Category Archives: Books

Books, Snow-Gauge Clif

Au Revoir, Snow-Gauge Clif

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The title of this post tells it all. Today, March 11, our yard is officially free of snow, and there is nothing for Snow-Gauge Clif to measure. In the past, we would hope to be snow free by our youngest daughter’s birthday on April 22. Some years we were. Other years, we weren’t.  This year, we are way ahead of April 22.

First, the front yard, with Snow-Gauge Clif,

and a broader view to chronicle our snow-free yard.

To the backyard.

Therefore, unless we get some snow in March—and we could—it is time to say au revoir to Snow-Gauge Clif who was only with us for two weeks this year. What the heck! Can this really be happening in Maine? A snow-free yard in mid-March? It seems that it is.

Onward to yard work, usually an April chore.

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Reading

Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay
Published in 1926

The story of a girl—who doesn’t like to read, doesn’t like art, doesn’t like theater, and is what we Franco-Americans would call lazy—is not a natural fit for me. And so it was with Denham Dobie, the protagonist in Crewe Train. My initial take on Denham was that she was a boring lump of a young woman, and I almost stopped reading the book after the first twenty pages.

But then something unexpected happened—Rose Macaulay’s writing and her sympathy for this unsociable, unambitious character won me over. By the end, I was as worried about Denham as I would be if she were a member of my own family. Well, all right. Maybe I’m overstating the case. Still, I brooded about Denham.

When the book opens, Denham is living in relative freedom with her father, also unsociable, in Andorra, a small country between Spain and France. When Denham’s father dies, Denham’s aunt—her mother’s sister—takes her back to England in the hopes of training her to be a proper young lady. But this is no Pygmalion story, and Denham is no Audrey Hepburn.

Initially, Denham does try to please her fashion-conscious aunt. She  falls in love with and marries a kind but conventional man named Arnold, who likes to mess about in boats and play games with Denham. But Arnold also likes London and books—he works as a publisher—and plays and dinner parties. He likes being around people, and Denham does not. For her small talk is a misery, and she would much rather be  rambling around outside.

Denham and Arnold are an odd, uneasy couple, and I wound up feeling sorry for both of them as they tried to accommodate each other’s opposing tastes.

I won’t reveal the ending except to note that the casual cruelty of Denham’s aunt sets in motion an unhappy chain of events. Crewe Train, while not a tragedy, is a sad book despite its flashes of humor.

One more thing to note: Crewe Train was published in 1926, and in my experience, writers of that time frequently included racist words and descriptions in their books. So it is with Crewe Train. Not the worst I’ve read—that honor goes to the otherwise delightful Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day—but not good all the same.

Nevertheless, Crewe Train is a book worth reading. Denham, for all her flaws, feels like a woman ahead her time, flailing as she tries to live on her own terms, unencumbered by possessions, free to wander the countryside, unconcerned with domestic duties.

All Denham wants is a simple life, not so easy for women of her class and generation in the 1920s.

 

Books, Celebrate

A Year of Books

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Last weekend we celebrated my son-in-law Mike’s birthday. Because they live in Massachusetts, Mike, our daughter Shannon, and the dogs came to Maine on Saturday to spend the night.

The day was astonishingly warm for early February in Maine.  When it comes to the weather nowadays, my thoughts always turn to my parents, who never would have imagined it could be so warm in midwinter. Such big changes.

Mike chose to go to Absolem Cider Company to celebrate his birthday. It is one of his favorite places in central Maine. It is one of mine, too.

Here we are, on the way to the barn at sunset. Note how shiny with mud the path is. It felt more like March than February.

However, inside all was cozy and dry. Soon we had our drinks, and it was cheers to the birthday boy.

Here is a picture of Mike and our daughter Shannon.

After our drinks, we went back home for presents, and this year, Clif and I had come up with something special for Mike—twelve books, one to be opened at the beginning of each month throughout the year.

