An interesting premise: a man in prison for murder writes his story, alongside the stories of three fellow prisoners also in for murder. The 3.5 stars
An interesting premise: a man in prison for murder writes his story, alongside the stories of three fellow prisoners also in for murder. The stories are engaging and the author talented, though I do think he (or his publisher) let chasing the zeitgeist take precedence over what he really has to say, confusing his thesis. This isn’t a book focused on media criticism, though there is a bit of that. (The question of whether true crime’s popularity contributes to our feeling less safe even as we get safer is an interesting one, though I suspect TV news and social media are equally responsible. The question of whether its sensationalized portrayals of crime work against reform I had not considered, though on this the author only really has his own experience.) It’s much more of a criminal justice reform book, which interests me more anyway: following the four men’s lives leading up to their crimes, the crimes themselves and then their many decades in prison. However, Lennon’s attempts to bring all this back to true crime rather than policy arguments leaves the takeaway from the juxtaposition of these four stories a bit unclear.
For people interested in criminal justice reform, I think these stories are worth reading precisely because they’ll challenge your empathy muscles. Unlike most authors, who seek sympathetic subjects, Lennon almost seems to have sought the opposite. It’s unclear how he chose his (all three were somewhat high-profile and so perhaps people you might hear about in true crime?). The most sympathetic is Shane, who after a childhood full of abuse and neglect, wound up killing his much-older abusive boyfriend (in the heat of the moment, but not in self-defense; the boyfriend was trying to kick him out at the time). The least sympathetic crime is Milton’s: as a teenager and an inveterate follower, he helped a friend rob and brutally murder two priests. The most confusing inclusion is Rob, a privileged young man who murdered a hookup partner for reasons even he seems unclear about (I wasn’t entirely sure why he was even in the book, aside from being the most high-profile murderer willing to participate, since the author is openly frustrated by his lack of candor or self-awareness. Maybe to make everyone else look better by comparison). The author’s story is the most run-of-the-mill: he was a drug dealer enamored of the gang lifestyle, and murdered another drug dealer (his friend, and in cold blood).
The storytelling is good and Lennon writes about everyone as full people, tracing their context and their development over decades in prison. For being in prison, he also does a surprising amount of his own research. The book doesn’t excuse their crimes, but it did make me wonder about redemption—what this even means in the context of murder, how much self-flagellation is performative and to what extent we demand that. I found myself questioning the author’s angle sometimes, although he’s far more up-front about it than most; the reality of his position is that a brutal degree of self-awareness is the price of entry.
So overall this was certainly worth a read, though it would’ve been stronger if the author had let the true crime tangent go and zeroed in on a critique of particular aspects of the system. Lennon is very invested in his identity as a journalist and I do think he’s earned that: the writing is strong and readable and thoughtful, albeit the organization can be messy (I think he should’ve given himself his own chapters rather than letting his story erupt at random moments in other people’s. When he described having to write the book in 7000-character increments via email drafts on a tablet, the organization suddenly made a lot more sense). I’ll be interested to see what he writes next....more
I ate this book up, both because it provides a fascinating look into the lives of popular women writers in the 18th century, and for the comm4.5 stars
I ate this book up, both because it provides a fascinating look into the lives of popular women writers in the 18th century, and for the commentary on their books. For years I have been looking for a critical book about what becomes a classic and what doesn’t: tracing the careers of books through the centuries, seeing where their reputations are boosted or where they are dropped from the canon, loudly or quietly. So I was especially excited about this part, and although the portions on rare book dealing and collecting interested me less, it was still a peek into a world I knew nothing about.
In general the nine authors profiled had fascinating lives, and I’m now interested in giving many of their works a shot as well. I do suspect Romney of being a very generous reader, quite understandably since she came to these works with both low expectations and the desire to be pleased; she only disliked one writer (whom Austen probably did too), and otherwise thinks they were unfairly dropped from the canon. Of course, what is great is ultimately subjective, and if Jane Austen thought these writers were great—the amount of evidence varies, but most of them she clearly did think were great—that’s a strong recommendation.
It’s interesting that Romney points to male writers from the period, such as Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and Laurence Sterne, having fared far better than the women. I wonder how much of that is specific to academia, as this does not seem to be borne out on Goodreads (at least when compared to the more popular of the women, such as Burney and Radcliffe). Also, all 18th century British writers—even Defoe, whose Robinson Crusoe blows the others out of the water in number of ratings—get mediocre averages. Does this support the conventional wisdom that 18th century novels just don’t hold up well today, while Austen was a genius pioneering the modern novel? But how to separate the authors’ relative merits from their cultural standing, when nobody comes to Austen blind? The question of how the canon should be defined is perhaps a riddle with no answer. But a major takeaway from this book is that it is not an automatic process, but one highly dependent on the tastes of influential readers. And once a book is dropped from the canon, however specious the reasons, it’s hard to bring back—pre-internet, almost impossible, because going out of print meant few people could read it even if they wanted to!
At any rate, some notes on the authors discussed:
Jane Austen: During her time, she was considered more “among the best in her genre” than “grand master.” Her reputation grew after her death, however, with some key interventions mostly by influential men: in 1870, when interest was beginning to wane, her nephew published an important memoir of her; he and her brother both skillfully portrayed her as the perfect Victorian angel. Other male professors and critics also championed her books, then leading to many adaptations, all of which has kept her work in the canon and the public eye.
Frances Burney: Was both wildly popular and renowned in her time, and one of the authors Austen most looked up to. She seems to have fallen out of the canon in part because her work was deemed too similar to Austen’s by male taste-makers with limited interest in young women’s lives, and who were happy with just one token woman on the list. Romney makes good points about not pitting female authors against each other in this sort of zero-sum game; she ranks Burney’s Evelina below Pride and Prejudice but above some of Austen’s other work, and notes that while her writing was less subtle than Austen’s, she was more willing to confront unsavory aspects of life.
Romney also theorizes that infantilizing Burney by calling her “Fanny” (when she did not use her nickname professionally) didn’t help, and that growing interest in her as a diarist didn’t either, though the latter confuses me, as it still raises her profile. Personally, I suspect the sheer length of Burney’s books (her shortest are about on par with Austen’s longest) is a factor, along with their epistolary format.
Ann Radcliffe: Popularizer of gothics, also both wildly popular and critically acclaimed in her own day. Her work seems to have suffered for a couple of reasons: first because it had a slew of lower-quality imitators, and while her contemporaries held her clearly above them, later on they got lumped together, while the gothic genre (popular with women) lost prestige. Radcliffe’s personal low profile didn’t help: around the time Austen’s nephew wrote his memoir, Christina Rossetti set out to write a biography of Radcliffe, but couldn’t find material.
Romney also loved The Mysteries of Udolpho and defends it hard, in ways I didn’t entirely buy. The connection of the 18th century heroine’s constant fainting with her lacking the option to say “no” is an interesting one. But a protagonist regularly losing consciousness in dramatic moments remains a pulpy trope, and I do think genre work ages more quickly in general (hence, the pacing being difficult for modern readers). But Romney’s point about Radcliffe having far more influence on later genre writers than she’s given credit for is still an important one.
Charlotte Lennox: This woman had a bold and wild life: arriving alone in England as a teenager and immediately getting aristocratic patronage as a poet was just the beginning. It’s less clear why her work fell out of fashion: perhaps because daring to critique Shakespeare lost her a lot of fans, or maybe because she tried her hand at many things rather than having a clear “brand.” But I’m interested in trying The Female Quixote.
