Four Novels by Muriel Spark (2004)

A collection of four novels by Muriel Spark published by Everyman's Library.

Book Review: This collection comprises three of the best novels by Muriel Spark (1918-2006), and one other. The first thing to note is that not only did Muriel Spark not suffer fools gladly, but she also didn't waste anyone's time. The four novels contained herein fill only 460 pages, so an average of a mere 115 pages each. Such efficiency. And as brevity is the soul of wit, then so much wit. The four novels here are The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1961), her best; it's successor, The Girls of Slender Means (1963); and The Driver's Seat (1970). These are her three most popular works and arguably her best among a career of 21 novels. The fourth book included is The Only Problem (1984), one of her least popular and more difficult books, parsing the Book of Job. It's less focused and precise than the other three (although with Spark I'm always ready to concede that any of her works may have flown high over my head and I missed the flying elephant entirely). Accordingly, The Only Problem is  less available than her other books, so perhaps the publishers lured us with the three excellent books to ensure that everyone has a chance to read the other one. Perhaps readers who (somehow) fail to enjoy the three popular novels may actually prefer the more esoteric choice. And these books cover a wide range of subjects: an iconoclastic teacher and her students at a girls' school, life at a boarding house for young women during the war years, a woman alone seeking something on a European holiday, a wealthy young man writing a treatise on the Book of Job as his estranged wife has apparently become a terrorist on the lam (though a horse would've been more efficient). Ms. Spark doesn't repeat herself. This collection gives readers new to the inimitable author a wonderful introduction, three of her best combined with one to show just how inimitable she can be. All short and all enjoyably entertaining. This lovely ribbon-bookmark edition published by the always tasteful Everyman's Library (Knopf), provides the "crème de la crème" of Muriel Spark's oeuvre, and would make a marvelous addition to anyone's personal library, or a lovely gift for any sophisticated, intelligent, and discerning reader of your acquaintance. Such as yourself.  [5★]

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (1951)

A young man invites his older cousin's widow to visit, with unforeseen and tragic consequences.

Book Review: My Cousin Rachel confirms that Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) is an irresistible storyteller with a Gothic sense of menace, maintaining a constant level of tension and suspense throughout the novel. She constructs a plot with an architectural level of complexity built of ambiguity and obscurity combined with a damaged and unreliable narrator. She toys with the reader, inserting twists and turns and introducing new evidence that changes perceptions between pages. Du Maurier actually gives enough clues to reach a single, consistent resolution of the several questions posed by the story, but leaves enough red herrings to support and contort any individual conclusions. She makes My Cousin Rachel a sort of Rorschach test for readers, based in large part on their preconceptions about relations between the sexes (a central theme), astonishingly still relevant today. Du Maurier makes the character of Rachel believably charming and attractive, complex, well-rounded, and understandable. The character of Philip is occasionally too obtuse to be credible, but is perhaps explicable by his odd childhood. For those who've read du Maurier's most famous work, this is that novel written inside out, though wordier and slower. My Cousin Rachel reaches a disturbing conclusion, creating yet more moral ambiguities to ponder.  [4★]

Taps at Reveille by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1935)

The fourth and final short story collection published by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) during his lifetime, released shortly after Tender is the Night (1934).

Book Review: Taps at Reveille is an uneven collection, as were Fitzgerald's short stories. Often he wrote simply to pay the bills, so although his writing is of consistently high quality, some stories have more to say than others. Accordingly, Fitzgerald's four original short story collections (especially All the Sad Young Men and this one) are rarer than repackaged "best of" editions. Additionally, numerous posthumous, rearranged collections have been issued: The Pat Hobby Stories, The Basil and Josephine Stories, I'd Die for You (and other lost stories), and comprehensive volumes edited by Malcolm Cowley (1951 - 28 stories) or Matthew Bruccoli (1989 - 43 stories). The 18 pieces in Taps at Reveille explore his themes of disappointment and regret, sorrow and failure, of having to pay for the good times, of longing for an unobtainable perfect love. The collection begins with a selection of eight YA stories exploring Fitzgerald's adolescence through separate alter egos Basil Lee and Josephine Perry (who never meet). Fitzgerald relates to women as well as any male author. The remaining stories are diverse, including ghost stories, historical visions, the bizarre, and his more typical romantic efforts. "The Last of the Belles" and "Babylon Revisited" standout in  this collection. The unusual title refers to military bugle calls: Reveille is played at sunrise to wake the troops, Taps is played at lights out. The somber melody of Taps played at the beginning of the day seems a foreboding of what's to come. The cover of my 1971 Scribners edition must be one of the least attractive covers ever printed. Fitzgerald's final collection isn't as good as his second, Tales of the Jazz Age, but is still significant, the last book he saw published.  [3½★]

Ride the Pink Horse by Dorothy B. Hughes (1946)

A young gangster comes to Santa Fe, New Mexico in pursuit of his future, trailed by his past.

