Review: The Dean's Watch

When Dean Adam Ayscough, a high-ranking clergyman in an English cathedral town in the 1870’s, stays home from work because of a cold, the last thing he expects is to make a new friend. But when Isaac Peabody, the clockmaker who repairs the Dean’s pocket watch, stumbles into his employer’s office and speaks his mind – “It’s a beautiful watch, sir, and you overwind it. You should take better care of it, sir” (e-book, ch. 5, p. 38) – a friendship forms between the two lonely, eccentric men that is exactly what they need.

Adam’s fierce campaigns for social and ecclesiastical reforms have given him a terrifying reputation, but that same reputation, combined with his lifelong shyness, has made it difficult for him to actually talk to the people he is fighting for. Meeting Isaac becomes a catalyst for a series of encounters that shock Adam out of his comfort zone and teach him to translate his Christian beliefs into action, even as they teach Isaac that his own father’s abusive fanaticism is not the only way to practice religion.

Their kindness to each other spreads in circles until it includes the entire city. Adam’s search for an apprentice for the frail, overworked clockmaker leads to Job, who is secretly dating Polly, Isaac’s maid. Job, a talented and temperamental workhouse orphan, is under a contract to the bullying fishmonger Albert Lee. Adam determines to save them both, victim and abuser, from their unhealthy association. Meanwhile Emma, Isaac’s unmarried older sister, struggles with jealousy of Polly and Job’s romance, and with Isaac’s friendship with one of the most powerful men in the city. Adam has to battle his own dislike of the bitter, narrow-minded woman in order to bring some peace to his friend’s unhappy household. Even Elaine, Adam’s vain and superficial wife, slowly begins to learn the value of her husband, just as she is in danger of losing him for good.

This is one of the few novels I have ever read about, for lack of a better word, professional pride. Isaac’s clocks, Adam’s religious texts, Job’s woodcarvings, Polly’s cooking, the work of Adam’s lawyer, doctor and butler, the long-ago construction of the cathedral, and even Elaine’s fashion choices, are all labors of love. “Genius creates from the heart,” Adam observes. “And when men put love into their work there is power in it, there is a soul in the body” (ch. 7 p. 90). This novel highlights the joys of craftsmanship, but also its challenges, such as Adam’s writer’s block - “Who was he, that he should dare to take a pen in his hand? And how puerile was the result when he had done it” (ch. 14 p. 33) – or Isaac feeling overshadowed by Job’s talent – “He must increase, but I must decrease” (ch. 14, p. 10). This theme of creativity ties in to the story’s sense of faith; whether they acknowledge it or not, the characters’ gifts can all be traced back to the divine. During one of his debates with Isaac, Adam even compares God to a clockmaker:

  “I don’t believe in God,” said Isaac obstinately. 

“I wish I could believe you,” said the Dean. “I should be thankful to believe that you had parted company with the God of your boyhood. But I believe he is with you still in a darkness that shadows your mind at times. Disbelieve in him, Mr. Peabody. Believe instead in love. It is my faith that love shaped the universe as you shape your clocks, delighting in creation. I believe that just as you wish to give me your clock in love, refusing payment, so God loves me and gave Himself for me. That is my faith. I cannot force it upon you, I can only ask you in friendship to consider it.”

-       ch. 15 p. 41-42

 This is also a novel about power, its uses and abuses. Adam does his best to use his wealth, intelligence, and authority as Dean for good, but even he makes mistakes. As a former schoolteacher in an age when corporal punishment was the norm, he knows how difficult it is to draw the line. His attempt to bribe Albert Lee to cancel his contract with Job backfires badly; his classist assumption that money will fix everything collides against Albert’s pride. Albert, on the other hand, is a classic abuser; he gets drunk and beats Job regularly. Emma Peabody is a more subtle example: she resents her brother Isaac for lowering their status by going into trade. She takes it out on him with small things, such as making wool mats that make him slip on the floor, forbidding him to smoke or to chat with Polly, and passive-aggressively reading the Bible to make him feel guilty.

