My Commonplace Book: May 2024

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent May’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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‘I know,’ I admit. ‘But it’s how I feel. I can’t rationalize it. The truth is, I’ve always thought that if you can explain why you love someone, then you probably don’t.’

Earth by John Boyne (2024)

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But with maturity comes the understanding that a woman must absorb the difficulties and trials of life. They will always be there. Happiness is not a gift that comes to us without pain.

A Court of Betrayal by Anne O’Brien (2024)

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General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas – Portrait by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière, c. 1797

To remember a person is the most important thing in the novels of Alexandre Dumas. The worst sin anyone can commit is to forget.

The Black Count by Tom Reiss (2012)

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When one looks back upon one’s time on Earth – across the span of years and decisions that have carried one from birth to wherever one is now – it is nigh impossible to point out a single particular moment and say, ‘Yes, here. This is where it all began to go wrong.’ But still one tries. One inspects the tapestry for the pattern, for the loose thread.

Spitting Gold by Carmella Lowkis (2024)

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‘A fish and bird may fall in love, but in whose world can they live? Air or water, whichever they choose, one will surely drown.’

A Plague of Serpents by KJ Maitland (2024)

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Defendants in the arsenic poisoning case of Nagyrév walking in the Szolnok prison yard

Joy always surprised her, peeking as it did through the cracks in her life. She didn’t know pleasure well enough to call it by name.

The Angel Makers by Patti McCracken (2023)

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It was something that had never occurred to me before: we all had the power to change our pasts, our beginnings – or our perception of them, at least – but none of us could determine how our stories would end.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng (2023)

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‘Do you not know, my friend, that each one of us is a dark mystery, a maze of conflicting passions and desires and attitudes? Mais oui, c’est vrai. One makes one’s little judgements – but nine times out of ten one is wrong.’

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie (1933)

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Čachtice Castle

‘There’s no use knowing how to speak Latin if the language of friendship is beyond you,’ observes the countess. ‘And you cannot profess to understand poetry, or literature, if you have not experienced the emotions that inspired the words.’

The Nightingale’s Castle by Sonia Velton (2024)

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‘She is coming home. It’s a year since I saw her last, but really I find that nobody ever changes – that we all contain ourselves from the day we are born.’

Enlightenment by Sarah Perry (2024)

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Finished with his task, he glanced back at her. ‘You cannot shape the world, Miss Symonds. It will always shape you, instead. How many like what remains, when the world is done with them?’

The Puzzle Wood by Rosie Andrews (2024)

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Favourite books read in May:

A Court of Betrayal and The Angel Makers

Authors read for the first time in May:

Carmella Lowkis, Tom Reiss, Patti McCracken

Places visited in my May reading:

England, Ireland, France, Saint-Domingue, Hungary, Malaysia

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Reading notes: I spent May catching up with books on my NetGalley shelf and also managed to fit in a Christie novel for the Read Christie challenge. In June, I’ll be focusing mainly on reading books from my 20 Books of Summer list and there’s also Mallika’s Reading the Meow week to look forward to.

How was your May? What are you planning to read in June?

The Black Count by Tom Reiss

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My second non-fiction review this month, The Black Count is a biography of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of the French author Alexandre Dumas. I’ve always loved Dumas’ novels (he’s most famous for The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, one of my all-time favourite books), so The Black Count appealed to me as soon as I heard about it on its publication in 2012. I’ve no idea why it has taken me so long to actually pick it up and read it!

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, usually referred to in the book as Alex, was born in 1762 in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti) in the Caribbean. He was the son of a French aristocrat, the Marquis Alexandre Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, and a freed slave woman, Marie-Cesette Dumas. After the death of his mother, the young Alex, along with his three siblings, was temporarily sold into slavery by his father in order to pay their passage back to France. Eventually the Marquis bought Alex back (but not the other three children, who remained in slavery and are lost to history) and took him home to France where he was educated in fencing, horse riding and all the other skills befitting the son of a nobleman.

