The sands of time

Book review: The Egyptian Years by Elizabeth Harris

I accidentally stumbled upon this book on Goodreads when I was in the mood for a past-present book with a gothic feel. It was written in the early 1990s and frankly, I hadn't heard of this author before reading this book. I couldn't find many reviews of Elizabeth Harris' books on the net either. But this book actually managed to exceed my expectations - it was a nice past-present mystery with a paranormal element and worth a read.

The book centers around Willa Jamieson who leads a boring life working in a museum with two aged employees. Her staid life changes suddenly when she receives a trunk full of old Victorian clothes from her distant relative, Hester Montsorrel. Willa doesn't recollect Hester very clearly, as Hester seems to have been an oddity in their family, mostly keeping to herself and always being whispered about. It seems the clothes belonged to Genevieve Montsorrel, Hester's mother, and Hester wants Willa to have them due to her interest in antiques.

On her way to Hester's house, Willa meets Hugo Henshaw-Jones, a collector of antique items, who has come to buy an Egyptian mummy-mask from Hester. Once she reaches Hester's house, Willa finds that Hester is now a very old and somewhat eccentric lady, though all her faculties are very much intact. Hester is apparently disposing off her old and antique items by selling them at nominal prices or giving them away as gifts.

After going back home, Willa is very curious about the unknown contents of the trunk, especially since nothing much is known about Genevieve. Willa is intrigued by Genevieve and finds out that according to the family bible, there is a mysterious question mark against Genevieve's year of death. Willa manages to open the trunk with Hugh's help  and is excited to find a lot of well-preserved and good quality dresses and hats from the Victorian era. She is attracted to a beige suit in particular and tries it on in front of the mirror. The dress fits her perfectly and for a moment, she thinks she sees another woman's face superimposed on her own face in the mirror. Willa, of course, dismisses this as a trick of the light. When she checks the pockets of the jacket, she finds grains of red-brown sand and hears a voice whispering "Egypt" in her ears. Then a whirl of images hit her - wide azure skies, golden sand, mummy-masks and she feels a frisson of a strange, momentary fear which goes away the moment she takes off the suit.

Willa is somehow sure that Genevieve had visited Egypt in her lifetime and is determined to find out more about what eventually happened to Genevieve. She soon discovers a journal written by Genevieve in the trunk and is sucked into the events of 1890 when Genevieve travelled with her husband, Leonard Montsorrel, to Egypt. It soon becomes apparent that Genevieve wasn't happy with her marriage and Leonard was a cold and unfeeling man, incapable of understanding his sensitive wife. As Willa keeps reading the entries in the journal, Genevieve's voice seems to reach out to her from the past and her own present world seems to fade away. She starts living in a trance-like state, forgetting to eat or sleep or go to work for days, so strong is her identification with Genevieve's life.

The events in Genevieve's life soon take an unexpected turn and Willa starts having surprisingly realistic dreams of Egypt. Willa realizes that she is fast losing her grip on the present and Genevieve's emotions are somehow taking over Willa's life. As Willa stays alone, she has no one to turn to for help. Her parents are also out of the country and are unable to come to her assistance. In her desperation, she reaches out to Hugo who seems to be her only connection with the present. Hugo and his mother take care of her and help her make sense of her visions. Willa is increasingly driven to find out more about Genevieve's disappearance and to know why Genevieve's voice seems to call to her. She knows that she will have no peace till she finds out the truth behind Genevieve's mysterious disappearance.

Shocking secrets are slowly revealed about Genevieve and Hester, and Willa and Hugo travel to Egypt to finally bury the past. What really happened to Genevieve in Egypt? Who is the red-haired man Willa keeps seeing in her dreams? Why was Hester shunned throughout her life by her family? Why is there a dark stain on the beige coat that looks suspiciously like blood?

There is an unexpected twist in the end that I didn't see coming, and I was glad that the ending to the tale is a happy one. My only complaints with the book are that it drags somewhat in the middle and Willa is a bit too passive for my taste, but I think I can live with that, considering that this book was written almost 25 years back. All in all, a nice, little mystery read :)

Write your own story

Book review: These Shallow Graves by Jennifer Donnelly

Josephine Montford (better known as "Jo") is a Montford by birth - one of the oldest, richest and most influential families in 1890's New York. She has lived a privileged life for the past seventeen years, wears the latest fashions, attends the most happening balls, and is about to be engaged to the scion of another rich and influential New York family. She should be happy and contented with her life, right? Nothing could be further from the truth, because Jo is not like the other society heiresses who cheerfully spend their time discussing inane topics such as tea parties, ball gowns, flower arrangements and eligible bachelors. She is a girl who is gifted with insatiable curiosity, sharp intelligence and a burning passion for truth, in an era when women are supposed to be docile, subservient and bound by rules of the society. 

