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cyphomandraAssuming I don't find another list somewhere, this should bring me up to date as of just over a month or so. I appear to have inserted vast amounts of spoilers into the first and last of these, so consider this a warning.
Wanda Cowley, Biddy Alone. Young girl goes to DOC island with her parents, and smuggles her cat with her. I found this really difficult to get past as a character action, even for a child, because ideas about biosecurity (in this case, creating predator-free island reserves for native birds and other wildlife) are so firmly stamped into me that, for example when flying from Spain to the UK, I was incapable of making myself buy any of the meat and cheese available duty-free at the airport (non-NZ people – NZ Customs are vigilant about confiscating and fining anyone attempting to bring through plant and animal products, although chocolate is fortunately okay).
Similarly, I spent so much time while reading this book being appalled at the fact that Biddy had taken a cat (admittedly an elderly lazy one) with her that it was a bit difficult to focus on the story. Which is okay – Biddy starts to realise what she’s done, her cat escapes, she runs off to rescue him and is found by a DOC hunter, while the cat is saved from eating native birds by the nighttime visitation of mysterious fairy-type people who leave him a bunch of dead fish. I was a bit unclear about this last development, especially as I presume these are supposed to be the Maōri previous inhabitants; firstly, it removes them to the distant past, rather than the ongoing present, and secondly, they ate native birds as well and are a bit more complex than intangible eco-defenders.
Jill Stevens, The Stolen Painting. Artistic family cope with visit of annoying cousin and a lurking but curiously specific burglar (he is trying to steal one particular painting; it turns out this is because it shows the location of a buried criminal hoard, before the garden where it is buried was redesigned). I like the cousin, who decides that she is going to paint abstract art and, despite a lot of griping by the text about lack of artistic merit, actually ends up with an award for it. The burglar plot doesn’t really work at all, but the characters are entertaining.
Josephine Elder, The Encircled Heart. Marion Blake is a GP in 1930s Britain, with a thriving practice run from a home she shares with Philippa, a pathologist. She falls in love with Paul Shepherd, a lecturer at the university, and her ongoing commitment to her job creates tension between them.
This is an interesting set-up (and the author herself qualified as a doctor in the 1920s) hampered only by the fact that the two leads are both smug, self-satisfied bigots, and thus startlingly well suited to each other. Paul’s introduction – they’re punting, he has no experience, shows off when he tries and watches the more skilled Marion as if “to pick holes” when she takes a turn – sets him up as a spoiled, cosseted only child, who sulks when things don’t go his own way, and is vicious to those he dislikes. He is believably unhelpful when Marion’s job takes precedence over him, and his meals are late or he has to eat alone, and takes over the job of answering the phone to patients and attempting to teach them “manners”.
Unfortunately, Marion is almost as bad. She thinks her male patients are “awful idiots to come to a woman,” and when called from a dinner party to an elderly lady who has fallen at home, has a discussion about with her fellow dinners about “naughty” people who demand help when it’s not needed; when the patient has, in fact, broken her hip, Marion states cheerfully that “Even a Jew may have organic disease.” It’s difficult to know what she sees in Paul, but whatever it is it's persistent, despite all of his behaviour. A lot of it seems to be the way they can set themselves up as elites, in a shared world; on their honeymoon, she’s quite happy for Paul to hold forth about how the Swiss have no sense of humour and the French know all about wickedness, and when he’s blindingly rude to a single woman staying at their hotel, Marion’s objections are weak, and easily brushed aside. She is devoted to her job until she gets pregnant (due, apparently, to Paul deliberately failing to observe his contraceptive duties), and then her initial irritation is pushed aside, and she gives up the practice and becomes a wonderful mother. Before that, once she is married, her single female patients suddenly become irrational (one has rheumatoid arthritis, which is apparently due to a loss of courage), and her friendship with Philippa is rapidly downgraded.
Philippa, however, thinks that Marion is still her friend, and seeks her help when she ends up pregnant and unmarried (WWII has now started, and the father has been killed), and asks Marion for an abortion, Marion refuses (ethics plus the potential damage to Paul’s reputation) in a particularly patronising manner, and when Philippa then does it herself and ends up bleeding out, and near death in hospital, Paul offers to come up to London with Marion – not as support, but so he and Marion can have a few days together in a nice serviced flat without the children. Which they do. After Philippa dies. (to give her credit, Marion is upset, but it’s brief, and a good part of it seems to be the belief that she could have been more persuasive).
There’s also classism, where the best servants are those who know their place, and British (two Austrian Jews they take in as servants head back to Austria with the war, with the unquestioned assumption by all that they must have been spies), and Marion and Paul find a budding Labour voter and unionist paper-boy, and provide him with an appropriate education and an RP accent. And then, in the final chunk, both of them separately have marriage (both tempted by others) and religious crises (I really don’t feel like recounting the whole septic appendix overcome through prayer rather than the penicillin given at the same time bit), and end up overcoming them triumphantly, with the final line having them “swagger[ing] home together”.
And it’s a shame, because there are bits that are fascinating, such as the medical cases themselves, and there are well-written bits, but Paul is so problematic as sympathetic and/or attractive that Marion’s ongoing devotion to him is bizarre, and quite overpowers all the conflict between them, because it is so obvious that she will always give way to him. The net result, actually, was to make me feel terribly grateful for the NHS (currently under threat), and wish the author had left the whole romance out of the story.