When the Marquis remarried, however, Alex was left to fend for himself and he joined the French military, taking his mother’s surname of Dumas. Playing an important role in the French Revolutionary Wars, he quickly rose through the ranks and by the age of thirty-two was General-in-Chief of the French Army of the Alps, commanding 53,000 men. Later, on a campaign to Egypt, Alex clashed with another powerful general, Napoleon Bonaparte, and from there his career took a downward spiral. Today, Napoleon remains one of the most well known historical figures of all time, but Alex Dumas has been largely forgotten. The Black Count is an attempt to give Dumas the attention he deserves and make his story known to a modern audience.

General Alex Dumas was clearly a fascinating man, yet I have to be completely honest and say that I was slightly disappointed by this book. It was described as a thrilling real life adventure story, as exciting as one of Dumas’ novels, which I think raised my expectations too high. For me, there was too much focus on military history, with details of campaigns, battles and tactics, along with lots of general information on the French Revolution, with Alex Dumas himself being pushed into the background for large sections of the book. Of course, other readers will find this much more interesting than I did, but military life is never going to be one of my personal favourite subjects to read about and I have read about the Revolution many times before. I did quite enjoy the chapter about the Army of the Alps, though, where Alex and his men scaled the icy cliffs of Mont Cenis to capture a mountain pass; as Reiss points out, the cold must have come as a shock to a man who grew up in the Caribbean!

All of Alex Dumas’ achievements are very impressive, but most impressive of all is the fact that he was able to rise as high as he did as a person of colour in the 18th century. In some ways it was the perfect time and place for him to succeed because it was a surprisingly tolerant period in French history; a century later racial prejudices and the removal of rights for black people would have prevented him from reaching the same heights. At the time of Alex’s arrival in France, however, a decree known as the Code Noir was in place which gave freed slaves the same rights and privileges as white people. Add to that Alex’s renowned strength, courage and leadership skills and it’s easy to see how he was able to accomplish so much and even rival Napoleon for a while.

Tom Reiss occasionally tells us about his visits to museums and archives where he saw documents and paintings which informed his writing of the book. He also draws on a large number of other sources, which are listed at the end in a bibliography, the most notable being the writings of Alexandre Dumas (the author), who wrote about his father in his memoirs and several of his other non-fiction books. Reiss also suggests that some famous scenes from Dumas’ novels were based on his father’s adventures – for example, in 1799 Alex was captured and thrown into a dungeon in the Kingdom of Naples for two years, something which surely inspired the imprisonment of Edmond Dantès in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Although I expected to love The Black Count more than I did, I do feel that I’ve learned a lot from it, both about France in the second half of the 18th century and about Alex Dumas himself. He was an amazing man and deserves to be better known; I’m sure this book, in the twelve years since it was published, will have gone some way towards achieving that.

Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein

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This is a book I would probably never have chosen to read if it hadn’t been nominated for this year’s Walter Scott Prize, but although I didn’t love it, for reasons I’ll explain below, it’s a book I’m glad I’ve read. For a start, it’s set in Trinidad and I’ve only ever read one other novel set there – Fortune by Amanda Smyth, which was also shortlisted for the same prize a few years ago – and it was good to have the opportunity to learn more about the history and culture of that country.

The story takes place in the 1940s in and around Bell Village in central Trinidad. Thirteen-year-old Krishna Saroop lives with his parents in a sugarcane estate barrack, a ramshackle building with a leaking roof that is home to four other families. On a hill above the village is the Changoor farm where Dalton Changoor and his wife Marlee live in comparative luxury and where Krishna’s father, Hansraj – known as Hans – works on the land. When Dalton disappears without explanation one day, Marlee feels uneasy about being alone and asks Hans to stay on the estate overnight as a night watchman – and Hans agrees, grateful for the extra money she offers him in return. But as the days go by with no sign of Dalton coming home, Hans finds himself becoming increasingly attracted to Marlee and spending less and less time with his own wife and son.

