“Old Yeller” by Fred Gipson

 

158 pages, Harper, ISBN-13: 978-0060115456

Show me a man or boy who was not traumatized by Old Yeller and I will show you a corpse. For some of us the opening sentence – “We call him Old Yeller” – is enough to get us blubbering away as we recall the story (nope, not gonna do it). Fred Gipson’s 1956 bestseller has become one of literature’s great weepies, exploiting that most pure of relationships: a boy’s love for his dog (I am NOT crying right now). Set in Texas in the late 1860s, the novel begins with a frank prophecy of the emotional pain to come: our narrator, 14-year-old Travis Coates, remembers the moment a dog strays into their cabin on Birdsong Creek, seemingly out of nowhere: “He made me so mad at first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks. That’s how much I’d come to think of the big yeller dog” (I’m keeping it together…keeping it together…)

Much like Charlotte’s Web (review coming next month), Old Yeller exposes children to life and love utilizing beautiful prose, deep emotions, vivid descriptions – and profound loss (still dry-eyed, damnit). The book is as crisp, laconic, deadpan and straight as any classic cowboy/rancher story could be; yeah, it tells the story of Old Yeller, but even more it tells the story of ranching in Texas in the 1860s and it does so in the most clear-eyed, upstanding, realistic way possible. Travis is as authentic as a mesquite switch and this is a classic coming-of-age story; every line is a gem of no-nonsense western storytelling and it is filled with multitudes of little incidents and bits of ranch life that ring true and inspirational. Hell, even Travis’ realization of the extent of his affection for his annoying little brother after a bear attack makes the book worth reading, even if no Old Yeller had ever showed up.

NOT crying.

Be warned, however; if you were raised on the (it must be said) excellent Disney adaptation from 1957, then the amount of animal cruelty described in the book may come as a shock (for that it is a faithful adaptation, which it should be, seeing as Fred Gipson wrote the screenplay). This is a great example of showing what good things in life might come your way, if you let them, and showing that in life one cannot have the good without the bad – that wasn’t a sob – and that, for all of life’s many challenges and hurdles – didn’t gasp just then – you cannot shut yourself off from the world in expectation of never feeling pain. Old Yeller is yet another example of how a past masterpiece can teach us so much more than any modern-day piece of Woke trash could ever hope to, and how, for however many trials and tribulations we may suffer – here we go – life is for the living and suffering makes us stronger…

…ah, hell, where’s the Kleenex…

“The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie” by Alan Bradley

 

384 pages, Bantam Books, ISBN-13978-0385343497

So, back in June of 2022, I got a new job at the Fraser Public Library in beautiful Fraser, Michigan, and one of my assigned duties was coordinating the Mysteries & Munchies book club in which a new mystery book is read every month and we discuss it while chowing down on junk food. A job right up my alley. One of the first books I assigned for the group was Alan Bradley’s first-ever mystery, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, and am I ever glad that I did. In a nutshell: it is 1950 in England and Flavia de Luce, third daughter of a minor gentry family and aspiring chemist, finds herself in the middle of a series of events that have struck Buckshaw, the crumbling manor house her family has called home for centuries. Oh, and she’s only 11-years-old.

These prototypical eccentric members of the English gentry consist of the father, Colonel de Luce, a distant man still grieving for his dead wife (Harriet de Luce, the mother, disappeared in a mountain climbing accident when Flavia was an infant) and sisters 17-year-old Ophelia and 13-year-old Daphne. Things around Buckshaw become interesting when a dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak…while mere hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches as he takes his dying breath – and is absolutely delighted: “I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn’t. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life”.

And that, my Dear Readers, is Flavia de Luce for ya, one of the most interesting, unique and engaging heroines I have ever read about. To call her “precocious” would be an understatement, for as the youngest of three daughters to an old family in good standing in the English peerage, our Flavia has always had it good and sees no reason not to go about her business as if the world existed for her alone to glory in. But she has reason to feel so, as her intelligence, her drive and her moxy are second to none, and as she pursues her own investigative lines of inquiry (quite independent of Inspector Hewitt, the patient if put-upon detective ostensibly in charge of the case), we cheer her on and follow her reasoning as easily as if we were there ourselves.