Mystery Review: Ride the Pink Horse fits as a mystery, a noir, or even a hard-boiled detective story, but with a distinct difference. Dorothy B. Hughes doesn't focus on plot, action, or suspense. Instead she spends much of the novel recreating the setting, the ambiance and feel of the Fiestas de Santa Fe. She also describes the growth and evolution of a young, bigoted, and damaged criminal. He's a stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, and he's reluctantly absorbed into the people, history, and landscape of the region. Hughes slowly establishes the complex interplay of the four main characters and is even slower to build suspense or tension. She's working with myths and archetypes. The story is much different than readers have come to expect from Hughes in novels such as Dread Journey (1945), In a Lonely Place (1947), or The Expendable Man (1963). Those novels were written with a subtle awareness of race and class in America, but that awareness is given center stage in Ride the Pink Horse and compassion is the main player. "It's good, for us to see how other people live. We get awfully narrow in our own little lives. We get thinking we're so all-fired important that nobody else counts. We forget that everyone counts, that everybody on this earth counts just as much as we do." Not what was on offer in Hammett, Cain, and Chandler. In Ride the Pink Horse thoughts and emotions, human interactions, are as important as guns and fists. There is a reasonable amount of drink, however. A well-written but surprising and thoughtful ride.  [4★]

Babylon Revisited by F. Scott Fitzgerald (2011)

Three Fitzgerald short stories, part of the Penguin (mini) Modern Classics series.

Book Review: Babylon Revisited collects three stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) from various points in his career. The earliest piece is "The Cut-Glass Bowl," which appeared in his first set of short stories, the appropriately named Flappers and Philosophers (1920). Next is the title piece, which was collected in the final assemblage of stories published during his lifetime, Taps at Reveille (1935). The third story is the rarely collected "The Lost Decade," more an experimental, sensory sketch published in December 1939, a year before his death. Fitzgerald's usual themes of loss, disappointment, regret, and punishment run through all three works. One feels the sense of paradise lost, though for Fitzgerald Paradise was usually fleeting, a mere moment, and perhaps not even appreciated at the time. For Fitzgerald's female characters the stakes were even more precipitous. In "The Cut Glass Bowl," a former beau gives a woman "a present that's as hard as you are and as beautiful and as empty and as easy to see through." By the final page she has confronted "the flight of time and the end of beauty and unfulfilled desire." "Babylon Revisited," the best piece here, looks back looks back at the glory days of ex-pat Americans on the Left Bank of Paris after the crash and through the cold light of responsibility, cost, and retribution. Catholic guilt drips from the pages. The story was filmed in 1954 as an elaborate technicolor melodrama titled The Last Time I Saw Paris, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Van Johnson. Different from the story but solid entertainment. "The Lost Decade," just three or four pages long, also looks back at one man's punishing past, but with a stronger resolve, a sterner gaze. As is typical with Penguin's mini Modern Classics, Babylon Revisited gives a good overview of Fitzgerald's short stories (his novels are a different animal), providing both an enjoyable appetizer and a reliable test whether his stories are for the individual reader.  [4★]

In the Penal Colony by Franz Kafka (1912)

Two stories by Franz Kafka, part of the Penguin (mini) Modern Classics Series.

Classics Review: In the Penal Colony is a sampler, containing the stories "The Judgment" (1912) and "In the Penal Colony" (1914). In both stories Franz Kafka (1883-1924) offers the world as an unpredictable and dangerous place. Rather than present this as an actual story collection (of which there are many), this Penguin series gives the reader a mere hint of Kafka so as to quickly decide if his writing is up your street.

In "The Judgment" the routine and quotidian life of a father and son, business partners, spins into something wildly different. It's tempting to interpret the story in many ways: psychologically, religiously, or autobiographically spring to mind. My choice, as a non-academic, is to read it more literally, letting the emotions created (if any) resonate with those themes, as a form of expressionism. There's no need to delve too deep. This is how the world seems to Kafka, people are not what they seem, tension and conflict are inevitable. 