Kevin Jared Hosein uses the disappearance of Dalton Changoor to explore the stories of Hans and Marlee and also Krishna and his mother Shweta, left behind in their squalid home while Hans spends his nights on the farm. Shweta is dreaming of a better life and at first is happy for Hans to take Marlee’s money in the hope that they can use it to buy a house of their own, but she changes her mind as she discovers that her husband is slipping away from her. However, Marlee is only one part of the problem; the relationship between Shweta and Hans has already been strained by the death of their first child, the ‘hungry ghost’ of the title.

If you think this sounds like a bleak novel, that’s because it is. I found it relentlessly miserable. Everyone has had an unhappy childhood, an unhappy marriage or both. We see people being abused, assaulted, blackmailed, murdered…even the animals don’t escape unscathed; there are some very graphic descriptions of the death of Dalton Changoor’s abandoned dogs, so be warned. I don’t usually have a problem reading books that tackle uncomfortable or challenging subjects, but I do like there to be at least a glimmer of hope and optimism and this particular book didn’t seem to have any. I don’t think there was a single character in the book that I actually liked.

Although I struggled to cope with the misery and sadness, obviously other people have enjoyed this book much more than I did and I would agree that it’s beautifully written. Kevin Jared Hosein was born in Trinidad and brings his island to life through his descriptions of the landscape, the birds and animals, the food, clothing and housing. He also captures the language and the speech patterns of the Trinidadian people and through the story of the Saroop family, who are of Indian descent, he explores the differences between the Hindu and Christian communities on the island. I can understand why it was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize and the fact that I didn’t like it probably means it’s going to win!

Book 18/50 for the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge 2024

20 Books of Summer – 2024

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20 Books of Summer, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books, is a very simple idea: make a list of twenty books (there are also ten and fifteen book options) and read them during the months of June, July and August. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds and despite taking part every year since 2017, I’ve never been able to complete it! I often do read twenty books during that period, but not necessarily the books on my list.

This year’s 20 Books of Summer starts on 1st June and finishes on 1st September. I have listed below the books I would like to read. Most of these are either upcoming NetGalley review copies or books for various other challenges and projects I’m taking part in.

1. Three Act Tragedy by Agatha Christie (Read Christie 2024)
2. N or M? by Agatha Christie (Read Christie 2024)
3. Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson (Moomin Week)
4. Thomasina by Paul Gallico (Reading the Meow)
5. In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas (Walter Scott Prize project)
6. The Noh Mask Murder by Akimitsu Takagi
7. The Meiji Guillotine Murders by Futaro Yamada
8. The King’s Witches by Kate Foster
9. The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye by Briony Cameron
10. The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
11. The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands by Sarah Brooks
12. A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk
13. Babylonia by Costanza Casati
14. The King’s Mother by Annie Garthwaite
15. A Case of Mice and Murder by Sally Smith
16. The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club by Helen Simonson
17. The Lost Queen by Carol McGrath
18. The Trouble with Mrs Montgomery Hurst by Katie Lumsden
19. The Briar Club by Kate Quinn
20. Cabaret Macabre by Tom Mead

Alternatives

I have listed four of the shorter books remaining on my Classics Club list as alternatives in case I don’t feel like reading some of the books above when the time comes.

1. The Black Lake by Hella S. Haasse
2. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff
3. The Elusive Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
4. The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

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Are you taking part in 20 Books of Summer this year? What do you think I should read first?

Earth by John Boyne

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Earth is the second in John Boyne’s new quartet of novellas named after the four elements. I enjoyed the first book, Water, so I was looking forward to this one and it didn’t disappoint. Although the two books (and presumably Fire and Air as well) are loosely linked, they are completely separate stories and you don’t need to read them in order. If you have already read Water, you may remember Evan Keogh, the teenage boy we last saw leaving his home on a small Irish island in search of a new life in England. Earth is Evan’s story.

Evan has had a talent for football from an early age, but his true passion is for painting and on his arrival in London he hopes to pursue a career as an artist. After a series of rejections he is forced to accept that he’s unlikely to achieve his dream and with his money running out he reluctantly decides that he will have to use his football skills after all. The book begins with Evan, now twenty-two and a famous footballer, preparing to stand trial for sexual assault. Robbie, his friend and teammate, is accused of rape and Evan has been charged as an accessory for filming the incident on his phone.

