And with this Leap Day, we’re at the end of February! This was a busier month by far than January, though thankfully we’re in an even-numbered year so I don’t have to deal with session until this time next year.

In Books…

• Cromwell: Oof. This is the closest I have come to not finishing a book in a very long time, probably as long as I’ve been keeping this blog. I read Antonia Fraser’s biography of Marie Antoinette a few years back and found it very lively and engaging, so I thought her biography of Oliver Cromwell might help me learn about a time period and person I knew virtually nothing about. Mistake! This is absolutely not meant for an audience not already relatively familiar with the time period and players, as there are frequent references to the political and religious issues of the times without giving a whole lot of context for the neophyte. I actually don’t know how well I think it functions as a biography, with large portions being devoted to military campaigns…on the one hand, given that Cromwell rose to prominence (and in some cases, like his Irish campaign, infamy) through his leadership in the Army, it makes sense to give the reader some understanding of what seems to be a legitimate gift for martial strategy. On the other, I know I’m not the only one who avoids military histories because I find them incredibly dull. I ended up skimming through most of the battle descriptions just to keep on moving, and wishing for more of a focus on Cromwell’s domestic life. The focus turns more to Cromwell’s personality in the later stages of the book, and it becomes very clear that Fraser intends this to be a bit of a revisionary biography and that she thinks he has gotten a bad rap. Because I was annoyed at the book already, this backfired spectacularly and the more I read, the more I found him unsympathetic. There’s a certain extent to which my failure to connect to this book is on me for expecting it to be something it was never trying to do, but even so I found it very boring and not at all enjoyable to read so I can’t at all recommend it.
• Dare Me: A noir-style mystery/thriller set in a high school cheerleading squad? Sign me up (especially after a dense slog through a giant biography)! This is the third Megan Abbott book I’ve read, and I’m starting to recognize her work’s hallmarks: the noir stylings, an intense relationship that is ostensibly not romantic but carries romantic undertones, the darkness of teenage girls and the power their developing sexuality holds. This book centers on the friendship between Addy and Beth, two cheerleaders whose longtime bond is threatened when a new coach comes to town. Beth has always been the dominant personality between the two, the captain to Addy’s lieutenant, but as Addy buys more and more into Coach’s methods and persona, the tables begin to turn. But no one is all they seem to be on the outside, and Coach has demons of her own. An unexpected death rachets up tensions even farther, and Addy will have to choose either Coach or Beth. I found this to be pretty successful as a noir-type mystery, the confusion around the death was engaging and kept me guessing. The vibes were generally well-deployed, there was a seemy underbelly type feeling that was David Lynch-ian. The rest of it is a bit of a mixed bag. Another Abbott trademark is an almost florrid style of prose, and that’s on full display here as well. The girls exult in their social power as cheerleaders, in their developing performance skills, and that is reflected in phrasing about glitter and armor and tans and hair that does start to take on a repetitive quality. The characters feel more like types than people, and particularly for Addy as a narrator I felt like I needed more depth to really feel anchored in the story.
• A Manual for Cleaning Women: This was, of course, a book club pick as I almost never choose short stories on my own unless it’s an author I’m already all-in on. If they’re good, I want them to be longer, and if they’re not good, they’re not good. This collection, from a previously little-known author, Lucia Berlin, was very buzzy a few years back so I hoped it might be one of the better ones. Alas, for me it was not. These stories vary in length from just a few pages to about 25ish, averaging about 10-15, so at least it moves quickly. Virtually all of them feature a female protagonist whose life has very similar details to Berlin’s own: four children, a few failed marriages, a peripatetic childhood, odd jobs to stay afloat, alcoholism. They’re little slices of a life that dangles now closer, now farther from the margins. Berlin’s prose is clear, true, with sudden and bright flashes of dark humor. But the effect, for me, of having these stories collected together was to make them feel samey. There were moments, here and there, of truth so straightforwardly rendered it was nearly breathtaking, but on the whole I just could not key into what the introduction and foreword took pains to tell me was the brilliance on display here. Two stories featured themes I found hard to deal with and wish I would have known about ahead of time so I’ll note them here for other readers: “Dr. H.A. Moynihan” has tooth-pulling that will horrify the squeamish, and “Mijito” has infant abuse and death.