Hannah More: Mostly a moralist and philanthropist. While she wrote a highly moralizing novel that was popular at the time, Jane Austen probably didn’t like it and Romney didn’t either, mostly using this chapter to draw an interesting comparison between the mores of 18th century evangelicals and those of the Mormon community Romney herself grew up in. More did manage to get set up for life by suing a guy for wasting her best years in an engagement and then failing to marry her, which sounds like a good deal to me.
Charlotte Turner Smith: This chapter is mostly focused on the author’s life, which is well-deserved: she had to write her way to independence from a terrible marriage. From the sound of it her novels were geared more at money-making than literary quality (and making them as long as possible meant more money). In a literary sense she was a bigger deal as a poet, but her work was later forgotten.
Elizabeth Inchbald: Primarily a playwright, who wrote the play performed in Mansfield Park. Romney found her humor to hold up very well, her tendency to hammer home the morals less so.
Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi: The only nonfiction writer on the list. Her life is an interesting one, and her friendship with Samuel Johnson plus male contemporaries’ obsession with how terrible it was for her to marry a lower-class, Italian man after her first husband’s death seems to overshadow all other facts about her in many accounts. All this tended to preclude serious consideration of her work.
Maria Edgeworth: This section disappointed me a bit compared to the others, since Edgeworth is a big deal and one of the authors I knew of. She seems to have fallen out of the canon after getting pigeonholed as an “Irish” writer, thus being less “universal” (which is of course ridiculous and really a matter of privilege: Austen, after all, is extremely English).
At any rate, the book was a fascinating read and I do plan to check out several of the writers on this list. I am not sure I will like them as much as Romney did, but as she points out, sometimes it’s important to judge for yourself rather than allowing the critic of 100 years ago to make it for you. And this is especially true with female writers, whose work has often been dismissed—in many of these cases, even after being renowned for decades, or even a century. But I loved reading about these writers and their work, appreciate Romney’s highlighting of them, and would love to read more books like this!...more
An enjoyable group biography of female intellectuals in the 18th century, a topic that happens to be a particular interest of mine. I would n3.5 stars
An enjoyable group biography of female intellectuals in the 18th century, a topic that happens to be a particular interest of mine. I would not put this book in the top tier for the subject—currently, that’s Romantic Outlaws, Liberty, and Jane Austen's Bookshelf—but then all of those cross over into the 19th century as much as the 18th and only the last has any overlap in the women profiled (Frances Burney, Hannah More, and Hester Thrale Piozzi appear in both), so I wound up learning a lot about historical figures previously unfamiliar to me.
Of particular interest were Sarah Scott, a writer who set up all-female communes with her female partner and friends and endeavored to support less fortunate women, and Catherine Macauley, a progressive historian and political figure who was more successful than most at ignoring societal expectations. Also new to me were the mini-biographies of Elizabeth Montagu, best known as the hostess of the “Bluestocking” salons, also a writer; Elizabeth Carter, a classicist who managed to remain always above reproach despite the unconventional choice of remaining unmarried and devoting herself to study; Hester Mulso Chapone, a poet and writer who defended women’s right to reject a proposed marriage; and Elizabeth Griffith, an Irish actress who wound up publishing her erudite letters with her husband-to-be. There’s a bit of Ann Yearsley, a poet and the single working-class woman represented, in the Hannah More section of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf (their patron/protegee relationship ended badly due to More’s classism), but a more substantial section here. There’s also a whole lot on Hester Thrale Piozzi, a diarist and memoirist who dominates several chapters with her strong voice and many misfortunes.
The book does not particularly make the case that these women were a “movement” or even a cohesive social group, as opposed to a bunch of people with similar interests who all knew each other to varying degrees, but after a somewhat rocky start (there’s a lot of generalities and repetition at the beginning) I found the individual biographies quite compelling. The women come to life on the page, their lives are interesting, and it’s especially nice to see how they intersected and supported one another (or sometimes didn’t), and the similarities and differences in their trajectories. Particularly notable is how committed they generally were to maintaining respectability in the face of the male establishment. There was a lot of anxiety and self-censoring, from Frances Burney’s fear of learning the “masculine” Latin to one of the saddest lines in the book, in which Hester Thrale Piozzi wrote that she never challenged her first husband out of fear that she would lose and be forced to face her own unimportance. She and Macauley are still the most “scandalous” women in the book, for entering into second marriages judged harshly by society (Piozzi’s second husband being an Italian music teacher, and Macauley’s a much younger man), both nonetheless scandalous enough to lead to rejection and estrangement from family and friends.
The book certainly has its flaws: aside from the early pages, the organization is confused, never quite certain whether it wants to be topical or just a series of mini-biographies. It is focused on narrative rather than analysis; I am sure the author, with a background in science history, knew very well that 18th century medicine was counterproductive and perhaps just found it superfluous to say so, but it’s true she does not. And one always has to wonder what else is wrong when one catches a mistake, such as describing a group of travelers as having “caught a glimpse of Marie-Antoinette, just nineteen and married only a year” (she married at 14). That said, overall I did enjoy this, and it’s a good introduction to a bunch of historical figures who have been largely forgotten....more
A readable book tracing the lives of four Chinese women today. Look, this is fine, but to me it stands out neither as a journalistic book about modernA readable book tracing the lives of four Chinese women today. Look, this is fine, but to me it stands out neither as a journalistic book about modern China (books I would recommend first: Little Soldiers, Factory Girls, Daughters of the Flower Fragrant Garden, or anythingbyPeterHessler) nor as a group biography of several contemporary people whose lives are variations on a theme (favorites in this style: Soldier Girls, Strangers to Ourselves, several of the China books listed above). The one thing it does have over all those other books is that China is changing fast and this book covers its subjects’ lives through 2023, introducing the reader to some contemporary Chinese women rather than being stuck in the world of 20 years ago.
I was engaged enough with the stories to read the book fast, and they do illuminate different aspects of life and different experiences. However, the selection didn’t quite gel for me: the women seem too similar to each other to be representative of China as a whole, but too different to describe the book more specifically than that. Three were raised in the countryside before moving to the city; one was not. Three are well-educated and financially well-off; one is not. Three have a social conscience; one does not. They aren’t quite members of the same generation: there seems to be an age gap of 20 years or so between the oldest and youngest, leaving the book jumping around in time between chapters.
My biggest issue, though, is just that this book doesn’t dig deep in its observations or analysis, so I didn’t find myself stopping to reflect, or feeling I knew these women and getting emotionally invested in their lives. (I did like Siyue and Leiya better than June and Sam, just because they seemed more admirable. This is perhaps a bit harsh on Sam and maybe the way Yang writes about her is to blame, but she struck me as someone who makes activism their identity but nopes out when the going gets tough, without actually accomplishing anything. Leiya on the other hand forms nonprofits to help working-class women in her community, to the detriment of her own finances, and Siyue makes good money while providing what sounds like holistic, outside-the-box education. June makes no pretense of doing anything beyond making money, though the obstacles she has overcome in life would probably make me admire her anyway if her story had come to life as more than just facts on a page.) Overall, a fine way to learn a bit about China, especially if you don’t know much, but I’d have liked it better had it done more than skim the surface....more
A very thoroughly-researched and entertaining work of narrative history, this is an account of Captain Cook’s third voyage, in which his crew4.5 stars
A very thoroughly-researched and entertaining work of narrative history, this is an account of Captain Cook’s third voyage, in which his crew visited most of the world’s continents, were probably the first Europeans to find Hawai’i, mapped the coastline of Alaska and laid to rest the idea of the Northwest Passage. It’s an engaging saga and well told, and Sides is clearly well-informed, taking the time to fill in the context of scientific issues not yet understood at the time, or the consequences of some of Cook’s actions (such as letting European rats off his ship on Pacific Islands. They proved to be a devastatingly invasive species).
