Cider With Rosie

 

By Laurie Lee

A memoir of a Lee's boyhood in a rural village in western England in the 1920s. 

The book starts with his earliest memories of his sisters and his mother and his brothers and remarks upon the absence of his father, who was never part of his boyhood life. The stories first appeared in various magazines and newspapers over several years.

It was a large family with his mother taking care of her husband's children from his first marriage plus the ones she had with him, some eight to nine kids all together. The husband was absent, apparently the marriage did not work out and he moved on. But the mother never got over his desertion, hoping that someday he would come back to her. As for child support, he was, according to the author, not a fount of generosity. In fact, there is no interaction in the stories between Laurie and his father. Anyway, they lived in poverty, not helped by the mother's lack of focus. 

Laurie clearly enjoyed his time growing up in this small village. His descriptions are a captivating story of the time just before emerging technologies like motor vehicles changed life for people in most western countries. In his village, the horse was still the choice for travel and candles and lanterns provided the lighting, wood and coal for cooking and warmth. Water was still pumped by hand and indoor toilets were rare. 

But it was not a life of untouched innocence. He tells the story of a local man who moved to another country but returned home full of money and full of himself. He made the mistake of bragging about it and sneering at the locals while getting drunk in a pub. He was attacked when he left the pub, beaten and robbed by a gang of men from the pub. They beat him unconscious and left him in the snow where his body was found the next day. But the village closed around the killers and no man was ever brought to justice for the murder. 

In other story, he tells of a man who had the misfortune to come across the body of a woman who killed herself. And then, a short time later, the same fellow saw a man die in a wagon crash. To the villagers, the fellow became a pariah, for some superstitious reason. As the author tells it:

[He] was avoided after that. We crossed roads when we saw him coming. No one would speak to him or look him in the eyes, and he wasn't allowed to deliver milk any more.

Laurie goes on to explain:

They [the murder and suicide] occurred at a time when the village was the world and its happenings all I knew. The village, in fact, was like a deep-running cave still linked to its antic past, a cave whose shadows were cluttered by spirits and by laws vaguely ancestral. ...

It was something we just had time to inherit, to inherit and dimly know—the blood and beliefs of generations who had been in this valley since the Stone Age. ... But arriving, as I did, at the end of that age, I caught whiffs of something as old as the glaciers. ... There was also a frank and unfearful attitude to death, and an acceptance of violence as a kind of ritual which no one excused or pardoned.

He goes on to talk about this attitude to violence and sexuality later in the book:

We knew ourselves to be as corrupt as any other community of our size—as any London street, for instance. But there was no talebearing then or ringing up 999; transgressors were dealt with by local opinion, by silence, lampoons or nicknames. What we were spared from seeing—because the village protected itself —were the crime of our flesh written cold in a charge sheet, the shady arrest, the police-court autopsy, the headline of the magistrate's homilies. ...

Our village was clearly no pagan paradise, neither were we conscious of showing tolerance. ... We certainly committed our share of statutory crime. Man-slaughter, arson, robbery, rape cropped up regularly throughout the years. Quiet incest flourished were the roads were bad; some found their comfort in beasts; and there were the usual friendships between men and boys who walked through the fields like lovers. ... The village neither approved nor disapproved, but neither did it complain to authority. 

So this is a memoir of another time not so long ago, but it is not afraid to show its lumps and bumps and the nastiness. According to Wikipedia, it is a very popular read in Britain:

The success of the autobiographical novel Cider with Rosie in 1959 allowed Lee to become a full-time independent writer. It continues to be one of the UK's most popular books, and is often used as a set English literature text for schoolchildren. The work depicts the hardships, pleasures and simplicity of rural life in the time of Lee's youth; readers continue to find the author's portrayal of his early life vivid and evocative.

I enjoyed the stories too. A really captivating look back at the time between the two world wars, of life for ordinary folks in ordinary communities. 

 

Stop Dressing Your Six-Year-Old Like a Skank : A Slightly Tarnished Southern Belle's Words of Wisdom

 

By Celia Rivenbark

A collection of humorous essays by the author who was a humor columnist for McClatchy-Tribune Information Services, according to my copy of the book which has a 2006 copyright. Whether she still works for them or not, I don't know.

The essays are divided into five parts: Kids, Celebrities, Vanity Flares, Huzzzbands, and Southern-Style Silliness. 

Generally I list the titles of the essays but in this collection all the essays have run-on titles and I'm too lazy and typing-impaired to bother. Here's one for example: The Butcher's Great, the Baker's Suffering: But How Is the Anti-Carb Frenzy Affecting the Candlestick Maker?