For such a short book (under 200 pages), Boyne manages to create a multi-layered story covering a range of important – and often uncomfortable – topics. Much of Evan’s story is told in flashbacks as he remembers his childhood, his strained relationship with his father and his growing awareness of his sexuality (Evan is gay, which can make life difficult both in his small Irish community and in the world of professional football). When he arrives in London he is taken advantage of by an older man who pushes him into work as a male escort, which has disastrous results for Evan. This is what leads to Evan’s decision to become a footballer, despite his dislike of the sport – and again I thought it was interesting to see how Boyne explores the idea of someone achieving huge success in a profession that they don’t enjoy and don’t respect, as well as the various ways in which young men cope with suddenly attaining a level of fame that they’re not really prepared for.

The trial is also a main focus of the book and I found it increasingly frustrating and infuriating to see how the victim was treated in court. I hoped Evan would do the right thing and not just try to protect his friend, but Boyne keeps us doubting him throughout the novel and I’m not going to tell you whether I got the outcome I wanted. Obviously there have been many real life cases of women making allegations of sexual assault against famous people and the courtroom scenes are all the more disturbing because you can easily imagine them happening.

Like ‘water’ in the previous book, Boyne works the element of earth into the story in several different ways, from the soil of Evan’s island home to the ground beneath his feet that is so important to his sport. Of the two, I think I preferred Water but both are powerful books and I’m now looking forward to Fire, coming in November of this year.

Thanks to Doubleday for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

The Angel Makers by Patti McCracken

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I don’t read a lot of true crime, but the title, cover and blurb of this one all intrigued me. Subtitled The True Story of the Most Astonishing Murder Ring in History, the book narrates in dramatic detail the tale of a group of serial killers in a Hungarian village who murdered over a hundred men during a fifteen year period. The killers were all women and their ringleader was a midwife known as Auntie Suzy.

The village of Nagyrév, a farming community in central Hungary, may seem an unlikely centre of crime, but actually it’s easy to understand why the events described in the book happened where and when they did. The murders took place between 1914 and 1929, a time when Hungary was in a state of political turmoil and preoccupied with war and its aftermath. The government didn’t have the money or resources to look into reports of suspicious deaths in a small rural village. Not only did Nagyrév have no police presence, but also no doctor, meaning that Auntie Suzy, with her limited medical knowledge, was the person to whom everyone turned for help with their own and their family members’ health problems. This put Suzy in a position of power, made stronger by the fact that she was the one who dictated to the clerk the causes of death to be put on the death certificates.

Auntie Suzy’s method was poisoning; she would soak sheets of flypaper in water to leave a residue of arsenic which could then be fed to the victim in small doses until they eventually became ill and died. Women came to buy bottles of Suzy’s potion for all sorts of reasons: maybe they had an abusive husband, an unwanted child they couldn’t feed or an elderly father they’d become tired of and wanted dead. Suzy herself would sometimes have reasons for wanting the murder to take place – if a wealthy woman was widowed, for example, she would then be free to marry Suzy’s own son, or perhaps a house would become vacant that Suzy could take for herself.

In The Angel Makers, Patti McCracken tells the story of Auntie Suzy and the other female poisoners of Nagyrév in a style that is as easy to read as fiction. In fact, the whole book feels much more like a novel than a work of non-fiction; I liked this as it made it easy to get to know the characters and follow what was happening, but it wasn’t what I’d expected and it may not appeal to readers who prefer their non-fiction to be more formal and academic. There’s a section of notes at the end of the book and a bibliography, but apart from occasional extracts from newspaper articles or other documents, McCracken doesn’t interrupt the flow of the story to provide any commentary of her own. She has also anglicised the names of most of the people in the book – Auntie Suzy’s real name was Zsuzsanna Fazekas.