I got the idea from my friend Doree, who had done this for her sister for Christmas and had written about it on Facebook. Immediately, I was smitten by the idea, and my thoughts turned to Mike and his birthday in February. Mike is an avid reader, and I knew he would be thrilled to get a book a month. Also, and this is sheer coincidence, of everyone in the family, Mike’s taste in books is most similar to mine, which made picking out books for him very easy.

Last Thursday, Clif and I wrapped and labeled the books. As we did so, I thought about how giving these gifts was a joy from beginning to end—choosing the books, deciding which books should go for which month, wrapping the books, and then seeing them laid out on our dining room table, small packages of delight waiting to be opened.

A closer look at February’s book.

And what was February’s book? Here is  New York, by the late great writer E.B. White, whom I mentioned in last week’s post.

It was so much fun to watch Mike inspect his books.

“This is amazing,” he said more than once.

Happy birthday, Mike, and happy reading!

 

 

 

Birds, Books, People

Of Tea, Books, Eagles, and a Dear Friend

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Last Thursday I went to one of my favorite places—the waterfront park in Hallowell—to meet Elizabeth, the granddaughter of my dear friend Barbara, who died  eighteen years ago. Elizabeth is from North Carolina, but she worked in Maine this summer, and we were able to meet several times.

The day by the river was overcast but not too chilly. I brought a thermos of tea and some cookies, and we settled in for a long chat. Elizabeth was only five when her grandmother died, and I told her stories about Barbara—about how she was one of the best home cooks I have ever known; about her passion for nature; about her love of story and writing.

Elizabeth not only resembles her grandmother, but she also shares Barbara’s love of books and nature. Accordingly, the talk soon turned to books, my favorite kind of conversation. (And Barbara’s, too.) What Elizabeth was reading—Rachel Carson—and what I was planning to read—The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. We discussed the current trend of not using quotation marks to set off dialogue. I admitted that I’m not a fan of leaving them out. Elizabeth thought that it all depended on the writing and how sometimes it worked to have dialogue without quotation marks.

As we sipped tea and munched cookies, the sun came out, illuminating a white house across the river.

Wouldn’t it be cool, I asked, if the house appeared only when the sun was shining a certain way? And that it would be invisible at all other times?

Elizabeth agreed this would be very cool.

While we were talking, we heard the shrill cry of bald eagles.  One flew right over us, and we were duly impressed. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough to get a picture of that eagle.

However, I did get this picture, a little blurry, but clear enough to give an impression of this big beautiful bird whose species was nearly wiped out in this country. When I was young, I never saw a bald eagle. Now they are a common sight, proof that sometimes things do change for the better.

As we admired the eagles, I thought about Barbara and how thrilled she would have been to be part of this day. She would have jotted down some of Elizabeth’s book recommendations, just like I did. (The Golem and the Jinni and The City We Became.) She would have exclaimed with pleasure when the eagle flew over us. In her excitement, Barbara might have jumped out of her chair.

I remember one day when Barbara and I were going somewhere together, and I was driving, Barbara cried stop, stop! I stopped, and Barbara rushed from the car to examine a snapping turtle who was laying eggs along the side of the road.

So in a sense Barbara was with us by the river as Elizabeth and I talked in a way that was reminiscent of the way Barbara and I had talked many, many times.

A bittersweet and lovely day.

 

 

Books, Food, summer

Of August Days and Jeri Theriault’s Poetry Reading

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Sunday was one of those August days that draw tourists to Maine in the summer. Warm weather—around 80°—combined with low humidity and sunshine made for a perfect afternoon on the patio. As it turned out, we had invited our friend Jill over for drinks and appetizers, and we were thrilled that the weather gods decided to smile on us. Yes, we could have had drinks and appetizers inside, but how nice to sit on the patio and watch the birds flutter in out and of the woods as they visited the bird feeders.

A beautiful August summer afternoon in Maine. When the rain and cold and snow come, I will try to keep this day in my heart, to be warmed by the memory of good food and good conversation.