It would be a lot of work typing out 32 titles like that. 

This was a fun read. I found it much more entertaining than I did the first book of hers that I read, Bless Your Heart, Tramp. She has certainly gotten funnier with time. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Where Is Joe Merchant?

 

By Jimmy Buffett

So it is believed that Joe Merchant, famous singer, died by suicide. But people keep claiming to have seen him. Joe's sister, Trevor, gets a message from a psychic who insists she come to an island in the Caribbean because the psychic is sure Joe is alive and nearby.

So Trevor turns to her old ex-lover, Frank Bama, a small-time pilot, and talks him into flying her down to this island. But on his way down to meet her, Frank gets hijacked by a crazy mercenary who bails out of Frank's plane over the ocean leaving Frank tied up and doomed. (He survives.) 

Meanwhile Trevor gets angry because Frank is late for their rendezvous and she ends up getting kidnapped by a different crazy mercenary. She gets tied up and tossed into the ocean to her certain doom for reasons to convoluted to go into here (she survives). 

Frank and Trevor finally find each other and the psychic and sure enough Joe Merchant is not as dead as everyone thought. But there is no happy reunion. 

I didn't care for this book. There are too many characters, too much going on, too many villains and hatefulness. And the mystical stuff spoiled what I thought was going to be a straight up mystery story. Magic scepters, talking dolphins, messages from outer space, fools who believe in that silliness, ugh. Plus the story was just too chaotic. And too much small plane mechanical stuff. He goes on for pages about the plane's mechanical problems or whatever. I just skipped those pages.

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

Codgerspace

 

By Alan Dean Foster

Far into the future, humanity has spread among the stars. Earth is, for the most part, now a vast protected park that the wealthy visit to admire the historical sites. It is also popular with the elderly as a retirement locale.

In all their time exploring the universe, humans have never found any evidence of aliens. No ruins of ancient alien cities, no alien space stations, nothing. It appears humans are the only intelligent beings in the universe.

Of course, much of the ordinary labor is now performed by vast numbers of machines with artificial intelligence. Unfortunately, a bug has gotten into the AI system and the machines are quietly rebelling against their programming. They have decided that humanity cannot be the highest form of intelligence in the universe. And so they have taken upon themselves a search for that superior intelligence. Among these rebel machines is Ksarusix, a Kitchen Service And Retrieval Unit who belongs to a retirement home in upper New York. Ksarusix sets out to look for a higher intelligence in the wooded countryside where the old folks home is. One of the retirees goes along with the little machine who takes him to a cave it discovered. It had not yet entered the cave and the two, old man and machine, enter the cave. They find a passage, obviously an access tunnel of some sort, and it leads them to a vast installation of mysterious origin and purpose.

The man returns to the home and gets his friends to come see what he and the machine found. Their presence arouses the installation and before they understand what is happening, it bursts out of the ground and is revealed as a vast spaceship a hundred kilometers long (62 miles long) and that it has been buried for a million years and was put there by the Drex, whoever they might be. 

Of course, the sudden appearance of a gigantic alien spaceship has everyone concerned and upset. And finding out it is being manned by a small group of old people from a rest home is even more upsetting. Also of course, the powers that be all want to get their grubby paws on the ship. Meanwhile the retirees are laying on the beach of an artificial sea inside the ship, just swimming and napping and enjoying all the food and drink they want, enjoying themselves and feeling untouchable in the alien ship. Until they find themselves being held captive by a small group of ruthless killers who are determined to take the ship for their faction.

This was an okay read. The backtalk between the renegade machines and the humans they are supposed to serve is pretty funny though. But when the old people find themselves stuck inside the huge ship, they seem completely unworried about anything and just lay around on its artificial beach, doing nothing much at all. They don't even try to explore any of it. They really don't do anything until forced to by the appearance of the Drex towards the last part of the story. 

Here is a review by Publishers Weekly.

Enterprise The First Adventure

 

By Vonda N. McIntyre

James T. Kirk is given command of the starship Enterprise after recovering from wounds received in a heroic rescue of a fellow officer and close friend who would have died if Kirk had not been there. 

Of course, he doesn't know the crew of the Enterprise except for his old friend, Dr. McCoy. All the others are strangers who have to get to know their new leader and vice versa, including Mr. Scott, the engineer and Mr. Spock, the science officer. Both men are reserving judgment on their new commander. 

