My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne Du Maurier

Daphne Du Maurier presents us with a story that is suspenseful, gloomy and creepy.  It is also a story of romance and probably a woman’s book.  Is Rachel vixen or victim?  Is she femme fatale or a plain Jane who is in the wrong place at the wrong time?

We have two protagonists in this story and two different settings.  Du Maurier contrasts Cornish, English country life with cosmopolitan, sunny Florence.  Phillip belongs to the former, Rachel to the latter.  Rachel is beguiling and bewitching, mistress of flowers and herbs, expertly brewing her tisanas for the enjoyment and health of all.  Philip is largely beguiled and bewitched, tending to his farm and tenants.  Then there’s Rainaldi hovering like a Dr. Faust in the background.  

Up to the very last line, Du Maurier creates an air of sadness and mystery.  Read this book with a cup of hot herbal tea close by. 

Mary Anne by Daphne Du Maurier

Mary Anne by Daphne Du Maurier

This is a great read, another woman’s book I’d say.  I really can’t see most men being all that interested in the tale of a smart and spunky lower-class girl of late 18^th Century London who rises to fame as the mistress of H.R.H. The Duke of York.  There is plenty of intrigue, chicanery and affaires de coeur in this tale.

There is also, though, a tension, a dilemma.  What is an ambitious and clever young woman to do in the world of 1790 if she finds herself at the lower end of the social-class totem pole with a stepfather who falls ill, a mother who is worn out with the cares of life, a husband who turns out to be a ne’er-do-well drinker and four children to raise.  Mary Anne finagles and calculates to save herself.  Will she use any means necessary?  As a woman, is that her only recourse?  Is it only herself she looks out for?  Does Mary Anne ever really love anybody? 

Now, here’s the kicker.  Mary Anne Clarke is not a fictional character. She really was real and she really was the mistress of the aforementioned Duke.  Mary Anne Clarke was also the great, great grandmother of the author, Daphne Du Maurier.  I had not the slightest idea of this until I finished the book and looked up dates for the Duke of York just to better fix the story in an historical era.  Du Maurier makes no mention that her novel is a work of historical fiction.  Or is it?  But if it isn’t and it’s a biography, then shouldn’t it be introduced as such?  Only the dedication makes hazy reference to Mary Anne being a relative of the author. 

Du Maurier never gave a physical description of Mary Anne except through the voice of one male character.  He remarks that Mary Anne is not a beauty, yet there is something about her eyes.  It was clever of Mrs. Du Maurier never to supply a description of her historical main character when, certainly, she must have seen images of her relation.  I greatly enjoyed the omission; it kept me fully engaged, the imagination jumping from here to there, wondering just exactly what it was that made this woman so alluring. 

I came to like Mary Anne.  That is, for the most part.  In the midst of identifying with her and cheering her on, I would suddenly turn and conclude that she was all tricks and cagey antics, someone I’d never want for a friend.  If you haven’t read it already, read this book.  If you’ve read it, read it again.  Either way, it’s a delightful escape.    

 

Is this Mary Anne?

Is this Mary Anne?

 

A young Mary Anne?

Mary Anne was only 16 when she married.

Trump Revealed

Trump Revealed by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher

The authors are Washington Post reporters, but I read the book anyway.  Their coverage was almost objective and probably not entirely inaccurate in its “reveal” of Trump. 

 The title is just glitter.  Trump is not revealed in this book any more than anyone is revealed in what the authors call a journalistic biography.  The purpose of the book is to highlight presidential nominees which, according to the authors, is part of a series that the newspaper regularly does.    

Despite not being a full-scale biography, the book does a handy job of hitting the highlights of Trump’s life.  There are several chapters on his parents, his childhood, his education and his start in the real estate business with his father.  Born in 1946, the 70s were the building-up years for Trump and his career as well as the beginning of married life to Ivana.  The 80s marked him hitting his career stride.  The 90s were his tabloid, playboy years, divorce, marriage to Marla Maples and his close call with bankruptcy.  By the 2000s he was back with The Apprentice, had mellowed somewhat as a person, was beginning to exhibit more of the “likeability factor” and was married to Melania in 2005. 

The book was a good read though a bit tedious in the majority of the chapters.  The authors examined in a fair amount of detail Trump’s business dealings, perhaps because they are inherently interesting, perhaps as points of information or perhaps for the purpose of casting aspersions.  I can't say.  I’m not interested in big real estate deals or the gambling industry and I'm an incompetent judge of the authors’ coverage of these topics.  There was reasonable attention given to his family life and relatively little coverage of Trump’s decision to run for president.

For the New Yorkers amongst us, what we may remember most about Trump are the playboy years.  Look familiar?

During those years, I assumed that Trump was little more than a rich and shallow gigolo who didn’t deserve the time it took to read the splashy headlines describing his latest exploit.  Over time I began to see it a little differently.  This book, perhaps unwittingly, confirms that Trump continually and successfully manipulated the media for his own purposes.  From the beginning, journalists took the bit and ran with whatever he gave them and he usually gave them only fluff.  Of the two, it’s the reporters who emerge as shallow.  While they sat in overheated cubicles pounding on their typewriters and wearing scruffy shoes, “The Donald,” as they so ridiculously christened him, was out re-configuring the landscape and building an empire!

Overall, the book gives a fair overview of who Trump was and is in the world of business and entertainment.  He comes across as a talented and ambitious optimist, a person with a very secure ego who believes in himself one hundred percent.  His ambition is backed up with intelligence and he seems to believe that, once in the door, he will find the right people, the right deals to make, the right problems to solve and the right solutions for those problems.  For a Donald Trump, there’s always another pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow.  In this sense, he is something of an inspiration. 

