osprey_archer | Entries tagged with author: doris gates

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

William Dean Howells’ Tuscan Cities: Travels through the Heart of Old Italy, a collection of Howells’ travel writings about a trip he took through Tuscany in 1883. I approached this with trepidation because I found his earlier travel book, about his time as consul to Venice during the Civil War, rather dull. But either my tastes have changed or Howells hit his stride as a travel writer in the intervening twenty years, because I really enjoyed this one—maybe it helped that I’ve visited many of the cities he’s discussing? I particularly enjoyed his description of walking the walls of Lucca and peeping into the gardens below, because I did the exact same thing.

He’s also uncompromisingly anti-Medici, which is refreshing. Sure, the Medici were generous patrons of the arts, but Howells is not going to let that blind him to the fact that they toppled the Florentine republic and tyrranized over its people! (Next installment of “How to Be a Better Dictator”: suborn the artists! People will be eager to whitewash your reign if only it produces a few sublime paintings or maybe a nice concerto.)

I also just finished Doris Gates’s Lord of the Sky, Zeus, which retells a smattering of the more famous Zeus-related legends. (Also some legends that Gates just felt like retelling, I think. Zeus doesn’t play a big role in the story of Daedalus, but here it is regardless.)

As I’ve been looking into the library holdings of these various mid-century authors, I’ve discovered that an astonishing number of them wrote mythology retellings and biographies. (I suspect that writing biographies in the mid twentieth century was way more fun than writing a biography now, as there was no need to bother one's head about footnotes.)

What I’m Reading Now

There have been GRAND REVERSALS in Sir Isumbras at the Ford.

( Spoilers )

What I Plan to Read Next

Hard to say! I am planning a trip to France, so perhaps it is time to start rounding up France-related books to enrich my journey.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A couple more Rumer Goddens. The Old Woman Who Lived in a Vinegar Bottle is delightful retelling of a folktale with enchanting illustrations by Mairi Hedderwick, including a cross-section of the “vinegar bottle,” that is to say, the cylindrical two-story cottage, one room on top of the other with a thatched round roof on top. I love cross-sections (one of my favorite ever Brambly Hedge illustrations is the cross-section of a tree trunk that is a mouse palace) and this one is infinitely appealing in the small perfect snugness of the house.

Also Mouse House, illustrated by Adrienne Adams, in which a little girl is given a little house with a couple of boring little mouse dolls… only eventually the mouse house ends up in the cellar, where a real mouse family moves in, and Mary sometimes goes to the cellar to watch them frolic. Cute! Will probably forget this book in its entirety.

I also read Doris Gates’ A Filly for Melinda, the sequel to A Morgan for Melinda, which suffers as sequels often do from a drop-off in quality from the first book… However, the drop-off is not severe here. I still enjoyed Melinda’s voice, and it was nice to revisit her and her family and her horses (now supplemented by Merry Jo’s baby filly, Little Missy); it just felt inessential.

What I’m Reading Now

In Sir Isumbras at the Ford,

( spoilers )

Meanwhile, in E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat, America has entered World War II. White seems positively relieved by this development, which I understand: it’s much easier to deal with an actual disaster than to live indefinitely in its impending shadow.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have Daphne DuMaurier’s The Flight of the Falcon, about which I know nothing except that Daphne DuMaurier wrote it. In fact I’ve been eyeing DuMaurier’s extended oeuvre, as you might say, by which I mean the books beyond Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn. Any recs or anti-recs?

As the month is flying to an end, I thought I'd slide in with some mini-reviews of the latest books I've been reading!

I picked up William John Locke's The Beloved Vagabond because it was one of Maud Hart Lovelace's favorite novels (her copy is actually in a glass case at the Betsy-Tacy Museum), referenced repeatedly in Betsy and the Great World. It is, as it turns out, a very odd book.

For reasons that slowly become clear over the course of the novel, Paragot long since cast aside wealth, education, and name (Paragot is of course an assumed name) to be a feckless drunken wanderer on the face of this earth, who dazzles his acquaintances with brilliant lively talk, but nonetheless holds everyone at arm's length - even the found family that he slowly gathers round himself, which includes our narrator Asticot (who Paragot bought off his mother for half a crown when he discovered the boy reading Paradise Lost; Asticot adores him) and Blanquette the traveling zither player, who finds herself stranded after the elderly violinist who is the other half of her traveling band unexpectedly dies. Paragot, a gifted violinist, flings on the violinist's sequined coat, plays dazzlingly at a peasant weddings, and more or less adopts her.

I can't explain much more without giving away the central mystery, but I will just say that I am fascinated that this was one of Maud Hart Lovelace's favorites, because it's just so different from her own books! But then I guess that's often the case: what you like to write may not be quite the thing that you like to read.

Daisy Hay's Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives was a gift from

troisoiseaux and an absolute roller coaster, as any books about the Shelleys and Byron has to be. This is one of those nonfiction books where the title misleadingly focuses on the most famous people involved: a large part of the book actually revolves around the crusading journalist Leigh Hunt, who was a central figure in the web of relationships that drew many of these second generation Romantic poets in contact with each other.