Sides also handles the thornier issues around colonialism well, including information and perspectives from Native histories and oral histories, and not simply following the Eurocentric assumptions of his most prominent sources. One of the objectives of the voyage was to return a Tahitian man named Mai to his homeland, and the book spends a lot of time following Mai’s journey as well. It’s interesting to see the ways that the 18th centuries explorers—who were not themselves attempting to conquer or colonize anyone, but whose voyages paved the way for that—come across as much more open-minded and progressive than their 19th century successors (Dalrymple observed the same about the British in India). Cook certainly recorded reflections that seem (from a modern perspective of assuming continuous progress) ahead of his time, opining that European visitors only introduced disease and deserved the peace, and doubting anyone could tell him “what the natives of the whole extent of America have gained by the commerce they have had with the Europeans.” However, despite his openness to different cultural practices and concern about the spread of venereal disease, he had an increasing tendency to respond violently to what he perceived as stealing, which ultimately got him killed after hurting a lot of other people along the way. Sides handles these issues with nuance and in a way that, refreshingly, does not feel aimed at social media. Unsurprisingly from a biographer, he does tend toward defending Cook at times, but more around his missing major geographical features than behavior toward indigenous people.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book; it is informative, immersive, and compelling storytelling. The average rating seems rather absurdly high and I would not go so far as to call it the best history I have ever read, but probably top 10%....more
A well-researched and ultimately engaging group biography, and work of popular history, featuring four English women writers from the Renaissance. I fA well-researched and ultimately engaging group biography, and work of popular history, featuring four English women writers from the Renaissance. I found the first third a bit of a slog—early chapters focus on Mary Sidney, by far the least interesting of the bunch, and I still don’t know why Targoff begins with a chapter on Elizabeth I’s funeral—but happily, it got much more engaging after that, discussing the interesting lives and truly feminist works of some other notable women.
The subjects, in order of appearance:
Mary Sidney: A countess who began her literary career by editing and expanding her dead brother’s works, then branched out into her own loose translations, in verse, of the Psalms. She took the unusual step of actually publishing these—almost more unusual for the nobility than for a woman. Otherwise her life comes across as conventional, though she managed to enjoy some good fun in old age, and I thought Targoff was stretching a bit to relate Sidney’s translations to her life experiences.
Aemilia Lanyer: Anything but conventional, this is the only non-aristocrat of the bunch, a woman from a musical immigrant family who had a colorful life, including being a powerful nobleman’s mistress, getting pregnant with his child and (standard procedure for the time) being married off to one of his musicians as a result. She later possibly dabbled in high-end prostitution (at least according to her astrologer, whose advances she rebuffed), taught girls’ education, and wound up publishing poems, including a Biblical retelling from the perspective of Pontius Pilate’s wife, making the case for women’s liberation on the grounds that crucifying Jesus was way worse than eating an apple so really men have no moral leg to stand on in claiming authority over women. Talk about radical! Her book was published, with about a dozen dedications to educated and powerful women from whom she hoped for patronage (apparently in vain), but seemingly got no attention. She was rediscovered in the 1970s under the mistaken impression that she was Shakespeare’s mistress, on since-debunked evidence.
Elizabeth Cary: This is another great story: a girl born into wealth, who seems to have been a child prodigy and received a well-rounded education that even involved successfully intervening on behalf of the accused at a witchcraft trial, at the age of 10. She was still married off for money to a husband she worked hard to please, including producing a whole passel of kids, but later separated from him upon converting to Catholicism. This led to court cases and extended fights over money, the kids, and their religion, including smuggling two of them out of a castle in the middle of the night. She also wrote feminist Biblical retellings, most notably a play about Herod’s wife Mariam, as well as histories and theological translations. Again her work seems to have passed without note, to be discovered in the 19th century by Catholic scholars interested in her championing of that cause. Four of her daughters, who became nuns in France, took the unusual step of writing her biography, which gives an intimate look into her life.
Anne Clifford: An extremely wealthy duchess, and not a creative writer, but the author of extensive diaries, memoirs, and family histories, resulting in an unusually well-documented life for a non-royal woman of the time. She engaged in a 40-year legal battle to gain ownership of her father’s estates (left to his brother in contravention of a law specific to these lands, requiring them to go to the children—the reason being that women couldn’t inherit titles and her father wanted to keep title and lands together). This is an interesting and dramatic story, as Clifford and her mother both devoted their lives to this cause, including arranging both her marriages to men positioned to assist. She was probably insufferable in real life (imagine someone who has a band to play her off every time she leaves an estate), but perhaps that’s the level of self-assurance needed for a woman of the time to defy the king, which she did.
At any rate, an interesting book about forgotten but mostly fascinating figures. Sometimes the book detours into a more general history of the times beyond what’s strictly necessary for context, in ways that should be interesting for those interested in Renaissance British politics and culture. Sometimes I wanted more context, though: there’s a lot about guardianships here, as anyone under 21 needed a legal guardian (at least if they were wealthy or titled?), which in the case of orphaned heirs, the king auctioned off to the highest bidder. And people would bid high, because then you could marry the heir off to your own kid, and keep their property in your family. Anne Clifford’s first wedding was hasty for this reason: both were 19 years old and his father on his deathbed. From the events described in the book though, guardianships don’t seem to be applied consistently, or perhaps I was just surprised to see widowed mothers holding them despite having no legal power vis-à-vis living husbands. To be fair, widows in early England were the only women with independent legal status generally.
At any rate, the prose is just slightly drier than ideal for me, but still very readable. My only other complaint is about the citation style, which makes it hard to find anything (why do some nonfiction publishers do these chapter-by-chapter summaries of sources rather than referencing specific claims by page number? Ugh), but mostly Targoff makes her sources clear in the text. Worth a read for those interested in early women writers....more
Read through page 52. Unfortunately the author’s (or translator’s) style did not work for me. It jumps around a lot, offering random details without tRead through page 52. Unfortunately the author’s (or translator’s) style did not work for me. It jumps around a lot, offering random details without the larger context of his subjects’ lives, in disruptively short segments, all while treating his subjects like characters in a novel, purporting to write their internal monologues.
Also, I didn’t need an explanation for why one would write about these four women—they’re each quite a big deal and also led interesting lives (amusingly, I knew of all of them, had previously read two with a third on my TBR, while I don’t think I’d even heard of more than one of the male philosophers featured in his previous book). Nor even for writing a group biography despite their apparently not knowing each other—they were at least contemporaries and provide for interesting contrasts. But I think I did need an explanation for why that group biography should focus exclusively on a single decade, from 1933-1943, when three of the four were only just getting started in their careers by the end of it. The book treats this era as complete unto itself and offers no context or explanation; it begins not with an introduction to its thesis or even its subjects’ early lives, but a flash-forward to 1943 before returning to 1933. But (except for Weil, who was dying) why should we care what they were doing in 1943 specifically? Their lives did not unfold in lockstep so why is the book organized as if they did?
Admittedly I am no great lover of philosophy, but I do love historical biographies and just quickly found myself dreading this one....more
Two stars as a work of social history focused on the average Tudor woman, which this isn’t. Three stars if you’re up for a mishmash of a bit of socialTwo stars as a work of social history focused on the average Tudor woman, which this isn’t. Three stars if you’re up for a mishmash of a bit of social history alongside a history of political and religious turmoil, seen mostly through mini-biographies of royals, aristocrats, and martyrs, i.e., the least “hidden” women of the period.
The organization is certainly strange, as Norton tries to arrange the book both by “stage of life” from babyhood to old age, and chronologically from 1492-1603, at the same time. This means at the beginning we hear a lot about the first princess Elizabeth Tudor (who died at age 3) and at the end we hear a lot about Queen Elizabeth I’s old age (with way more description of her body and how well-preserved she was or wasn’t than seemed either tasteful or relevant).
