Girl with the Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier

Tracy Chevalier likes to write historical fiction because it helps to connect her life with the past, to see her life “in a deeper perspective”. The Dutch 17^th century painter Jan Vermeer is revered for his paintings of domestic life, among them the “Girl with the Pearl Earring”. Chevalier took it upon herself to weave a tale behind the painting of this masterpiece, a story of a domestic intrigue with a twist.

The identity of the young girl in the painting is unknown, so the writer is free to imagine her as a servant, but one who was not born to the serving class – in this case, Griet, the daughter of a glazier who suffered an accident and became blind. With the father unemployed, the daughter has to find work. It is plausible that an artisan’s daughter would be used to household work, and Chevalier makes Vermeer the head of the glazier’s guild - a suitable employer in the eyes of Griet’s family.

Griet is not happy to leave her mother and father and sleep in a strange household, and be bossed about by Vermeer’s wife, as well as the cook and Vermeer’s children, who can be unruly and demanding. But she manages, and has enough spirit from being a well-loved child in our own home to discipline Vermeer’s children and manage her other new relations with tact and with fortitude. We, the readers, are secretly rooting for Griet to handle all obstacles well, but in ways befitting her time and place.

And Chevalier largely succeeds in this. We can see how the butcher’s son pursues his suit for Griet’s hand, encouraged by her parents in light of his father’s secure business. Griet herself has little to say in this choice, as would a girl of that century. But as she cleans her master’s studio, she becomes aware of his life and his habits, and his art. There is a reverence there, in Griet’s perception of him - more than just from his being the head of the household. Chevalier skillfully builds on Griet’s and Vermeer’s awareness of each other, giving Griet an artist’s capability of seeing color and symmetry, gained through her artisan’s heritage. Their relationship grows slowly, through recognition and respect. It makes sense to us that out of Vermeer’s large household, only he and his mother-in-law see Griet as a person in her own right.

But the novel as a whole is understated, with the drama too muted for my taste. I have heard that the movie, directed by Peter Webber, has more emotional impact. Perhaps the choreographing of the countless interactions in the household, skillfully done, manages to convey the charged and evocative atmosphere more forcefully than in Chevalier’s writing. I’ll have to view it. Luckily, we have the movie here at the library also.

Mending: New and Selected Stories / by Sallie Bingham

Although a middle-aged woman's life is consumed by doctor's appointments which do little more than offer emotional reassurance, it's the only way she can receive intimacy, and, in effect, the only way to "mend" her damaged soul. Two sisters, the eldest one which escaped the downtrodden family farm years ago and the younger one that didn't, talk about what's to be done with it now that their mother's succumbed to cancer. Ignoring her younger sister Shirley's emotional bond to the plot of land which she's been a part of all her life, the elder Miriam spares no tact in talking up her intentions of selling it all to the realtors, even envisioning her plan for the perfect cottage community. On another dying family farm, a capricious widow, still grieving the loss of her teenage daughter as well as her husband, hires a family of Haitian refugees against the will of her semi-bigoted land manager. Amid obvious discomfiture and through nearly impregnable language and cultural barriers, the more subtle admonitions of each's feelings about the other steadily bridge the communication gap, ultimately augmenting the perpetually tenuous social situation and initiating a serendipitous kind of connection.

Born and raised on a farm in Kentucky, literature professor, author, poet and playwright Sallie Bingham has spent much of her life in New York City, amid frequent trips to New Mexico, and has been married three times. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly and Southwest Review and been featured in several anthologies and collections like this one which includes 5 new stories as well as sampling of her earlier work. Perhaps classified as a mildly feminist author with a realistic voice similar to Joyce Carol Oates or Margaret Atwood, Bingham also has something of Chekhov in her prose, a steady, astute in-the-moment type of voice, economically deconstructing the scene in any given situation and presenting a masterfully dissected arrangement of people and feelings. With striking swiftness, the reader gets to know the principal characters--who they are, where they've been and (to some degree) what they'll do next--in a manner that's at once abrupt and palpable. It's a fun experience, worthy of its praise. (FIC BINGHAM)

March by Geraldine Brooks

Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize, March is the Australian writer’s second novel. It’s set in the American Civil War, and is ostensibly based on a character, March, from Louisa May Alcott’s 19th century novel Little Women. In Little Women, March is the girls’ father, who volunteers to go south and serve as an army chaplain. He is a marginal figure in Alcott's book, being away in the fighting for some time. The actual model Brooks used for March is the historical figure of Bronson Alcott, Louisa’s father. He was one of the leaders of the Transcendentalists, who cultivated the belief that God is revealed in nature and in human beings, if they follow the right principles. The Transcendentalists championed pacifism, vegetarianism, women’s rights, and the kind of education in which a natural thirst for knowledge is cultivated and facts are not crammed into young minds.