Why is it, she wondered now, that boys get to do things and be things and girls only get to watch?

Any woman digressing from the accepted norms of behaviour or thinking faces social ruin, humiliation and even life-long detention in a mental asylum! Women are thought to be fragile beings, incapable of logical thinking or intelligent decision-making. A mere walk in the streets at night alone is enough to get a young woman branded as a woman of loose character or worse still, charged with insanity. In such a world, Jo is forced to keep her curiosity about the world outside her social circle carefully hidden, because she has been repeatedly warned about the consequences of being a non-conformist in society:

"You, on the other hand, wish to know things. And no one can forgive a girl for that."

"....That was what people did when they wanted to stop a girl from doing something—they shamed her.”

That doesn't stop Jo from being secretly inspired by the trailblazing American journalist, Nellie Bly, and her sensational expose on the inhuman treatment of inmates in a lunatic asylum, "Ten Days in a Mad-House". 

We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither. Yet how can we help them if we don't even know about them? And how can we know about them if no one writes about them? Is it so wrong to want to know things?

Nelly Bly (1864-1922)

Things might still have continued normally with Jo accepting the inevitable and letting go of her dreams, if suddenly her father hadn't been found dead in his study, apparently having shot himself by accident. Jo and her mother are in a state of shock while her uncle helps them sort out her father's extensive business affairs. During a visit to a prominent newspaper office owned by her family, Jo by chance overhears a young reporter talking about how her father's death was actually a suicide but was hushed up by her influential family. Unable to believe her ears, Jo confronts the reporter, Eddie, to find out why he has reached such a conclusion. Little does she know that her chance encounter with Eddie will propel her into a world of people she has never encountered, situations she has never faced and secrets she has never dreamed of before! 

"The truth can be a hard thing, Jo. It’s often best left hidden."

What if everything she has ever known about the world and the people around her is a veneer? What if her father's death is not even a suicide but a murder? Who or what was her father scared of? Who is the man with the scar Jo keeps seeing everywhere? Who knows the truth and who is hiding it? 

The mysteries keep piling one on top of the other and more secrets keep tumbling out, as Jo joins forces with Eddie to find out the truth. As she delves deeper into the mystery, she also travels to the underbelly of New York - the slums, the dockyards, the brothels, the mental asylums. Eddie helps her see and experience things and perspectives to life that she has never come across in her sheltered world. She finds the outside world scary yet strangely fascinating - full of untold stories waiting to be told. She is no longer able to reconcile herself with having no life other than getting married and raising a family - she starts questioning more, she starts wanting more:

How did this happen? How did I get here? Jo asked herself. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to be home. Safe inside her Gramercy Square town house...

Go back? How? There was no going back. Not to her old life of drawing rooms and dances. Not to Miss Sparkwell’s School. Not to her friends, or to Bram. It had all gone too far....

If only she could be bold enough, and brave enough, to claim the things she wanted: love, a purpose, a life. But could she be?

I loved how the author expertly binds two parallel tracts together - the mystery moves seamlessly on one hand, while on the other hand, Jo awakens to a new and often dangerous world outside her known boundaries, through her association with Eddie. I liked their slow-burn romance, often poignant because of its very implausibility:

He was a flame and she’d gotten burned, and the pain was terrible, yet it didn’t make the fire any less alluring.

I liked some of the secondary characters like Eddie's friend, the forensic expert Oscar Rubin, and his funny comments about human anatomy. I also loved the strange camaraderie and female kinship between Jo and the pickpocket girl, Fay - how both were constrained to do what society forced them to do, and how both longed for freedom, in spite of being from completely disparate backgrounds.

Little by little, Jo's sheltered life crumbles around her and she loses her naivete as her assumptions about people are challenged. She realizes that the past is not really buried and the dark alleys and shallow graves may yield their startling secrets after all:

"If you're going to bury the past, bury it deep..Shallow graves always give up their secrets."

As someone who has everything to lose - her reputation, her family, her riches, her love, her sanity and maybe even her life - can Jo dare to find out the truth? Will the truth ultimately make her or break her? Will she ever be able to write her own story?

Between the shadow and the soul

Because I know no other way than this...

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

- Pablo Neruda

My thoughts

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) was a Chilean poet and politician who is famous for his sensual and often erotically charged love poems. His most renowned works include Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair. I had started my blog with one of his poems; so it stands to reason that my favourite poem, out of all the ones I love, can only be one written by Neruda. 

I identify so strongly with the soul-deep love this poem speaks of - a feeling that cannot be expressed through honeyed words or flowers or precious stones. Rather, it is an emotion hidden in the dark recesses of the soul - a feeling without artifice or conditions or complexity. This is the kind of love that renders everything redundant - words, reasons, consequences, personalities and differences. There is no how or why or where to such a love; it is love simply because it is - because there is no other way to live than this.