The middle is full of religious martyrs, and wow, Norton is really into describing executions, and the more barbaric and torturous, the better. Since neither martyrs nor queens are representative of the general population, I felt pretty misled about the book’s contents. Also I did not need all these detailed descriptions of people being burned to death, boiled to death, pressed to death, etc. etc., with occasional descriptions of the rack and other tortures thrown in.
Aside from that, it just seemed sloppy at times. For instance, one religious visionary who challenged the king was executed with her six greatest supporters, which somehow adds up to six total people (6 + 1 = ??). At another point the book tells us that: “The local church was central to Tudor life, and everyone believed in God—the word ‘atheism’ would only emerge during the period” which seems to contradict rather than support the author’s claim. The references are also organized as obnoxiously as possible, so you have to hunt back and forth for chapter numbers to find anything.
That said, despite a bit of skimming I did finish it, and here are a few fun facts:
- Diagnosing pregnancy was apparently very difficult at the time, and nobody (including physicians) was really sure until the baby started moving, which was also when they held life to begin.
- The Tudors put the “cake” in “pancake,” flavoring them with “cloves, mace, cinnamon, and a nutmeg” before seasoning them with salt. This sounds delicious.
- Women rarely (though not never) apprenticed in male-dominated trades, but frequently sponsored men as apprentices—said women being widows who had learned the trade during their marriage and carried it on afterwards.
- At the same time, there are numerous mentions in the records of female surgeons. Only starting with Henry VIII was there an attempt to regulate the profession. Women in general were expected to have some medical knowledge and “physic” was an expected subject for aristocratic girls, who would later minister to their neighborhoods. This was far less controversial than girls learning to read.
- On the other end of the spectrum, the most common crime committed by women was petty theft, usually of household items or clothing. Breaking into houses to steal linens could make a good living, showing how much textiles were worth in pre-Industrial Revolution times. The usual punishment was hanging if the stolen goods were worth more than a shilling, whipping if not.
- The man who first translated the Bible into English was burned at the stake for it. Under Henry VIII that cat was out of the bag, though he wasn’t thrilled about it, and women below the rank of gentlewoman were banned from reading the Bible in English, while even upper-class women could only do so in private. This whole controversy and ensuing differences of opinion about the scripture was the source of many martyrs.
- Old age was pretty much synonymous with poverty, and with women living longer than men, widows earned money by spinning into their 70s and 80s, while others depended on their relatives. Or they might be “searchers,” essentially coroners, which being an old woman apparently qualified you for automatically even though these women were known to be often drunk and easily bribed. Some rich people set up charitable “almshouses” where the elderly lived (and worked), but even with large endowments, they averaged fewer than 10 inhabitants. When bigger institutions were set up in London, some people were so eager to leave their elderly relatives there, they smuggled them in and abandoned them.
So, I did learn a bit, but overall not one of the better books I’ve read on the subject. For a real social history, try How To Be a Tudor (not specifically focused on women but still far better on the subject), or for a group biography of some interesting women of the era, Shakespeare's Sisters. The Weaker Vessel, though focused on the following century, does a far better job combining social history with mini-biographies, and with a wider scope of interest. While this book may not be a bad choice if you haven’t read much about the period or just love martyrs, it’s not one I’d recommend....more
An obscure, gossipy nonfiction work from the 1990s about the royal line of Monaco, this turned out pretty much as I expected. If you are spec2.5 stars
An obscure, gossipy nonfiction work from the 1990s about the royal line of Monaco, this turned out pretty much as I expected. If you are specifically seeking a book about Monaco, which I was, it isn’t a bad choice. It’s hard to imagine recommending otherwise.
Monaco’s early history, from ancient times to the beginning of the 17th century, is swept through in the first few pages. As it turns out, the Grimaldis have not actually ruled the principality from 1297, as claimed; the guy who took the fortress lost it within a few years, and the family had to buy it back twice, coming into permanent possession only in 1419. It became a principality in 1612, when the regent for its young ruler started designating his nephew as a “prince” and the Spanish, in control at the time, let it go.
From there, the first third of the book follows marriages, affairs and wars from the early 17th through mid 19th centuries. By this point the princes were fully focused on their true aim of achieving high rank in the French nobility; Monaco gave them a title and they pumped it as hard as they could for taxes to fund their lifestyle, but rarely visited.
The second third traces Monaco’s rise as a luxury vacation destination, from the mid-19th century through WWII; this was originally the brainchild of a business-minded princess, and focused almost exclusively on the casino, though that raised moral objections both abroad and by some of the princes themselves. Not that they refused the money, far from it, but they tried to distance themselves all the same.
The final third is all about Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly and their children, up through the book’s publication in 1992. The celebrity gossip portion seems to be what has drawn most people to the book. My biggest takeaway is that marrying a prince isn’t all it’s cracked up to be: he demanded a $2 million dowry (her father refused on grounds that his daughter didn’t need to pay a man to marry her... but then was convinced to put that amount “toward the wedding,” which in fact the casino magnate mostly funded) and that she contribute to household expenses—somehow, as she also had to give up her career. Oh, and agree up front that if they split for any reason, he’d get the kids.
Overall, it was informative, although not written with any particular flair. The book is not particularly well-sourced; the author describes extensive research in general terms, but provides only a chapter-wide notes on sources, leaving many unexplained claims, such as describing the thoughts and feelings of people now deceased.
It’s also sloppy, which always makes you wonder how much you can trust anything the author says. At one point, Edwards mistakenly identifies a prince’s sister as his daughter. At another, she has a treaty ending the Franco-Prussian War before it started. Something happens in 1690, six years pass and somehow it’s still 1690. She has Queen Alexandra becoming Queen of England in 1910; actually it was 1901, and 1910 is when she stopped being queen. She weirdly implies there was something fishy about the deaths of the Louis XIV’s grandson and his family, which I have not seen from any other writers and am inclined to put down to sloppiness as well. (Also, an unnecessary number of words are spent on French royal gossip.) She gets the size of Monaco wrong virtually every time she mentions it: I am stumped as to claims late in the book that in the 20th century Monaco reclaimed a full square mile of land from the sea, which it obviously can’t have done since it remains at only 0.8 square miles total.
Also, I truly cannot with this description, offered without commentary:
“Proust described the Princesse de Luxembourg [whom the author says was modeled on Alice, Princess of Monaco] as ‘tall, red-haired, handsome, with a rather prominent nose. . . . [I saw her] half leaning upon a parasol in such a way as to impart to her tall and wonderful form that slight inclination, to make it trace that arabesque, so dear to the women who . . . knew how, with drooping shoulders, arched backs, concave hips and taut legs to make their bodies float as softly as a silken scarf about the rigid armature of an invisible shaft which might be supposed to have transfixed it.’”
This, this gem is why I don’t read 20th century men—this need to sexualize absolutely everything in the most bizarre and disgusting ways. Maybe I should thank Edwards for warning me off Proust, but it was clearly inadvertent; in fact she introduces Grace Kelly in her own words as “a rare beauty with unruffled elegance and flashes of an inner fire waiting to be kindled by the right man.” Perhaps I should acknowledge that gross 20th century writing about women was not limited to the pens of men. That said, outside of these couple of howlers it’s all right.
In the end, it is a book about Monaco, it is coherent and readable, and there aren’t a lot of choices. That’s one more off the list, at any rate....more
A disappointing so-called biography of a seemingly fascinating figure. I think perhaps history books just shouldn’t be this short—the actual text is jA disappointing so-called biography of a seemingly fascinating figure. I think perhaps history books just shouldn’t be this short—the actual text is just 145 pages, and they’re small pages; this is a book that fits in my back pocket—because they so often bleed out all the human interest and all the analysis, leaving the reader with a textbook-like recitation of facts.
