November Book, The Franchise Affair

The Talk About Books group decided at their October meeting to read a mystery for the November book selection.  Josephine Tey came up as a much loved British mystery writer. The Franchise Affair was first published in 1948.

The setting is contemporary post-Second World War, but could be  inspired by the 18th-century case of Elizabeth Canning, a maidservant who claimed she had been kidnapped and held prisoner for a month. It could be based on a 1925 non-fiction account of the case, The Canning Wonder by Athur Machen.

Robert Blair was about to knock off from a slow day at his law firm when the phone rang. It was Marion Sharpe on the line, a local woman of quiet disposition who lived with her mother at their decrepit country house, The Franchise. It appeared that she was in some serious trouble: Miss Sharpe and her mother were accused of brutally kidnapping a demure young woman named Betty Kane. Miss Kane's claims seemed highly unlikely, even to Inspector Alan Grant of Scotland Yard, until she described her prison -- the attic room with its cracked window, the kitchen, and the old trunks -- which sounded remarkably like The Franchise. Yet Marion Sharpe claimed the Kane girl had never been there, let alone been held captive for an entire month! Not believing Betty Kane's story, Solicitor Blair takes up the case and, in a dazzling feat of amateur detective work, solves the unbelievable mystery that stumped even Inspector Grant.

October Book, The Greater Journey

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough recounts the activities and observations of Americans who went abroad to Paris in great numbers beginning in the 1830's.

Waves of young Americans who would become important in art, education, medicine, literature, music and technological innovation sought the kind of broadening experiences that were not available to them at home.

 Mr. McCullough’s account of how Morse, who would become best known for his telegraph and code, painted his monumental “Gallery of the Louvre” (1831-33) is fascinating.  So are the experiences of American medical students in Paris, whose educational opportunities (including free lectures at the Sorbonne) were vastly greater than anything available to them at home. In America, male doctors could not examine female patients; in France, they could learn about obstetrics. And Paris enabled Elizabeth Blackwell to go home and become the first female doctor in the United States.

That's just a taste of the many famous personalities who fill the pages of The Greater Journey. The descriptions of Parisian life and political events during the span of the 70 years covered in the book are equally entertaining and enlightening.

The Endurance, September Book

Talk About Books will be participating in Vermont Reads 2016 with our September selection, The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander.

The thrilling adventure has been recounted many times. The expedition started out in August 1914 with the goal of making the first crossing on foot of the Antarctic Continent. 

The crew of 27 under the leadership of Ernest Shackleton came within 85 miles of their destination. There Endurance came to a dead stop, trapped in then crushed by the relentless ice pack. The stranded crew forged on for 20 months before finally being rescued.

Caroline Alexander has drawn upon previously unavailable sources to bring this expedition alive for her readers. She presents the work of Australian photographer Frank Hurley whose first-hand visual record had never before been published comprehensively. The survival of his glass plate negatives was a tribute to his resourcefulness. Together, Alexander's text and Hurley's photographs are riveting.

Copies of Endurance have been provided by a grant from the Vermont Humanities Council and are available at Guilford Free Library, Guilford Country Store, Guilford Central School and the Broad Brook Grange. When finished, readers are asked to return it or pass it on to a friend who will help us keep the books circulating.

Not Without Peril, August Book

Not Without Peril by Marguerite Allis is an historical novel based on the life of a real person, Jemima Sartwell, who born in Groton, Massachusetts. Her father moved his family to the wilderness when Northfield was at the edge of the frontier and built a fort in what is now Vernon, called Fort Sartwell. Jemima moved up and down the Connecticut River as her first husband, then her second husband were killed by Indians. She and her children were captured by Indians and taken to Canada, where they lived as prisoners of war. After the French and Indian War ended, Jemima was returned to New Hampshire, where she was reunited with all but two of her children. Not Without Peril is  an amazing book about an amazing woman. 
 
This epic adventure is a learning experience about the living conditions, political divides, impact of the French and Indian War, the American Revolution and the evolution of the land called The Grants which we now know as Vermont.

The Little Paris Bookshop, July Book

 “There are books that are suitable for a million people, others for only a hundred. There are even remedies—I mean books—that were written for one person only…A book is both medic and medicine at once. It makes a diagnosis as well as offering therapy. Putting the right novels to the appropriate ailments: that’s how I sell books.”

Monsieur Perdu calls himself a literary apothecary. From his floating bookstore in a barge on the Seine, he prescribes novels for the hardships of life. Using his intuitive feel for the exact book a reader needs, Perdu mends broken hearts and souls. The only person he can't seem to heal through literature is himself; he's still haunted by heartbreak after his great love disappeared. She left him with only a letter, which he has never opened.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

After Perdu is finally tempted to read the letter, he hauls anchor and departs on a mission to the south of France, hoping to make peace with his loss and discover the end of the story. Joined by a bestselling but blocked author and a lovelorn Italian chef, Perdu travels along the country’s rivers, dispensing his wisdom and his books, showing that the literary world can take the human soul on a journey to heal itself.

Defending Jacob, June Book

 “Defending Jacob” by William Landay is a courtroom drama that hinges on the murder of a high school boy. The novel opens amid a grand jury hearing, with Andy Barber, a former assistant district attorney, being grilled by Neal Logiudice who happens to have been Andy’s protégé. The questions involve whether or not Andy should have been investigating the killing of a boy named Ben Rifkin. The case fell into Andy’s professional bailiwick, but the victim was a classmate of Jacob Barber, Andy’s 14-year-old son.

Landay turns out to be creating a clever blend of legal thriller and issue-oriented family implosion. It’s possible to get almost all the way through “Defending Jacob” without knowing whether he can pull this off. It helps that Andy is as ignorant about Jacob as he is savvy about courtroom theatrics. Before the murder, Andy and his wife, Laurie, just didn’t know much about their son. These are comfortable suburban parents who think they have done all the right things in raising their son. They’ve never needed to question that assumption. But the way that Jacob found Ben’s body in the woods casts suspicion on Jacob. So does the fact that Ben was a bully, using Jacob as a frequent target. And it turns out, to Andy and Laurie’s horror, that Jacob’s classmates have always found him a little strange. The more they uncover about this, the more “Defending Jacob” heats up.

excerpts from NY Times review by Janet Maslin, 2/12/2012 

Fates and Furies, May Book

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff tells a the story of a marriage from two sides. Every relationship has two perspectives. And sometimes, it turns out, the key to a great marriage is not its truths but its secrets. At the core of this rich, expansive, layered novel, Lauren Groff presents the story of one such marriage over the course of twenty-four years.

According to Jason Sheehan in his September 15, 2015 book review for npr, "The book is a master class in best lines; a shining, rare example of that most unforgiving and brutal writer's advice: All you have to do is write the best sentence you've ever written. Then 10,000 more of the best. Then find a way to string them together into the story of something.

 At age twenty-two, Lotto and Mathilde are tall, glamorous, madly in love, and destined for greatness. A decade later, their marriage is still the envy of their friends, but with an electric thrill we understand that things are even more complicated and remarkable than they have seemed. The voice that tells Lotto's half of the tale is dreamy. Mathilde's is rougher, crueler. A Greek chorus chimes in now and then in snarky, bracketed asides, which work beautifully within the architectural construction of Groff's voice.

By the end of Fates And Furies, we have seen both sides, maybe even all sides of Lotto and Mathilde. We've seen the man and the woman behind the man, borne witness to terrible truths brought forth for spite's sake and watched a dark turn to furious vengeance when Mathilde (suddenly, but not at all uncharacteristically) goes full Lady MacBeth and scorches the very earth. We know their secrets. We know their fears."