Life of a Comic

Last Words by George Carlin
2009
Reviewed by Diane K.M.
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


I grew up listening to George Carlin. His HBO comedy specials, which frequently aired in the 1980s and 90s, shaped my ideas and opinions. Carlin was brilliant when he discussed language and euphemisms, and his famous bit about the Seven Dirty Words You Can't Say on Television was memorized and giggled over with friends. Carlin talked about the stupidity of Politics and War.* He talked about our obsession with Stuff. And he said Religion was Bullshit, which was the first time my young mind had heard an adult say that. What a revelation!

I mention this to stress how much George Carlin meant to me. His stand-up comedy was never just jokes -- they were ideas. He was a powerful social critic who had a big influence on not just me, but several generations of young adults. 

"I was beginning to realize something ... Getting laughs all the time wasn't my only responsibility. My responsibility was to engage the audience's mind for ninety minutes. Get laughs, of course, dazzle them from time to time with form, craft, verbal fireworks, but above all engage their minds ... Laughter is not the only proof of success." 

Carlin had been working on his autobiography for a number of years before he died of heart failure in 2008. This book, "Last Words," was published after his death. I listened to it on audio, read by his brother Patrick, and it was surprisingly moving. Patrick has a similar edge and vocal inflections, and frequently I forgot that it wasn't George who was speaking. It was as if George were alive again and sharing his story.

"Last Words" covers George's Catholic upbringing in New York City, his tense relationship with his mother, his adoration of his big brother, how he got his start in comedy, his drug use, and his evolution as an artist. I particularly liked learning about his change from being a suit-and-tie wearing, clean-cut guy in the 1960s to a long-haired performer who wore jeans, swore a lot and who criticized the government and religion in the 1970s. It's a great read, both thoughtful and funny. I think any Carlin fan would love it. 

*This book includes the text of a number of Carlin's bits, and I was happy he discussed one of my favorite pieces on war from the early '90s. I liked it because his point of view was so diametrically opposed to all of the hyper-patriotic speeches we typically saw on TV in the United States: "America loved war, I said. In our history we've had a major war every ten years. We suck at everything else but we could bomb the shit out of any country full of brown people. Only brown people. The last white people we bombed were the Germans. Because they were trying to dominate the world, and that's our job!"

Saturday's Child

Saturday's Child by Ray Banks
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When a mobster hires unlicensed PI Cal Innes to find a dealer (casino, not drug) that took off with his money, Innes quickly finds himself in over his head. Further complicating things are Mo Tiernan, the mobster's psychotic son, who thinks he should have been given the assignment. And why is the elder Tiernan really so keen on getting his hands on the dealer?

This book fell into my lap for two reasons: 1) None other than Johnny Shaw vouched for it and 2) It was free on the Kindle. Fortunately, it was one of those freebies that I would have gladly spent money on.

Saturday's Child is like a movie Jason Statham would have been in before he starting exclusively making shitty action movies. The lead, Callum Innes, is a damaged goods drunk detective in the mold of George Pelecanos' Nick Stefanos or Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder.

The case looks simple a the outset but quickly proves to be much more complex. Turns out Rob Stokes took a lot more from Morris Tiernan. Further complicating things is the younger Tiernan, Mo, a drugged out psychopath. It's all Cal can do to keep from getting killed in a whirlwind of booze and violence.

The setting, Manchester and Newcastle, set it apart from a lot of other crime books, though I could see all the British slang and dialect turning off some readers. Like the aforementioned Nick Stefanos, the case is almost secondary with the problems and history of Cal Innes taking center stage. Cal pretty much makes the dog's breakfast case and takes several beatings. The hard violence is tempered with Cal's black brand of humor, making for quite an enjoyable read.

That's about all I have to say. If you're into English gangsters, this is the book for you. And it's free. Four out of five stars.

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Ceremony

Ceremony by Robert B. Parker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When a troubled teenager named April Kyle is seen hooking in Boston, her parents want her brought back. While Spenser won't work for the father at any price, he takes the case for the princely sum of one dollar from April's mother. Spenser, Hawk, and Susan soon find themselves caught in a web of underage prostitution and pornography. But what do you do when a runaway prostitute doesn't want to come back home?