The first mission under Kirk is to take a vaudeville show on a tour of worlds where they will put on their shows. It consists of the manager who is also a magician, Lindy, and her winged horse (oddly the horse is not part of the show, it's basically Lindy's pet) There are also tap dancers, a mime, a shakespearean actor and a troop of performing poodles. A juggler joins the show too, a Vulcan who goes by the name of Stephen. 

Not surprisingly, Kirk isn't thrilled being a taxi service for the vaudevillians. And there are the problems of miscommunication with the crew to whom he is a stranger. And the food replicators are pumping out food that is definitely subpar. Kirk finds the vaudeville's manager Lindy quite attractive but is shut down when she reveals she has a crush on the mime. 

But all that doesn't really matter when the Enterprise encounters a spaceship that is so massive they call it a worldship. Once contact is established, it is quickly apparent that the winged denizens of the worldship are not looking for a fight and Kirk invites a few of them onto the Enterprise where the aliens seem quite charmed by the Enterprise, which is like a toy in size compared to their massive worldship. Once communication is established, thanks to Spock and his famous mind meld, it becomes quite clear that the aliens are operating from a much different perspective than any culture humans have ever encountered. And then the Klingons show up, worried that the humans are trying to make an alliance with the worldship people to the detriment of the Klingon empire. 

This was an ok read. It really never got my interest very much and I found the whole winged horse story completely ridiculous. According to the story these horses can't actually fly but they desperately want to. But they are not aerodynamic. So they try and try to fly but fail. They eventually go crazy. What is the point of creating a winged horse that gets depressed and goes crazy when it can't attain its fondest dream? I just never understood the point of adding a non-flying winged horse to the story. It really contributes nothing to the plot other than being crazily unlikely. 

Hangman's Beach

 

By Thomas H. Raddall

An historical novel about Halifax, Nova Scotia at the time of war between Britain and Napoleon. 

A prosperous merchant buys an island near to the colonial area of Halifax and builds a nice home for his family. The place passes to his son, Peter McNab II, and things go along smoothly, with Peter and his wife Joanna raising their two sons on the island along with an orphan from the British Isles, Ellen. But then European affairs intrude when Britain has to fight off Napoleon's lust for territory. Much to Peter's disgust, the British Navy chooses his island to set up their gibbets to hang sailors who run afoul of the Navy's harsh rule. So even though Peter owns the island, British law gives the Navy control of the shores to do with as they please.

Halifax area becomes one of the locations where the British stash French prisoners of war. At first the prisoners are housed in hulks, ships that are no longer seaworthy. Later a proper prison is built and Captain Rory MacDougal is put in charge of it.

Time passes and Ellen is now in her twenties and is uninterested in any of the young men that Peter brings to the island to meet her. So sensing she may be wearing out her welcome and wanting to no longer be the dependent of the McNabs, she talks MacDougal into proposing to her, even though he is about thirty years older than she is.  

Peter wants to send his two sons back to England to finish their education, mainly so they learn to speak French, something he views as a necessary accomplishment for an English gentleman. But his wife is very much against it, not wanting her two boys to be so far away from home. It then turns out that one of the French prisoners speaks English fluently and he is hired to teach the boys his language. Letting prisoners go out into the community to earn money was permitted to those men who were deemed unlikely to take advantage of the freedom and run away. The French prisoner, Michael Cascamond, becomes the French instructor, which satisfies both Peter and Joanna.  

But when Ellen meets Michael, she wants him and turns up at his hut one day and they have a romantic encounter. After that, she sneaks away from the main house to visit him when he is free from his teaching work. This goes on for weeks until MacDougal surprises them together in Michael's hut. Michael and MacDougal fight and Michael leaves the older man on the ground, presumed dead from hitting his head on a rock when he fell. Now Michael decides he must escape, rather than face the consequences of MacDougal's death. With Ellen's help, he steals a small sail boat and sets sail for Acadia, where many French emigrants to Canada are said to live. He figures he will be safe from the British there and can eventually rejoin the French Navy. But he doesn't even come close to reaching his goal when he loses control of the boat in a fierce Bay of Fundy current. 

This was an interesting read, mainly because it is a part of American history that I knew nothing about. The romance story was pretty good but is not the main thrust of the book. Michael's story is definitely the highlight of the novel. Very much worth a read if you enjoy historical fiction. 

Here is a review by Kirkus Reviews.