Wanda Cowley, Biddy Alone. Young girl goes to DOC island with her parents, and smuggles her cat with her. I found this really difficult to get past as a character action, even for a child, because ideas about biosecurity (in this case, creating predator-free island reserves for native birds and other wildlife) are so firmly stamped into me that, for example when flying from Spain to the UK, I was incapable of making myself buy any of the meat and cheese available duty-free at the airport (non-NZ people – NZ Customs are vigilant about confiscating and fining anyone attempting to bring through plant and animal products, although chocolate is fortunately okay).
Similarly, I spent so much time while reading this book being appalled at the fact that Biddy had taken a cat (admittedly an elderly lazy one) with her that it was a bit difficult to focus on the story. Which is okay – Biddy starts to realise what she’s done, her cat escapes, she runs off to rescue him and is found by a DOC hunter, while the cat is saved from eating native birds by the nighttime visitation of mysterious fairy-type people who leave him a bunch of dead fish. I was a bit unclear about this last development, especially as I presume these are supposed to be the Maōri previous inhabitants; firstly, it removes them to the distant past, rather than the ongoing present, and secondly, they ate native birds as well and are a bit more complex than intangible eco-defenders.
Jill Stevens, The Stolen Painting. Artistic family cope with visit of annoying cousin and a lurking but curiously specific burglar (he is trying to steal one particular painting; it turns out this is because it shows the location of a buried criminal hoard, before the garden where it is buried was redesigned). I like the cousin, who decides that she is going to paint abstract art and, despite a lot of griping by the text about lack of artistic merit, actually ends up with an award for it. The burglar plot doesn’t really work at all, but the characters are entertaining.
Josephine Elder, The Encircled Heart. Marion Blake is a GP in 1930s Britain, with a thriving practice run from a home she shares with Philippa, a pathologist. She falls in love with Paul Shepherd, a lecturer at the university, and her ongoing commitment to her job creates tension between them.
This is an interesting set-up (and the author herself qualified as a doctor in the 1920s) hampered only by the fact that the two leads are both smug, self-satisfied bigots, and thus startlingly well suited to each other. Paul’s introduction – they’re punting, he has no experience, shows off when he tries and watches the more skilled Marion as if “to pick holes” when she takes a turn – sets him up as a spoiled, cosseted only child, who sulks when things don’t go his own way, and is vicious to those he dislikes. He is believably unhelpful when Marion’s job takes precedence over him, and his meals are late or he has to eat alone, and takes over the job of answering the phone to patients and attempting to teach them “manners”.
Unfortunately, Marion is almost as bad. She thinks her male patients are “awful idiots to come to a woman,” and when called from a dinner party to an elderly lady who has fallen at home, has a discussion about with her fellow dinners about “naughty” people who demand help when it’s not needed; when the patient has, in fact, broken her hip, Marion states cheerfully that “Even a Jew may have organic disease.” It’s difficult to know what she sees in Paul, but whatever it is it's persistent, despite all of his behaviour. A lot of it seems to be the way they can set themselves up as elites, in a shared world; on their honeymoon, she’s quite happy for Paul to hold forth about how the Swiss have no sense of humour and the French know all about wickedness, and when he’s blindingly rude to a single woman staying at their hotel, Marion’s objections are weak, and easily brushed aside. She is devoted to her job until she gets pregnant (due, apparently, to Paul deliberately failing to observe his contraceptive duties), and then her initial irritation is pushed aside, and she gives up the practice and becomes a wonderful mother. Before that, once she is married, her single female patients suddenly become irrational (one has rheumatoid arthritis, which is apparently due to a loss of courage), and her friendship with Philippa is rapidly downgraded.
Philippa, however, thinks that Marion is still her friend, and seeks her help when she ends up pregnant and unmarried (WWII has now started, and the father has been killed), and asks Marion for an abortion, Marion refuses (ethics plus the potential damage to Paul’s reputation) in a particularly patronising manner, and when Philippa then does it herself and ends up bleeding out, and near death in hospital, Paul offers to come up to London with Marion – not as support, but so he and Marion can have a few days together in a nice serviced flat without the children. Which they do. After Philippa dies. (to give her credit, Marion is upset, but it’s brief, and a good part of it seems to be the belief that she could have been more persuasive).
There’s also classism, where the best servants are those who know their place, and British (two Austrian Jews they take in as servants head back to Austria with the war, with the unquestioned assumption by all that they must have been spies), and Marion and Paul find a budding Labour voter and unionist paper-boy, and provide him with an appropriate education and an RP accent. And then, in the final chunk, both of them separately have marriage (both tempted by others) and religious crises (I really don’t feel like recounting the whole septic appendix overcome through prayer rather than the penicillin given at the same time bit), and end up overcoming them triumphantly, with the final line having them “swagger[ing] home together”.
And it’s a shame, because there are bits that are fascinating, such as the medical cases themselves, and there are well-written bits, but Paul is so problematic as sympathetic and/or attractive that Marion’s ongoing devotion to him is bizarre, and quite overpowers all the conflict between them, because it is so obvious that she will always give way to him. The net result, actually, was to make me feel terribly grateful for the NHS (currently under threat), and wish the author had left the whole romance out of the story.