After reading the most recent Ace Atkins Spenser book, I decided it was time to fill in more of the gaps of the series.

Ceremony is the darkest Spenser I've yet read but things can't be rosey when a teen prostitute is the focus of Spenser's case. As per usual, Spenser, sometimes with Hawk in tow, walks around, pissing people off and stirring up shit, until the pot bubbles over.

One thing that I thought was really cool about this book was that Spenser toned down the wisecracks for this outing. One thing that sometimes bugs me about crime books is the smart ass that doesn't know when to shut up and Spenser blessedly knew when not to make jokes.

Spenser and Hawk were in fine form, going up against pimps, a crime boss, a pornographer, and an entire house party that was one big orgy. I question the logic of bringing Susan along to the final showdown, however.

There were a few things I didn't like about this book, however. As with a lot of Spenser books, there was a lot of talk of Spenser's code and how Hawk fits into things. Also, there was way too much Susan Silverman for my liking. The thing I really thought was strange was Spenser's logic that if April wanted to be a whore, he should put her to work for a madam he knew. I thought that came out of left field.

Fun fact: The pornographer's name in this book is Mitchell Poitras. Robert Crais' Elvis Cole's friend on the police force is named Lou Poitras. Since Robert Crais' Elvis Cole started as a Spenser ripoff (even though Crais claims Ernest Hemingway is his biggest influnece), I'd saw that's where Lou's name comes from.

It may be tantamount to blasphemy but I might actually prefer Ace Atkin's version of Spenser to the original. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

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Another Winner from Megan Abbott

Reviewed by James L. Thane
Four out of five stars


On the heels of her excellent last novel, Dare Me, Megan Abbott again plunges into the mysterious and often troubled world of teenage girls, where even the smallest of incidents can assume a monumental importance.

At the heart of the novel are three high school girls and best friends, Deenie, Lise and Gabby. As the novel opens, Deenie watches in horror as Lise suffers a mysterious seizure while in class one morning. Lise is immediately hospitalized and falls into a coma, but no one, including the medical professionals, can figure out what's happened to her.

In fairly short order, other girls at the school begin to exhibit bizarre symptoms that also go unexplained, and what follows is a panic that spreads from Lise's friends through their school and ultimately through their entire community. In the age of the Internet, YouTube, and the 24/7 cable "news" cycle, all sorts of theories inevitably abound and none of them seems too looney to receive consideration.

Have the girls been affected by some toxic poison that's lurking in their school? Was their illness caused by the foul but beautiful lake nearby? Perhaps it resulted from the HPV vaccination that the school required the girls to receive.

The story unfolds principally through the eyes of Deenie, her hunky hockey-playing brother, Eli, and their divorced father, Tom, who is a teacher at Deenie and Eli's high school. All of the characters in the book, but especially these three, are finely drawn. In the hands of many another author, the father, Tom, would be totally clueless, but Abbott portrays him as an intelligent, complex man who cares deeply about the children he is raising alone. He worries about his skills at a parent and he's terrified at the thought that soon he will have to send his daughter out into a larger and sometimes dangerous world.

The brother, Eli, is also very well done--not at all the stereotypical high school jock that one might expect. He's a three-dimensional character who's very interesting and sympathetic in his own right.

This book is very loosely based on the Salem, Massachusetts witch scare that began in 1692, and Abbott creates a vivid, scary and ultimately very believable story of a community in panic. It's a great read and upon finishing it, one is struck by the thought that, as a society, maybe we're not as far removed from the Seventeenth Century as we'd like to think.

Welcome To The Jungle...You're Gonna Die!

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This will make you feel like a kid again! It will ignite a Jonny Quest kind of desire for adventure, to dive into the jungle in search of lost worlds.

This will also quench most desires to ever take one step closer to a jungle.