Brooks is an accomplished writer, and she fluently depicts March’s sensitivity to his physical surroundings and to his companions. In Virginia, he is removed from his first post as an army chaplain, since his faith is too humanist to give solid comfort to the wounded and dying soldiers. Not believing in a literal hell, or in Christ as God, his view of humanity bumbling and stumbling itself into a mess does not sit well with the men or with his superiors. Critics of the book have found fault with March’s excessive self-flagellation, with his despair at witnessing pillaging and violence on the side of the Northern soldiers as well as on the Southern side. In contrast, the character of March in Little Women, although undeveloped, is one of stability and purpose – a father who steadies his wife and girls through their trials and sorrows.

March is transferred to a plantation whose absent owner supports the North and has leased the land to a Northerner come down to make a profit. March is to help by teaching the former slave children. The plantation has been ransacked both by the Union Army and local bands of raiders, who live on what they can pillage. Brooks’ depiction of the final devastation that takes place on the plantation reads like something out of Rwanda, and the source she cites does not match the unspeakable cruelty and horror which Brooks presents as commonplace. (When this kind of violence did occur, her source relates how the local residents rose up and administered their own justice after the sheriff and his men apprehended the assailants.) In Brooks’ landscape, there is no sheriff, and evil is done with impunity.

Brooks’ literary license ends up as an assault on the principles which Bronson Alcott propagated in his writings and teachings. An assault, because there is no surcease - there is no “balm in Gilead” found in the novel’s experience. Here history is not “unveiled” simply through engrossing characters and vivid landscapes. March, a broken man, or one who was never truly whole, creeps back to his family’s side, without hope and without redemption. This may be Brooks’ world, but it is not everyone’s.

A Doll's House (DVD) 1973 / based on the play by Henrik Ibsen; starring Anthony Hopkins, Claire Bloom and Denholm Elliott

"The man is a moral cripple."

Nora Helmer leads an idyllic life. She's the pampered wife of Torvald Helmer, a banker and a man who spoils her with cash presents and little gifts almost daily, and she's the mother to 3 small children who are well-cared for by their own nanny. At least this is how it's seen from the outside looking in. In actuality, things are far different, and in fact they're becoming more desperate by the day. In connection to his recent promotion to bank manager, Torvald has elected to fire one of his employees, a man named Krogstadt, who's been accused of forging a signature on an important document. But there's something Torvald doesn't know about. What's being kept from him by Nora, and has been concealed from him for quite a while is the matter of a sum of money that Krogstadt once loaned Nora some years back when Torvald was very ill and needed a vacation.

It is not only the debt which Nora has been secretly working off which binds her loyalty to Krogstadt, but the fact that Nora is herself guilty of forging a signature, that of her own father (then deceased) as guarantor on the loan. This little secret, something for which Krogstadt is now blackmailing Nora to keep his job, will be found out sooner or later, and it is Nora dignity, Torvald's reputation and Krogstadt's livelihood which lies in the balance. But how can Nora even approach Torvald with the knowledge that his future is in jeopardy, especially since their relationship has never gone beyond the boundaries of familial niceties and formal gestures of flimsy affection--Nora essentially treated as a 'doll' of Torvald's?

This is a first-rate adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's classic tale, a filmed version of a play which included many of the same participants from the West End theatrical production. It is a story about lies and deceit, about place and society and, above all, of patriarchal hypocrisy of men and the victimization of women. A resplendent core cast of actors, namely Bloom, Hopkins and Elliott, all of whom were in their prime, or in Hopkins' case, just moving to the forefront of the A-list, entwine the audience to the suspense and conflict which arise out of circumstance and desperation. But it's Ibsen's finely crafted drama, his interweaving of chance, ambition and existential conundrums, which set A Doll's House (first written and produced in 1879) at a level above so many other classic fables and morality plays. The rising theme is bigger than what many consider it's crux, that of emerging feminism, to be. At it's core, it is a piece which exemplifies the human condition, indeed the need of every individual discover the kind of person they really are and strive to embody that person throughout their life. (DVD DOLLS)

Hardly Knew Her: Stories / by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman's long entertained readers with her mystery novels featuring Baltimore PI Tess Monaghan. Her loyal fans will be sure to enjoy her first published collection of short stories, brief, flighty episodes as inventive and sassy as the plots and entanglements she depicts in her novels. Initially, Lippman observes a versatile collection of women getting into all sorts of drama, schemes and mayhem; from murder-accessory babysitters, drug deals gone wrong and retiree-aged adult entertainers, even a high profile working girl who, in addition to her soccer mom commitments, is currently embroiled in a treacherous cat-and-mouse game involving a deathrow inmate.

The rest of the book follows similar, if slightly more pragmatic, suit. Stories focus on murders, scams, betrayals and fiendish plots all perpetrated by sly, world-savvy women eager to see wrongs righted, rights returned and scales evened. From sleek, classy career women to housewives and normal teenage girls; the characters all have a knack for getting themselves into scrapes involving some the criminal elements most detestable characters. Feminism is a clear, well-represented theme in this book in which women seek revenge on their male counterparts, either through devious underhanded dealings, clever manipulations and well-conceived acts of sudden violence. Lippman brings reality to her characters, most of which are sympathetic on at least one leve. Most maintain some type of integrity and endings to most of the tales are even-handed, characters and circumstances fitting tightly into each story's context.