Book Review: 1666

  By Lora Chilton

• Pub Date: 2023

• Genre: Historical fiction

• Where I bought this book: Joseph-Beth Bookstore, Lexington, during the Kentucky Book Fair 

• Why I bought this book: The author talked me into it  

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    The thing you have to understand about this book, and what affected me the most, is that these were real people who survived the horrors within.

    The PaTow'O'Mek tribe of what is now called Virginia actually existed, and because of the people written about and their descendants, exist again. That is no small thing, considering how America was built on the wanton destruction of the native people and their lifestyles.

    The novel begins with the tribe living in a time of change, when the Strangers have come and expressed an intent to take the land, regardless of the desires of the current inhabitants. Several tribes live on the land, with similar lifestyles but with shifting interests and coalitions. The Strangers take advantage, and with superior weaponry and numbers (not to mention the diseases they bring), take what they want.

    In doing so, they massacre all the male members of the PaTow'O'Mek tribe -- now known as the Patawomeck. They capture the women and children they don't kill, and sell them into slavery in the sugar fields of Barbados.

    The survival story is told in alternating chapters through two women who lived through the massacre and whom we meet again aboard the slave ships. Ah'SaWei and Xo, tribal friends, are split up when they arrived. Xo has the harder enslavement of the two, being regularly subjected to rapes and beatings. Ah'SaWei's enslaver is a Quaker, who is less vicious in the treatment of the people he enslaved.

    Several parts are particularly difficult to read, as the author spares little in documenting the violence inflicted on those who were kidnapped and enslaved. But it's necessary to lay it all out, as it explores the inhumanity of the original colonists, and the suffering of those whose lives and lifestyles were uprooted and destroyed.

    Chilton, the author, is a member of the tribe, and she interviewed tribal elders, studied the language, and researched documents from the colonial era and beyond to put together the tale. It's quite an amazing work that reads like literary history, and marks the trauma, pain, sadness, and eventually triumph.

Book Review: Small Things Like These

 By Claire Keegan

• Pub Date: 2021

• Where I bought this book: Scarlett Rose Books, Ludlow, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: I'd heard good things about it, and it won a Booker Prize in 2022

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    This book surprised me. I had expected concise, controlled, and beautiful writing, but a sparse story. What I found was tight, poetic writing -- at a mere 116 pages-- an exquisite use of the language, and a tale that untangled the old torments of Ireland in a new era.

    Just admire this scene of a Catholic Church in small-town, modern Ireland a few days before Christmas.

Some women with headscarves were saying the rosary under their breath, their thumbs worrying through the beads. Members of big farming families and business people passed by in wool and tweed, wafts of soap and perfume, striding up to the front and letting down the hinges of the kneelers. Older men slipped in, taking their caps off and making the sign of the cross, deftly, with a finger. A young, freshly married man walked red-faced to sit with his new wife in the middle of the chapel. Gossipers stayed down on the edge of the aisle to get a good gawk,  watching for a new jacket or haircut, a limp, anything out of the ordinary.

   

    Keegan conveys how the piety and the hypocrisy that pervaded the joining of the Catholic Church and the Irish Free State of Eamon de Valera may have evolved but has never left.

    She presents a story of the Magdalene Laundries, which operated throughout Ireland during this time. Run by the church, they held "fallen women" -- young women who became pregnant, bringing shame to their families and communities, or just troublesome souls who were not "proper ladies" -- ostensibly to help such women give birth or learn a trade. In reality, they were cruel institutions that worked the women for years, giving them little care or love, stealing their infants at birth, or letting them die.

    The communities knew what went on behind closed doors, but bought the excuses because of the power and teachings of the church -- first the Protestant Church of Ireland, and later the Catholic Church.

    Into this steps Furlong, a good man, an orphan raised by a widow, now an adult who is married with five daughters who attend the adjacent Catholic school. He stumbles into a reckoning with the reality, and wrestles with his ability to help or to continue to deny the truth.

    What he considers doing may be a small thing that leads to more trouble, or it may improve lives. Keegan's writing -- the slow setting of the scenes, the intricate but restrained  descriptions, and the expressive dialogue -- compel the story forward and make it a joy to read.

Book Review: The Ninth Child

The Ninth Child, by Sally Magnusson

     This book about a Scottish faery tale is so readable because it is based on a true story.

     There really was a Scots minister by the name of Robert Kirke. He really did die under mysterious circumstances in 1692. He really was the first person to translate the Bible into Scots Gaelic, and he really did hand-cut the epitaph for his wife's gravestone, which still stands in the cemetery in Aberfoyle, Scotland.

 

     More importantly for this story, though, is that Kirke was a folklorist, who collected and wrote down the tales of the Good People. It was this work that got Kirke into trouble with the faeries. The tale is that when Kirke died, the faeries stole away his body, replacing it with one of their own. They kept him from his heaven until he performed a task in repentance.

      It is this legend -- which the great Scots author Walter Scott had a hand in spreading -- that Magnusson imagines is true, and she writes the conclusion. 

