Short Story Wednesday: The Wood at Midwinter by Susanna Clarke

I bought this small hardback book consisting of one short story because it was pretty, very appealing, and with lovely illustrations. And apparently a Christmas story. For its size, it was expensive, not exorbitant, but an indulgence.  I bought it at our lovely independent book store (at a 50th anniversary sale, so I got 20% off).

Previous to reading this story, I had read nothing by Susanna Clarke and I had no idea what to expect. 

I loved the story. It is a fantasy story about a young woman, Merowdis, who loves animals and nature. She has many dogs and many cats, and a pig, plus other assorted animals. She prefers to spend her time in the woods alone, and she has a sister, Ysolde, who understands her and aids and abets her in her escapes to the woods. The rest of her family wants her to marry and be normal.

As the story begins, Ysolde takes Merowdis out to the woods in the chaise, dropping her at the gates to the wood, leaving her to walk alone in the woods with two of the dogs and the pig, named Apple. 

The story begins a few days before Christmas and there are mentions of the Christmas season, but I hardly noticed the connection to Christmas the first time I read it. 

I loved the Afterward too, where the author talks about her inspiration and sources for the story. It was as good as the story, and I found both the story and the afterword moving.

The story takes up 42 pages of the book but there are a lot of illustrations, so it is really about 30 pages long. The illustrations by Victoria Sawdon are gorgeous and the writing is magical.

Winter Solstice: Rosamunde Pilcher

This book is way outside of my normal reading, and over 500 pages long, but I fell in love with it from the beginning and was immediately immersed in the story. It is the epitome of a comfort read... at least for me. And it was set at winter solstice and has a focus on Christmas, a big plus.

We meet Elfrida Phipps, formerly an actress on the London stage, at age 62. Two years previously she retired, moved to Dipton in Hampshire, England and bought a small cottage. Elfrida soon encounters Gloria and Oscar Blundell and their 12-year-old daughter Francesca and they all quickly become good friends. Oscar is 67 and much older than Gloria. 

Elfrida goes off for an extended visit with a cousin and his much younger wife and their young children. When she gets back from her month's visit, she finds that Oscar's wife and child were killed in an automobile accident, and that Oscar has no place to live, unless he goes to an old folks' home nearby. She offers to help get him moved and settled in Creagan, Scotland where he owns half of an Estate House which used to belong to his grandmother.

Shortly thereafter they are joined at the Estate House by three other people who need a place to stay at Christmas: Carrie, a young woman related to Elfrida; Lucy, her 14-year-old niece; and Sam, a businessman who is in the area to help rebuild a company that had fallen on hard times.

My Thoughts:

• The characters are all interesting. I got to know the main characters and care for them, but all of the peripheral characters had back stories. I will admit that the main characters are almost too good to be true, but that did not bother me enough to spoil my overall enjoyment of the story. (A good number of reviewers don't agree with my assessment of those characters.)
• Pilcher's writing style appealed to me. Each chapter is titled with the name of one of the five main characters and looks at the story from their point of view. She reveals the details of the issues that they are dealing with gradually throughout the book. The depictions of the Scottish countryside and the weather in November and December in this part of Scotland were wonderful.
• There are many mentions of books: reading them, buying them, books in homes, bookshops. I love that in a novel.
• The ending was exactly what I wanted it to be, and when I finished it, I was sorry that it was over. 

This was Rosemary Pilcher's last novel, and I don't know how it compares to her earlier books, but I will be looking for another one to read someday.

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Publisher:   Thomas Dunne Books, 2015 (orig. pub. 2000)
Length:       520 pages
Format:      Trade paperback
Setting:       Mostly Scotland.
Genre:        Fiction
Source:      I purchased this book in October 2023.

Short Story Wednesday: Murder for Christmas, edited by Thomas Godfrey

This is the book that I will be reading Christmas short stories from this year...

The book was edited by Thomas Godfrey, with illustrations and cartoons by Gahan Wilson included. Godfrey provides an introduction for each story.

Two paragraphs from the dust jacket:

It has been said that Christmas brings out the best in everyone, and this has been especially true of mystery writers who seem to have been inspired to their best work by the holiday season.

