Fingersmith

By Sarah Waters

Back in my college days, my best friend read Sarah Waters' debut novel Tipping the Velvet, and told me I had to read it. I never got around to reading that particular Sarah Waters novel, but I did just finish Fingersmith, and I'm happy to report I wasn't lead astray. Waters is a fantastic novelist, with a gift for bringing to life a particular time and place while building an enjoyable suspense novel. 

The novel takes place in Victorian England, and contains multiple Dickensian motifs: orphans, prisons, insane asylums, pickpockets, handsome villains and stolen fortunes. It seems to be the straightforward story of Sue Trinder, a small-time thief who is recruited by a family friend to help him seduce and marry the wealthy orphan of his employer. However, once Sue takes on the role of the young woman's maid her alliance begins to shift. Once the deed seems to be done the story takes a highly unexpected turn. 

Waters has an eye for detail, vividly bringing to life the slums of Victorian London, as well as the decaying country homes inhabited by the wealthy who spend their time in idle pursuits. Her intricate narrative mapping makes Fingersmith a gripping read right until the end of Sue's journey.

Mad Men in Books

  The fourth season of Mad Men ended last week, and while I'm sad to see it go, I've recently discovered some fun Mad Men inspired books to keep me going until next season. And with the holidays right around the corner these books make fantastic gifts for any Mad Men fanatics. 


The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men
By Janie Bryant

Janie Bryant is the immensely talented costume designer for Mad Men and she just released The Fashion File this past month. The book works more like a how-to reference for dressing yourself. She also gives behind the scenes peeks into the Mad Men world, as well as her process for creating the costumes. 

Mad Men: The Illustrated World

By Dyna Moe

Dyna Moe became famous when she began posting illustrated depictions of Mad Men on her Flickr stream (check it out here). AMC then used her considerable skill to create their Mad Men Yourself machine. The book isn't just illustrations, it includes a Sally Draper drink menu, Joan paper dolls, and instructions on how to create the perfect bouffant.

 

Freedom: A Novel

By Jonathan Franzen

I wish I had a post to do this novel justice. All I can say is Jonathan Franzen rocks and I'm pretty sure he's the greatest living writer of fiction in the U.S. Read this book right now!


And if you still haven't read it, pick up the The Corrections.

Never Let Me Go

By Kazuo Ishiguro 

I read Never Let Me Go a few years ago when it was first published. I was reminded of the book when I recently saw the trailer for the upcoming movie (featuring Keira Knightley and the lovely Carey Mulligan).  I never read Remains of the Day, Ishiguro's most famous novel, but I was impressed by the books' understated style. 


The book takes place in a dystopian Britain and revolves around the boarding school Hailsham, where the students are all taught they are special and not like other children. Slowly, the reader is given clues regarding the children's role in society, gradually unfolding until the deeply unsettling end. 


Ishiguro's prose has a simplicity I have always admired in writers. Every word and every sentence is a choice, and those choices are made with great care. Ishiguro manages to create an eerie distance between the reader and the characters, never fully stating what is happening, but all the while managing to mimic the half-lives they are forced to live for the good of society. 

Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks

By John Curran

For an Agatha Christie lover this book is a fantastic trove of information and insight into her writing process. Curran poured through over seventy notebooks in order to piece together Christie's plot developments, a task made even more challenging because Christie didn't record her musings in any sort of order. 

Sex With Kings: Five Hundred Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge

By Eleanor Herman



I've been slowly making my way through Sex with Kings for the past few months, since it's the type of book you can easily pick up and come back to a few days/weeks later. 


While the writing is light and frothy, it still covers a lot of ground, detailing the wide array of royal mistresses that have populated monarch's beds for centuries. Some are serious loves, with relationships spanning decades, while most are temporary placeholders until the next beauty comes along to take her place. One thing is clear, being a royal mistress was hard work, and those lucky few who found themselves on the receiving end of a king's affections had to work non-stop to hold onto their place of honor. 


Overall a fun, interesting read. My only warning, Herman doesn't cover her subjects chronologically, so it's easy to get mixed up with the numerous names and dates she throws at you. 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

By John Le Carré

"Treason is very much a matter of habit." -George Smiley

Sometime last year I read that the British writer John Le Carré (the pen name of David Cornwell) was considered to be one of the greatest spy novelists of all time. I've always loved mystery novels, but the spy genre tends to be a very different animal altogether. And while spy novels sound like fun, I had never really found a great book to reel me in. However, last summer I ended up reading the American-based The Romeo Flag by Carolyn Hougan and enjoyed the quiet, intellectual style her spies possessed. 

Luckily, John Le Carré's novels seem to have a similar understated intensity to them. Browsing through Amazon I discovered that Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy is considered to be one of his best novels (along with The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and A Perfect Spy). (An interesting side note, the term "mole" was first used by Le Carré in this novel.)


The novel takes place during the height of the Cold War and focuses on the recently fired George Smiley, who is asked to return to his British Intelligence stomping grounds to find a long-ago implanted Russian mole. The character of Smiley goes against the suave James Bond-type made famous by Ian Fleming. Instead, Smiley is short, overweight, with a beautiful wife who has left him. He is later described  by one of his agents: "You thought, to look at him, that he couldn't cross the road alone, but you might as well have offered protection to a hedge hog." 


The spywork laid out in Tinker, Tailor is not flashy, or even exciting. Instead, it involves pouring through paperwork and the ability to analyze vast networks of spies and their handlers. He also manages to convey the strangeness of the double agent's life, working his way up in an organization while slowly destroying it in such a way as not to attract attention. Le Carré has the gift of possessing sparse, yet descriptive prose, allowing his work to more than just another spy novel. 


Le Carré's attention to the vast details present in British Intelligence also sets his novel apart; the relationships, office hierarchies and the constant watchfulness present in all its agents. The detailed focus isn't surprising since Le Carré spent the 1950s and 1960s working for M15 and M16 running agents and conducting interrogations. His intelligence career came to an end when he was betrayed by Kim Philby, a British double-agent who was part of the Cambridge Five. In the book's introduction, Le Carré indicates that he used Philby as a model for his KGB mole.