Which is another thing to like about this book and this character: as intelligent and tenacious as Flavia is, she is still realistically drawn. While her knowledge is the result of aristocratic homeschooling and self-taught discovery, I never got the sense that it was unrealistic or over-the-top; Flavia knows a lot, but she doesn’t know everything. Her lines of inquiry are the result of logic and reasoning, not dumb luck or convenient events. And the adults in her world – her father, the folks of the village, the inspector and other policemen – treat her as they would any other 11-year-old girl in 1950s England: with polite contempt, something Flavia feels and is infuriated by. But, as the old saying goes, she doesn’t get mad, she gets even.

She goes charging around Bishop’s Lacey on Gladys (her bicycle, inherited from her long-lost mother) while going into rhapsodies about her love of chemistry and exhibiting that annoying preteen quality of being able to notice things you wish they wouldn’t and arguing constantly in support of their viewpoint – two qualities needed by tenacious detectives everywhere. A truly well-realized and believable character, Flavia de Luce captures the reader as much for her mistakes as for her successes, and as she goes about her business in attempting to rescue her father from an accusation of murder, she does so in a spirit and a style all her own, and we glory in her pride of knowledge and confidence right along with her.

Should The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie prove as popular with the book club as it has with me, I fully expect to read the further adventures of Flavia de Luce – precocious girl, aspiring chemist and accidental detective – in the very near future.

“In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods” by Galen Rowell

 

326 pages, Sierra Club Books, ISBN-13: 978-0871561848 

Galen Rowell’s In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods was first published in 1978 and is an account of the 1975 American K2 Expedition’s attempt on the northwest ridge of that peak, interspersed with the history of mountaineering in the Karakoram Range of the western Himalayas and with earlier accounts of K2 attempts (some successful; most not). Be advised, though, for almost the entire book deals with the myriad problems and disputes between the members of the climbing team, their porters and so forth; as stated in the Foreword, “the book is about the personalities of those who climb” and not about the climb itself.

This is itself ironic, for after all the team discussions about the possibly negative implications of having a woman – Dianne Roberts, the wife of the leader, Jim Whittaker – on the team, she really figured very little in the disputes and quarrels; it was also ironic that there was still a lot of dissention and miscommunication amongst the team members on the actual expedition, even after the team expelled Alex Bertulis, due to lack of confidence in his ability to be a team player. After a while one finds these (overly detailed) accounts of bickering to be boring and welcomes the interspacing of the historical accounts and those of the more interesting concurrent expeditions.

But all is not lost, for the excellent color plates and black-and-white photographs help the reader to forget his unhappiness with the detailed personality problems of the 1975 expedition. Looking at these images of the highest spot on the planet is enough to make one forget that the humans clinging to the sides of K2 were pretty miserable. In fact, after reading about the latest dust-up between this or that unhappy person I often just flipped through the book for the pictures, the people be damned. So if you find In the Throne Room of the Mountain Gods someplace cheap – like I did – by all means pick it up, for the pictures and nothing else.

“The Mitford Murders” by Jessica Fellowes

 

448 pages, Minotaur Books, ISBN-13: 978-1250170798

I have learned that there is a special way to read a mystery; one must be patient and allow the story to roll itself out and not be in a hurry to find the killer. There is a pace that must be maintained, a stately progression from the crime being committed, to the investigators uncovering facts and discovering clues, to the piecing together of said facts and clues and finally to the denouement in which all is revealed and the guilty are brought to justice. So my typical past complaint with mysteries – that they take too damn long to come to fruition – is rather invalid, as that is simply the nature of the beast. Sorry.