Bargaining with your life!

Series review: Covenant of Thorns by Jeffe Kennedy

Ever read a book where the writer makes you see everything through the main character's eyes, leaving you increasingly confused and lost in a strange world - and instead of putting you off, this actually makes you more desperate to  figure out what exactly is going on? 

Ever read a book which starts off with elements you find unsavoury and characters you think are unlikable till suddenly mid-way you realize, to your surprise, that everything had happened due to a reason and that you like the characters after all? 

That was what happened with the Covenant of Thorns series by Jeffe Kennedy.

I stumbled upon this  fantasy series purely by chance on Amazon, and went into it with zero expectations, never having read a book by this author before. It's a trilogy, and I cautiously bought the first book, Rogue's Pawn, believing it to be a standard fantasy romance (judging by the clichéd cover!). But it was nothing like I had expected it to be! It disguises itself as a romance, but it actually isn't. It may be regarded as an intriguing mix of Alice in Wonderland, Rumpelstiltskin, Tamlin, Puss-in-Boots and Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream, but it is not really like any of them. The series progressively got better with every book and I ended up racing through all the three books in two days! Thank the gods that all the sequels had already been released and each book was of a normal, manageable length!

This is no fairy tale....

- cautions the back cover of "Rogue's Pawn", but I still wasn't prepared for how different this book was from the run-of-the-mill fantasies. The book starts like many normal urban fantasies, with a logical scientist frustrated with her dull job and duller fiancé finding herself transported accidentally to the Faerie world while on an impulsive hike to Devils Tower in Wyoming.

Devils Tower, Wyoming

When she regains consciousness, she sees a ferocious black dog standing in front of her - the same mystical dog which has been stalking her dreams for the past few weeks. The black dog attacks her, almost ripping out her throat and the next thing she knows is that she is in a dark castle where a mysterious stranger and a suspicious healer are trying to either heal her wounds or murder her (they themselves don't seem to be sure about which one they would prefer!). When she is told that she is a human Sorceress, she realizes that not only has she somehow entered the Faerie realm but has also mysteriously acquired some magic while transitioning to this world - she has only to think of something to make it happen! She can also communicate telepathically with certain people in this land. Surprisingly, she can understand and interpret the Fae people's language as her mind can translate that into English. Everyone views her as a dangerous human and an unpredictable hazard and she is bound in silver chains to restrict her magical powers. She is healed by magic, under the orders of the man who she learns is a powerful Fae sorcerer called Rogue (it seems people are named as per their character or profession in this world!). In spite of the gravity of the situation,  Jennifer's internal monologue is a joy to read:

"Call me Rogue - that's my name." 
I snorted out a painful giggle and he paced into my view. 
"I take it that translated oddly? Show me a picture of what that word means to you."
I pictured Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean, scraped and bruised from escapades, a bottle of booze in one hand and a couple of girls in the other, wicked mischief on his face."

Ha-ha.

From here, things get more mysterious as Jennifer (which translates as Gwynn in Fae language) realizes that this world may look as  magical as a fairyland but is actually vicious and cruel, hiding all manner of creatures with their own agendas. The author creates a dark and uncertain world where wishes coming true have unpleasant repercussions, where everyone has an ulterior motive, and where every action and reaction have to be carefully thought out. The currency of Fae is bargain - nothing comes for free. Each favour is treated as a bargain which has to be repaid by service, trading a loved one or even death. There is no room for a random thought or impulsive action.

Rogue takes Jennifer/Gwynn to a party where she needs to bargain for her life and she doesn't fare well, given that negotiation is not her strong point. It seems she owes quite a lot of people and she is forced to survive by bargaining away her services (hence the title "Covenant of Thorns"). Rogue wants Gwynn's first born (with him!) as payment for saving her life, another noble Fae named Lord Scourge wants to train her, a general named Lord Falcon wants her assistance in winning battles and even a magically anesthetic (!) cat named Darling  wants to be her Familiar. What happens in this part left me as confused as Jennifer and unable to decide who is a friend and who is a foe, who is good and who is bad:

"You are a child in the wilderness. You are without friends."

I had issues with Jennifer submitting to the sadistic training boot-camp she undergoes, and I felt she didn't try enough to wrest back control. I found her too passive in this part and also hated Rogue for allowing this humiliation. In hindsight, I realized why this had to happen.

Things got better as the story progressed. As Jennifer becomes tougher and learns to control her magic, she also devises strategies to win battles, change hair colours, dream up the perfect dress complete with accessories and make lights out of pillows! Rogue makes a re-entry at this point, trying to use his considerable charm to seduce Jennifer, though neither she nor the reader is entirely sure of his motivations. His erotic torture is strangely irresistible to Jennifer, though she's not sure if that's due to Rogue's powerful mind control or her own weakness towards him. Every encounter with him and the other denizens of Faerie makes one sit up and notice that something underhand is happening here - a dark undercurrent of deception which seems to be leading Jennifer to an outcome which someone else is orchestrating. To top it all, Jennifer keeps seeing the mystical black dog and isn't sure if it still wants to harm her.