Though this book purports to be a biography of Thomas Sankara (young, Marxist-leaning military president of Burkina Faso from 1983-87; crusader against corruption; proponent of human development, true independence from former colonial powers, and pan-Africanism), there is almost no personal information about him in it. The focus is on his policies. And it’s organized topically rather than chronologically. So after a very brief overview of Sankara’s childhood and early career, we get successive chapters about governmental structure, infrastructure projects, human development, and foreign policy, with all the information about the actually quite severe problems and abuses during Sankara’s regime stuffed into one chapter at the end, in which the coup that killed him is also very briefly recounted. That feels like some sleight of hand (the author takes an extremely favorable view of Sankara overall, but he doesn’t own it and defend his views; he acts as if he’s being neutral). But it’s also just not engaging to read. As with most textbooks, the language is clear but it’s near impossible to get caught up in or care about.
That said, I’m glad to have finally found a book about Burkina Faso, and it’s fascinating material even if this author doesn’t do it justice. Perhaps more suitable for a classroom setting (which may well be what it’s intended for) than for those seeking popular history....more
I picked this up because I’m interested in the period (late 18th and early 19th century) and it’s the first popular history work I’d found set in GermI picked this up because I’m interested in the period (late 18th and early 19th century) and it’s the first popular history work I’d found set in Germany during that time rather than just England and France. And in that sense it was quite interesting—the fractured government of the Holy Roman Empire meant that each tiny principality could go its own way, within limits, giving rise to the freethinking university at Jena which is the focus of this book. For a few years around the turn of the century, leading thinkers gathered there and socialized together, and it’s these people and their relationships that are the focus of this book.
The only major player I had heard of was Goethe (author of Faust and Sorrows of the Young Werther); Kant is an influence but not in residence, while Hegel shows up once most of the others have moved on. Other players include poets, literary critics, and philosophers representing the birth of the Romantic movement (most of whom were named Friedrich). The writers wanted to integrate everything: science and art, nature and the self. The philosophy I’m afraid I don’t quite understand based on this book; it feels like an extension of Descartes, positing the self and from there the world, but doesn’t get much detail here.
At any rate, it was interesting to read about a setting I was unfamiliar with, and thinkers I didn’t know much about, and the author has clearly done a ton of research. Writers make great subjects for a biography because they tend to write a lot, and therefore we know a lot about them, their lives and their foibles. These people had a lot of foibles and their lives were fairly interesting: virtually everyone’s love life is unusual in one way or another, whether they were practicing open marriages or proposing marriage to 12-year-olds (this is perhaps not quite as creepy as it sounds as the couple never made it to the altar and so their relationship was presumably never consummated, but at any rate no one at the time seems to have found it nearly as objectionable as Goethe formalizing his relationship with a working-class woman).
Unfortunately, this is a hard one to recommend. It’s a group biography but it’s overwhelmingly focused on the few years these people were all involved with each other, relegating their earlier and later lives to a few quick paragraphs. And those few years are not always the most interesting: when they got along, everyone hung out having animated intellectual discussions for which the author would clearly have given her eyeteeth to be present, and when they didn’t they descended into endless drama which the author relates in great detail, and all this makes up most of the book. Wulf also doesn’t really bother to defend her claim that their thinking changed the world forever, which is not particularly convincing—they clearly did influence later English-language Romantic writers, but there’s no evidence for the claim that the concept of the primacy of the self was their invention (indeed, I followed this up with another book on the topic which traces that straight back to ancient Greece).
Overall, I thought this could have been shorter, with the interpersonal drama condensed, and its grandiose claims either argued more seriously or removed. It was still interesting enough though, and worth a look if you’re interested in the lives and careers and friendships and unconventional romances of the early German Romantics....more
For whatever reason, I love real-life stories of messy, complicated families, and I’m always fascinated by stories of adoptees dealing with f2.5 stars
For whatever reason, I love real-life stories of messy, complicated families, and I’m always fascinated by stories of adoptees dealing with family both biological and adopted, so this book was an easy sell. It’s the story of three sisters, all born in Vietnam: two of them are twins separated as infants—one to be adopted by Vietnamese relatives, the other by an American family—and the third, while not biologically related to the first two, is in the orphanage with the second and adopted by the American family at the same time. The book follows their young lives, interspersed with some background about international adoption, twin studies and other relevant topics.
The book is easy reading, with bite-sized chapters split up into even smaller segments, and I zoomed through it fairly quickly. I enjoyed getting to know these people and learning about the complications of their experiences, and particularly the Vietnamese family’s lives (the twin who stays grows up in a village, in a flimsy house whose floor turns to mud whenever it rains—also, her parents are lesbians, which the community seems to take little issue with). However, the writing style is very plain, and the background sections basic. Little here will be new to those who already know something about international adoption and/or twins.
Compared to other similar books, I also found this one somewhat lacking in insight and detail on the lives of the principals. This didn’t especially surprise me where the three girls are concerned—the author also includes some snippets in their voices, which come across as rather banal, but that’s normal for their ages (late teens and early 20s). However, the sections featuring the grown-ups are even less in-depth, whether due to the author’s own limitations as a writer or because neither the Vietnamese nor the American family fully trusted her (presumably for different reasons).
The elephant in the room here is that the book not only caters to short attention spans, but it’s very woke in a social-media-esque way, in which Hayasaki doesn’t so much examine issues as throw around code words. This is particularly evident in her treatment of the American mother, Keely. Keely seems actually pretty great: she spends a lot of time and energy tracking down her daughter’s twin in Vietnam so that they can meet while they’re still young, takes the girls back to Vietnam to build connections with the culture and their biological families, pays to put the Vietnamese twin through private school and college, covers the Vietnamese adoptive parents’ housing expenses, and provides a variety of other financial supports for the biological family. And the whole time, from the author’s word choice and choice of focus and detail, I had the image of her scowling and gritting her teeth: this is, after all, a white woman! trying to help!! people of COLOR!!! Never mind that she’s actually doing an impressive job of it. And Hayasaki never unpacks her own feelings about this, just constantly dog-whistles at us in the background. I wound up suspecting a story/author mismatch: all the actual players in this story seem to like Keely and be in favor of the adoption, while Hayasaki seems to oppose interracial and international adoption on principle. Perhaps she should have profiled adoptees who felt the same.
At any rate, if you’re interested in the very serious issues in international adoption, I strongly recommend checking out The Child Catchers, which is far more thoroughly researched and in-depth than this one; for a good international adoption horror story, see also Finding Fernanda. For a better book about twins separated by international adoption, try Daughters of the Bamboo Grove. As far as this book goes, I did enjoy reading about the sisters and their families and wish them all well, but I wish they’d found a better author....more
An entertaining and informative biography of a powerful Roman empress. This book is written in a humorous, irreverent style that you’ll either love orAn entertaining and informative biography of a powerful Roman empress. This book is written in a humorous, irreverent style that you’ll either love or hate—I enjoyed it, essentially taking this as the book version of a lecture by a knowledgeable and charismatic professor who livens things up by poking fun at the material. The author is a real ancient history scholar and seems to have done thorough research. I was thrown at first by the lack of endnotes, but there are occasional footnotes and Southon also regularly discusses her sources in the text itself—as it turns out there’s really only three that discuss Agrippina in any detail, and if written today none of them would pass the Wikipedia test for reliability, so in the end we can only make educated guesses about what occurred.