And so that is, naturally, the nature of The Mitford Murders by Jessica Fellowes. It’s 1920, and Louisa Cannon dreams of escaping her life of poverty in London. Her salvation is a position within the Mitford household at Asthall Manor in the Oxfordshire countryside where she will become nursemaid, chaperone and confidante to the Mitford sisters, especially 16-year-old Nancy, an acerbic, bright young woman. But then a nurse – Florence Nightingale Shore, goddaughter of her famous namesake – is killed on a train in broad daylight, and Louisa and Nancy find themselves entangled in the crimes of a murderer who will do anything to hide their secret.

As murder mysteries go, The Mitford Murders is serviceable. There are several intersecting story threads featuring a diverse array of characters from differing backgrounds as they all seek whatever it is they’re after, whether a new life away from a poor family background, to advancement in the police force, to freedom from overbearing parents – the characters are all well-drawn and not merely cardboard cutouts to act as stand-ins. The mystery is solid and the ending, I thought, was satisfying, as all of the pieces seemed to fit together logically and the villain was suitably disguised until the very end and wasn’t unrealistic, either.

I do, however, have one enormous complaint, and that is the title: one would think that a book called The Mitford Murders would have starred the Mitfords themselves – y’know, David Freeman-Mitford, 2^nd Baron Redesdale, his wife Sydney Bowles, and Nancy, Pamela, Thomas, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Oh, Nancy is in it for certain as she and Louisa start the investigatory ball rolling, and her parents are part of the plot, too. But I was expecting, I guess, a mystery involving all of the girls (and Tom) and was looking forward to seeing these extraordinary people brought back to life, as it were, solving a murder of all things.

But…no. it’s just Nancy and Louisa, along with Guy Sullivan, a railroad cop with a thing for Louisa, while the sisters (and brother), still children all, are relegated to background status. If you’re looking for a solid mystery then by all means The Mitford Murders will do you just fine. So long as you don’t mind a lack of Mitfords.

“The Star Wars Sketchbooks”

 

“The Star Wars Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston

96 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345273802

“The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston & Nilo Rodis-Jamero

95 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345288363

“The Return of the Jedi Sketchbook”, Joe Johnston and Nilo Rodis-Jamero with additional material by Ralph McQuarrie and Norman Reynolds

96 pages, Ballantine Books, ISBN-13: 978-0345309594

The three Star Wars Sketchbooks – The Star Wars Sketchbook, The Empire Strikes Back Sketchbook and The Return of the Jedi Sketchbook – are awesome. AWESOME, I tell you. Each is filled with preliminary sketches of the various vehicles, characters and equipment that were made for the relative movie in question, and it is absolutely fascinating to see how each evolved under the artist’s pencil. Just seeing how the TIE fighters were originally imagined, or the development of the ATAT’s heads, or how Boba Fett’s armor changed through the process, or how Death Star II changed during production – and then imagining how different the movies would have been had earlier ideas had made the final cut. And to have them all at one’s fingertips made my childhood nighttime reading that much more memorable.

It is rather humbling, too, seeing the sheer creative power that these films brought together and how these artists were just as responsible for the look, feel and success of the original and best franchise (yeah, I said it). In addition to poor writing, forgettable characters and woke politics, I believe that another reason the prequels and second trilogy failed so badly is that the various vehicles, characters and equipment were boring as all hell. I can’t remember the look or the vibe of a single one from any of the other movies and suspect that nobody else can, either. From the Millennium Falcon to the X-Wings and TIE Fighters to the Snow Speeders to Slave 1 to the B-Wings to the TIE Interceptors – nothing in the new movies compares to these unique and brilliantly rendered creations, and the world knows it.

“The Mother-in-Law” by Sally Hepworth

352 pages, St. Martin’s Press, ISBN-13: 978-1250120922

Another of the books I assigned for the Fraser Public Library’s Mysteries & Munchies book club, The Mother-in-Law by Sally Hepworth was the latest book we tackled. Exquisitely polite and friendly, Lucy’s mother-in-law Diana has nonetheless always kept her at arm’s length; however, when Diana suddenly commits suicide, all and sundry are shocked, especially after reading her note claiming that she did so after her recent cancer diagnosis – a cancer that, according to the autopsy report, doesn’t exist. So Lucy finds herself in the center of a murder investigation involving the mother-in-law she hardly knew (incidentally, The Mother-in-Law is Hepworth’s sixth book and has even been optioned for a TV series by Amy Poehler).