What kept me more interested was how well the author infuses humour in the most dangerous of situations and how quick on the uptake Jennifer is. Her intelligent mind and unique perspectives to unpredictable situations make for some delightfully snarky comments:

Act II, scene ii. Exit Nasty Tinker Bell, Enter God-Only-Knows-What-Now...

"Relax."...This wasn't easy to do, what with the knife and all. However, I was concentrating on being the most Zen I could be. Which was so not my forte.

I looked like death warmed over. Maybe death microwaved - because my eyes shone and my complexion looked fantastic.

I should have gotten coaching on proper greetings. Though it would have been difficult to cover "formally greeting nasty noble folk who've dumped soup on your head."

Each chapter begins with a wonderfully tongue-in-cheek comment, mostly starting with, "In Which I....", for example: "In Which I am Covered in Glory and Other Obnoxious Fluids" or "In Which I Accomplish Several Impossible Things before Breakfast".

Her analytical mind makes mental lists of her predicaments, that are totally hilarious:

Organize your options, I ordered myself.
1. Endure the pain..., then spend weeks convalescing chained to this bed, surrounded by people hoping to kill me.
2. Attempt to control myself long enough to be knocked unconscious, risking the possibility that I could harm someone else and likely be killed.
3. Do nothing and die here of starvation and infection.

As the story progresses, we are introduced to more likable characters who form part of Jennifer's entourage, such as Starling, Larch and Athena. The world-building is engrossing, as are the descriptions of the different types of Fae - dragonfly girls, pink pixies, blue pages, brownies, dragons and even crossover humans. Another hugely entertaining character is Jennifer's cat familiar Darling, who communicates with Jennifer using mental images and has delusions of being a fierce battle cat!

He flattened his ears in disdain, splayed his legs to lick his butt, and sent me an image of him striding through a battlefield, tossing monsters aside. The cat had battles on the brain. Plus he wanted a new name. A battle name....

"Gigantor", he suggested.
"I am so not calling you Gigantor."
Darling swirled himself around my ankles. "Titanus".
I rolled my eyes. "No."
Darling meowed up at me, lashing his tail. "Colossus."
A snort escaped me and I picked him up so he could head-butt my chin.

You go, Kitty!

The action moves at a rapid pace, the stakes get progressively higher, with never a dull moment - as Jennifer slowly starts understanding what is actually happening in this world and how to bargain with those trying to manipulate her. As she gains more clarity, the missing pieces start falling into place for the readers as well. We comprehend who is really on her side and who is not. Towards the end, there are some unexpected twists, though I cannot reveal any more of the plot to avoid spoilers. But trust me, the ride from being disoriented to being in control is well worth it, both for Jennifer and for the reader! I will give it a 4.5 out of 5, which is a very high rating indeed. Looking forward to discovering more such gems unawares! :)

I am a pause..

 Between going and staying by Octavio Paz

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

 All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause. 

 My thoughts: 

Octavio Paz (1914-1998), the Mexican poet and Nobel Laureate, is another of my favourite poets. His poems are a mixture of sensuality, philosophy and surrealism, and the one I have reproduced here is the one I like best. This poem is a complex one which can be interpreted in various ways, depending on how the reader views it through the prism of his or her own experiences.

To me, this poem conveys the state of shock that one goes through in the aftermath of the death or loss of a loved one - that feeling of constantly wavering between living and feeling dead inside. It feels as if one is unable to move on, while everything around is flowing normally and everyone else is going about their daily motions of life. It's akin to being numbed and mentally isolated from the world - physically present yet not really present at all. "I find myself in the middle of an eye/watching myself in its blank stare" - conveys a feeling of being alone and disconnected from reality.

The poem's paradoxical descriptions help articulate this solitary and strangely blank feeling, which is often difficult to express in words to someone who has never experienced a deep loss. The "circular afternoon" is in "stillness", yet it "rocks", like a stationary boat which is unable to move forward, even in flowing waters. Despite the fact that "Time is throbbing in my temples", it is "unchanging" - even in the middle of constantly changing time, the shocked person is frozen in a moment in time. "All is visible and all elusive/all is near and can't be touched" - it's as if one is unable to register anything and is existing on another plane.

As poignant as these images are, the last two lines are the most telling of all, juxtaposing motion and stagnation and conveying strongly the bereaved one's inability to move forward - wanting to let go but coming back again and again to the same point:

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.

This is not a poem to be read or understood at one go. Do go back and re-read it - what does it say to you now?