Northanger Abbey / Jane Austen

Though published posthumously in 1817, this was Jane Austen’s first novel, written in either 1798 or 1799.  It opens with Catherine Morland, who at age eighteen travels from her small village to the social mecca of Bath with a family closely attached to her own.  Naive and innocent, there she is introduced to other young women seeking romantic attachments, hoping to better themselves in society.

One of these is a young woman whom her brother is wooing, someone who befriends Catherine as well.  She soon disappoints when it becomes clear she is more interested in achieving wealth than true love.  Meanwhile, Catherine is courted by this friend’s brother.

But she quickly realizes that this man is too self-centered to win her affections.  Instead, she is drawn to a clergyman, a man from a wealthy family above her own social class.  His sister, Elinor Tilney, becomes a dear friend who draws Catherine into a world of wealth beyond her imagining.

Having befriended the clergyman’s sister, the daughter of the man who owns Northanger Abbey, she is invited to visit the Tilney estate.  Once ensconced at the estate, and having been a reader of the gothic novels of the time, Catherine begins to wonder if Elinor’s father might have killed his wife. This possibility is what becomes  the novel’s cliffhanger.

While providing the story’s suspense, it quickly proves to be a supposition quickly disproved. The book’s end seems rushed, and its happy ending does not seem justified.  Since it was published posthumously, I cannot help but wonder if Austen herself was unsatisfied with the rushed conclusion.  The unfolding romance with Elinor’s brother seems an unlikely fairytale come true.  While the novel has proved to be a blueprint to her numerous romantic novels that followed its writing, Northanger Abbey ultimately disappoints.  In Austen’s canon, it falls short of the complexity of her earlier published novels.

Hunger

In autumn’s dimming,
the sound of an axe reminds
one of winter’s length

A garden’s harvest
now put into storage is
still a question mark

Come winter’s killing
frost, how lacking our larder
will suddenly seem

The implanted hope
of another spring fails to
assuage our hunger

Surfacing

Oceanic, the dark’s
rising tide
of silence reaches
out to
engulf consciousness,
thought’s
babbling vocabulary,
a tongue
so sly that despite
submersion,
it will again articulate,
loquaciously
surfacing to chronicle
the silence’s
landscape of dreams.

Rules Of Civility / Amor Towles

I was first introduced to Towles when I read his second novel, A Gentleman In Moscow.  It was one of my favorite reads in 2018.  Rules Of Civility was his debut novel, and I wondered if it would disappoint me after so enjoying his later effort.  I needn’t have worried, as it was quickly proved that Towles is no one hit wonder, but rather, a gifted writer likely to delight readers for decades to come.

In the opening chapter, Katey Kontent and her boardinghouse roommate are celebrating the arrival of 1938 in a jazz bar in New York City when they chance to meet Tinker Gray, a handsome banker.  Both of them quickly fall under the spell of his charm and good looks.  This encounter propels Katey on a path, in the next year, that takes her from the lowly realm of Wall Street secretary to associating with the upper class of New York society, as well as landing a much better job with a new magazine in development at Condé Nast.

Tinker is just the first of several men and women she becomes intimate with, and she is able to use the opportunities presented by them to better herself.  It is a modern fairytale blessed with a good many fascinating characters, but none more charming than Katey herself.  Blessed with intelligence, youth, and a wry wit, she effortlessly carries the weight of this entire story.  For me, it was impossible not to be won over by someone who turns to the books of Charles Dickens and Agatha Christa for support and inspiration.  

Towles does a marvelous job of capturing what life was like for the upper class in New York during this time period.  He excels in portraying these characters’ charmed lives, but also delves into their disappointments and heartbreaks, which wealth and glamour cannot prevent no matter how flush their bank accounts.  Katey Kontent is a delight to get know, someone who remains true to humble Midwestern roots despite her year long climb up New York’s social ladder.

Barometer

Long before
the horizon announces the danger,
he bristles
and backs away from the window,
furiously
barking at a presence none of us
can make out.
Sometimes it is a plane passing
by overhead,
or a threat never to be identified.

Usually though,
having given notice of a summer
storm’s approach,
this sentry’s duty is discharged.
Knowing better
than to confront a wind’s whip or
its angry rain,
wisely, he turns tail and retreats,
his courage no
match for the sky’s first crackle.

Safely kenneled,
splayed beneath the nearest bed,
Snowboy awaits
a barometer’s rise before he does.

Unanswered Questions

If no one is there
to press “like,” does dawn’s sky feel
singularly blue?

Come moonless nights, in
light’s absence, what does a pond
reflect on instead?

In a storm’s outrage,
who taught these bark armored trees
to bend in retreat?

To outlast spring’s frost,
do flowers hold their breath or
clutch sun’s memory?

On its appointed
path, has that determined ant
heard a word I’ve said?

Warrior

O mighty
untested warrior, so ruthless
and stern,
no matter how courageous
and fearless,
despite your ability to read
battlefields
like a map, knowledgeable
of where
all those others went wrong,
fate will
still refuse to be kind to you.

O mighty
warrior soon to be confronted,
struck by
the arrows of time’s passage,
you will
find, unexpectedly wounded,
deprived of
the glory so long imagined,
now prone
to tears, you’re a soft target
like the rest,
humbled by caution after all.

Happiness / Aminatta Forna

Happiness, published in 2018, is Aminatta Forna’s fourth novel.   In it, she addresses a number of grand themes by focusing on two main characters.  There is Attila Asare, a Ghanaian in late middle age.  He is a well-known psychiatrist who has traveled the world to deal with trauma victims in war zones.  Following the death of his wife, he has come to London as an invited keynote speaker at a conference.  Jean Turane is an academic who, following a divorce, is in England to study the movement of urban foxes.  To make ends meet, she also designs rooftop gardens.

To help her track the foxes, she enlists the help of traffic wardens, a street performer, security guards, and hotel doormen––all foreigners who have made London their home.  While minor characters, Forna uses them to add a third world perspective as they help to carry her plot forward.  At times Forna strains to connect all the dots of the themes she is attempting to address here.  This is a fault that barely registers, however, since the characters she presents have such interesting histories.  More importantly, they are kind, caring individuals, people who have overcome various traumas to adapt to the circumstances life has presented them with.

Nature, post-traumatic stress, a lost nephew of Attila’s, the impact of the death of a loved one, as well as the budding romance between the two main characters are all masterfully woven into the story.  Forna has always excelled at creating memorable characters, and she succeeds in spades here.  It is a novel that highlights small acts of decency that help to create a community’s strong bond.  For those not familiar with Aminatta Forna’s work, she is an author capable of presenting grand themes by focusing on characters dealing with situations familiar to all of us.  She is someone who deserves to be added to everyone’s must read list.