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From the Department of Good News

In this time of climate change when some people suffer from too much heat and others from too much rain, reading good news provides welcome relief. In her post “This week’s Small Pleasures #348,” my blogging friend Barbara of Thistles and Kiwis wrote about how bird counts are up in Wellington, New Zealand. Way, way up. Some by as much as 260%. If my knees weren’t so creaky, I would jump for joy.

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Listening: Poetry Reading at Greene Block + Studio in Waterville, Maine

Self-Portrait as Homestead by Jeri Theriault

Last Friday, I went to Waterville to hear Jeri Theriault read poetry from her terrific new book Self-Portrait as Homestead. Like me, Jeri is Franco-Amercan, and she also grew up in Waterville, a small mill city by the Kennebec River.

It gave me great pleasure to hear Jeri use the word “mémère” (grandmother) in her poetry. And what a thrill that the title of one of her poems comes from a street in Waterville’s South End, where I lived as a baby and visited every week as a child. My home, my geography, my ethnic group. While Jeri Theriault’s poetry ranges far from Waterville—to Iwo Jima and the Middle East—for me, Waterville was the center that rippled outward to other places. Perhaps someone not born and raised in Waterville would have had a different take, but that is what stayed with me no matter how far Jeri roamed in her poetry.

To add to the mood of the reading, Jeri’s husband Philip Carlsen and his son Mel played music between the poetry—Philip on the cello and Mel on the piano. So lovely, so lovely.

Jeri asked that the applause be held until the end, and she spoke about each poem, telling the audience how her poetry wasn’t memoir, which allowed her to use some artistic license; how she thought of the “self as house”; how the book was “supposed to be all feminist poems,” but somehow her father crept in. Jeri filled in her father’s silence with her own words as well as ones taken from a local newspaper article about his time in Iwo Jima.

After the reading, editor and journalist Bob Keyes had a conversation with Jeri, which illuminated her poetry and her process.

From her moving poetry to the music to the conversation, this was one of the best poetry readings I have ever been to. I bought Self-Portrait as Homestead, and instead of shelving it with my poetry collection, I will be tucking this one among my Franco-American books.

Jeri Theriault, on the left, with Claire Hersom, also a fine poet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Books, Spring

Spring is Here!

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Spring has finally arrived in Maine.

Last Wednesday, we had small patches of snow in the backyard.

But the next day, on Thursday, April 12, the snow was completely gone. In the little pond down the road, the frogs were clicking and clacking, but so far, no peepers.

On Friday, the temperature jacked up to 80°F, and heat records were broken statewide. Too hot for April in Maine, that’s for sure. Fortunately, by Saturday the temperature had dropped to something approaching normal for this time of year.

The table is now on the patio, and we had lunch out there several days in a row. If you look closely, you can see bright green coming up in the garden.

The chipmunks are out of hibernation, and they have decided that our compost bin is their neighborhood grocery store. Note how they have chewed the side vents to make bigger holes for easy in, easy out.

Overnight, it seems, the goldfinches went from drab feathers to bright yellow. (Dawn, from the blog Change Is Hard, has noted this, too.) Because of the sun, the goldfinch’s colors are washed out in the picture below, but the bird on the left gives some idea as to the yellowness of the feathers. I’ll try to get a better picture in the upcoming days.

Now the busy season has begun: raking, removal of leaves from the various beds, adding compost, moving plants. To borrow from a comment on a blog I read recently—alas, I can’t remember which one—it now takes me a week to accomplish what I once could accomplish in day. Ah, well. What I lack in speed, I make up with persistence. Despite my dratted creaky knees, I am outside most nice days.

Minerva, the guardian of the front yard, is waiting patiently for me to come around. By now, she knows that I always start in the backyard and work my way to the front.

“Soon, soon,” I promise her.

Wisely, Minerva makes no remark.

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Books: In Which I Toot My Own Horn

Normally, in this section, I feature books that are not my own. But this week I can’t resist sharing a blog post written by my blogging friend Alys of Gardening Nirvana. The title of the piece is A Meeting of Libraries, Real and Imagined, and it features copies of my book Of Time and Magic as they make their way to various Little Free Libraries near where Alys lives all the way across the country. (Two of the Little Free Libraries are in her very own front yard.)