I was also delighted to learn that the man buried beside Shelley in Rome is some raconteur who met Shelley in the last year of his life, enthralled the whole social circle with wildly inaccurate stories about his past, and after Shelley's death insisted on digging him up and cremating him on the beach, apparently because he just thought that would be so metal. Then he bought to adjoining grave plots, one for Shelley and one for himself, where he was interred decades later under a stone that suggests he and Shelley were bosom buddies, WHEN IN FACT this guy is just some chancer who realized he had stumbled onto an opportunity to clutch the coattails of immortality.

Continuing my Audrey Erskine Lindop read (which kicked off memorably with Details of Jeremy Stretton) with The Self-Appointed Saint! I don't want to spoil this one for

skygiants specifically so I will just say that it is a WILD ride. Is it a wild ride that actually hangs together in a vaguely plausible manner? IMO no, but also I didn't really care, why bother my little head about plausibility when the whole thing is so entertainingly nuts.

Doris Gates' Little Vic is perhaps one of THE purest expressions of the Boy Meets Horse genre that I've ever read. The main character loves horses so much that he's nicknamed Pony, and the entire book revolves around his relationship with Little Vic, the colt that he raises and trains and adores.

Gorgeous horse illustrations by Kate Seredy, who either could not be bothered to draw humans when there were horses around (fair!), or was told by the publishers to focus on the horses, as illustrations might make it to obvious to the skittish library buyers of 1951 that Pony is Black. This fact only comes into the narrative about two-thirds of the way through the book, which is... perhaps later than it ought to be... it just seems like something that would probably come up at some point before you meet the book's Token Racist, you know?

Lucretia P. Hale's The Peterkin Papers, which is about a family that is very stupid in an Amelia-Bedelia type fashion. One morning Mrs. Peterkin puts salt in her coffee, and the family summons the chemist to try to remove it, and when he can't they summon the old herb-woman to try to disguise the flavor, and when that doesn't work they turn in desperation to the lady from Philadelphia (their only friend with a brain cell), who suggests... that perhaps Mrs. Peterkin could brew a new cup of coffee!

This was published in 1880, and apparently remained popular with children up through the 1950s. Even as a child I scorned Amelia Bedelia and her ilk, but if this is the sort of thing you like, then it is very much that kind of thing.

And another Lindop, Journey into Stone, which I regret to say was a swing and a miss. Like The Self-Appointed Saint, it doesn't quite come together, but as the book is a mystery novel, this is a pretty big flaw, and also I just didn't like most of the characters. Ah, well, many writers have their off novels!

While I’m on the road trip, I won’t be able to keep up with the weekly Wednesday Reading Meme, but as I’m taking a brief break (ending today! Heading out on a camping trip this afternoon!) I thought I’d catch up on some book reviews.

Anne Lindbergh’s Bailey’s Window is a charming 1990s children’s fantasy, extremely short. Obnoxious Bailey goes to visit his cousins in rural Vermont and discovers that he has a magical power: when he paints a window on his bedroom wall, it’s possible to walk through into the painted scene. The character growth by which Bailey becomes less obnoxious seems rushed, but who cares, we’re all here for the magic windows and the windows are fun.

John D. Fitzgerald’s Mama’s Boarding House is a fictionalized adult memoir by the author of the Great Brain books, which are fictionalized children’s memoirs that I read with great enjoyment as a child. The two books share some characters, and it’s at times very strange to see them refracted through such a different lens. For instance, the Great Brain is completely tangential. Not a single harebrained scheme! Enjoyable if you enjoy mid-century family memoirs like Chicken Every Sunday. (Speaking of which, I keep thinking about reading Clarence Day’s Life with Father. Thoughts?)

I don’t usually post about rereads, but Dorothy Gilman’s A Nun in the Closet is just so much fun, I have to mention it in case someone has not yet heard of the book.

rachelmanija’s review perfectly captures what makes the book so excellent: “an absolutely delightful book, and one with depth underneath its breezy surface… While the nuns’ innocence is often very funny, their philosophy and knowledge set is serious and taken seriously, as is that of the hippies. There’s hilarious hijinks, a cast of distinct and mostly very likable characters, clashes of world views and also surprising commonalities in world views, a lot of herb lore, and a tiny but real community that springs up in and around the house.”

Doris Gates’s A Morgan for Melinda is an excellent horse girl book, with horses as fully realized characters right alongside the humans. Melinda initially doesn’t want to learn to ride at all, and agrees only because she thinks it will help her father come to terms with the death of her horse-loving older brother; but after she gets a Morgan horse, she falls so in love with her steed that she decides she had to write a book about the experience.

I enjoyed the writing parts just as much as the horse parts, although I think Gates was perhaps not quite clear enough in her mind exactly when Melinda was writing this: as it was happening or after it was all over? There are clues that point both ways.

