Carol's Comments October 2022

 

Carol’s Comments October 2022

Hello Everyone! Welcome to another issue of Carol’s Comments. I’ve always loved literary traveling to all my favorite places and time periods. This summer, I began my journey in the Italian Riviera while watching Hotel Portofino, the delightful and sumptuous new ITV British miniseries written and created by Matt Baker on PBS. I soon discovered that the program also had a companion novel written by J.P. O’Connell. I quickly checked it out of the library.

 

Set in 1926, O’Connell’s  luscious historical novel concentrates on a British aristocratic family, Bella and Cecil Ainsworth and their two grown children- Alice and Lucien- who open a luxury hotel in the Italian Riviera during Mussolini’s reign. Their daughter Alice is a widow raising a young daughter after her husband dies in World War I while their artist son Lucien still suffers the traumatic physical and psychological wounds from the Great War.

The Ainsworths hope to arrange a marriage between Lucien and Cecil’s former sweetheart’s daughter Rose but Lucien’s secret dalliance with the hotel’s maid Paola and his homoerotic attraction to his best friend Nish, an Indian doctor who saved his life in France create tremendous obstacles to this plan.

Moreover, all the hotel’s guests along with its owners are guarding many lurid secrets which creates lots of intrigue along with some confusion for the reader. The book’s rather provocative themes, overlooked and downplayed in the television series reminded me of a combination between Downton Abbey and The Durrells in Corfu with a small sprinkle of an Agatha Christie or Jessica Fellowes mystery.

Hotel Portofino, the novel as well as the miniseries has a very open-ended conclusion. It seems like there may be many more adventures ahead for Bella Ainsworth and her family as well as former and future guests. I hope so!

Despite its lightweight and somewhat predictable plot, Hotel Portofino is the perfectly delicious summer reading guilty pleasure.

 

While browsing The New York Times Bestseller List, I noticed that Kim Michele Richardson had recently published The Book Woman’s Daughter, a sequel to The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek, one of my favorite novels. I hurriedly placed a hold on it. Unfortunately, I had to wait several weeks before I could read it. When the library finally notified me that copy was available, I quickly picked it up at the River Park Branch. It was well worth the wait.

Set in 1953 Kentucky, Richardson’s new novel focuses on Cussy Mary’s teenage daughter Honey Lovett who narrates the book. At sixteen, her parents are arrested for breaking miscegenation laws when a stranger reports a “Blue” woman is married to a white man. The Lovett family had been living secretly in Thousandsticks, Kentucky for twelve years. Fortunately, when Honey reached adolescence ,she lost the blue skin color from the genetic disorder methemoglobinemia and now only turns blue on her hands and feet when she is afraid or excited.

To protect Honey from going to the House of Reform, a children’s prison where she would be confined for five years until she turns 21, her parents ask their lawyer to appoint their trusted friend Loretta Adams to act as her guardian.

When Loretta suddenly dies and her nephew sells his old aunt’s house to pay his debts, Honey returns to her grandparents’ home deep in the hollow hoping to hide from the authorities until she turns 18 in sixteen months. Honey realizes she needs a job to support herself. After much thought, she applies for the Assistant Packhorse Outreach Librarian position. When other applicants drop out, she gets hired!

Now just like her mother years ago, she and her mother’s old mule Junia, deliver books and other reading material to people living in rural Kentucky. With her tremendous fighting spirit, Honey Lovett not only helps her patrons by giving them hope, solace and escape through the books she brings them but these books also allow Honey to gain emancipation and live independently as a legal adult.

Throughout the sequel, Richardson extensively describes events from the first novel so it can be read as a separate book for readers who haven’t read the original story. The author also profiles other courageous Appalachian women like forest lookouts, visiting nurses and coal miners by including authentic photos of these trailblazers in a special section at the end of the book.

The novel’s incredibly enthralling narrative was so riveting and addictive, I couldn’t stop reading. I finished it in less than a week! The Book Woman’s Daughter is a wonderful and amazing book. I highly recommend it to both adult and young adult readers who enjoy historical fiction or novels about libraries.

 

After finishing The Book Woman’s Daughter, the library’s online catalog suggested I might enjoy reading The Paris Bookseller by Kerri Maher. When I learned that Maher’s new historical novel focused on expatriate authors and artists in 1920s Paris – a subject I absolutely adore, I quickly snatched up a copy.

Set in Paris between 1917-1936, Maher’s novel centers on Sylvia Beach, the founder of the famous bookstore and lending library Shakespeare and Company. Unsure of her true sexuality and very unconventional for her time, Sylvia decides in 1917 that Paris is the perfect place to live a bohemian life as a potential writer. Then by 1920 at age 30, she decides to open Shakespeare and Company, the first American bookstore in Paris after she meets and begins a discreet yet very passionate lesbian relationship with Adrienne Monnier.

Sylvia becomes very good friends with James Joyce and loves all his novels especially his current very controversial book Ulysses. When the United States declares it obscene and bans its publication under the Sedition Acts, Sylvia decides to defy this outrageous censorship and publishes Ulysses under the Shakespeare and Company’s imprint on Joyce’s birthday, February 2, 1922. This was the only book Shakespeare and Company would ever publish. Beach later relinquishes her rights to the novel when Random House under Bennett Cerf finally published it in the United States in 1952.

During the 1920s and 1930s, Shakespeare and Company became a literary haven for many other writers in the expatriate community such as Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry Miller and especially Ernest Hemingway. Chapters about Hemingway’s visits to the bookstore alone or particularly with his first wife Hadley Hemingway strangely mirror Paula McLain’s novel The Paris Wife, now seen through Sylvia Beach’s perspective.

Maher also features a fascinating Author’s Note chapter that vividly describes Beach’s remarkable life after the novel ends in 1936. I highly recommend The Paris Bookseller for readers who enjoy historical and biographical fiction especially set in Paris between the two world wars.

The books reviewed in this blog can be found in most local public libraries. My readers in St. Joseph County, Indiana can visit the St. Joseph County Public Library’s web site at sjcpl.org for additional information.

Thanks for reading! See you all next time.