Holy cats, I was pleased! And those Little Free Libraries are utterly adorable. If you have a chance, click on the link in the above paragraph and take a look not only at my book but also at the sweet little libraries whose mission it is to put books in the hands of book lovers.

Many, many thanks Alys.

Books, Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

Septic System Problems, Snow-Gauge Clif & and a Review of Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

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Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.
—Joni Mitchell

The past two weeks have been hard ones. First we lost our beloved cat, dear little Ms. Watson. Then, our septic system decided to stop working—toilets wouldn’t flush, and showers wouldn’t drain. As I’m sure readers can imagine, this was no fun at all.

Being Mainers, we tried to fix the problem ourselves. Clif used his trusty plumbing snake to see if he could find a clog. He couldn’t, and we set up a camping toilet in the big bathroom. We used a dishpan for washing up, dumping the water into a bucket and then emptying the soapy water outside. (In the summer, when we haven’t had rain for a while, I sometimes use the gray water on my perennials.) So we had a system, albeit a primitive one.

Eventually, Clif gave up and decided to call the plumbers. I am happy to report that they came came swiftly as did the folks who pumped our septic tank. Finally, after the second time the plumbers came, they found the problem, and with their much larger plumbing snake, they were able to dislodge a big clog that Clif had mistakenly thought was the edge of our septic system.

I thanked the plumbers profusely as they packed up their truck to go off to help someone else with a problem. Smiling, they indicated it was all in a day’s work. For them, I suppose it was. For us, it was something akin to salvation.

Now, the toilets flush, the shower drains, and life is back to  normal. The quotation at the beginning of this piece sums up how Clif and I felt about the situation.

Joni got it exactly right.

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Plumbing problems or not, Clif was out with his trusty snow gauge to measure the snow.

Here he is in the front yard by the driveway and then on the walkway leading to the front door.

Over the past week, the weather has been warm and sunny, and the snow has actually gone down a bit. Here are last week’s pictures for comparison.

And here is Clif in the backyard.

Again, last week.

The path to the compost bin was actually muddy this week, and I had to step carefully so as not to lose my Sloggers. In Maine, this counts as progress, but up the East Coast, a nor’easter is blowing, and tomorrow’s forecast is for another foot of snow.

Dang! Snow-gauge Clif and I are ready for the snow to melt, not to accumulate.

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READING

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Note: There are moderate spoilers in this review.

With its spare, beautiful writing, this gem of a short novel—set in the 1980s—is nearly perfect. In the Irish town of New Ross, Christmas is coming. Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, works long hours to ensure his customers have enough fuel to stay warm over the holidays. At home, his wife Eileen and their five daughters bustle to get ready for Christmas. In her own way, Eileen is as busy as Bill is. I’m guessing many women will identify with Eileen and the hard work of getting ready for Christmas. I know I did.

While making deliveries, Bill reflects on his life as an illegitimate child raised by a single mother who worked as a domestic servant for “Mrs. Wilson the Protestant widow who lived in the big house a few miles outside town.” Mrs. Wilson, frugal but kindhearted, provided Bill and his mother with a warm, stable home and even helped Bill as an adult. Fortunately, in New Ross, there is little antagonism between Catholics and Protestants.

There is, however, a convent in New Ross where on one side is a school and the other side a home for unwed mothers. The convent, in many ways, is important to the economy of the town and especially to Bill, whose daughters go to school there.

In a tense, heartbreaking way, Bill’s reflections of his childhood converge with bringing coal to the convent and what he discovers. Then Bill must must make a decision that will reverberate with his family for years to come.

I’ll certainly  be reading more of Claire Keegan and have ordered Foster through interlibrary loan.

 

Books, Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

Snow-Gauge Clif & Book Review: Our Spoons Came from Woolworths

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During the past week, we had three snowstorms, and the last one, on Saturday, was a corkah as we Mainers would say. Clif measured thirteen inches with his snow gauge, and the snow was wet, heavy, and hard to move. Our electric snow-thrower, Snow-Joe, just barely managed, and I did a fair amount of shoveling. Nature’s gym, as I like to call it.