Despite that limitation, I learned a lot about Rome in the early imperial period—coming in knowing very little about it, this was a good primer on a variety of well-known figures, even while keeping the focus mostly on Agrippina. She seems to have been an extraordinary person, coming from a family where her parents and siblings were all dead (mostly of murder) by the time she reached full adulthood, after the exact same thing had happened to her own mother, but seeking out a life at the center of power: elevated and then exiled by her brother Caligula; marrying her uncle Claudius and ruling at his side; securing the throne for her son Nero, only to see him turn against her. Agrippina came from a society where women were expected to have no public role (though from the frequency with which they were sued and/or murdered, I have to wonder if this was honored mostly in the breach), but nevertheless built up a power base and seems to have been quite successful at politics. It’s a crying shame her memoir—political propaganda though it undoubtedly was—didn’t survive; as is it’s only referenced in a couple of surviving sources.
Southon is an unabashed Agrippina fangirl, but she tempers that by being clear when she’s speculating and separating what she wants to be true from what we actually know. Biographies of historical women can sometimes excuse selfish and harmful wielding of power on the grounds that it’s cool that a woman was doing it, and I can see why some readers would see that here, but to me it stays on the right side of the line. The author is able to make the case that Agrippina was a voice of reason and diplomacy who was actually good for the empire, while also acknowledging that the world of palace politics cared little for the lives of ordinary people. And Southon’s humor, empathy and groundedness bring a lot to what is otherwise a violent and depressing story in which most of the characters are brutally murdered.
In the end, a strong choice for those who enjoy popular history, as long as you don’t mind a somewhat flippant tone. It has whetted my appetite to learn more about the period, though it’s sad enough that I’m not sure I’ll be jumping back in too soon....more
An interesting group biography of 5 medieval princesses, daughters of King Edward I of England. I haven’t read much on the period and learned some thiAn interesting group biography of 5 medieval princesses, daughters of King Edward I of England. I haven’t read much on the period and learned some things from this one, which was unexceptional but basically enjoyable reading.
Edward I was an expansionist 13th century king; with his first wife, Eleanor of Castile, he had 16 children, of whom 6—one son, Edward II, and five daughters—lived to adulthood. Those daughters—Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary and Elizabeth—are the focus here, though as with any historical biography, we also see a fair bit of the times and the other players.
This being the medieval period, sources are scant, and I do wish Wilson-Lee had addressed that issue head-on, straightforwardly describing what we do and don’t have (if you think this necessarily makes a book dry or academic, go read Agrippina and get back to me). I had the impression throughout that the author was trying to cover a bit for how little we actually know, and she engages in some speculation, though she is clear about when she’s doing so rather than fictionalizing. Nothing survives written by the princesses themselves (indeed, it’s unclear whether they or even their father could write, though Eleanora at least regularly bought wax tablets), but in at least one case there’s a letter dictated to a scribe. Mostly the book appears to be based on seemingly quite detailed household purchasing and expense accounts, as well as public records, which mentioned the princesses from time to time—when they intervened to convince the king to grant a boon, for instance, this was memorialized in the granting documents. In the end we can only make educated guesses about their personalities, thoughts and feelings.
Still, Wilson-Lee manages to craft a reasonably complete narrative, though she does perhaps put more weight on purchases than they always deserve. And it basically ends with the reign of Edward I, leaving me curious to know more about their brother’s reign and the princesses’ later lives.
I actually disagree with those calling the princesses “remarkable” women, though we might be using different definitions of the word. Except perhaps for one instance in Holland, when the teenaged Elizabeth managed to galvanize the people to “rescue” her even younger husband from a mentor who had “abducted” him (what really happened is unclear), the sisters seem to have had little direct impact on history. Keeping in mind that medieval princesses, disenfranchised by patriarchy though they may have been, were still full human beings with their own lives, relationships, and agendas, these five come across as pretty normal women. But that’s actually what makes them interesting.
By modern standards, the sisters married young, though perhaps not quite so young as stereotypes would have it. Eleanora had a proxy marriage as a preteen, but never met her “husband”; joining him in her later teens fell through for political reasons, and her true marriage (to a different man) happened when she was 23. Joanna married a much older, defiant Marcher lord at 18 (her father probably hoped this would keep him in line. It didn’t), was widowed young, and married again to a lower-ranked man of her choosing. (Joanna was clearly the most fiery personality of the bunch, though her ends—such as demanding as a teen that she not have fewer pages than her sisters—can seem petty and entitled. Like many books about this royalty, this one never fully reckons with their privilege.) Margaret and Elizabeth were married at 15, to boys aged 15 and 13 respectively, who would become counts in the Low Countries—though they delayed actually joining them there, in Margaret’s case for several years. Mary was sent to a convent at age 6 to keep her grandmother company, and although she took her expected vows as a nun, they don’t seem to have suited her; she lived in luxury, was always in debt, and often traveled to see her family. Three sisters died in their late 20s to mid 30s, in two cases of unrecorded causes, while the other two lived into their 50s.
What was probably most interesting for me was just seeing the reality of these people’s lives. Rather than being based in a particular palace, the court was constantly on the move, and from a young age the daughters all had their own households made up of servants who traveled with them, and often traveled independently of their parents. Wives regularly accompanied their husbands to war. Successful kings were image-conscious: Edward I consciously imitated the court of King Arthur in his pageantry. And while in many ways children were expected to grow up fast, in others they weren’t; the age of majority was 21, so a king in his late teens would still have a regent.
Overall, interesting reading that I learned from, though Wilson-Lee never really took it to the next level. Worth checking out if you want an idea of how real medieval royalty lived....more
A fabulous, empathetic book that tells the stories of six people dealing with mental illness, about their lives and how they understand their4.5 stars
A fabulous, empathetic book that tells the stories of six people dealing with mental illness, about their lives and how they understand their distress and the various ways the system worked or didn’t work for them. Aviv is an excellent storyteller, and though this book is short it’s very meaty—she evidently considered writing a book entirely about each of the people profiled, and packs so much in here that I can see it, without feeling that this format gave them short shrift. This book is probably the best example I’ve read of an author writing about mental illness in someone other than themselves (she does include herself, but she isn’t the focus) yet keeping the focus firmly on the person, not the illness. Illness—or distress manifested or understood as illness (it’s not as bright a line as we might believe)—is part of each story, but they’re all still individuals and the author is most interested in how they understand themselves.
Some brief notes on the stories included:
Ray: A successful doctor who goes into a tailspin when facing professional setback. This story is largely focused on the conflict between doctors favoring psychotherapy and those favoring medication when psychiatric medication began to take off, and Ray was right in the middle of it, as he sued a psychotherapy-only hospital for failing to cure him. But life went on and meds also failed to provide a cure-all in the end.
Bapu: A well-off Indian woman treated as second-class by her in-laws (even as they all lived in her house), she took refuge in religion and ultimately took it to extremes—or perhaps suffered from schizophrenia, and made Krishna her focus? This is a fabulous chapter, exploring the ways western models of mental illness interact with very different cultures. The fledgling mental health care system in India at the time sounds incredibly traumatic, but it was also a fledgling, which perhaps accounts for the fact that outcomes for people diagnosed with schizophrenia there were better than in the developed world. Ultimately Bapu’s own remedy (devoting herself to a less all-consuming god) seems to have done her more good than anything else.
Naomi: This is a wild ride of a story, an African-American woman who grew up in abject poverty, then began suffering from serious distress as a young woman, which culminated in throwing herself and her twin infant sons off a bridge in the belief that this was necessary to save them all from racism. She and one boy were rescued, but the other was not, leading to her conviction for murder. This chapter takes a hard look at poverty, intergenerational trauma, racism, and the justice system, whose definition of insanity hasn’t changed in centuries despite everything we’ve learned in the interim.