"Z" is supposedly a long lost South American city of a once powerful people. Think El Dorado. Did it ever really exist? Finding out was the self-imposed task of an almost legend of a man who lives up to the myth:

Famous British explorer Percy Harrison Fawcett...



A military man with an athlete's physique and a cast iron constitution, Fawcett made the perfect explorer. As fortune would have it, he lived in a time and place where conquering the last of our Earth's unknowns was in high fashion: Victorian England.

I've read a few of these sorts of books and I've come to expect the unavoidable asides. After all, to take this book as an example, there is always going to be more to the story than just one man trying to find one lost city. The Lost City of Z is fattened by many an aside discussing the myriad of Victorian era explorers who threw themselves into harm's way for glory and adventure. It was almost like a game to them, a great race to see who could get there first, be it the depths of the jungle or the arctic pole.

Author David Grann juggles these stories well, never dropping the main story, at least no more than necessary to incorporate the interesting details from these off-shoot tales that help the reader to better understand the mindset of the times or to underscore the perils of such treks into the unknown.

In the process of putting this book together, tracking Fawcett became Grann's adventure. However, it turned out to be one shared by many.

Fawcett went on numerous South American explorations with varying degrees of success and always emerging - though slightly worse for wear - in relatively good health compared to the many who perished along the way. However, after disappearing into the jungle one last time, with his son and a friend in-tow on this occasion, Fawcett disappeared forever. In the years that followed, finding Fawcett became a new kind of sport that swept the world. Many expeditions set out to find and bring the man back, dead or alive.

As you read The Lost City of Z you begin to form the opinion that "dead" is the only possible outcome for anyone foolish enough to set foot in the jungle. Grann's descriptions of the jungle's deprivations felt to me like watching a David Attenborough nature program in Feel-o-vision...every sting, bite and virulent disease feels like its invading your body. I itched unconsciously at every mention of the ubiquitous insects. I swore my skin creeped and I could feel a fever coming on. So, if you've got Indiana Jones aspirations, this is the cure!

Exposing The FBI...Sort Of

The Secrets of the FBI by Ronald Kessler
Reviewed by Jason Koivu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, they ain't secrets no more!

And were they secrets in the first place? I guess "technically," but if we're being honest, come on, some of this stuff is just silly. Kessler tosses the FBI some grapefruits right up front in this one, giving the reader little vignettes of instances where the Bureau came away with mud on their face. It's like viewing their blooper reel: Agents foiled by cats and in-and-out jobs gone haywire by zany hijinks. *cue the laugh track!* I didn't have much hope for this one right off the bat.

But eventually it comes around. Kessler hits his stride when he starts in on the pros and cons of each of the Bureau's Directors: Hoover's suspicious denial of the mafia's existence; Freeh's technophobia; Sessions allowing his wife and her friends complete security clearance and access within FBI Headquarters. Many interesting how-to tidbits regarding their techniques are told via entertaining anecdotes. Kessler gives a rundown of how the FBI responded to major national events (Waco, 9/11, etc), not allows showing them in a positive light.

Overall though, The Secrets of the FBI maintains a balance, reporting equally on the good and bad of the FBI's checkered past, and it does so in an engaging manner that may not be as exciting or biting as some wish it to be. However, for those of us with a passing interest, it's a good read for sure!



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California Bones by Greg Van Eekhout

California Bones
Greg Van Eekhout
2014 Tor Books


reviewed by carol

★    ★    ★    ★    ★   


You ever have that experience where you finish a book, and are left feeling all discombobulated; not sure exactly what time it is because the sun set while you were reading, and actually kind of hungry because you might have missed dinner? California Bones did that to me. 

It wasn’t an instant draw; it had blipped across my radar long enough to make it onto my TBR list, but it wasn’t until bookaneer’s review that I was motivated it to move it up. I picked it up from the library and was sucked into its pages until a solid two hours later. Unbelievably good, it was a breath of fresh air–the forceful Southern California Santa Anas, perhaps–blowing away an urban fantasy landscape cluttered with vampires and werewolves. Van Eekhout combined an almost-now Los Angeles with fast-paced heist, built it on the foundation of serious family drama, added an upbringing in a thieves’ gang, and wrapped the whole thing in some of the more interesting magic I’ve read in this year. 

