Under the Wide and Starry Sky

This is an enjoyable and interesting novel based on historical fact, about the passionate and productive relationship between Fanny Osbourne and Robert Louis Stevenson.  The story is true to the major events in their lives and some dialog is based on letters or diaries, though most is created out of the author's sympathetic understanding of their characters - and is quite believable.

RLS first meets American Fanny Osbourne in France, where she has fled from her philandering husband, taking her three children to Paris to study art.  Stevenson is smitten with her and eventually, though he is 11 years younger, they begin a relationship - which is complicated by her husband's determination to regain his family (while retaining his extracurricular love life).  In confusion, she returns to California and her husband, leaving RLS in doubt and near despair, though eventually she writes and pleads with him to come to California to rescue her.  All these events intertwine with Stevenson's early attempts to establish himself as a writer - not only because this is his passion, but also because of his determination to earn enough to support his potential family.  The very emotional and uncertain story of whether and how Fanny and RLS will get together forms the crux of the first half of the book.

The second half of their story is framed by the terrible state of Stevenson's health and Fanny's wholly devoted and exceptionally skillful efforts to keep him alive.  This quest necessitates travels to various climates that might help Stevenson's severe tuberculosis, including Davos, the English seaside, voyages at sea and, finally, Samoa, where RLS becomes the healthiest he has been in his entire life and where he wholeheartedly embraces the people, language and land of Samoa.  This portion of the book is energized by Fanny's devotion to Stevenson, which, however, deprives her of the time to pursue her own artistic ambitions, and by her increasing estrangement from Stevenson, who begins to dismiss Fanny's artistic abilities and needs as inferior to his own.  Eventually, these strains lead to or intensify severe episodes of mental illness, shocking Stevenson, who then honestly and seriously repents his ill treatment of Fanny.  Their relationship is recovering slowly until Stevenson's early and sudden death, not from tuberculosis, but a cerebral hemorrhage.

This was a very satisfying read for me - and has been very favorably reviewed by readers - but I suspect it's of special interest mainly to those who, like me, think, or rather hope, that they actually were Robert Louis Stevenson in a prior incarnation.

Dead Wake - Eric Larson

Dead Wake, by Eric Larson (author of Devil in the White City), is the captivating and tragic story of the 1915 sinking of the British cruise ship Lusitania. Nearly 1,200 passengers (or "souls") perished after a German U-boat torpedoed the Lusitania, an event that rocked the civilized world and helped draw America into World War 1. Larson's skillful storytelling weaves the events of that fateful year into a thrilling page turner, and his detailed portrayal of characters makes them come alive. President Wilson isn't just the cautious and patient man he seems to be outwardly, he is also a passionate man, driven to distraction by his wife's death, and preoccupied by his subsequent courtship of Edith Bolling. Larson recounts several passengers' tales in vivid detail, and clearly went to some trouble to gather stories about victims as well as survivors, so one is not sure when reading if a given personage will be spared or not in the inevitable tragedy, adding to the suspense of the narrative. A very engrossing read which I recommend to all.

Kindred - Octavia Butler

Kindred is unlike anything I have read before. Set in the 1970s, it is the tale of a modern Black woman living in California who suddenly begins to experience involuntary time travel episodes to antebellum Maryland. Each time Dana is transported to the past, she arrives at a moment of extreme peril for a young plantation owner's son named Rufus Weylin. Repeatedly saving Rufus' life leads them to develop an unlikely bond, but as Rufus gets older and takes over running the plantation (and its many slaves), and as Dana gets sucked into the past for longer and longer stays, she learns first-hand the ugly realities of slavery and the complexity of the relationships it breeds. A truly remarkable and original tale, offering a very compelling first-person account of a cruel and strange time in American history. Powerful and a must-read, in my opinion.

The Dispossessed - Ursula K. LeGuin

For Bookclub this month, we are reading two sci-fi novels by female authors: The Dispossessed (1974), by Ursula K. LeGuin, and Kindred (1979), by Octavia Butler. Both are tremendous!