This book was refreshingly free of any psychoanalyzing or partisan political analysis.  Donald Trump emerges as an uncomplicated man who suffers no illusions about who he is and what his talents are.  As for his religion and other core, moral beliefs, the uncomplicated person with ambition and drive might not always dwell upon such matters.  Trump is not the man to go to for spiritual or philosophical reflection.  He is not quite a man for all seasons, although as President, he……well….  let’s just leave it at that.  Enough psychoanalysis and no politics.  

I would recommend this book for some light yet informative reading. 

More U.S. History

The Pioneers   by David McCullough

The pioneers referred to in the title are the New Englanders who founded the Ohio Company of Associates and settled that portion of the Northwest Territory in and around the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers (present day Marietta, Ohio) beginning in the year 1788.  

The featured pioneers are the families of Manasseh Cutler, Ephraim Cutler, General Rufus Putnam, Joseph Barker and Samuel Hildreth.  Their stories offer excellent insight into the daily life of these settlers, their values and their contributions to the overall history and development of this geographic area, indeed to the nation as a whole.  The significance of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 in the development of our country comes into sharp focus in this book.  The settlers’ interaction with the Indian tribes of the area is covered.  The tragi-comic if not almost farcical tale of Harman and Margaret Blennerhassett, their island, and Aaron Burr’s treachery is nicely explained also.  

McCullough is an engaging writer, new to me, but one that several of you have mentioned.  His writing style is uncomplicated and he delivers the history in an accessible manner that keeps the reader following along easily.  In this book, he covers about 70 years in the life of a seemingly insignificant small town located in one remote corner of the newly formed American nation.  After reading McCullough’s book, I was convinced that little Marietta was one of the most important places in the United States.  And, in a way, it is.   Marietta is just one of the many settlements that tells the larger story of America’s westward push and the spirit and endurance of its pioneers.  McCullough accomplished a lot in telling about the town and its pioneers. 

The book includes very good photographs that correspond to most of the central figures and subjects covered. There are two or three maps at the beginning of the book which are quite helpful though I did have to consult additional maps on several occasions.   

Mr. McCullough’s book gave me a better understanding of Ohio.  I now think of the area as “Puritan New England West.”  The author and his tale whetted my appetite for sitting on the banks of the Ohio after strolling downtown Marietta.  I’m planning my trip now.

 

A Book about the Scots-Irish

Born Fighting  How the Scots-Irish Shaped America  by James Webb

Five groups immigrated to and made up the population of colonial North America prior to the 1830-40s.  They were the Puritans in New England, the Quakers in the Mid-Atlantic states and the Anglicans in the South.  African slaves were a fourth group that came to the colonies though they were not immigrants of their own free will.  The fifth group was the Scots-Irish who pushed west past the established towns and villages of colonial America and settled its then-frontier areas of western Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia.  This book is about them.  (The American Indians were considered indigenous at the time of colonization though they, too, had migrated from foreign lands.) 

This book is part history, part personal memoir, part cultural history and part political commentary.  Its author is a man of seemingly limitless talents and energy.  Who knows James Webb?  No, not James E. Webb of telescope fame.  No, not Jimmy Webb who wrote Wichita Lineman and, no, not Jimmy Webb, East Village punk fashion icon. This is James Webb---novelist, journalist, filmmaker, professor, decorated Marine, Vietnam War veteran, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, former Secretary of the Navy (both during the Reagan years), former senator from Virginia and one-time Democrat candidate in the 2016 Presidential primary.  That James Webb! That James Webb, as you might guess, is himself a Scots-Irish.  He is justifiably proud of his roots and he writes with a zeal and passion fitting of a fightin’ Marine.  

Mr. Webb gives the reader several solid chapters on the provenance and history of the Scots-Irish going back to the indigenous Celtic tribes of Europe.  He then takes us from William Wallace (aka Braveheart) to Robert the Bruce to the monarchs of the 15^th and 16^th centuries and then the migrations of the Scots-Irish to the New World and their role in America’s history up to the present.  Other chapters deal with the legacy of the Scots-Irish in the United States, a legacy which pervades our military, our fighting spirit, our sense of individualism, our country music, our Protestant religions and our form of governance.  Among his many celebrations of his countrymen, Webb writes quite a paen to Andrew Jackson as representative of the Scots-Irish ethos.  

A portion of the book is devoted to Webb’s family history, his personal reflections and experiences moving through the post-Vietnam American culture.  His analysis of race relations and the scape-goat role that was unfairly foisted on Southern whites is particularly insightful.  His family memories veer slightly to the sentimental at times, but they save themselves by Webb’s level of detail and thoughtfulness that renders them genuinely from the heart.  

I ended up enjoying this book.  My original intent was to skim it and concentrate on the history chapters.  However, with no Scots-Irish heritage whatsoever, I could relate to much of the cultural history that Webb so accurately described.  The historical chapters, though a bit jumbly at times, were thorough and informative.  The book has no pictures except for the collage on the book jacket.  Hardly enough!  Photos of Mr. Webb wearing all his various hats would have added another dimension to the text as would have photos of the family members he described.  Generic photos of people and places discussed would have been helpful as well. 

I recommend this book and look forward to reading more of James Webb’s work.  Perhaps this Scots-Irishman extraordinaire will step onto the public stage once more in one of the many areas in which he excels.