Laura: A privileged young white woman who seems to have had a difficult childhood (she didn’t want to talk about it with the author, making this perhaps the weakest of the stories) and began to be heavily medicated as a young adult, until she didn’t know who she was on her own. This chapter looks at the epidemic of psychiatric medication, with people potentially being prescribed dozens of pills primarily to counter the side effects of other pills, all of it severely limiting their lives (such as killing people’s sex drives), as well as the question of when distress becomes something that should be medicated, and for how long. At what point are people, especially those with high expectations, being medicated to achieve more or simply to avoid medication withdrawal, rather than because they’re still sick?
This segues into the author’s own life—she is rather bizarrely hospitalized for anorexia at age 6 (fortunately, it didn’t last), and then as an adult, winds up taking Lexapro long-term even though she isn’t depressed, to make her more productive and improve her personality. This is uncomfortable to read about, and the author is evidently uncomfortable with it too—but at the same time, she doesn’t want to be dysfunctional for her own kids in the same way her parents were dysfunctional for her (leading to the whole 6-year-old anorexia hospitalization episode) and it’s hard to argue with that.
Then there’s the epilogue, focusing on a woman named Hava who was hospitalized alongside the author for anorexia. Unfortunately, for Hava this was a lifelong problem, and this section points out the way people with anorexia are often denied care by insurance despite the fact that it is the deadliest mental illness.
Overall, I was riveted by the stories (and they’re told in bite-size sections, making it easy to read), and loved the way Aviv weaves together individual stories and the larger picture. The stories are thorough and insightful—everyone she profiles is exceptional, most if not all being writers who kept extensive journals, which helps paint a complete picture of their experiences. She’s thorough in putting together pictures of their lives, too, getting to know family members and contacting doctors and anyone else who will speak to her. Aviv also clearly did her big-picture research: it would be easy for a book mostly focused on the U.S. to resort to stereotypes for the chapter set in India, or for one mostly following well-off people to fail to dig in to the chapter dealing with poverty and racism. But every chapter feels fully explored, and all of them compassionate and respectful of people’s experiences and their right to define their own stories. I highly recommend this one....more
A fabulous nonfiction tale of two of the author’s aunts, who had very different destinies. Jun and Hong were the elder two sisters in a wealt4.5 stars
A fabulous nonfiction tale of two of the author’s aunts, who had very different destinies. Jun and Hong were the elder two sisters in a wealthy, complicated Fuzhou family (two wives, lots of kids), fortunate enough to get good educations despite being displaced for most of their adolescence due to Japan’s WWII invasion of China. Jun studied to be a teacher, and following a job interview in Xiamen, took a fateful vacation with a friend on a nearby island. That island became the last bastion of Nationalist resistance, leaving her stranded and cut off from her family as the Communists took over the mainland. This set the course for the rest of Jun’s life, as she took a job with the military, married a high-ranking officer, raised her family on Taiwan, became a hardnosed businesswoman, and ultimately took a circuitous and demanding route home.
Younger sister Hong, meanwhile, took a completely different route. Always practical, she studied to be a doctor; at first refusing to be pigeonholed into ob-gyn practice based on her sex, exposure to the rampant gynecological diseases of the impoverished—highly curable, but leading to ostracism and blighted lives if left untreated—ultimately inspired her to spearhead campaigns to treat these diseases in the countryside. Her family’s Nationalist past put some serious stumbling blocks in her way—most dramatically, during the Cultural Revolution this caused her medical license to be revoked, while she was exiled for years to a remote mountain village. In later years she seems to have retained no bitterness about that experience, focusing instead on the latest medical work to be done, genuinely believing in helping the poor and willing to accept the Party with all its failings and potential. She was even roped into a leadership role in the one-child campaign, bringing as much humanity as she could to the government’s demands.
It’s an enthralling story all around, Li tells it well, and although it took me a chapter or two to get invested, I was soon very eager to learn what would happen next. The author herself is the daughter of a younger sister from the second wife, and was a bit in awe of her aunts (at the time this book went to press, one was in her mid-90s and going strong, the other only recently deceased), but she still digs deep, raises difficult issues, and writes with insight and complexity. And it’s clear they gave her a lot of material to work with. There’s a lot to this story: a lot of Chinese history encapsulated in the family’s experiences; a lot of moral and emotional complexity. I don’t think I’d ever understood older Chinese people’s willingness to go along with the party line so well as I did reading Hong’s story. It isn’t just fear or brainwashing, but a pragmatic, forward-looking attitude focused on the difference she can make in the world while leaving the rest to others.
While there were a few bits where the writing might have been a little smoother, overall this is very readable and well-written, especially impressive given that the author herself learned English somewhat late. If I have any real complaint it’s that I would have loved to know more about the other siblings’ lives, but perhaps that would have made the book unwieldy or revealed more than they were willing to publicize. We do see something of them early and late in the book; the family’s reunion, of course, falls short of what Jun at least wished it to be.
Ultimately, this one is a great choice for those interested in seeing history through individual human stories, or just stories of tough-minded women making their way against the odds. It can be difficult to read in places, as they lived through horrific times, but it’s an enthralling book and I’m grateful that the author and her aunts were willing to share their impressive stories....more
I love some in-depth analysis of personalities and relationships, so a book that explores the intricacies of five Victorian marriages, all involving wI love some in-depth analysis of personalities and relationships, so a book that explores the intricacies of five Victorian marriages, all involving writers who left lots of documentation, tied together by a scholar interested in the nuances and complexities of their stories—sign me up! It’s a thoughtful book, fair to everyone involved and much less a litany of patriarchy horror stories than I expected. In the prologue, Rose writes about gossip as serving a higher psychological function—people need templates for their lives, whether to follow or to react against—and in a sense this is particularly high-class, analytical gossip. It doesn’t pretend to present a representative study of the age (for instance, only one of these couples had children together, though in three other cases one of the partners had kids with someone else), though one can certainly learn about the age from it.
A few notes on the couples profiled here:
Jane Welsh and Thomas Carlyle: A storybook courtship between a scholar and an intellectually-minded heiress, leading to something less than a storybook marriage—after their mostly epistolary courtship, they had a childless and possibly sexless marriage, and during one difficult stretch (when he was spending a lot of time with a richer, wittier female friend) she spent a lot of time venting in her diary, causing him no end of regret after her death.
Effie Gray and John Ruskin: The biggest trash fire of a marriage in the book, this one was thankfully short-lived. He seems to have realized on their wedding night that he was not in fact sexually attracted to grown women (the prudishness of the era making it difficult to know how one felt about sex in advance). Both couples’ parents were heavily involved, they turned out to have completely different tastes and interests, and much drama ensued. Fortunately, non-consummation meant they could get an annulment: she married again and had several children; he never did.
Harriet Taylor and John Stuart Mill: I think Rose gives this couple a bit of an unfairly bad rap. They married later in life after a very long, intimate friendship—the problem was that she was already married, though unhappily (she didn’t appreciate sexual demands, or think much of John Taylor’s intellect)—and their own view of their marriage was at odds with others’ interpretations, but they seem to have been happy on their own terms. He thought she was way smarter than any outsiders ever judged her to be, and their mutual commitment to gender equality in an era when that was radical seems to have resulted in her calling all the shots. But he was happy with this and she clearly contributed a lot to his writing. I thought the disability angle was underexplored—there’s a mention of her being bedridden due to injuries from a carriage accident before their marriage ever happened, which is never followed up on.
