seem hilarious! Well, at least hilarious some of the time. And maybe that’s all you can expect from political satire.

The premise here is great. President Vanderkamp, a terribly earnest and therefore thoroughly disliked Ohioan, becomes miffed when two of the finest jurists of the age are turned down for a seat on the Supreme Court because Dexter Miller, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wants the job himself. Throwing caution to the wind for once, he nominates TV judge Pepper Cartwright, a wisecracking, gun-toting, Prada-wearing Texas icon to the Court.*** Along with the arcane nature of Constitutional law, Buckley also expounds on reality TV, populism, and the nature of marriage. There’s something here for everyone, especially news junkies.

Part of the book works beautifully. There’s one exchange among justices made up almost entirely of Latin legalese that had me laughing out loud in the library. And Silvio Santamaria, clearly a send-up of the most despicable justice with whom I share an alma mater – Antonin Scalia – is a brilliant tribute to excess:

He was brilliant, with a wit as caustic as drain cleaner; good company if you were in his camp and look out if you weren’t. Silvio Santamaria didn’t take yes for an answer. He didn’t disagree—he violently opposed. Didn’t demur—he went for your throat. Didn’t nitpick—disemboweled you and flossed his teeth with your intestines. First-timers appearing before the Court for oral argument had been known to wet their pants and even faint under his withering questions and commentary (p. 71).

I actually hope Buckley gets back to Santamaria in another book – the character deserved more time!

Unfortunately, not all of the book hangs together that well. The romantic angle of the novel was weak – so weak it made me squirm a bit. And Latina bombshell Ramona Alvilar represented a very nasty and hackneyed stereotype. At times it seemed like a long time between laughs. But then, this is a novel about the Supreme Court, where things change at a glacial pace. Perhaps that’s what he was going for?

If you like Buckley’s other books, you definitely will not be disappointed with Supreme Courtship, as I wasn’t. It just wasn’t as sharp as Thank You for Smoking, or as gut-wrenchingly funny as Boomsday, but it does represent a broadening of social themes for Buckley, which I enjoyed. A solid 3 out of 5 stars – probably 4 if you’re the kind of person who actually enjoys watching 24-hour news channels when there’s no particular disaster to follow.

This counts for the Book Blogger Abroad 2011 Challenge, as it was recommended by yours truly! So thanks to Judith at leeswammes for hosting!

*Yes, Christopher Buckley’s work stands on its own, but it’s hard to separate his political sensibility from the fact that his father was William F. Buckley, Jr., which makes him a true American political scion. I probably wouldn’t agree with either man on anything, including day of the week, just on principle. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that Buckley was raised on this stuff, and can be funny about it.

**That’s Washington, DC, for those of us outside the beltway. People in DC are so inside the beltway they don’t even realize that other cities HAVE beltways.

*** Think Sarah Palin on the Supreme Court and you have the idea, although Buckley actually finished the book before John McCain plucked the woman who could see Russia from her house out of Alaska and onto the national scene.

No splash from Fluke

I had no sooner finished the hauntingly beautiful Kitchen when the library sent me one of those annoying notices that indicates that even though you have taken out a book in good faith for a particular amount of time, some other patron would now like it, so your rights to said book are going to be coming to a close sooner than you had anticipated. I had planned for Christopher Moore’s Fluke, Or I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings to fulfill part of task 15.1 in the Seasonal Reading Challenge, a very clever old or new & borrowed or blue task. Since I had never read a Christopher Moore title (although I have had Lamb in my TBR pile for some time), its cover qualified it for the new & blue part of the task. Since I didn’t feel like scrapping the book completely, I decided to squeeze this book in before it had to go back to the library.

Maybe not my best idea.

Let me be clear – I didn’t dislike Fluke because I’m uncomfortable with the genre. I LOVE science fiction and absurd comedy. I firmly believe that there are still people who tell the story about the crazy young woman they saw standing on the LIRR between Woodside and Huntington in 1991 (it was a summer Friday, I couldn’t get a seat), laughing until she cried while reading The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. And the zanier the better. My darling husband once found me on the couch at 3 in the morning, gasping so hard with laughter while reading Boomsday that I couldn’t catch my breath (he rushed down the stairs thinking I was having an asthma attack!). Really, all I could do was snort! So even though my last few titles have been literary in nature, I was honestly looking forward to changing pace and sharing a hearty laugh with Christopher Moore at some point this summer.

I admit it, I was disappointed. But I haven’t quite figured out why. Maybe it was all the hype. Christopher Moore’s writing is so often compared to Douglas Adams’, but I just never found those lines where absurdity becomes hilarity. The character-to-character banter was self-consciously witty, but not sparkling. And all the sphincter references were just gross, not funny.

It may be the characterizations that turned me off. Nate Quinn, the cetacean biologist whose work on whale song brings him up against some mysterious undersea forces, is a likeable character, in that absent-minded professory way that often appeals to me – you could say I know the type. Clay Demodocus is the quintessential heroic sidekick, and Kona is a thoroughly likeable Jersey-boy-cum-Haole-stoner. Research assistant Amy is another story – she was written too snarkily to be a truly likeable smart ass. Ex-wife Libby and her life partner Margaret are caricatures, and without giving too much away, Moore’s rationale for the crystallization of Libby’s lesbian identity sounds like it was written from a point of view that my girlfriends might describe as “compensatory.” I don’t tend to love books where the women aren’t treated sympathetically, and I felt that was the case here.

Much has been made in other reviews about the environmental message of the book. I do believe that saving whales is a very good idea. But because of the ending, the message becomes a threat: SAVE THE WHALES OR ELSE! Not exactly a bio-diversity Kumbaya, is it?

This is a fantasy, so some of the completely ridiculous explanations that make the plot go are part of the fun. And there were a couple of funny bits – the part about not being able to throw a coconut in Lahaina without hitting a Ph.D. was good. But I never laughed out loud. Or even came close to snorting. And that’s when I know a book in this genre didn’t work for me. Still, it could have been bad timing - Kitchen was a tough act to follow - or not Moore’s best effort. I’m not taking Lamb off my TBR pile – but I’ll definitely give it a lighter segue than I gave Fluke.