Fiction Reviews – Books, Brews & Banter

Excellent Women, by Barbara Pym

The comic novel Excellent Women by Barbara Pym immerses the reader in a time long past, an unfamiliar country and a unique culture. It’s 1952 post-World War II London. Rationing is still in effect and various structures, such as parts of churches, remain in ruins. The male population has been much reduced by the war, and the female population appears to be divided into marriageable women – young, attractive with the feminine wiles to know how to attract men and then the “excellent women ” – those who actually know how to run a household and address the common tasks of everyday life, women who are always open to serving others, regardless of how presumptuous the task or clueless the originator. The protagonist is one of the latter.

Excellent Women is a comedy of social manners in the style of Jane Austen. The plot, such as it is, is driven by a cast of fascinating characters whose personal foibles and everyday activities comprise the narrative. There is a great deal of tea drinking, going out to lunch and participating as helpful and productive members of an Anglican parish where jumble sales and Christmas bazaars require hours of planning, quibbling and execution. This placid, comforting way of life is disrupted by a married couple representing and introducing a new social order and a conniving, marriage-seeking female.

The book opens with the main character and narrator Mildred Lathbury, a thirty something single woman of just sufficient independent means, welcoming new neighbors to the flat below hers in very much not the best part of London or the most desirable house, since she must share a bathroom with the new tenants, married couple Helena and Rockingham (Rocky) Napier. The Napiers are totally outside the normal orbit of Mildred’s quiet, solitary life. Rocky is a flamboyantly charming naval officer, and Helena is an anthropologist, currently focused on marital kinship mapping in some foreign clime with her fellow anthropologist Everard Bone, an acerbic and socially inept unmarried male. Helena is a drama queen and a domestic slob – quite a contrast to Mildred who is a fastidious housekeeper with a quiet social life and part time job aiding distressed gentlewomen – an occupation that remains a mystery to the reader. Everard seems to take an interest in Mildred though his invariably dismissive communication style motivates Mildred’s sacrifice for Lent – trying to like him.

As the book progresses, Helena and Rocky split, dragging Mildred into writing letters between them and even arranging furniture transfers for both these self-centered, presumptuous moderns. But – Mildred is one of those excellent women, always ready to step in and help sort out other people’s problems.

The book’s other main characters are Mildred’s good friends, brother and sister Julian and Winifred Mallory. He is the unmarried parish Vicar, and she, an excellent woman, runs his household. Winifred is given to wearing items from the parish’s jumble sales that Mildred describes as drab and unsuitable. She notes that Julian has some good features but is not so good looking that women are constantly after him, thereby implying that marriage with him does not interest her. The siblings’ current preoccupation is finding a renter for the rectory’s upstairs apartment. Eventually, here enters the very attractive divorcee Allegra Gray, whom Mildred in one of her witty but acid observations speculates may or may not have been named after Dante’s “natural” child.

Mrs. Gray is a consummate manipulator– very definitely not an excellent woman, and even perhaps one who deliberately sets out to target a man as if she “were going to buy a saucepan or a casserole.” The vicar is enamored, but when the secret engagement is revealed, Mildred and Winifred and other parishioners are thrown into chaos. Eventually the vicar comes to his senses, and the engagement is called off. Quiet parish life goes on.

The book concludes with Mildred acceding to a near jaw dropping presumptuous request as her lot in life, ostensibly because it will be “a nice change of pace.” Some book club members who had admired Mildred’s choice of a quiet, solitary life and her witty observations were quite disappointed in the ending, but overall, most members enjoyed this book and its window into the past.

Fans of Barbara Pym will be pleased to learn that award-winning British film producer Ellie Wood has acquired rights to Excellent Women, with an option to develop other Pym books. She said, “I look forward to creating a “Pymverse” and bringing this iconic author’s uniquely British tales of comic observations and unrequited love not only to her legions of fans but also to a wider TV audience.”

— Sue Martin

The Golem and the Jinni, by Helene Wecker

The Golem and the Jinni is a debut novel by Helene Wecker. The novel is a mixture of historical fiction and fantasy. The two title characters are magical creatures who unexpectedly find themselves living as immigrants in New York City around 1899. Chava is a golem created from clay by a Jewish mistic kabbalist and Ahmad is a jinni, a creature of fire, who has been trapped in a copper flask for centuries by a wizard.