The author, however, instead of reducing these characters to simple villains, shows them to us fully rounded and real. We learn how their harsh actions are, in their own minds, simply defenses from an equally harsh world; it doesn’t excuse them, but it makes them easy to understand. For example, Albert beats his apprentice because he knows Job is smarter than he is, and it makes Albert feel powerless. As for Emma, when Adam reluctantly pays her a visit, a simple gesture – the way she brings out her best tea service for the rare occasion – unlocks a wealth of empathy inside her guest because it shows how lonely she is. Abuse is not a straight line; it is a cycle, and it takes a strong effort to break it. 

Most of all, however, this is a story about love. Sexual love is part of it – Polly and Job share a passionate romance in spite of Emma’s best efforts to stop them – but it is far from being the only part. There is love of place – the city and the cathedral are almost characters in their own right – and love of work – for example, the clocks. The most important love in this story, however, is between people: the friendship between Isaac and Adam, the mentor-student bond between Isaac and Job, Adam’s fatherly love for his lawyer’s granddaughter Bella, the strained sibling relationship of Isaac and Emma, and the complicated marriage of Adam and Elaine.

Of course, none of these relationships are perfect. They all include the potential for hurt and misunderstanding. As Miss Montague, a friend and advisor of almost everyone in the city, says to Adam: “If you turn for your joy to the intractable and explosive stuff of human nature, it’s in for a penny, in for a pound.” (ch. 13 p. 57). Besides, the author understands perfectly how challenging it can be for an introvert to talk to people at all. Then again, the reward is more than worth the effort, especially when shared interests form a bridge over the awkwardness: “Love of the work strengthened the love of each other. Love of each other enriched the work” (ch. 14 p. 12). 

Even Isaac, the atheist, feels that “the dark would not entirely get him” while his clocks keep time and his friends remember him (ch. 1 p. 33). Adam, the Christian, holds the same belief with even greater certainty: “Love. The only indestructible thing. The only wealth and the only reality. The only survival. At the end of it all there was nothing else” (ch. 94).

High Tea at the Fairmont Laurier

“What are those rocks?” said my nine-year-old cousin, poking the contents of a stainless steel bowl in the middle of the table.

“Sugar,” said my aunt. “It’s meant for putting in your tea.”

“Can I eat them?”

“No.”

Table manners aside, afternoon tea at the Fairmont Laurier Hotel was the perfect finale for our day trip to Ottawa. We sat by a window in Zoe's Lounge, beneath a sparkling chandelier, and had our hot water poured from a silver urn. I chose the Orange Spice tea, a zesty and powerful blend suitable for cheering up even the most exhausted of summer tourists. My father chose Lapsang Souchong. "Tastes like smoked salmon," he said. (Coming from him, a descendant of Baltic Sea fishermen, that's a compliment.) My aunt chose Earl Grey, with perfectly calibrated amounts of milk and sugar. My cousin ordered a pot of hot chocolate, which was served with whipped cream in place of a lid.

We ordered the full Chateau Laurier Tea Experience: scones with jam and clotted cream, finger sandwiches, macarons and cake. "Classic," was my father's verdict. "Not too adventurous." (That's also a compliment.)

My aunt, who had never heard of clotted cream, picked up a tiny portion with the tip of her knife. Her eyes lit up. 

For my part, two days later, I'm still daydreaming about the lemon poppyseed chiffon cake. If the name makes you think of smooth and delicate layers, you're absolutely right. The layers consist of cake, raspberry jam, and the finest possible sliver of vanilla pudding. 

"Pink cookies!" said my cousin, and proceeded to set up a brisk trade across the table: sandwiches, scones etc. in exchange for our macarons. The small sizes of the food made it ideal for trading. 

"Look at this," said my father. "We're wheeling and dealing here!"