So come to a unique yuletide celebration and rub elbows with such greats as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Dame Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, and Ellery Queen, while Georges Simenon and Dame Ngaio Marsh drop a few hot coals into your stocking. Masters of suspense John Collier and Stanley Ellin will be on hand with a few terrifying tales to send shivers up your spine. Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens, and Baroness Orczy also will be present with some surprise contributions. There will be a few laughs, too, with Damon Runyon, Wyndham Lewis, and Woody Allen, as well as visits with old and new masters of the genre such as Margery Allingham, Dorothy L. Sayers, G.K. Chesterton, Edward D. Hoch, and H.R.F. Keating. John Dickson Carr will favor us with a locked room story, while O. Henry contributes some Christmas criminality from the Old West. We'll even go Christmas shopping with Robert Louis Stevenson.

George Kelley reviewed Murder for Christmas at his blog. He lists all the stories in his post.

Short Story Wednesday: American Christmas Stories

 

Last year I purchased an anthology of Christmas short stories from The Library of America Collection, titled American Christmas Stories, edited by Connie Willis. There are 59 short stories which have been selected from a variety of genres. The stories were published between 1872 and 2004.

I wanted to sample stories from a variety of time periods, so I started with the first four stories in the book, published between 1872 and 1883.

• Bret Harte, "How Santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar"
• Louisa May Alcott, "Kate’s Choice"
• Mark Twain, "A Letter from Santa Claus"
• J. B. Moore Bristor, "Found After Thirty-Five Years—Lucy Marshall’s Letter"

Alcott's "Kate's Choice" is about a 15-year-old girl who has been orphaned. Her father wanted her to live with one of her uncles after his death; all of them have a family with children near her age. She has never met any of these families because she lived in England and they were in the US. Kate is allowed to choose which family because her father was rich and she has lots of money. However, Kate wants to meet her grandmother before making a decision. The story is very readable and I enjoyed it, but it is sentimental and everyone was too perfect. 

The story  by J. B. Moore Bristor, "Found After Thirty-Five Years—Lucy Marshall’s Letter", was very interesting. It is described as a true story. It is about a black man who was a slave and separated from his mother when he was a child. Many years later, he had tried to find out if she was alive, with no results. A white woman volunteers to help him find out about his mother or any additional family. She writes some letters to ministers of churches in the area where he lived with his mother.

The next set of stories I read were published from 1903 to 1909: 

• O. Henry, "A Chaparral Christmas Gift"
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman, "According to Solomon"
• Edward Lucas White, "The Picture Puzzle"

My favorite in this set was "The Picture Puzzle", which was a somewhat fantastical story of a couple whose very young daughter is kidnapped. When she is not returned, they end up consoling themselves by working on picture puzzles together.

This story was first published in Lukundoo and other Stories by Edward Lucas White in 1927. It was most recently published in a Dover edition of The Stuff of Dreams: The Weird Stories of Edward Lucas White. "The Picture Puzzle" and other stories in that book are discussed at Battered, Tattered, Yellowed, & Creased.

Then I wanted to read some stories from the 1980's. Both of these are very good.

Cynthia Felice's "Track of a Legend" is a science fiction story about two kids looking forward to their Christmas presents. They also share a belief in Bigfoot and believe he lives nearby. 

Ed McBain's "And All Through the House" is an 87th Precinct story. As it opens, Steve Carella is on his own in the squad room a little before midnight on Christmas Eve. Soon various detectives come in with people they have arrested for minor crimes, including a very pregnant woman and her husband who had been arresting for living in an abandoned building. 

I still have many more stories from this book to read. 

Short Story Wednesday: American Christmas Stories from the Library of America

 

Today I am featuring an anthology of Christmas short stories from The Library of America Collection. American Christmas Stories was edited by Connie Willis, and she has provided the introduction. There are 59 stories included.

From the dust jacket of this book:

Library of America and acclaimed author Connie Willis invite you to unwrap this diverse collection of fifty-nine enchanting and uniquely American stories about Christmas, literary gems that will delight and surprise.

