The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax

 

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax / Dorothy Gilman
NY: Random House, 1983, c1966.
204 p.

Another "Mrs." today, and it was an unexpected delight! I heard this one being talked about, felt a sudden urge to read this series, and then came across a copy of volume one randomly. It was a sign. 

Mrs. Pollifax is a retired widow who decides to tour CIA headquarters on a trip to Washington, with the cunning plan in place to volunteer as a spy, once she can get someone to listen to her. She is mistaken for an agent by a series of miscommunications, and sent off to Mexico as a courier - an easy job with the additional bonus of a week's vacation in Mexico. But of course things do not turn out as planned. 

I was surprised by the mix of cozy and thriller in this book. There were violent deaths and suspense and bad people, alongside Mrs. Pollifax's irrepressible cool-headed assessment of the many pickles she finds herself in. I found it an engaging read, lots of fun and suspenseful, and as the title notes, quite unexpected! The writing and plot holds up, for a novel written in 1966. I am now another of the many fans of Mrs. Pollifax and intend to follow up with the whole series if I can. 

This was a great choice for some lighter summer reading, and has the perfect blend of humour and irony alongside an actual spy plot. And some great characters. It reminds me a little of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody books, in feel only as the setting and themes are obviously different, but it had the same vibe and enjoyment factor, for me. Great find! 

Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer

Mrs. Lorimer's Quiet Summer / Molly Clavering
London: Dean Street Press, 2021, c1953.
192 p.

I was in need of a quiet read recently, so turned to Dean Street Press, always a reliable source of comfort reading. I found this one off my to read list, and thought that "quiet" and "summer" described what I was looking for. 

I'm so glad I picked it up! I really enjoyed this one. We find Mrs. Lucy Lorimer (loosely based on the author's friend D.E. Stevenson) getting ready to welcome her children home for a visit. She's disappointed that a local house has been sold, as she had been pondering buying it so that all the children could fit when they visit. As it is, two of the children will be staying at her best friend Grace "Gray" Douglas' house down the road (a character loosely based on Molly Clavering). 

This quiet summer is not so quiet; it does have small domestic upsets. The four children are all grown, three married and the youngest, Guy (Mrs. Lorimer's favourite) is nursing heartbreak. All four (plus spouses, grandchildren and assorted locals) cause many quiet fusses over the summer visit -- some are more nerve-wracking than others, including sudden illness, a car accident, a growing attachment by Guy to an unsuitable local girl, and more. 

Also in the mix is Mrs. Lorimer's husband Jack, who seems blustery and comical at the beginning, but grows on the reader as he proves he is good at solving a crisis, and everything he does is aimed at making Lucy's life easier. 

This is a gentle read, with three lovely main characters (Lucy, Jack and Gray). The wide range of other characters give motion and event to the book (including a wonderful summer fair) but these three are at the heart of it. I felt carried away, entertained, and satisfied by this read. I will definitely look for more Molly Clavering. 

Miss Granby's Secret

Miss Granby's Secret / Eleanor Farjeon
London: Dean Street Press, 2024, c1941.
338 p.

A rare miss for me from Dean Street Press. Doubly so as I usually love this author's works - I have strong feelings about having her wonderful Martin Pippin novels reissued, for example! 

But this book was a bit of a mess for me. It just went on with the main conceit for far too long, becoming tiresome. That conceit is that Pamela's great aunt Addie, a spinster who was a best-selling author of romantic melodramas, was not as cluelessly innocent as her family had thought. After her death, Pamela is left the secret manuscript of Addie's first novel, a story apparently based in fact. 

This melodramatic manuscript then takes up most of the story, and the arch ridiculousness of it goes on and on. Young Addie doesn't know what "bastard" means, teehee! It continues in this manner for quite a while. 

The conclusion, where we come back to Pamela as she tries to determine what might be true in the story, is written naturally and has more heft. But by this time I couldn't have cared less how much Aunt Addie actually knew about the facts of life. I just wished she could have known something about the facts of writing! 

I think that I was probably in the entirely wrong mood for this. But I was disappointed - Farjeon's magical touch was missing here, making this one a bit of a dud. Perhaps when it was first published there was more cultural context that might have made this more enjoyable - perhaps people even had older relatives they may have connected with characters like Addie. But I don't feel that the appeal has carried through to today, at least not for me. 

Ex-Wife

Ex-Wife / Ursula Parrott
Rare Treasure Editions, 2025, c1929
283 p.

I first saw this book on Instagram somewhere, when this reissue came out. It sounded really good and I was lucky to find it as an online book via my library. It's another book from the 20s about marriage and gender roles but very different from the last one I read (The Home Maker). 

It was a lot bleaker than I had expected. It follows Pat as she becomes an ex-wife, one of the growing cadre of them in 1920s New York City. Pat was a young starry-eyed wife, inordinately fond of her philandering husband Peter - this seems to be fine, until she's the one who philanders, and suddenly Peter doesn't want her anymore. 

There were scenes in this book that I wasn't expecting; dark, scary ones of domestic violence - heartbreaking ones of abortion and child loss - rape when Pat's back on the dating scene. This feels scarily contemporary. 

This novel was first published anonymously in 1929, set in the mid 20s, and was considered scandalous. I guess it was okay to live this way, but to talk about women's experiences of it was a no-no. It's also semi-confessional, according to the author's son. This was the original Jazz Age story, one of heavy drinking, dancing, divorce, and the effect of women of these sea changes in social norms. Pat moves in with another divorced woman, Lucia, after she is left on her own. Lucia is a no-nonsense woman with a clear vision of their status. She says: 

The choices for women used to be: marriage, the convent, or the street. They’re just the same now. Marriage has the same name. Or you can have a career, letting it absorb all emotional energy (just like the convent). Or you can have an imitation masculine attitude toward sex, and a succession of meaningless affairs, promiscuity, (the street, that is) taking your pay in orchids and dinner-dates instead of money left on the dresser. 