"Salmon roll for a lemon cake?"

"Sure."

(Photo by Dirk Peters.)

If I had to rack my brain for something less than perfect, I'd say it was the waiting time. To be fair, though, we did arrive twenty minutes before our reservation. Also, my cousin objected to the frosting on his cupcake - he found it impossible to bite through - but that may have been fatigue.

The Fairmont Laurier has always had a reputation for being inclusive as well as beautiful, ever since its construction in 1912 (see this article in the Ottawa Citizen). When it first opened, rooms cost $2 a night, which amounts to $50 in modern currency. That may have been the reason they let us in, even though one of us (yours truly) was dressed in jeans and carried a clunky backpack. I haven't been this relaxed in such an elegant environment for a long time.
Then again ... I'm not the one who had to pay the bill.

Review: All The Feels

I was 15 when I read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The ending knocked me sideways. I couldn’t believe Professor Snape was evil, all evidence to the contrary. I re-read the books in a frantic search for clues that he had at least a tiny spark of good in him. Then, since I had just discovered fanfiction, I relieved my feelings with a novel-length self-insert fic to redeem him. It was juvenile – even my mother said so. But it made me feel much better.

That being said, even I find Liv Walden’s campaign to revive her favorite character a little excessive.

In an article titled “The Death of the Author”, French academic Roland Barthes wrote that in the twentieth century, the field of literature criticism went through a fundamental shift: instead of the author, we put the audience at the centre. In other words, when a story is written – or, in the case of Liv’s favorite Starveil franchise, filmed – it isn’t set in stone. It takes place inside viewers’ minds as much as on the screen. As a fanfiction reader and video maker, she should understand that. Her beloved Captain Spartan is alive as long as she believes he is. Why sacrifice immense amounts of time and effort, fail a  college exam, alienate her mother, and force a tired actor back into an unwanted role, just to make her own opinion “canon”?

I kept wondering when author Danika Stone was going to address the elephant in the room. In the very first chapter, she mentions that Starveil is something Liv shared with her father before he died. Spartan’s death itself is a heroic sacrifice on behalf of a little girl. Liv leaves the cinema in tears, her eating and sleeping habits are disrupted, her mother worries, and her friends have to physically pull off the blanket under which she’s buried. She clearly has unresolved issues about her father’s death, and her drive to bring back Spartan is understandable in that light, but surely directing her grief from a real death onto a fictional one isn’t healthy. It sounds harsh, but I was almost hoping for the “Spartan Survived” movement to fail, if only so Liv could finally face what she’s been repressing. As for Liv’s mother, who blames fandom for Liv’s poor grades and reclusive habits (and she has a point), her last appearance involves a shouting match through a locked door. Why, after such a scene, Mrs. Walden would allow her daughter to fly to a comic convention across state borders – alone with a boy, no less – we will never know.

From a certain point of view, though, one could argue that she does face some of her problems. The campaign has its good side: it pushes the shy young girl out of her comfort zone, allows her to make friends with like-minded people, and teaches her to defend herself and her work in a public space. It also brings her into closer contact with Xander Hall, her best friend, with whom she shares a romantic tension thick enough to cut.

Xander is my favorite part of this novel. An aspiring actor and the star of Liv’s campaign videos, he dresses, speaks and behaves like a nobleman of the British Regency period. Like his idol Lord Byron, he is also bisexual. He calls Liv “dearest”, coaxes her out of the house when she’s depressed, does his level best to build up her fragile confidence, and happily sits through midnight Starveil showings although he doesn’t even like science fiction. He has a weakness for French fries and texting that is endearingly at odds with his 19^th-century persona. He also has what many people wouldn’t expect from an actor: humility. “A movie serves its fans, not the actors. (…) Their opinion is the only one that matters,” he tells Liv (e-book, ch. 11, p. 41). He’s the most unique and lovable romantic hero I’ve come across since … well, since Cyrano de Bergerac a week ago, but I’m sure even Xander would agree that no one can compete with Cyrano. Still, I would have liked to see a bit more equality in their relationship. Surely someone who lives his life in cosplay would have some issues of his own, and receive emotional support as well as give it? There is a brief scene involving his girlfriend Arden, but he shrugs that off within days.