Ranging from the advent of the American tradition of holiday storytelling in the wake of the Civil War to today, this is the best and widest-ranging anthology of American Christmas stories ever assembled. Ghost stories and crime stories, science fiction, fantasy, westerns, humor, and horror; tales of Christmas morning, trees, gifts, wise men, and family dinners everywhere from New York to Texas to outer space: this anthology is an epiphany, revealing the ways Christmas has evolved over time—and how the spirit of the holiday has remained the same.

I have only read one of the stories in this book so far. It is a story by Pete Hamill, titled "The Christmas Kid." Written in 1979, it is about a Jewish boy from Poland who has come to New York City to live with his uncle, following the end of World War II. He is an orphan and lost his parents to the holocaust. The story is told from the point of view of another boy in the neighborhood. It was a very moving story. I seem to be reading more sentimental stories this December.

This was the first thing I have read by Pete Hamill. If anyone has read books or stories by Hamill, I would love to hear what you think. 

The Last Noel: Michael Malone

This is a Christmas story, as the title indicates, with a serious topic.

Following is the description from the back of the book:

The Last Noel captures the exuberance and poignance of a lasting friendship between a man and a woman from very different backgrounds. Noni Tilden and Kaye King grow up and grow close as their lives come dramatically together through four decades of tumultuous change in a small southern town.

The story begins in 1963 when Kaye first meets Noni on the eve of their seventh birthdays. On that Christmas Eve, Kaye climbs through her bedroom window to invite her to come sledding with him in a rare southern snowfall. 

The story takes place in the small town of Moors, North Carolina. Noni (real name Noelle) is the daughter of the Tilden family, a rich and privileged family that has lived in the area for many years.  Kaye is the grandson of the Tilden's black maid, who has worked for the Tildens for years. Kaye and Noni's relationship is viewed through twelve Christmases, starting in 1963 and ending in 2003. 

The two main characters are both flawed, but very sympathetic. Many secondary characters are also memorable. My favorite is Kaye's grandfather (by marriage), Tatlock, a very vocal, colorful character who later in life starts painting and gains fame for his paintings.

I don't often read books set in the South, but this one covered from 1963 through the 1990s and handled racism and politics of that time pretty well. I enjoyed it because it is well-written and touches on events that happened in my own lifetime; it covers the Viet Nam war, politics, civil rights, the moon landing, and the music over the decades. 

The description at the publisher's website emphasizes the romance in this book, which there is little of. The description on the back of my book focuses on the lifelong friendship between the two main characters.

I have read two of Michael Malone's mysteries and some of his short stories. The crime fiction stories are darker. My review of Time's Witness is here and reviews of short stories from Red Clay, Blue Cadillac: Stories of Twelve Southern Women are here and here. This book was very different; it was a much more sentimental story.

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Publisher:  Sourcebooks, 2002.
Length:     292 pages
Format:    Trade paperback
Setting:     North Carolina
Genre:      Historical Fiction
Source:     Purchased in 2005.

A Christmas Carol: Charles Dickens

I am not sure if I have read A Christmas Carol before, but it felt brand new to me as I read it a few days ago. I have, of course seen some adaptations of the story but the only one I remember is Scrooged with Bill Murray. It is one of my favorite Christmas films, but of course it is a departure from the original story.

The novella has a very simple structure. In the first part, Scrooge is revealed to be a bitter man who has no sympathy for the poor and whose every thought is aimed at making more money. On Christmas Eve, he leaves his place of business at the end of the day, after being rude and inconsiderate to his employee, his nephew, and some people seeking donations for the poor. He goes home but immediately notices odd occurrences; the iron knocker on his door looks like the head of his old partner, Marley, now dead. Marley appears before him, in chains, and foretells that that three visitors will come and will try to save Scrooge from Marley's sad fate.

In the middle three parts, the three ghosts visit Scrooge and take him on heartbreaking and scary tours of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. And Scrooge does experience an epiphany and becomes aware that he can change. The last part shows Scrooge's redemption and his new relationships with family and friends.

What did I like?

Just about everything. I liked the way the story was told. The narration pulled me into the mood immediately. Not only is the book a pleasant and humorous read, while giving us a beautiful story of redemption and finding new happiness, it also shows us today what life was like in the 1800's, especially for the very poor. The edition that I read had wonderful illustrations by Roberto Innocenti. The illustrations enriched the reading experience.