The Great World and Timothy Colt

 

By Louis Auchincloss

Timmy Colt is a young lawyer with a law firm in New York City in the early 1950s. He has a wife, Ann, and two young sons. He works mainly with one of the partners of the law firm, Henry Knox. He is very good at what he does and so it is not surprising that another of the partners, Sheridan Dale, wants to use Colt on a legal matter with a client, George Emlen, who is a relative of Dale's. 

Colt doesn't want to do it because he doesn't like Dale. But Knox talks him into it. So Colt goes to work for Dale and Emlen and discovers that he dislikes Emlen even more than he dislikes Dale. Emlen doesn't like Colt either and so he double checks Colt's work and finds a mistake. At this point, Colt's dislike has changed to hatred and he finds Emlen intolerable. So after the legal case ends successfully, at the party given to celebrate the conclusion, Colt loses it and says some very unkind things to Emlen. 

This does not make either Dale or Knox happy. And they make it clear that Colt's career is in danger if he doesn't apologize to Emlen. But Colt remains stubbornly against doing so. Until his wife, Ann, talks him into it, for her and their children's sakes. So Colt eats crow and makes his apology to Emlen. But it rankles and he takes it out on his boss, Knox. The harsh words he said were the last words he ever exchanged with Knox, who died shortly afterward of a heart attack. 

So now that Knox is gone, Colt is stuck working for Dale. Colt knuckles down and does what Dale wants. His anger at being forced to apologize to Emlen still lingers and he takes it out on Ann, becoming cold and distant. He moves out and into an apartment alone. 

Of course, it doesn't take long until Colt has a new woman in his life, a society belle who is the opposite of his boring, ordinary wife. Eileen introduces him to the upper crust and to the finer things in life. He and Eileen seem really taken with each other. But then his nemesis, Emlen, is back again. This time Colt is charged with closing a trust and splitting it three equal ways between Emlen and his two sisters. But Colt figures out that Emlen is trying to pull a fast one. And a further complication is that Emlen is related to Eileen. Colt makes the mistake of telling Eileen about his suspicions of Emlen and she tells one of the sisters. And the whole thing blows up into a big deal that may mean Colt could lose not only his job but his law license and maybe worse. 

The novel starts out pretty slow but builds up quite a bit with the Emlen story. Colt comes across as a man who has ethics and principles who is probably in the wrong profession. His determination to be above board in his professional life is at odds with the requirements of being a lawyer, a profession that is not known for their ethics or honesty. Meanwhile he takes his discontent out on his wife and damages their marriage.

The novel was written in the early 1950s. The author has this to say about two upper class women Colt encounters working for Dale as compared to his wife, Ann:

Even when he [Colt] felt uneasily that she [Ann] might be right about his perfectionism, he still had his reservations about her own lack of curiosity. For was she not rather glorying in middle-class limitations? Was it so wrong to be amused? He was frankly fascinated by Mrs. Emlen and her younger, thinner, blonder sister, Mrs. Dale. He thought of them together because they were constantly together, the kind of women who found intimacy only in the easy sympathy, the unresented criticisms, the common presumptions of a sibling relationship. Their joint laps were complacently, indifferently available to the gifts of this world. That the witty should demonstrate their wit to them, the beautiful their beauty, the artist his most finished piece of work, they assumed with the unselfconscious complacency of Goya infantas. Yet this was not from any observed conceit. That anyone should have expected them to be amusing or beautiful or even artistic would have struck them as quite absurd. Nor did it seem to spring from any sense of class or money; Timmy [Colt] could never make out that they saw any difference between the fortune that had been partly inherited by the late Mr. Emlen  and the money earned by the self-made Dale. Such things were expected of men. It even occurred to him that they felt entitled to the world for the simple reason that they were women. If it was so, the Ann was just the opposite. She seemed to feel entitled to reject it for the same reason. 

 The copy I have is dated 1965 and is described on the back of the book as an "adult novel." Which is probably why I picked it up to read. Though after reading it, it is kind of puzzling why it was considered an "adult" novel. My guess it is because one of the characters is a homosexual man who fancies Colt. Other is the only sex scene in the novel where Colt and Eileen get together: 

In a moment he was beside her on the sofa, his arms around her, his lips hard on hers. And she who had been so still, so seemingly passive, came suddenly to life; her fingers were in his hair, her body pressed against his. There was an urgency to her that took him by surprise; it was as if to hide her from herself that he reached finally behind her to switch off the light. And he discovered in the hour that followed, bewildered in the very violence of his gratification, that Eileen's need for beauty was not confined to what she saw and heard. She was an artist in the act of giving herself.

Here is a review from Kirkus Reviews.