Here is a picture or our car before we cleaned the driveway. Only a sliver of red shows through the snow.

More red in the snow as Mr. Cardinal comes to the feeder.

Now, on to Snow-Gauge Clif, who stood in a different place so that readers could see the tunnel that is our path to the front door.

Here he is in his usual place in the driveway.

And in the backyard.

It’s funny to think how in January there was so little snow that we were worried Snow-Gauge Clif would be out of a job this year. But Mother Nature said, “Not so fast,” and we now have snow aplenty. Good for the water table and the plants, but I think we have enough snow. I hope Mother Nature agrees.

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I want to thank everyone for the notes of sympathy I received in the comment section of my post about little Ms. Watson. I really do appreciate it as did the rest of the family. A lovely example of how kind words of support really do matter.

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READING

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns

Note: There are moderate spoilers in this review.

Recently I have begun following a wonderful blog called JacquiWine’s Journal, which is mostly about books and a little about wine. For a book nerd like me, this blog is sheer delight. Jacqui especially likes novels from the mid-twentieth century, and so do I, particularly if the writers were women. These novel chart the ways women’s lives have changed over the twentieth century, and much of it is for the better. In one book I read, Elizabeth Jane Howard’s The Beautiful Visit—set in the early 1900s—a young girl’s parents forbid her from becoming a librarian because it doesn’t seem genteel enough to them.

Jacqui has introduced me to many good writers, and one of them is Barbara Comyns. Our Spoons came from Woolworths is a harrowing novel of living in poverty in the 1930s in England. The novel has autobiographical elements, and it follows the marriage of Charles and Sophia. Charles is a painter, and, among other things, Sophia works as a painting model.

A more hapless couple you will never meet. Charles thinks only of his painting and cares about little else. Sophia is innocent in most every way, including on how babies are conceived. As a result, Charles and Sophia live in terrible poverty, just barely scraping by. Not surprisingly, Sophia becomes pregnant, and there’s a harrowing scene of labor and delivery in a hospital where poor women go to have their babies. The woman are marched, literally, through the system and are left in their bloody shifts for far too long. In short, there is little tenderness, and the care is  minimal.

Sophia’s fortunes improve because of an inheritance, but once that is gone, life becomes even worse.

Our Spoons Came from Woolworths is a gripping read. Sophia’s voice is plain, steady, compelling. Through it all my sympathies were with her, despite her poor judgement. For her selfish husband, Charles? Zero.

The end is a bit like a fairy tale, but I have to admit it comes as a relief.

 

Books, Winter

The Polar Punch Pastes Our Public Library

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What a difference a week can make. On February 10, Allison Finch, of AccuWeather wrote, “In a remarkable weather turnabout, [in the Northeast] temperatures throttled up from the lowest levels of the year to late-March levels within a week.”

She was absolutely right. Here was the temperature at our house on Friday, February 3.

And here it was one week later on Friday, February 10.

A case of weather whiplash, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately for our town’s library, the polar punch did its dirty work before it left the state on Sunday, February 5.

In the Kennebec Journal,  Richard Fortin, the library’s director, explained what the librarians found on February 4: “We came in around 8:30 on Saturday morning and the building smelled like heating oil. We went into the furnace room and basically found that the oil filters and oil lines were encased in ice. There’s a fresh air vent in that room, and that extreme cold just came in and froze those lines.”

Frozen lines, of course, spell trouble.

“[Fortin] said this caused the oil’s consistency to resemble sludge or mud, so it was not able to get through the lines. This backed up the system and caused a major oil leak.

“The entire boiler was basically encapsulated with oil,” said Fortin. “It leaked through the cast iron. And the nozzle was spraying oil into the room.”

Not good. Not good at all. The library was closed for a whole week as the problem was dealt with. On Wednesday, The Maine Department of Environmental Protection “determined…the harmful materials in the air had dissipated enough that the library [was] safe.”