“‘Our bodies are cauldrons,’ he said, ‘and we become the magic we consume.’ He often said things like that, things that circled around the perimeter of Daniel’s understanding, sometimes veering just within reach before darting away into ever-widening orbits. Daniel could remember the names of osteomantic creatures and their properties–mastodon for strength, griffin for speed and flight, basilisk for venom–but he grew lost when Sebastian spoke of the root concepts of magic.“

The story begins with a quick flashback to Daniel Blackhand’s childhood, learning magic from his father Sebastian; then forward to a powerful moment his family is ripped apart by the Hierarch; and then a third jump into current time with Daniel working the open-air market. He lands from one frying pan into another fire, only to be offered the ultimate thieves’ job, complete with the opportunity to recover a very personal item.  At the same time, Gabriel, a bureaucrat and minor relative of the Hierarch, has the sense of unfamiliar magic in the vacinity and is troubled that some of the city powers are starting to talk of sedition. When he meets the handler and dog who were chasing Daniel in the market, it sets him on Daniel’s trail, and brings an unexpected chance to confront his own past.
The writing is enjoyable; fast paced, descriptive enough to cause a vivid image or two but never lingering too long, naval gazing at the scenery (I’m talking to you, Way of Kings). An almost perfect tone for the story, it waxes a bit lyrical when describing the magic of osteomancy in all its grim, powerful, glory. I found the degree to which Van Eekhout could make the The Hierarch and his six underlings menacing remarkable, despite their rare appearance.


I liked characterization of Daniel, an ambivalent hero who is mostly trying to keep his head down after the destruction of his childhood. Gabriel is an interesting foil, essentially using the same strategy within the Hierarch’s organization. Side characters are fleshed out enough, and the fact that they are able to still surprised Daniel seems entirely possible. I rather enjoyed Emma and Max, who each played rather interesting sidekick roles to Daniel and Gabriel.


Plotting is quick and ultimately, contained a few unexpected twists. The heist is great fun at the beginning, the standard untouchable target. If it also employs a standard set-up of recruiting the team and planning for the gauntlet, at least it comes complete with humor:

“Emma Walker had observed this routine for three consecutive weekdays before fishing his coffee cup from the trash and identifying the contents of his flask: tequila.
Who the hell put tequila in their coffee? It was disgusting and obscene, and it made everyone on the crew feel better about what they were going to do to Sergeant Ballpeen.“

During the heist, crew member Emma takes a moment to wax poetic:

“‘All my being,’ Emma whispered, ‘like him whom the Numidian seps did thaw into a dew with poison, is dissolved, sinking through its foundations.’
‘That’s from a poem,’ she said with some despair to the crew’s stupefied expressions.
‘Yeah, Shelley,’ Moth said. ‘It’s just we usually don’t do poetry during jobs.’“

The humor nicely contrasts the dark feel of the osteomantic magic, and the compromising situations the team members find themselves in. At the moment, the first three chapters are available for free on Van Eekhout’s website. I highly suggest you give them a try.  All in all, it really worked for me, and I’m looking forward to immersing myself a second time–and eventually adding it to the paper collection.

cross-posted at my site:  http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/california-bones-by-greg-van-eekhout/

Zero Fade

Chris L. Terry
Curbside Splendor Publishing

Reviewed by Nancy
4 out of 5 stars

Summary

Zero Fade chronicles eight days in the life of inner-city Richmond, Virginia, teen Kevin Phifer as he deals with wack haircuts, bullies, last year's fly gear, his uncle Paul coming out as gay, and being grounded.

My Review

If it wasn’t for Karen's review, I’d probably never come across this book, and that would be a terrible shame.

The cover was embarrassingly bright, the characters on the front are green and the one in back is yellow. I loved the book’s compact size, the bright white pages and the comfortable text size. It aroused some curiosity on the bus, probably because I’m in my 50’s and there’s a prominent Teen Urban Fiction label on the spine, or maybe because I had a silly smile on my face reading about 13-year-old Kevin’s “mushy tushy.” Yeah, it’s a kids’ book, but adults can enjoy it too.