       Fast forward to 1856. Isabel Aird is a doctor's wife, a lady of leisure and fashion, a city woman. Her husband, bored and looking to expand his medical knowledge, takes a position out in the country, as the Scots attempt to blast through the rocky highlands to bring fresh water to Glasgow.

    She is frustrated as she tries to adjust to life as a country wife. She misses the luxuries of an urbane society, but she comes to enjoy the trails and fields around her home. She manages to accept the country people, and some of them enjoy her, but they can never quite put aside their suspicions of her. 

   Of course, at some point, Mrs. Aird and Rev. Kirke meet and develop a relationship. It's an uneasy one, full of missteps and mistrusts. Each is unsure of the future and the social acceptance of their friendship.

    The tale is mostly theirs, but it brings in various subplots that tie into the story. There is Mrs. Aird's inability to give birth, as she has had eight miscarriages -- and during the book, she again becomes pregnant. Her desire to have a child is strong, and her society's judgment troubles her. She attempts to branch out, and expresses a wish to learn medicine and help her husband, who too often responds with a patriarchal flippancy.

    Yet, she is surrounded by strong women: There's Kirsty McEchern, a co-narrator who provides the voice of the Highlanders whose culture Mrs. Aird moves in with. Florence Nightingale is making her own waves in the world of medicine, and Mrs. Aird sees her as a living example of what women are capable of. Victoria is the queen, a mother and a sovereign, and her strength and equal personal relationship with  her husband, Prince Albert, is a strong contrast to the lifestyles of  Mrs. Aird and most of the women of their time. 

    It's a multi-faceted book, one that will leave you thinking about it long after you've read the last page.

Book Review: The Sealed Letter

The Sealed Letter, by Emma Donoghue

Like the time period in which it is set, this novel takes a while to unwind and reveal itself, patiently narrating the daily comings and goings of its various characters.

Based on Codrington v. Condrington & Anderson, one of the earliest divorce trials in British history, Donoghue's novel shows she is at her best writing historical fiction with its roots in real life. This is one of her earlier novels, published in 2008, and focuses on two women at the center of the mid-19th Century British drama

Helen Codrington is the unhappy wife of Admiral Harry Codrington, part of an upper-crust family living well in a fashionable part of London after an assignment in Malta. The admiral also is unhappy and wants out. But according to British law at the time, his only recourse is to accuse his wife of the crime of adultery. Because she wants to continue to mother her two daughters -- and otherwise keep her good name and her station in life -- Mrs. Codrington denies the charge and must defend herself in court.

The second main character is Emily "Fido" Faithfull, an unmarried businesswoman and leader of The Cause, which is capitalized in the book. The Cause is women's equality -- such as it is seen in the 1860s -- and one of the issues is marriage and divorce equity. She is also Mrs. Codrington's close friend and confidant.

But as much as Donoghue is a feminist herself, the two female characters are portrayed as not very likable. (There are a few male characters -- the admiral, Mrs. Codrington's alleged paramours, lawyers, the investigator, and the judge -- but they are relatively minor and for the most part are not well described.) Admiral Codrington is mostly a stuffed shirt longing for glory he will never achieve.

Miss Faithfull is shown to be smarmy, repressed, prudish, and judgmental. At one point, she refers to her friend as "a demimonde." Mrs. Codrington is devious, flighty, untrustworthy, and selfish. 

The narrative plays out like an episode of Law & Order -- the characters are introduced, a hinting at some wrongdoing is alleged and investigated, the charges are brought and trial begins. It's quite a linear tale, crossing back and forth between characters, and giving some insight into their lives beyond the trial. But the main story is the trial as it played out, which becomes the focus in the second half of the tale.

And don't skip the author's note at the end. It gives some insight into the actual trial and what happened afterward -- and into the author's mindset in bringing the characters to life.

Book Review: When Everything Changed

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins

A good overview of how the last 50-odd years of history affected women, from the average homemaker to the candidate for president of the United States. 

I liked it. The basic premise of the book is that the life of the American woman has changed dramatically over the past half-century, so much that most people born during the period do not comprehend what life was like in the 1950s and before. Yes, not everything is perfect these days, and women still fight discrimination. But the basic acceptance of women as equals, and their abilities in all fields, has pretty much cancelled out the idea of "men's work," and "women's work."

Collins, a columnist for The New York Times, is know for her witty observations, and this book has no shartage of them. It drags, however, when she moves into historian mode, blandly reciting facts and anecdotes on various historical events. In her defense, however, some of those times were pretty bloody and sad, as when she relates the roles of women in the civil rights movements, and the deaths that occurred during that period.

But her book is full of actual women who caused and lived through many of the changes, and the effect it had on them. However. some of these women jump in and out of the narrative, making it hard to keep track of them as individuals. Collins does, however, brings us up to date on many of the women portrayed.

Beware, however. The book was written in 2009, so while it includes Hillary Clinton's 2008 run for president, her 2016 run is not reviewed.