But the library still reeked of oil—the children’s section smelled especially bad—and there was major rearranging to do so that the library could open today, Monday, February 13.

Most of the books I read come from the library, and this polar punch incident at the library made me realize, yet again, how much I love my library and how much it gives to me. It’s not an exaggeration to say that the library is a cultural mainstay for me. Because of the library and its interlibrary loan system, the world of story and ideas is completely open to me. I don’t have to worry about cost or bookshelf space.

Whenever I go to events and sign my own book, Library Lost, I always add “Love Your Library.”

I certainly do love mine. I am so glad it’s reopened.

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Reading

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

This murder mystery novel is as airy as a chocolate soufflé and just as delicious. At an upscale senior retirement village in England, four friends—Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron—meet weekly on Thursday to talk about unsolved crimes. Naturally murder strikes, not once but twice, and the sleuthing seniors sally forth to discover who the killer is.

There are several storylines that converge in a satisfying way. Two detectives, Chris and Donna, become involved in investigating the murders. Although Chris and Donna aren’t fools, the seniors are always several steps ahead of them.

Osman has a deft touch that snaps the story along but allows for character development, a must for me as a reader. And although The Thursday Murder Club could be categorized as a light read, the novel touches on many aspects of aging—physical and mental diminishment, loneliness, regret, and grief—that are not so light.

However, friendship and community provide solace and bring purpose as well as happiness to Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim, and Ron.

There are two more books in the series—both on the bookcase in my living room—with another slated to be published in September 2023.

Thanks to Barbara at Thistles and Kiwis for bringing Richard Osman to my attention. One of the great joys of blogging is to be introduced to writers I’ve never heard of. The same is true for television shows, movies, and podcasts. I really enjoy getting suggestions.

 

Books, People, Winter

At Last, a Proper Snow Storm & Lolly Willowes

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Weather Report

This January has been warmer than average. However, cold weather from the Arctic is forecasted to blast us this weekend, with a projected temperature as low as -20°F (-28°C). With the windchill factor, it might even drop to -40°F. That, my friends, is cold even by Maine standards.

Good thing, then, that we got a proper snow storm last week. Otherwise, my perennials would be in serious trouble when the cold snap hits. There’s no telling how many plants I would lose. As it is, they are covered by a nice insulating blanket of snow, at least ten inches.

Here are some pictures of our yard during the storm. My beds and the perennials are tucked under the snow.

I like the way the snow-covered fence ripples with snow.

As I shoveled the pathways to the compost bins and the bird feeders, I stopped to take a picture from backyard to front yard. No hanging laundry until spring.

Little Gideon, the guardian of our yard, is nearly buried beneath the snow.

The lantern out front has a cap.

And the snow on the porch rail curves like a wave of water.

Another picture of our home nestled in the snow.

With so much snow, Clif had to clean the roof. Otherwise ice dams form on the eaves, and this in turn leads to leaks inside.  I took this shot through an open window, which is why everything is at a slant.

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Correspondence

Today I received this lovely card from blogging friend Jodie Richeal. If you have time, do check out her snappy website, Poppiwinkle, that features her work. Jodie wrote to tell me how much she was enjoying my recent book Of Time and Magic. Do I spy William Shakespeare on the lower right-hand side of the card? I believe I do. Many thanks, Jodie!

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Reading: Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

Spoiler Alert: I can’t discuss this book without revealing crucial elements in the plot.  If you haven’t read the book and would rather not have spoilers, now is the time to stop reading.

Lolly Willowes, published in 1926, is a novel full of oddities and curiosities. The first half of the book is realistic to the point of almost being dry. The second half crackles with the supernatural.

The novel is about Laura Willowes, who was brought up on a country estate in Wales. When Lolly Willowes opens, Laura’s father has just died—her mother died years earlier—and it’s decided that twenty-eight-year-old “Aunt Lolly” should move to London with one of her brothers, his wife, and their children, Fancy and Marion. In the London Home, Laura is given the smallest spare bedroom as the larger one can’t be spared. This decision sets the tone for how Laura is treated, not cruelly, but as an afterthought, to be put up with rather than cherished.