"In the Penal Colony," the other story, presents an explorer in a foreign country who watches the demonstration of a unique torture device. The story reflects the times and Kafka's own existence. It vaguely presages Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," and may even look forward to the rise of terror, the horrors of the First World War, and European fascism, while unexpectedly looking back at the Spanish Inquisition. For those so inclined it can be easily read as an extended and intricate religious allegory.

In the Penal Colony contains two of Kafka's strongest stories and ones that he felt mattered, which was unusual as he was hypercritical of his work and wanted it all destroyed at his death. This selection is representative and gives an accurate sense of Kafka's writing. Readers who relish these pieces will most likely enjoy his other work. Those who dislike these may want to read no further.  [5★]

Till September Petronella by Jean Rhys (2018)

A sampler of four short works by Jean Rhys (1890-1979), part of the Penguin Modern Classics series.

Book Review: Till September Petronella is not intended to be a serious, short story collection. Instead the pieces were selected for variety, just providing a small taste to see if Jean Rhys is your cup of tea. Progressing through time and the ages of life, the four stories presented here are: 

"The Day They Burned the Books" - set in the Caribbean, about a twelve year old girl and her friend encountering the harsh realities of the adult world. Reminiscent of Wide Sargasso Sea and just a bit of Jamaica Kincaid.

"Till September Petronella" - a pretty, London party girl accidentally bumps through life on the very eve of the First World War. A character very much like that in Rhys' four novels written in the Twenties and Thirties (culminating in Good Morning, Midnight (1939)). A character without skin, almost too sensitive to live, barely able to engage in the world around her. Even when she can't emerge from her interior monologue and hurt, her looks make her attractive to men and her vulnerability makes friends of women. When September arrives the world will be changed.

"Rapunzel, Rapunzel" - Unusually, a story focusing on someone other than the perhaps now middle-aged, first-person narrator, set in a London convalescent home. About something mysterious or about unthinking cruelty. How we all have something we cherish that may be important only to us, but it is important.

"I Used to Live Here Once" - the only one of the four written in the third person, a brief encounter, just a moment, an epiphany, a realization, again set in the West Indies, maybe a ghost story, maybe something else.

Till September Petronella is a varied and well-chosen selection of stories, covering much of Rhys' unique style and temperament.  [4★]

The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler (1950)

A collection of Raymond Chandler's non-Marlowe detective mysteries.

Mystery Review: The Simple Art of Murder is highlighted by an introductory essay that sounds like a fussy uncle trying to justify hard-boiled detective fiction by decrying how contrived and lacking in personality are some traditional mysteries. He makes some valid points, but without landing a punch on the cozy mystery. Raymond Chandler (1888-1959) wrote 25 short stories, which fall into three groups. First, there are the Philip Marlowe stories, four of which are currently collected in Trouble is My Business and one that isn't. Then there are the eight stories he "cannibalized" for his novels, which he chose not to republish (being first collected in Killer In the Rain (1964)). Finally, there are the rest of the stories, twelve in all. Four consist of two "odd" mysteries, a Gothic Romance, and his first published story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot" (1933), which seemingly should have been included in this collection. The eight other stories, all hard-boiled mysteries, are collected in The Simple Art of Murder. In these eight pieces Chandler seemed to be trying out various ideas for a series detective, though he was probably just trying to sell stories. Oddly, only one is written in the first-person narration that Chandler later adopted for his best known creation. He creates a Latino police detective who gets suspended; a hotel detective with a brother in the mob; a fired hotel detective; a wealthy dilettante known to "talk the way Jane Austen writes"; a gambling undercover man; John Dalmas, a private detective who appeared in another story was later renamed Philip Marlowe; Ted Carmady who also popped up in another story and was later renamed Marlowe, but in this one is a well-connected man about town; and a gambler involved with the wrong crowd. All are tough guys who can take a punch, dish it out, down a drink or six, and try to do the right thing. None of the detectives are quite as noble as Marlowe, however. And none of the stories have the witty banter of the best of the Marlowe novels. All the stories are interesting, twisty, and have enough action for Hollywood. A couple stories are too clever for their own good, getting more convoluted than necessary without a road map. Chandler was known to disdain plot for character, and succeeded most of the time as he does in The Simple Art of Murder.  [4★]