Michael Kevane

If you are looking for a short novel to read, The Girls of Slender Means by Muriel Spark is one of the best novels I have read in a decade. Within five pages you start admiring Spark’s writing, and as you get deeper into the novel you increasingly realize how amazing she is. She captures intense settings and actions with a few crafty sentences. Everything is in your mind.

Virgilia Patterson in The New York Times wrote, in 1963 when the book appeared: “Admirers of Miss Spark’s last and brilliant little tale, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” may find “The Girls of Slender Means” more oblique and ambiguous. The abrupt shifts in time are less easy to follow, and the verses she quotes with such poignant effect may not seem relevant to those who do not remember the context of the poems she quotes from (as, for instance, “Gerard Manley Hopkins’s “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” in which one nun goes to her death unafraid). Furthermore, the book’s end may appear arbitrarily drastic to those who do not have a religious view of fate. But those who seek new dimensions in their reading will find this to be Miss Spark’s most interesting piece of work. “

Our neighborhood book group decided not to read this for next time, but I was intrigued by the “pitch” and so got it from the library. It is a good, solid, novel: not much to talk about in terms of literary style unless you are really into the poetry of the prairie, which is not my thing. But the portrait of small-town Nebraska in the 1800s, with the Swedish and Bohemian and French immigrants, and the struggle to establish a prosperous farm, and the sociology of being a semi-independent woman, is quite interesting. Cather is most interesting with her matter of fact descriptions of daily routines or special events, like the fairs.  The story arc is rather melodramatic.

I would definitely recommend to anyone interested in American history. And by the way, some of them read a lot of books in their spare time. O Readers!

The Shining Girls, by Lauren Beukes is a time-travel serial murder novel. So, I love most time-travel novels. I am not a fan of serial murder novels. About halfway through I started skimming: I am almost never interested in how bone-knife-artery-floor interactions work, no matter how literary. The “ordinary life” American history recounted through the time travel device was well-done, but someone like me might often just prefer to read primary sources or work by historians. So, altogether, well-written, but not my genre.

HT: Carmen McCain for recommending

My Mortal Enemy, by Willa Cather, is a short novel first published in 1926. Pretty bitter. An unforgettable protagonist, who cuts through platitudes, is complex and a bit unfathomable even to a perceptive narrator. The writing is excellent. Here is an excellent article by Charles Johanningsmeier about who might have been the inspiration for the novel, which apparently is a bit perplexing for Cather scholars.

What prompted Cather to write about the McClures in early 1925, though, was learning about McClure’s pathetic position during her 1924 meeting with him. Possessing detailed knowledge both of the McClures’ courtship and their current situation, Cather commenced her novel about the lies, contradictions, and disappointments involved in such a seemingly passionate love affair, and the disillusionment of one who wants so very much to believe in it. The numerous parallels between the stories of the Henshawes and the McClures make identification of these persons as Cather’s models unmistakable; furthermore, the evolution of Nellie’s relationship with the Henshawes is closely mirrored by Cather’s relationship with the McClures, and with S. S. McClure in particular.

More is in the article. Fascinating!

Our neighborhood book group read The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes and I loved it! Oddly, as I was reading it I had the distinct feeling I had already read it, but I could not remember anything. Thinking a lot about this short book really paid off: as you browse it for nuance, you find it on practically every page. Little details that you passed by in the first reading, you suddenly realize are quite important. It is intense and compact, and a wonderful study in ambiguity. From the perspective of the book group discussion, let me say it is a “Yes” to the following question: “Is there a short novel that good readers can spend more than an hour trying to dissect what actually is happening?” The narrator is unreliable, and tells you that right away. And he is very unlikable, but he is telling such an interesting story. And he is really very perceptive, at least in his self-serving understanding of those around him.

He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope proved to be a fine summer novel. Like most of Trollope, it is long.  So 20-30 pages a day means it takes a month to finish. But the reading is quite rewarding. Keen insights into the situation of a certain class of women, who have occupied the popular imaginary for more than a century: the constrained, corseted, almost imprisoned Victorian young women, whose entire social identity depends on the men in their social orbit. Trollope here concentrates almost entirely on the women’s point of view. Gripping!