By the way, it’s a relief to find a YA author who doesn’t demonize her heroine’s romantic rival. This one is a cheerful, outgoing person who cares about Liv almost as much as Xander does. It’s not Arden’s fault that she cannot fully understand either of them. The minor characters in general were very entertaining to read about, from the string of unsuitable men Liv goes on blind dates with, to her eco-crusading classmate Hank aka Granola, to her fellow fans at DragonCon, including Brian, whose specialty is standing day-long lineups, and Sarah, who communicates exclusively via text message.

In short, while Liv as a heroine is sympathetic, the fandom world quirky and fun, and the romance satisfying, the psychological aspects of the story were not as well developed as they could have been. For a more in-depth and authentic exploration of a geek girl’s coming of age, I recommend Fangirl by Eleanor Rowell.

Review: Cyrano

“What a divine fool that Cyrano was! What a colossus of style! Quel panache!” (p. 5) The same thing could be said of Geraldine McCaughrean, the author of this book. To take a classic centuries-old play, which has been filmed in countless variations, and rewrite it in such vibrant, sparkling prose that it feels entirely new, certainly takes panache. Listen to her description of a Parisian theatre in the opening scene:  

“See that dizzying cliff-face of boxes decked out in white and gold; the tiered chandeliers being hauled into the roof ablaze with candles; the fleecy bob of wigs and sumptuous swirl of cloaks; the gallants strutting, fingers on sword-hilts; the footlights winking on … Feel the jab of saucy elbows; the brush of rouged cheeks as the scandalmongers exchange whispers; the snip-snap of pickpockets dipping like herons into pockets and purses. Countless mouths are already a-glitter with sugar from Monsieur Ragueneau’s cream horns. Blushes, drunkenness and rage soak a hundred hat-bands with sweat … ” (p. 1-2).

McCaughrean doesn’t stop at beautiful writing, however. Her characterization of Cyrano de Bergerac himself is a work of genius.

We don’t usually think of “style” as something heroic. If I describe the hero of this story, Cyrano, as someone intensely image-conscious, you will probably picture a vain and silly character checking his Facebook status or, since this is the eighteenth century, his mirror. Cyrano’s idea of style is completely different. When someone insults his infamous oversized nose, he doesn’t just fight back; he delivers a lecture on the “Art of the Insult” complete with twelve examples of nose humor (“Have a care! When you sneeze, whole fleets sink in the Spanish Main!”, p. 9), all while shredding his opponent’s clothes with a sword and not even injuring him except for one tiny cut – on the nose. And when Roxane, the woman Cyrano secretly loves, falls for a soldier named Christian and asks him to write to her, Cyrano helps the handsome but unpoetic young man write the most beautiful love letters imaginable. When a third suitor of Roxane’s, the conniving Comte de Guiche, sends Christian and Cyrano off to war (by the way, please don’t read about the hungry cadets during the siege of Arras if you haven’t eaten recently!), the stakes rise drastically for everyone concerned – and as usual, Cyrano carries matters to an extreme. I won’t spoil the ending for anyone who doesn’t know the story, but you may want a Kleenex box.