I liked how this story shows just 8 days of Kevin’s life. It is not all mundane, though. He’s a very typical teenage boy at that awkward age where your body and emotions are in turmoil. His dad left when he was a baby, his sister is distant, and his mom is smart in lots of ways. It’s just too bad she can’t give her son a decent haircut.

I also liked how the story takes place in urban Richmond, Virginia, and features black characters that are richly drawn, vibrant and real. Their skin color is not the focus of the story, yet this is very much a story about the black experience. It deals with the complexity of relationships, identity, sexuality, and growing up without being preachy.

Kevin’s sharp observations brought me back to my own childhood growing up in the Bronx. Though we didn’t share all the same experiences, there were enough similarities that made it very easy for me to relate and empathize with his character. He wasn’t always likable (what 13-year-old is), but he is genuine.

"Our school’s old. When you first walk in, there are class photos from the ‘50s to now. The school was segregated before Martin Luther King, so the pictures from the ‘50s and ‘60s are all white people wearing funny-shaped glasses and sitting on corncobs. By the ‘70s, there are a few black people in the pictures with big ‘fros and beaded necklaces like pictures of Mama in high school. They’re bits of pepper in a salt spill. But it’s reversed by 1980, and the pictures look like Oreo cookies—mainly black, with a little white in the middle."

Kevin deals with bullying, competing with his best friend to get a girl, and his discomfort with all things gay. His dapper gay uncle, Paul, certainly is not making that easier for him. At least Kevin now has a great haircut.

As thoughtful and entertaining as this story was, I’m glad it’s over. Like many kids, Kevin was really hard to take at times.

WHITE HOUSE DIARY BY JIMMY CARTER

White House Diary by Jimmy Carter
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

”A scholarly assessment after I left office showed that I had the most unfavorable press coverage of the century; with a net of negative news stories every month except for my first one, after my family and I walked down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House. Despite frequent news conferences and a concerted effort to meet privately in the White House with all the key reporters and media executives, I was never able to turn them around. We finally decided to accept the situation and plow ahead with our programs.”



I wonder if Jimmy Carter had been James Carter would his political career had been better or would it have never existed at all. Though it was Jimmy Carter that the American public wanted as a balm for the abrasions left by Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon; it was James Carter maybe they wished they’d had when multiple things start to unravel. He was a true outsider to the Washington Beltway. He wanted to do things differently than previous presidents and soon discovered he was burning through political capital for the most inane things. He did not go to parties or hobnob with politicians outside of the White House. He didn’t go to the very popular correspondence dinner that presidents have been such a hit at since they started attending. He saw it as silly and the reporters did not. He was elected because he was a pious man, but that fact became a source of irritation to the press corp even though he was very careful to not let his personal beliefs spill into his politics.

We now live in an age of counter balancing biased news sources. In those days there wasn’t a twenty-four hour news cycle with heavy weights like CNN, FOX NEWS, and MSNBC putting their particular spin on any political news story. Every politician now can find a friendly ear with the press, well maybe not Anthony Weiner, but then I say that, and I just saw him on Bill Maher the other night. An MSNBC would have been invaluable to Jimmy Carter back in 1980.

Carter is perceived as weak and inept by more than just Republicans. Even Democrats make excuses for him by talking about all that he did AFTER he was president. The reason why I read this book was to settle some questions I had about his presidency. I was just beginning to notice world events or lets say events outside of my own small home patch of Kansas in 1976. I was more aware, but made most aware when I discovered that we weren’t going to the Olympics in Moscow (which my family always watched the olympic games), and of course the hostage crisis in Iran.


Camp David Accords. Carter’s primary achievement. President Anwar Sadat of Egypt on the left and Menachem Begin Prime Minister of Israel on the right. Carter had many moments when he wanted to strangle Begin during the process, but he understood the pressures he was under from back home as well.