Here are some paragraphs from his journey with the Ghost of Christmas Present:

...they stood in the city streets on Christmas morning, where (for the weather was severe) the people made a rough, but brisk and not unpleasant kind of music, in scraping the snow from the pavement in front of their dwellings, and from the tops of their houses, whence it was mad delight to the boys to see it come plumping down into the road below, and splitting into artificial little snow-storms.

The house fronts looked black enough, and the windows blacker, contrasting with the smooth white sheet of snow upon the roofs, and with the dirtier snow upon the ground; which last deposit had been ploughed up in deep furrows by the heavy wheels of carts and waggons; furrows that crossed and re-crossed each other hundreds of times where the great streets branched off; and made intricate channels, hard to trace in the thick yellow mud and icy water. The sky was gloomy, and the shortest streets were choked up with a dingy mist, half thawed, half frozen, whose heavier particles descended in a shower of sooty atoms, as if all the chimneys in Great Britain had, by one consent, caught fire, and were blazing away to their dear hearts’ content. There was nothing very cheerful in the climate or the town, and yet was there an air of cheerfulness abroad that the clearest summer air and brightest summer sun might have endeavoured to diffuse in vain. 

For, the people who were shovelling away on the housetops were jovial and full of glee; calling out to one another from the parapets, and now and then exchanging a facetious snowball—better-natured missile far than many a wordy jest—laughing heartily if it went right and not less heartily if it went wrong. The poulterers’ shops were still half open, and the fruiterers’ were radiant in their glory. There were great, round, pot-bellied baskets of chestnuts, shaped like the waistcoats of jolly old gentlemen, lolling at the doors, and tumbling out into the street in their apoplectic opulence. ...

If I had to find some complaint about the book, I would point out that Scrooge reversed his attitudes awfully quickly. On the other hand, who wouldn't change if they were in the middle of being taking back and forth in time by ghosts. I sensed that deep down he was ready to make amends. And this is a fantasy / ghost story anyway. A parable of sorts.

It is encouraging that this story has endured for so long. I understand now why some people read this every Christmas. It is a quick read, very entertaining, and joyful.


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Publisher:   Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, Inc., 1990 (Orig. Publ. 1843)
Length:      152 pages, with illustrations.
Format:      Hardcover
Setting:      Great Britain
Genre:       Classic; Fiction
Source:      From our collection of illustrated books.

Six Degrees of Separation from A Christmas Carol to Mr. Ive's Christmas

The Six Degrees of Separation meme is hosted by Kate at booksaremyfavoriteandbest. The idea behind the meme is to start with a book and use common points between two books to end up with links to six other books, forming a chain. Every month she provides the title of a book as the starting point.

The starting point this month is A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, thus this is a perfect first post for December. I am sure I have read this story long ago, but then maybe I am just familiar with film adaptations. (My favorite is Scrooged with Bill Murray.) I do have the illustrated edition pictured here, and I will be reading it this month.

For my first link I will make the obvious connection, another book with a Christmas theme.


The Shortest Day by Jane Langton is set in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Homer and Mary Kelly are teaching a class at Harvard University. Mary is participating in the annual Christmas Revels when a young singer in the event dies in an automobile accident. When other deaths follow, Homer resists getting involved, even though he was once a homicide detective.

I next link to another book featuring an academic setting ... Murder is Academic by Christine Poulson. The UK title is Dead Letters. This is the first book in Poulson's Cassandra James series. Cassandra becomes the Head of the English department at St. Etheldreda's College at the University of Cambridge, after the former Head, a close friend, dies. This is one of my favorite academic mysteries.

I move on to another book set at the University of Cambridge, The Cambridge Theorum. The main character, Derek Smailes, is a police detective assigned to investigate the death of an undergraduate. It is a combination of a police procedural and an espionage novel.

My next choice would be The Becket Factor by Michael David Anthony, which also includes elements of espionage with another subgenre, this time a clerical mystery. Published in 1990, politics, local and national, are also touched on. The main setting for this book is a cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, and its surroundings, which leads me to another book set in a Cathedral close.

Close Quarters by Michael Gilbert was my first exposure to life in a Cathedral close, which made it doubly interesting. That book was published much earlier, in 1947, and is very much a traditional puzzle-type mystery.

