July Reads II

The second half of July reading began with a small book recommended by my friend, Kristina, when we visited them in Tucson in February.
William Maxwell's "So Long, See You Tomorrow" is a memoir of a man seeking to make amends for something he had done fifty years earlier and was ashamed of. It relates an act of murder and how it affected the tenuous friendship between two lonely boys. The narrator is writing from memory, from newspaper articles from the time and from imagination.
It is interesting how Maxwell could make the reader see and feel the setting and characters with such sparse lines and paragraphs. Perhaps his forty years as fiction editor at The New Yorker honed his own writing. He won the American Book Award for "So Long, See You Tomorrow". Would I read more of his works? Yes, if I happen upon them, but I probably won't put them on my must read list.


"The Long Song" by Andrea Levy tells the story of a child field slave on a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the mid 1800's. "Miss July" relates the story of her life over and over to her son so he can pass it on to his daughters. He encourages her to write the story down so he can have it printed for her because in 1898 this son of a slave is a publisher-editor.

Our library places "Rate This Book" slips in the front pocket of some of their books. Only one person has rated this book. On a scale of 0 to 4, they gave it a -1. I wouldn't agree with that, but only my resolve to finish a book I've begun reading kept me reading to the end. That and the fact that Ms. Levy won the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction for her fourth book, "Small Island". Those awards made me think she must be worth reading. No, I do not plan to seek out "Small Island".

"Daughters of the Witching Hill" by Mary Sharratt was more palatable. And as it is based on the true story of women accused of witchcraft in Jacobean England (1600's), I found it quite interesting. It is also very scary to realize how poverty and social injustices can condemn innocent people. Ms. Sharratt lived in the Pendle region of Lancashire, England - the setting for "Witching Hill" during the years she researched and wrote the novel.

Reading this book makes it easy to understand from where the definition of "witch hunt" - "an investigation carried out ostensibly to uncover subversive activities but actually used to harass and undermine those with differing views" - comes. There is a part of me which did not want to read this book because I already knew the terrifying ending for these women. The author wrote it in such a way as to be hopeful and followed it up with an afterward of facts about the real woman her novel was based upon.

I have put Mary Sharratt's first novel: "Summit Avenue" on my must read list. I'll also read "The Real Minerva" and "The Vanishing Point" if I can find them.


For my final July read, I allowed myself the pleasure of another of my Minette Walters' mysteries - her second novel, "The Scold's Bridle". When rich, spiteful old Mathilda Gillespie is found dead in her bathtub, her wrists slit and the ancient scold's bridle clamped on her head, few people mourn even as they are puzzled by the way the old lady committed suicide. When suicide begins to look more like homicide, her doctor and heir who becomes a suspect, tries to aide the police in unraveling the mystery. In order to do that, they must delve into Mathilda's past of blackmail, perversion and deaths.


Another wonderful read! And August will begin with more of the same......