So Carter before his administration became mired in many events beyond his control established two new cabinet positions: Education and Energy. Ronald Reagan while campaigning in 1980 insisted he would abolish the Department of Education. The current Secretary of the Department of Education is Arne Duncan so...exactly…Reagan’s insistent promise didn’t ever happen. Carter established an energy policy which included price controls, new technology, and conservation. He had solar panels installed on the White House which Reagan with much fanfare had removed. Baffling…I know. Carter negotiated the SALT II Treaty with the Soviet Union to reduce the number of nuclear weapons. He negotiated the Camp David Accords that lead to peace (well pretty much) in that region for thirty years and also the Panama treaties which eventually returned The Canal to Panama. Here is one that I didn’t know.

”I worked assiduously throughout my tenure to control the national debt, with some success. The best yardstick for measuring the debt is to calculate the total national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product. The year I left office, this debt-to-GDP ratio was 32.5 percent, the lowest it has been at any time since World War II. Under Ronald Reagan it increased to 53.1 percent; after the end of George W. Bush’s term, the ratio was 83.4 percent. The accumulated debt for fiscal year 2009 is thirteen times greater than in 1980 and is projected to be 100 percent of GDP in 2011.”


I remember having nightmares about Ayatollah Khomeini, very powerful ones that still sometime intrude into my dreams today whenever Iran makes the news.

In 1979 there was a cascade of things that pretty much assured that Jimmy Carter was going to be a one term president. Lets start with the Iranian Revolution which sent the U.S. supported Shah of Iran fleeing for his life. Under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini oil production from Iran plummeted mainly because of the destabilization of the country and the fact that foreign oil field workers had to leave the country. This bobble in production made OPEC countries very rich, but caused a worldwide energy crisis that was made worse by panic. This was followed by the Iran-Iraq War which took Iraq oil production out of the equation creating another large perceived shortage. Saudi Arabia is encouraged to increase their production. Frankly there was plenty of oil located in other countries to overcome the shortages from Iraq and Iran, but profits were booming and it does take some time to increase production.


Soviet Tank Graveyard in Afghanistan

In December of 1979 the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. This was a nine year war that drained resources from the Soviet Union and cost them political clout with the world. In the end they had to leave without ever fully subduing the country. The world of course took note of this colossal failure and the lack of success by the Soviets insured that no one else would ever be naive enough to invade Afghanistan again. Wait...no...can’t be...folks you are not going to believe this, but President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan in 2001. But this time it was going to be different right?

Because of the invasion of Afghanistan Carter made the decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. He also funneled Soviet made weapons, readily available all over the world, to the “rebels” in Afghanistan. In the 2000s U.S. soldiers took casualties from these very same weapons.

On November 4th, 1979 the US embassy in Iran was stormed by dissidents and fifty-two American hostages were taken. They were held for 444 days. I still remember Walter Cronkite ending his newscast with the latest, ever increasing, count of how many days they had been held captive. We do not negotiate with terrorists. It is a great policy and one that I feel gives Americans around the world a certain level of protection. I will not get into the Iran-Contra Affair as Carter did not go into it in his book, but the stone cold fact that the hostages were released within moments of Carter’s term ending and Reagan’s term beginning begs more than a few questions.


US Embassy Hostages in Iran.

Carter did attempt an ill fated mission to release the hostages. He authorized two spare helicopters for the mission and as he has often said if he had authorized one more helicopter he would have been elected to a second term. The sands of Iran’s desert clogged the engines and two helicopters became inoperable with a third receiving too much damage to continue. The mission became FUBAR.

We had a similar circumstance, a flashback for many Americans, when the helicopter crashed during the mission to get Osama Bin Laden. We purposely had a spare because these very expensive helicopters seem to become very unreliable when we need them to be perfect.

Carter also had to survive a primary challenge from Senator Edward Kennedy. Even though Kennedy did not win the nomination he did cast a lot of doubt with the liberal wing of the Democratic base on Carter’s ability to come up with solutions for the numerous issues that were facing the nation in the early 1980s.


Three Mile Island disaster.