My last book in the chain has even more of a religious emphasis, and takes us back to the Christmas theme. Mr. Ive's Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos is a novel that tells the story of a man's life and the grief he suffers when his son dies in a senseless robbery a few days before Christmas. Mr. Ives' religious beliefs and faith are at the center of this book, but family relationships and friendships are also stressed.

My chain this month began and ended with Christmas stories, and in the middle there were books with academic or ecclesiastical settings. I look forward to seeing the direction of other Six Degrees posts.

Doomsday Book: Connie Willis

This book is set at Christmas. It may not contain much merriness and the festivities may be muted, but Christmas is there throughout the story.

Doomsday Book is the first novel in the Oxford Time Travel Series by Connie Willis. The story begins in the 2050s when time travel has been successful in some cases, but is in the hands of historians at Oxford University. Kivrin Engel, a student in the Mediaeval History department at Brasenose College, is preparing to go back to the Middle Ages, 1320 to be exact, and Professor James Dunworthy is helping her, even though he thinks the trip is unsafe. After Kivrin has been transferred back in time, the story is told in alternating sections, following Kivrin's experiences in the earlier time, and Dunworthy's efforts to recover her from the past.

As soon as the transfer has been made, Dunworthy suspects there is a problem with the drop. Badri, the technician who handled the transfer, comes down with a serious disease and cannot tell them what happened. Dr. Mary Ahrens who works in the infirmary is a friend of Dunworthy. The disease turns into an epidemic and she is soon consumed with caring for the sick and tracking down the origin of the disease.  Her niece's son is visiting her for Christmas and Dunworthy ends up watching after twelve-year old Colin.

That is the bare bones of the plot, although I have left out any hint of what Kivrin encounters in her travels. I would say about equal time is given to each time period. The book begins a few days before Christmas, so that Kivrin will have identifiable events to determine when she should be ready to be picked up and returned to her own time.

My thoughts:

I loved this book. I liked the characters and the way the story is told. It will go on my shelf of books to reread. Yet the story is not perfect by any means.

Strong points:

• The characterization is very good. In addition to the characters mentioned above, there are many other wonderful characters in both time periods. Both primary and secondary characters are well defined. Various types of relationships are explored with these characters.
• The author conveys the conditions of the Middle Ages very well, and I now want to read more mysteries set in that timeframe. 
• This book has many parts that are just overwhelmingly sad, and that is primarily what I remember about it. But the entire book is not like that; although the events in both time lines are serious in tone there is also humor. 

Weak points:

• Pacing is a problem, especially in the James Dunworthy time period. There is a lot of repetition and stalling. But I still enjoyed reading those portions, just got a bit irritated.

Neutral:

• There is not much explanation of time travel or its issues. I don't think that was the point of this book, but it is worth mentioning. If the reader is looking for technical explanations or discussions, this isn't the book to read.
• I cannot point to any specific issues, but readers have complained about incorrect use of terminology for the UK setting in some of the Oxford Time Travel series. I did not encounter any such criticism of this book. 

I think any reader's enjoyment will depend on what they are looking for in this book. For me, the book was exactly what I wanted and expected, and the good points outweighed the bad, which were merely minor annoyances.

If you are interested in the series, this overview at Alan J. Chick's Pages looks to be a good resource. It tells more than I want to know about the books I haven't read, so I haven't read it all.

This page at Connie Willis's blog gives a more concise overview of the series: Oxford Time Travel Guide.

Doomsday Book was preceded by “Fire Watch”, a novelette, that is the first story in the Oxford Time Travel series. It was first published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Feb 1982, and was later reprinted in the collection Fire Watch. I haven't read it and don't know if it is a good place to start, but I have a copy ordered. "Fire Watch" won the 1983 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. It is available online here. Susan D. at Joie de Livre first pointed me to this story.

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Publisher:   Bantam Books / Spectra, 1992
Length:      445 pages (of very tiny print)
Format:      Hardcover
Series:       Oxford Time Travel, #1
Setting:      England 
Genre:       Time Travel
Source:      I purchased my copy.

Dust jacket illustration by Tim Jacobus.