With a character like Cyrano, it’s impossible to tell where idiocy ends and heroism begins. Nowadays, we’re constantly told to love ourselves the way we are, flaws and all; in that context, Cyrano, with his painful self-consciousness about his nose and his terror of rejection, comes across like an angsty teenager. I wanted to grab him by his leather jacket and tell him to grow up. This self-deprecation has a flipside, however: self-sacrifice. He loves Roxane so much that he would give up anything to see her happy. His style, his “panache”, which he uses to hide his broken heart, is to reassure her more than anything else. Even his archenemy, the Comte de Guiche (who surprised me several times during this story – if you were expecting a one-dimensional, moustache-twirling villain, think again), has this to say about him: “He has stayed true to himself. He’s preserved his integrity (…) I don’t pity Cyrano de Bergerac. I envy him a life well lived. And I’d be proud to shake his hand, if ever I was man enough to do it” (p. 151).

It’s infuriating to see what he throws away. It’s awe-inspiring to see what he gives up.

Review: The Scent of Water

This book is for all the single women out there. If you’ve ever been hopelessly in love with someone while knowing it could never work, if you’ve ever wondered whether there’s something wrong with you for preferring to be alone, if you’ve ever thrown a book at the wall because it provides a fairy-tale romance as the only answer to real-world problems, this book is for you.

Mary Lindsay, the heroine, is a civil servant from London who prides herself on being practical. When she inherits a cottage called The Laurels in a remote village from a distant cousin she only met once as a child, the practical thing to do would be to sell it. However, to her own surprise, Mary decides to live there instead, setting off a chain of events that will affect not only her, but everyone around her.

Mary starts out believing that she is incapable of love. The wartime death of her fiancé haunts her, not only for all the obvious reasons, but because she could not return his feelings no matter how much she respected him as a person. Similarly, she feels guilty because, even though she lost touch with Mary Sr. after their one meeting, the older woman cared enough to pass on not only her cottage, but a collection of priceless miniature treasures such a blown glass tea set and a palm-sized ivory carving. Mary Jr. comes to The Laurels with a deep-seated longing to learn more about her cousin’s life, and about the imaginative, intuitive part of herself she suppressed long ago.

This is, among other things, a book about mental illness. Mary Sr.’s diaries describe a lifelong struggle with something that we might call depression or bipolar disorder: “I can’t talk to people because this illness isn’t like other illnesses (…) I remember Mother didn’t [understand] when I was a child, and I said I was lying on stones and the black walls were moving in” (ch. 5 p. 56, e-book edition). In the absence of therapy, medication, or even a name to call her condition, she turns for support to her Christian beliefs and her reverence for home and nature: “I am seeking the goodness of God that waters the dry places (…) I shall fall into black depression, and perhaps desperation too, but it will pass and spring will come with celandines and white violets in the lanes … ” (ch. 5 p. 84). Similarly, Jean Anderson, the Vicar’s sister, relies on religion to cope with her social anxiety. In the middle of panicking about her brother’s request that she visit the newly arrived Mary Jr., she feels comforted by the idea of God laughing with her about her predicament (ch. 4 p. 48).

Elizabeth Goudge describes these characters in tones of deep respect as well as compassion: “If many of [Jean’s] fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage” (ch. 4 p. 37). She does not reduce them to their labels or overanalyze them with medical jargon, neither does she make fun of them, minimize their problems, or idealize them as saints (although, to be fair, Mary Sr.’s referring to her depressive episodes as punishment for her sins may grate on a modern reader’s nerves).

What this book conveys, and what Mary Jr. learns, is the interconnectedness of all people regardless of time and space. She can still learn from her cousin and her fiancé, even after their deaths. She can love someone and be enriched by it, whether or not that person feels the same. Among her neighbors, the mutual empathy between two war veterans grows despite their involvement with the same woman, and a wealthy landowner’s business gamble becomes his salvation as well as his ruin. The web of plotlines reaches all the way back to the construction of the local abbey during the Middle Ages, in which a disfigured monk overcame his self-loathing and suicidal thoughts, learned to carry himself confidently, became a healer, and inspired his countrymen’s spiritual lives hundreds of years after his death.

“I wasn’t solitary. Everyone was me and I was everyone” (ch. 7 p. 105). It’s not an original idea by any means, but it’s one that needs repeating.