• The Year of the Flood: I read the first book in this series (Oryx & Crake) nearly eight years ago, so it’s a good thing that this book is more a companion piece than a direct sequel. It returns to the same world and roughly the same time as O&C, but where that book explored that world through a man’s eyes, from inside the exclusive corporate bubbles, this one looks at it from the perspective of two women, who live out in the “real world”. Toby was raised in relative comfort, but circumstances derail her path and she finds herself working a low-wage retail job where she’s sexually abused by her boss. She escapes from his clutches with the help of the God’s Gardeners, a new religious movement focused on preserving what’s left of the natural world, and remains with the group first from a lack of anywhere else to go, and then from loyalty. One of the young people being raised within the group is Ren, whose mother brought her along when she left their cushy corporate home to run away with one of the group’s leaders, a man named Zeb. Though set in the time just after the plague has been unleashed on the world, the story is told largely through flashbacks, following both Toby’s and Ren’s lives with the Gardeners and what happens to them after they have separately left the group. I was, as ever, blown away with the power of Atwood’s imagination. So much of the way the world devolves feels heightened but not outside the realm of possibility, which makes it all the more haunting, and she develops the theology of the Gardeners with hymns and sermons from their leader, Adam One, in a way that feels realistic for something that would emerge in the context of the world she posits. After the maleness of O&C, the focus on Jimmy and Glenn (both of whom do show up in the narrative here in side roles), it’s refreshing to have Toby and Ren as narrators of The Year of the Flood, and the two women are both richly-drawn and compelling in their own ways. Atwood’s prose remains top-notch, I find her writing spellbinding in a way I find difficult to put my finger on but I get lost in so easily. There are some flaws here, most notably the way that several survivors manage to reconnect in a plague-decimated world in a way that defies probability, but the storytelling is too enjoyable otherwise to make that a fatal flaw.
• Joan of Arc: This book is subtitled A History, and it’s very true to that outlook, so if you’re looking for a true biography this isn’t for you. Joan doesn’t even enter the narrative until about 1/3 of the way through, as Castor spends quite a bit of time setting up the context in which she appeared. I knew only the vague outlines of her story beforehand (teenager, claimed to have heard voices, dressed like a boy and lead men in battle in defense of the dauphin’s right to the throne of France and to drive the English out of France, was burned at the stake), so it was actually immensely interesting and helpful to learn more about the time period, and understand that not only was France at war with England, France was experiencing civil war at the same time. And when Joan does finally appear, we don’t learn more about her early life or any of those standard biographical details. Instead, she’s already 17 and determined to meet the dauphin (who had already been crowned, actually, at this point, but not yet anointed), to tell him that he was destined to not only be officially enthroned but to reconquer France. And briefly, everything seems great: she wins early battles that start the tide turning her side’s way. But then there are some defeats, and capture, trial, and ultimately death. There were two trials, it happens: first by her English captors, who had every political reason to and did condemn her, and then a second one by the French after the once-improbable recapture of nearly all of their territory, which had every political reason to and did exonerate her. I found it relatively accessible, as a history. There are a lot of players with a lot of complex and interconnected interests, but it wasn’t too hard to keep track of who was who. It left me with lots of questions about Joan herself but also made a case as to why the surviving documentary evidence (and the political forces at play behind it) is unlikely to be able to draw a true portrait of a woman, hardly more than a girl, who rocketed to a significant place on the world stage and fell from grace just as quickly, becoming as much a symbol as a person. If you’re interested in Joan or the Hundred Years’ War, I’d recommend this!

In Life…

• C turned two!: I can’t believe he’s two already! He is just the delight of my life and I love watching him grow. He’s not my little baby anymore, he’s a walking, talking, happy little boy who loves cars and Sesame Street and singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song. He got a lot of presents and ate pizza and got chocolate frosting all over his shirt so it was a very successful birthday indeed!
• Work retreat in Austin: This year’s work retreat took me to Texas for the first time ever! Austin is a super cool city, I’d love to come back again to explore more but particularly enjoyed my trip to BookPeople and stopping by Central District Brewery! And it’s always a fun to get to see the people from the other offices in our company in person and talk about what we’re up to professionally and personally.