The story shifts in perspective throughout from Lucy (the daughter-in-law) to Diana (the mother-in-law) and from the present to the past, though one is never confused by this jumping back and forth. As is usual with mysteries of this type, this non-linear way of storytelling is crucial to keeping The Big Reveal secret until the end. Throughout the narrative we get to see that what Lucy views as one thing, Diana reasonably views as another; even though Diana lives in a mansion with millions of dollars in her bank account and her children believe she comes from a comfortable middle-class life, that is far from the truth. The skeletons in Diana’s closet go back farther than any of her children can imagine, and they shaped her in ways they simply cannot understand.

While The Mother-in-Law is officially classified as a mystery it so much more than that: it is also a classic story of miscommunication and lies that so many families struggle with in reality, and not just between daughters and mothers-in-law. This book will stay with you because of the undercurrent of sadness, the “what could have been” potential if family members had just opened up to each other. Fair warning: it was rather slow to start and I found bits to be boring, but I must finish any book whose spine I crack and so I powered through. And, brah, was it worth it. I enjoyed this book but in a surprising way, for it was not at all what I thought it would be. It was better, and all the more fulfilling for being so.

“The Summer Before the War” by Helen Simonson

 

512 pages, Random House, ISBN-13: 978-0812983203

Sooooo…just what is The Summer Before the War by Helen Simonson? A romance? Well, kinda; the main characters chase after one another for most of the summer, so there’s that. Is it historical fiction? We, yes, assuredly; it takes place, as the title states, during the summer of 1914 and before the Edwardian World and European civilization committed mass suicide. Is it a character study? Again, yes, as we see personages of differing classes and social orders rubbing elbows as they watch the autumnal storm clouds of war creep over their summer skies of peace. So it is a lot of things, even poetic: “The scents of honeysuckle and wallflowers rose on the salty breeze” is one such line, as is “She could hear the snort and jingle of a horse tossing his head in the street and smell the peppery scent of Mrs. Turber’s tomato plants wilting against sun-heated brick”. This book is as much a sensory delight as it is a picturesque novel.

The book is also very English in its droll humor and sedate pacing – sedate being a kind word, for there are whole stretches in which people talk and talk and talk and TALK and yet don’t seem to say much at all. Perhaps this is to mimic the lazy summer in which most of the book takes place, wherein the principal characters spend these days in blissful ignorance: Beatrice Nash, newly arrived Latin teacher to the village’s children; Agatha Kent, the “still a handsome woman at forty-five” who sunbathes nude in the backyard; her nephews Hugh Grange, medical student fond of “sectioning” the heads of chickens and Daniel Bookham, prankster poet. They know that war is coming and that their lives will change forever – yet they DON’T know just how much this is true. Like everyone else during that last summer of peace, the magnitude of the disaster awaiting them all was hidden behind bright sunny days filled with tea and honey and flirtation.

And when that disaster at long last hits it is as disruptive and devastating as only war can be, even if that war is supposed to End All Wars. In this way the book’s title is misleading as it takes us through the start of the war when that last summer all-too-soon becomes a distant memory. This is to be expected, I guess, seeing as how one cannot have light without shadow. And one cannot have life without death, for the War, of course, affects everyone and everything, especially the main characters whom we have come to know so well. The Summer Before the War is meant to be read in as leisurely a pace as a bright summer’s day. The pacing may seem sluggish, but it is meant to contrast with the stark, driven horror to come all too soon. And it is meant to show us the main characters as their all-too-human selves, warts and all – which means that when each of them meets their ultimate fates, it is that much more affecting.