The Dispossessed is the story of Shevek, a brilliant physicist and revolutionary from Anarres, a moon isolated from its homeworld, Urras, since its settlement by anarchist colonists 179 years ago. Although Anarresti society still largely lives by the teachings of its founder, Odo, Shevek and his friends progressively observe how their freedom has become cramped by bureaucracy and social constraints. Shevek ultimately determines that the only way to achieve his physics masterwork and heal his society is to make an unprecedented journey to Urras, to share his science and reunite the two worlds. 

I really enjoyed Shevek's character, and his zeal for the Odonian way of thinking. Many of Odo's quotes have great attraction for me, as well. For example:

"A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole."

All in all, a fascinating, surprising, and gripping tale. 

Jude the Obscure

This book, exploring some of Hardy's ideas of marriage and class relationships, was infamous when first published - widely denounced and sometimes burned.  Hardy said that the attacks "completely cured me of further interest in novel-writing" (though he had apparently been thinking of turning almost exclusively to poetry anyway).

Two themes are dominant - the idea that the legally-binding nature of marriage destroys true love and friendship, and that the inaccessibility of university life and learning to those of lower class is ill-founded and destructive.  Jude Fawley, a thoughtful, sensitive, fair-minded person with ambitions to intellectual attainment is the hapless victim of a scheming woman who, once they are married, quickly abandons him.  Jude later falls passionately in love with his cousin Sue, who he believes is his soul-mate - a free-thinking, courageous, independent woman.  Jude is a good man with a strong moral sense, a fiercely independent thinker, with advanced but sensible and kind ideals, and with unwavering devotion to Sue.  Unfortunately, as Jude recognizes, Sue is "a fool! - And she's an angel, too, poor dear!"  Eventually, they live together as man and wife, but without formalizing their "marriage".  The novel is the story of how this highly unorthodox relationship leads to their ruin:

To indulge one's instinctive and uncontrolled sense of justice and right, was not, he had found, permitted with impunity in an old civilization like ours.  It was necessary to act under an acquired and artificial sense of the same, if you wished to enjoy an average share of comfort and honour; and to let loving-kindness take care of itself.

This is a strong, interesting and thoughtful book.  I greatly admired Jude and was absorbed in the exploration of his personality and outlook, but for me, the oversensitive and indecisive Sue was an especially maddening character. Though shocking at the time of its publication, dramatic changes in society have robbed the story of a great deal of its power.

A Memoir from John le Carré

The Pigeon Tunnel - Stories from my Life is a memoir of sorts composed of short chapter-length anecdotes from le Carré’s life that are amusing, head-shaking, chilling, or thought-provoking.  Several explain the origin of particular characters that appear in his books, and some describe hair-raising experiences during his trips to war zones and other exotic locations to research different novels.  For The Night Manager, he visits Panama to see a camp where the CIA trained the Special Forces from several countries, and to meet 54 year old President Endara, atop a Spanish colonial staircase, with his 22 year old mistress, newly turned wife: 

A young woman is crouched at his feet, her shapely rump pressed into designer jeans as she wrestles with a Lego palace she is building with the President’s children.
‘Darling,’ Endara cries down to her, in English for my benefit. ‘See who is here!  You have heard of….’ Et cetera.
Still kneeling, the First Lady looks me cursorily up and down and resumes her building.
‘But darling, of course you have heard of him!’ the President implores her. ‘You have read his wonderful books! We both have!’
Belatedly, the former diplomat in me stirs.
‘Madame President. There is no reason on earth why you should have heard of me. But you have surely heard of Sean Connery, the actor, who was in my recent film?’
Long silence.
‘You are friend of Mr. Connery?’
‘Indeed I am,’ I reply, though I scarcely know him.
‘You are welcome in Panama,’ she says.

 The Pigeon Tunnel is of special interest to le Carré fans, but full of striking stories and insights for any reader!

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On Immunity: an innoculation

This is an unusual and rewarding book.  Eula Biss is a freelance writer with interesting genetic credentials for authoring this book - that is, her father is a physician and her mother a poet.  The book embodies this heritage: it's both a very thorough analysis of the history, technique and value of immunization, together with an open-minded and very thoughtful critique of the balance between an individual's right to make choices regarding their own health and body, versus society's right to protect itself.  Biss is a very talented writer, whose prose is frequently powerful and memorable, sometimes humorous, and sometimes lyrical.  This is a very worthwhile read - highly recommended!