And so it goes for twenty years with Laura trotting unobtrusively through domestic life with her brother’s family. Fancy, as an adult, wonders why her Aunt Lolly didn’t set up housekeeping by herself. After all, when her father died, she was left with a comfortable income. Fancy concludes, “How unenterprising women were in the old days.”

What holds Laura back? The traditions and conservatism of her family, which she accepts without question. It will take something very big to knock Laura off track.

In short, it takes demonic intervention. First, the devil, an invisible force, leads Laura into a small shop with homely items that remind her of life in the country and how much she longs for that life. This longing tips something in Laura, and against her family’s wishes, she up sticks to the countryside, to a small village filled with witches who don’t seem to do much. Mostly they roam at night and tend to village business by day.

All goes well until Laura’s nephew, Titus, visits her and decides to settle in with his aunt. Once again, Laura must put the needs of her family first. The freedom she longs for is gone.

It is then the devil really comes into it. Laura makes a pact with him—she will serve him if he keeps family away. This the devil does in a way that is more humorous than menacing. Soon Titus is gone, and Laura is free to be herself. The devil, having made his conquest, leaves her alone.

After finishing the book, I puzzled over the ending. Did Warner believe that in 1926 women could only be free if they shucked family ties and made a deal—symbolically, of course—with the devil?

Laura had the financial means to be independent. But it seems she did not have the emotional means to break away and could only do so with supernatural help.

This slim book certainly made me think about the role of women.

 

Birds, Books, Winter

Winter Has Arrived & In the Woods by Tana French

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In Maine, it seems that winter has finally showed her frosty face. It is snowing today, and it snowed last week when I took the following pictures.

The backyard looked serene in its muted colors,

and birds came to the feeder to eat.

A female cardinal,

a woodpecker,

and a chickadee.

Out front, the shovel and the buckets of salt and sand waited,

and Clif used Snow Joe to clean the driveway and walkways.

I know you all enjoying seeing our red home nestled in the snow so after the snow was cleared, I took this picture.

On the weekend, after all that snow, I figured we deserved a little treat, and I made these chocolate vegan muffins.

Actually, snow or not, I would have made these muffins. After all, what is life without treats? Six days a week, we eat a low-carb, low-calorie diet, but one day a week we splurge. While the muffins might be vegan, they are certainly not low in calories or carbs. But, as my Yankee husband might say, they are pretty darned good.

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Reading

I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I especially like ones that cover books, movies, and television shows. A few weeks ago, on Slate’s Culture Gabfest, Julie Turner, one of the hosts, recommended the American-Irish writer Tana French, who writes crime novels. This is not my first choice of genres, but Turner praised French’s writing, her craft with words as well as her ability to tell a ripping good story.

I decided it was time for this old reader to learn a new trick, and I requested French’s first novel, In the Woods, through my library’s interlibrary loan system.

In the Woods is about two crimes that happen twenty years apart on the outskirts of Dublin. In the 1980s, three children go into the woods—only one, Adam Ryan, comes back. Adam’s memory of what happened is completely gone, and he is unable to help the investigators. Adam and his parents move; he takes his middle name, Rob; and the past recedes. Rob becomes a detective in Dublin and befriends fellow detective Cassie Maddox.

Then twenty years later, along comes another murder in the neighborhood where Rob grew up, and he discovers that the past is never really past. Are the two murders connected? Will Rob’s memory return to help him solve the original crime? Will Cassie and Rob’s relationship move past friendship?

I will not answer any of these questions, but I will note that although the middle sagged a bit, In the Woods kept me reading, and I raced through the  last fifty pages to see how the story would end. I was not disappointed by the ending, which somehow managed to be both surprising and unsurprising.

French is indeed a good writer, with a pleasingly understated—at least to me—style. Both Cassie and Rob are prickly, flawed characters that I came to care about. Also, French describes Dublin in enough detail to give a sense of place but not so much that it becomes tedious.

I’ll be reading more Tara French, even though crime thrillers are not my preferred genre.