The story opens in the Polish town of Konin. A local man, Otto Rotfeld, is planning to immigrate to the United States and desires to take a wife with him. Rotfeld seeks out a Jewish mistic kabbalist, Yehudah Schaalman, to make him a wife out of clay. Rotfeld asks for a submissive wife, but also request that she be curious as well. Although Schaalman foresees disaster for Rotfeld, he does as Rotfeld requests and makes him a golem for a wife.

On the voyage to the United States, Rotfeld disobeys Schaalman’s instructions and wakes the golem while still at sea. The golem wakes with no knowledge of the world but is able to sense her master’s desires and seeks to carry them out. Soon thereafter, Rotfeld becomes seriously ill and passes away. The newly awakened golem is left masterless and must use her ability to read other’s desires to hide her true nature from the other passengers while the voyage continues.

Upon arrival in New York, the golem escapes the vessel, bypasses immigration, and makes her way to the Jewish quarter. There, the golem is discovered by Rabbi Avram Meyer, who takes the golem in and names her Chava. The rabbi considers destroying Chava, as he knows how dangerous a golem can be, but decides to help Chava lead as close to normal an existence as is possible.

Meanwhile, a Christian Syrian tinsmith, Boutrous Arbeely, takes on the task of reviving an ancient copper flask. During repairs, Arbeely accidentally frees a jinni from the flask. Like the golem, the jinni is soon trying to fit into society and pass as a human, taking the name Ahmad and working at the tin-smithery with Arbeely.

Much of the story focuses on Chava’s and Ahmad’s struggles with passing as human. Both spend the hours of the nighttime awake and alone. Eventually their paths cross and they recognize each other as magical creatures. They soon forge a fraught friendship and explore the city together at night. They have opposing views on the communities that they live with and what each should be seeking in life. Chava wants to be as human as possible and seeks to fill the needs of those around her while Ahmad resents being trapped in human form and seeks a way to escape his imprisonment. The story climaxes with the arrival of an antagonist with ties to both Chava and Ahmad.

Through the novel, Wecker explores aspects of her relationship with her husband. Wecker is of Jewish heritage and her husband is of Arab heritage, which mirrors the origins of the golem Chava and the jinni Ahmad. Wecker has said that elements of the story were inspired by “similarities between our families, the way that certain themes echo between them.”

Further, the story deals with themes on class divide, the immigrant experience, and feminism. Through the fantasy lens of the golem Chava and the jinni Ahmad we experience the difficulties in assimilation to a new culture and what it means to hide one’s true nature.

— Jim Lynch

Ordinary Grace, by William Kent Krueger

William Kent Krueger’s novel Ordinary Grace won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, the Anthony Award, and The Barry Award for 2013. Krueger has also written a series of mystery stories set in Minnesota based on sheriff/detective Cork O’Connor.

Ordinary Grace is a coming of age-story set in 1961 New Bremen, Minnesota. The story is narrated by Frank Drum as an adult forty years later. He recounts the events and challenges of that summer when everything he, as a thirteen year old, thought he knew of the world he was living in, was falling apart. We feel, see, hear and think as the thirteen year old in this story. It feels as if the town and characters were very real in their human experiences and emotions. The tone of this story is written with a quiet melancholy air.

Based in the small town of New Bremen, Minnesota, 13 year-old Frank, his brother Jake, and sister Ariel live with their parents Nathan, a Methodist minister and his wife Ruth. The story begins with the death of Bobby Cole, a child with golden hair and thick glasses killed on the railroad tracks. In that summer, the town saw five deaths, one of them was a member of the Drum family. Frank’s innocent summer transforms into a dark journey into adulthood.

The family members and the community deal with the deaths in many ways: goodness, joy, kindness, cruelty, anger and grace. The book raises questions of racism, war, mental illness, forgiveness, despair, faith and redemption. Often in the face of despair, Nathan spoke quiet humble words of faith to the community helping us, as the reader, to begin to understand the awful grace of God.

The action, characters, picturesque writing and the setting all enhance the story. The writing allows you to feel the depth of despair, the joy of life and ordinary grace of God.

One question raised in the novel is, “Why does God let bad things happen to good people?” Ordinary Grace is a journey of that question.

But it is Jake who offers us the most profound understanding of ordinary grace. “And that was it. A grace so ordinary that there was no reason at all to remember it. Yet I have never across the forty years since it was spoken forgotten a single word.” At the end of the novel, we glimpse in understanding the quote of what is ordinary grace.

— Deb Krueger