As if all those issues were not enough the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster and the eruption of the Mount St. Helens volcano also happened during his term.



The diary entries are interesting. Carter bemoans the fact that he had 5,000 pages of diary entries; and yet, was only using about a ¼ of them to create this volume. He was very careful not to change entries to make himself look better, but he did allow himself to write further explanations after the diary entries. These were as fascinating as the original entries because he could expand a point to better explain what he was thinking and also show the benefits of many more decades of thought about what he wrote and the decisions he made. This book is going to have a very special place in my library because it represents the first presidential signature I’ve been able to acquire. Unfortunately I did not meet him to get this signature, but I did buy the book for the original list price. I can only believe that the bookseller was a Republican. :-)



4.25 Stars out of 5


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Gothic Mystery

The Secret Rooms by Catherine Bailey
2013
Reviewed by Diane K.M.
 My rating: 4 out of 5 stars


There is a saying: "More money, more problems." After reading this book, I think there should be an addendum for nobility: "More titles, more drama." 

"The Secret Rooms" is the story of the 9th Duke of Rutland, John Henry Montagu Manners, and the family secrets he tried to hide. Before John died of pneumonia in April 1940, he locked himself into his archive rooms at Belvoir Castle and would not come out, working ceaselessly on a mysterious project, even against his doctor's orders to rest. After John died, his son closed the rooms and no one was allowed in them for nearly 60 years.

"[John's] obsession with collecting struck me as pathological. The pursuit and ordering of objects appeared to lie at the core of his personality. It seemed to go far beyond mere interest -- it was all-consuming, a compulsion. It looked as if these collections represented some sort of refuge, a form of escape into a private world. But what had he wanted to escape from?"

In 2008, Catherine Bailey was working on a book about World War I and was one of the few who was granted access to the closeted archives, called the Muniment Rooms. While going through family letters and papers, she found several gaps in the collection, as if John had deliberately removed correspondence to try and hide something.* Bailey got on the trail and ended up writing a very different kind of book than what she started. What she found was a lot of family drama, a scandalous coverup, and at the heart of it, a deeply unhappy child. (At one point, my heart broke for sweet little John and I wished I could have given him a hug.)

"I was becoming more and more caught up in the mystery behind this man, and starting to follow a different story -- his story. In creating the gaps in his biography, he had erased so much of himself -- and so thoroughly."

There were a lot of things I liked about this book: the inside look at a duke's family; the workings of an English castle; the historical setting; the details of how estate life changed during the Twentieth Century; and some fascinating details about the start of World War I, when John was sent to France. 

Bailey mentions the incredible privileges the ducal families were afforded, but she also discusses the immense social pressures they faced. I liked having this humanist perspective on the bookish, introverted John; it seems he would have chosen a very different life for himself if he hadn't been under a tremendous amount of pressure from his parents to live up to his future role as duke.

My complaint about the book was with the writing style. Bailey told the story from her perspective; everything plodded along as she found various letters and clues, and she often closed a chapter with a trite tease, such as: "What I discovered next changed the course of my research entirely." I even wrote ARGH on a post-it to flag such a page. I admit I can be fussy about writing, and other readers might not be bothered at all by the chapter teases -- they might even like them.

I wondered if this book could have been better if Bailey had not told it in first-person, because she sometimes got bogged down in too many me-me-me details and descriptions. Could the story have been better told in third person? 

Despite this complaint, I was still drawn into the story and was anxious to solve the family mystery (or mysteries, to be more correct). The blurbs for this book usually reference Downton Abbey, and I would agree that fans of that TV show would probably enjoy delving into the real-life drama of an aristocratic family.** I would also recommend it to my fellow Anglophiles, or anyone who likes a good family mystery and historical drama.


*While reading, frequently I wondered what kind of archivists we are today, with so many communications only in digital texts, emails or in social media. We save so little correspondence in print. 

**For those who would like to read more about the American heiresses who married into the British nobility in the late 1800s and early 1900s, I recommend the fascinating book, "To Marry an English Lord" by Gail MacColl.