Once Pat is divorced she goes through waves and stages of grief and longing for Peter's return (meanwhile I just wanted to punch Peter in the throat). The depiction of her grief and distress is powerful and realistic, the experience of heartbreak is laid bare. Pat has so many things to grieve over, and this includes her own loss of innocence and growing cynicism. She travels this road and comes out a different person; the conclusion is natural in a way, but also bittersweet. Definitely a must read for anyone interested in women writing about their lives. 

The Homemaker

 

The Home Maker / Dorothy Canfield Fisher
Rare Treasure Editions, 2024, c1924.
255 p.

I read this book online recently, and even though it was written 100 years ago, I felt like it was discussing our current society directly. The writing style is a little straightforward but the issues are still so extremely relevant -  discussion of patriarchal roles, capitalism, gender relations, women feeling stifled by home making - it's all there. And not in an oblique way either, it's explicit, the reason for the novel, and all said straight out. Lots to consider in this novel! 

Evangeline Knapp is an energetic mother of three - a school aged boy and girl and a young toddler who is inquisitive and gets into everything. She likes her house and kitchen just so, and has a short temper with her children. She is involved in church groups, and all the other ladies admire her organizational and managing skills. But she's clearly not happy at home; a scene where she is at a ladies' sewing bee and the other ladies are asking her for advice and assistance shows that she is much more relaxed and comfortable when she is managing processes and people, not children and kitchens. 

Meanwhile her husband Lester is a mild, weak man with no real ambition. He's been a clerk at the local department store for years, never advancing and never making quite enough for them to really prosper, despite the encouragement and push from his wife to do so. He's dreamy and just wants to read his books, wishing he could have been a teacher. 

It all comes to a head when he is injured trying to help a neighbour. He is bedridden, partially paralyzed, with an uncertain outlook. This plunges the family into distress, as he is the breadwinner. But Evangeline doesn't take anything sitting down, she marches down to the store and asks to take over his job for the interim. Luckily for her, the shop owner is young and modern, and has a new position for a floor manager instead - and installs her, where her skills finally come to shine. She loves it, is very good at it, and impresses everyone. Her husband, having recovered enough to use a wheelchair, is happily domestic, learning to care for the house and the children. He loves it and turns out to be quite good at it. The thought of never going back to an office fills him with delight despite everything else. 

But then there is a chance that he could fully recover. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? They will have decide what road to take. 

I loved this. It was a delicate look at temperament and what a person is suited to. It examines the roles of a traditional marriage and how social norms and expectations might not work for everyone but powerfully control what people can do. The characterizations of both wife and husband are nuanced, showing their internal worlds and their frustrations, although this might have seemed topsy-turvy to contemporary readers. I found it a compelling and thought-provoking story, even 101 years after publication. Still so much in it to think about. 

Linnets and Valerians

Linnets & Valerians / Elizabeth Goudge
Boston, MA: David Godine Publishers, 2015, c1964.
256 p.

I've been having a hard time reading and an even harder time sitting down to review lately. So I decided that I should read something delightful from a favourite author, one of her children's book that I hadn't yet read. This was the right choice! 

Linnets & Valerians is the story of the four Linnet children, Nan, Robert, Timothy and Betsy. They are sent to live with their grandmother when their father is assigned a post overseas -- their mother being, of course in these kinds of books, long dead. Their grandmother is strict and they are unhappy at the beginning of the book, as they are all being punished for rowdy behaviour by being locked away in solitary. They decide to escape and run away. 

And so they do, walking to another village until in exhaustion they climb into a pony trap, which then sets off, the pony heading home, while they eat all the groceries in the back. I can see why Grandma locked them up! 

Fortunately for them, the pony belongs to their Uncle Ambrose, a grumpy minister and scholar, who takes them in. Life there is much freer, even if they must be educated by Uncle Ambrose. 

But instead of just larks and hijinks for the rest of the book, the story turns darker. There is a witch in town, old Emma Cobley, who has cursed the local rich family - their son disappeared at age 8 on the hills, the husband is long missing overseas, the wife is a recluse at their estate. The Linnet children stumble into this and they do resolve it, as expected, but the story is dark, with witchcraft, magical bees, owls, and more. The children remain resolutely stout and English amidst this swirling magic, except for maybe a little bit of Nan is brought into it. As the oldest she is responsible for them and she also finds a little book of spells in Uncle Ambrose's house (the vicarage, where the rich recluse used to live as the old vicar's daughter long ago). 

But despite the odd balance of this book I loved it and would have loved it when I was a young reader as well. It was published in 1964, when these themes of English witches were everywhere -- Mary Stewart's Thornyhold, Alexander Key's Escape to Witch Mountain, or any of Ruth Chew's lighter witchy stories, for example. And this kind of dark magic against the (Christian) light is a theme in some of Goudge's other writing, in different ways but present. 

The only part I wasn't keen on was Nan's character arc - I could see her resolution coming and didn't like it, and then it happened and I still didn't like it! But this was a fun, relaxing read that I really enjoyed on a steamy summer day. 

19th Annual Canadian Book Challenge!

 

It's time for the new round of the Canadian Book Challenge! It's the 19th year in a row that this readalong has been going on, it's easy, just read and review 13 Canadian books between July 1 - July 1. 

I made it to 17 over this last year. Maybe I'll beat that in this round! Lots of great books to choose from - and there are many reviews to read over the last 18 years, if you are looking for a good book :)