Finally, Barbara Michaels’ Be Buried in the Rain, a modern gothic in which the heroine spends the summer at a decaying Virginia mansion to care for her horrible grandmother, who remains as vicious as ever despite a pair of strokes that have left her almost paralyzed. Fantastic atmosphere, an amazing subplot in which the heroine adopts a dog, compelling forward motion - this is not a short book, but I read it in one sitting - but awkward plotting that moves creakily and doesn’t quite come together at the end. Nonetheless, a fantastically creepy ending.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Jean Slaughter Doty’s Can I Get There By Candlelight?, a horse girl book mashed together with a magical time travel book, which I adored. One day when Gail is out riding her horse Candy, she finds a gate leading to a cool shadowy path through the woods. At the other end of the path, Gail meets Hilary, a girl her own age who is wearing an old-fashioned white frock and eating tea cakes in the summerhouse outside a mansion! Gail and Hilary quickly become best friends, meeting almost every afternoon all summer to take turns riding Candy, even as Gail feels a growing unease about the oddity of the whole situation.

This book heads directly for the gooey center of its premise: the bond between girl and horse, the mysterious pathway through the woods, the instant best-friendship. If that appeals to you, you’ll probably love it as much as I did. If it doesn’t, there is not a lot else here, as Doty doesn’t get side-tracked by subplots or side characters.

My only complaint is that the book ended too abruptly. Partly this is just that I didn’t want it to be over! But also

( spoilers for the ending )

Elizabeth Enright’s Tatsinda is a brief, sprightly fairy tale. A magical mountain is entirely populated by people with ice-white hair and blue eyes… except Tatsinda, a golden-haired, brown-eyed girl who was dropped on the mountain by an eagle when she was a baby. The other mountain folk think Tatsinda is a wonderful weaver, but strange-looking and ugly… until the prince confesses his love of Tatsinda, and everyone realizes that different doesn’t necessarily mean bad. Happy end! It’s cute, but it feels shallower than the Melendy books.

I’ve loved Doris Gates’s Blue Willow ever since I read it as a child, so I had high hopes for Gates’s Sensible Kate, but alas I didn’t like it nearly as much. Maybe if I had read it as a child? But also maybe not. I felt that it was just a little too thick with life lessons, and needed more story to string them together.

What I’m Reading Now

Almost done with Teresa Lust’s A Blissful Feast: Culinary Adventures in Italy’s Piedmont, Maremma, and Le Marche! Sorry in advance that the journey has to end. The chapters are so perfectly bite-size, and they always make me hungry. This morning I read one about homemade pasta...

What I Plan to Read Next

I just learned that Elizabeth Wein has a new book out! It’s called Stateless and it’s a murder mystery set during a pre-World War II air race and I have it on hold at the library.

One of my many (many, many) favorite books as a child was Doris Gates' Blue Willow. The title refers to the only beautiful object that our heroine Janey's family owns: a blue willow plate, which Janey loves with an almost religious fervor. The plate, to her, is a feast for the imagination and an escape from her family's sometimes desperate poverty.

The plate is their last memento of more prosperous times. Ever since losing their farm in the Dust Bowl, the family has followed farm work around the country. They hover on the brink of disaster.

That's the basic set-up. What do I love about this book? Well - JANEY. She's such a treat of a character, real enough to pop off the page: proud and prickly, curious and imaginative, and wistful. She wants more than anything to stay in one place long enough to make real friends and go to a real school with bright new books.

She can't have most of that quite yet, but she's got a new best friend: Lupe, the little Mexican girl from across the road. Gates is so very excited about the fact that she writing a Mexican girl that she describes Lupe as "the Mexican girl" every time she shows up, which gets irritating. But otherwise Lupe is darling: kind and, more importantly and more unusually, tactful.

There's a great scene: Lupe's family, more prosperous than Janey's, has taken Janey to the carnival. Lupe thinks Janey doesn't have money to ride the carousel, and concocts a little story to convince Janey to accept a free ride (which Janey would never, never do if it were offered outright). The dialogue is just right. And the description of the carnival is just wonderful - Janey feels like she's in a sort of fairyland, and the wonder of the experience flows off the page.

Gates' descriptions are beautifully evocative. The book starts with a description so rich that you can see Janey's shadow on the sun-baked boards, the heat shimmer hovering in the air... The rich description and occasional flashes of beauty (the carnival; the wonderful scene where Janey's family goes fishing beneath the willows on a nearby stream) soften the grimier aspects of Janey's life without occluding them.

And this balance is the thing that makes the book great: it's so beautifully crafted. Flashes of wonderful soften the painful, grimy backdrop of everyday life. Janey is a delicate blend of virtues and flaws, realistic and sympathetic and wonderful. The plot flows like a stream, always moving but never jolting.

(And - minor spoilers! though nothing you probably hadn't guessed - the happy ending is so well-earned and beautiful and beautifully constructed: radiant, yet realistic, with a starring role for Janey. It's hard to make a little girl the heroine of a realistic and rather grim story without breaking the realism; the only other book I can think of that manages it so well is Number the Stars.)

Blue Willow is such a wonderful book. I loved it when I first read it, at nine or ten, and loved it again when I reread it this fall, and I hope this review convinces someone else to read it and fall in love with it too.