One thing that struck me about this case was how easily the crimes could have been stopped and the culprits brought to justice, yet they were allowed to continue for many years because the authorities either didn’t have the resources to investigate or just didn’t seem interested. The poisonings were an open secret in Nagyrév and Suzy and the other women grew more and more confident over time, hardly bothering to cover up their actions. You can feel sorry for some of the women, pushed into arranged marriages at a time when divorce was not an option, but others were committing murder for cruel or petty reasons. Suzy, as the ringleader, was particularly complacent and unrepentant about the deaths she was causing and her behaviour is quite chilling to read about. However, McCracken seemed to have an obsession with Suzy’s weight; the constant descriptions of her chubby hands, fat feet and waddling walk quickly became very repetitive and unnecessary.

The Angel Makers is a fascinating story and I would probably recommend it to people who have enjoyed Kate Summerscale’s books such as The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, although the informal style won’t be to everyone’s taste. Despite some flaws I found it entertaining and informative and feel that I’ve not only gained some knowledge of a very unusual ring of criminals but also some insights into life in Hungary between the wars and the various elements that enabled crimes like these to take place.

Thanks to Mudlark for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Lord Edgware Dies by Agatha Christie

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This year’s Read Christie challenge has a ‘Through the Decades’ theme and this quarter we’re reading books from the 1930s. My choice for May is Christie’s 1933 Poirot mystery Lord Edgware Dies (published in the US as Thirteen at Dinner).

The novel is narrated by Poirot’s friend, Captain Hastings – a nice surprise as I tend to love the Hastings books and hadn’t realised he was in this one. At the beginning of the book, Poirot and Hastings are visiting the theatre to watch a performance by the American impressionist Carlotta Adams, known for her impersonations of famous people such as the actress Jane Wilkinson. After the show, they are approached by Jane Wilkinson herself, who asks for Poirot’s help in obtaining a divorce from her husband, Lord Edgware. The actress desperately wants to marry the wealthy Duke of Merton and tells Poirot that if Edgware won’t agree to a divorce, she’s just going to have to kill him!

When Lord Edgware is indeed found dead in his own home, having been stabbed in the neck, Jane Wilkinson appears to be the obvious suspect – after all, she was seen entering the house that evening and everyone knew that she wanted her husband dead. However, Edgware had already agreed to a divorce earlier that day, taking away Jane’s motive. And Jane had spent the whole of that evening at a dinner party with twelve other guests, all of whom can provide her with an alibi. Was Jane really in two places at once – or was it Carlotta Adams who entered Lord Edgware’s house in disguise?

This is a very enjoyable Poirot novel with a clever solution, although I don’t think it’s an absolute favourite as I found it a little bit lacking in atmosphere. The whole story takes place in London and we don’t see much of Poirot actually going out in search of clues – instead he sits and waits for the clues to come to him, much to the frustration of Hastings who wishes Poirot would take a more active role in solving the mystery, like their old friend Inspector Japp:

Poirot replied that he preferred to solve it sitting at home.

“But you can’t do that, Poirot.”

“Not entirely, it is true.”

“What I mean is, we are doing nothing! Japp is doing everything.”

“Which suits me admirably.”

“It doesn’t suit me at all. I want you to be doing things.”

“So I am.”

“What are you doing?”

“Waiting.”

Of course, Poirot is the one who correctly identifies the murderer while Japp, as usual, jumps to the wrong conclusions. I also failed to solve the mystery; although I did guess part of the solution very early on, I allowed myself to get distracted by the red herrings, of which there are many!

What I particularly loved about this book was the relationship between Poirot and Hastings and the way they work so well together, with some chance remarks of Hastings’ inadvertently pointing Poirot in the direction of important clues. Having the novel narrated by Hastings means the reader gets to hear Poirot discussing possible theories with him and sharing his thought processes, which I find more enjoyable than the books where we have no idea what Poirot has been thinking until the end. It also means that we only see the various suspects and witnesses from Hastings’ perspective; Jane Wilkinson, for example, presents herself in public as so silly and vacant that we know there must be more to her than meets the eye. Jane is a great character and Jenny Driver, Carlotta Adams’ friend who owns a fashionable London hat shop, was another favourite.

I’m hoping to read another 1930s Christie novel in June, then for July-September we move on to the 40s and 50s!