Catherine Hogarth and Charles Dickens: This marriage in particular I expected to be an absolute patriarchy horror story, and perhaps because of that billing, my overall reaction was “eh, I’ve seen a lot worse, and in the 21st century too.” This couple started out happily, but grew apart as he become a celebrity touring the world and she grew worn out giving birth to their 10 kids. The strain of having such a large family to support, not to mention his grasping parents and siblings—and some serious emotional immaturity on his part—did not help. He eventually left her for a younger woman and completely disregarded her existence from that point on (though he did pay support for the rest of her life, he made no efforts to encourage the kids to visit with their mom, which they apparently had little interest in doing). Again, the disability angle isn’t fully explored. She seems to have had some serious health issues: no doubt giving birth to 10 kids (plus some miscarriages) is indeed exhausting, but lying on the couch for years while your sister runs the household and raises your kids seems like more than simple tiredness, perhaps a fatigue disorder or depression.
George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) and George Henry Lewes: Rose posits this as the one happy couple in the book, despite or perhaps because of the fact they were never formally married. (He was married to someone else, but what had begun as a 19th century version of an open marriage turned into a long-term relationship between his wife and his also-married business partner.) I got the sense Rose identifies a lot with Eliot, but casts her into what for me is quite an off-putting mold: the professional woman who is nonetheless sad, lonely and unfulfilled until she finds a man to complete her, at which point her life is perfect. Well, except for the fact that she was extremely morbid, and so sensitive about any criticism of her writing that he censored newspapers and correspondence for her! Someone’s lucky not to live in the age of Goodreads.
As with any good nonfiction, I’ve only skimmed the surface here—it’s a thoughtful, detailed, and engaging book that I’d recommend to anyone interested in Victorian England, scholarly gossip, or in-depth studies of marriage and women’s lives....more
A fabulous book. This is a journalistic account of one family’s struggle with poverty, homelessness and associated ills, closely observed over severalA fabulous book. This is a journalistic account of one family’s struggle with poverty, homelessness and associated ills, closely observed over several years and written with thoughtfulness and insight. The author worked closely with the family, without whose collaboration such an intimate account could never have been written, but also brings perspective to the observation of their personalities and coping skills and the big picture that brought them to this point. The central figure is Dasani, the oldest daughter, who is 11 at the beginning and 19 at the end. But as her trajectory makes clear, the lives of a family are all intertwined.
The book begins following Dasani and her family when they are living in appalling conditions at a homeless shelter in New York City, and follows in particular their struggles with housing and education. Dasani is bright and athletic and outgoing, and for awhile it seems like her own exceptional qualities plus the publicity from the author’s initial series of articles will send her down a very different path from her family’s. She essentially wins the lottery, getting into a free private boarding school for poor children, which has both extremely deep pockets and a seemingly deep understanding of the hurdles these kids face.
But meanwhile, things go badly wrong for Dasani’s family as the parents’ limitations collide with the worst in the child protective services bureaucracy, and her siblings are put in foster care. I won’t spoil it because it’s a compelling story told with narrative flair, but their experiences make clear the pitfalls of trying to help children in need without also helping their adults, and of a child welfare model that equates poverty with neglect, as well as a great deal more.
There are a lot of great poverty books out there, but this one might actually be my recommendation for a starting point. The writing is compelling and readable, with lots of dialogue (real dialogue: either the author was there or the family was recording). The story is intense, and the people in it come to life, portrayed sympathetically but with complexity. Beyond the family themselves, the author also got to know those around them (in a poignant moment, Dasani’s middle school teacher also moves into a homeless shelter upon losing her affordable housing, but doesn’t tell the students).
The book doesn’t tell the reader how to think, but provides big-picture information from which we can draw conclusions. In a particularly inspired choice, Elliott traces Dasani’s predecessors, from her enslaved ancestors in North Carolina, through the great-grandfather who served in WWII and saw combat in Italy, only to be unable to take advantage back home of the benefits provided to white GIs—as a black man, no colleges would accept him, and he couldn’t get a mortgage or even a job making use of his skills as a mechanic, instead being relegated to menial work. His children grew up on the streets while he struggled to make ends meet, and the story also traces Dasani’s grandmother’s and mother’s lives, through high-crisis poverty, gang involvement, the AIDS crisis and more. This is not how these stories are usually told, and it’s striking how direct a line it is from racist policies decades ago to this family’s current situation.
All that said, this isn’t just a dire book full of misery: the family bonds are strong, and there is help and support from others too, as well as moments of levity. There’s a lot that is awful in it though, and the book doesn’t cast easy blame, but leaves readers to sit with some tough questions. My only real criticism is that it’s written in the present tense—I got over it, but for me that is a technique to be gotten over rather than one that adds value.
At any rate, while on it’s the long side, I found the pages to turn quickly, and this is a book I’d absolutely recommend to anyone interested in learning more about poverty in America, through the real stories of people living it.
Also, for those who liked this one, below are some other books I recommend and see as its spiritual kin: all books dealing with poverty and exploring in various ways its intersections with racism, trauma, addiction, and the failings of the system, as well as family, community, education, and belonging:
I picked this up because there’s not a lot of nonfiction for a general audience focused on pre-20th century, nonwestern history, from an interest in lI picked this up because there’s not a lot of nonfiction for a general audience focused on pre-20th century, nonwestern history, from an interest in learning more about Japan in particular, and also because historical biographies of women are one of my favorite ways to learn history. In the end I would call it a competent but not outstanding example of that subgenre. It makes the rather bold choice of structuring the book as a biography of a completely ordinary woman, but then seems a little short on material about her for a full book (even though the text is only 252 pages), so it fills in with a lot of historical background that often has nothing to do with her. For instance, she worked as a servant for a samurai’s female relatives for a few weeks; Stanley gives us most of a chapter on the economic and social position of the samurai in the 1830s and 40s. Which is the sort of historical tangent I’ve enjoyed in other books, but I didn’t entirely click with Stanley’s writing style, which tends a bit toward wordiness and flights of fancy.
The primary subject is Tsuneno, who was born to a temple family in a harsh province in the early 19th century. Her family married her off three times, up through her 30s; at the time divorce was easily accessible (though only men could institute it) and about half of arranged marriages failed, so relatively little judgment was attached. By her mid-30s, though, Tsuneno had had enough and made a break for the capital city of Edo, against her family’s wishes. Her life there was not extraordinary, however. Once arrived, she married someone she chose herself but who was also a disappointing husband; wrote lots of letters home asking her family to send her goods and money; and spent the rest of her life as a wage laborer.
Given that, on the one hand it’s impressive that Stanley has enough material to write a biography at all—Tsuneno’s elder brother was a meticulous record keeper, so the family archive is extensive—but on the other, the material feels relatively skimpy, based as it is entirely on the family letters. We don’t get a great idea of who Tsuneno was (quoting more of her letters may have helped), or know much at all about the first several decades of her life. And the historical background given often feels a bit distant from Tsuneno herself. I would have liked to see more about other women’s lives at the time, and some of the most startling cultural practices, like people publicly putting misbehaving family members (both men and women) in cages for long periods to show a commitment to correcting their behavior.
In the end I did learn a bit about Japan in the first half of the 19th century, and it’s a fairly short book so I don’t regret the time spent. But it’s not one I’d go out of my way to recommend....more
After two tries, I think Walter Isaacson’s writing just doesn’t work for me. I did actually finish this book—well, mostly; I skipped about 50 pages inAfter two tries, I think Walter Isaacson’s writing just doesn’t work for me. I did actually finish this book—well, mostly; I skipped about 50 pages in the middle—and the cutting edge of gene editing is certainly a fascinating topic, about which I’m glad to have learned a bit more.
That said, the book’s popularity surprises me because I didn’t find it especially engaging. It’s full of short chapters which get deep into rather uninteresting weeds: mini-biographies of a large number of involved scientists; details of who met whom and spoke about what at which scientific conference. Isaacson tries to fill readers in on some of the science behind CRISPR, and to be fair the cutting edge of modern science—especially fields like biochemistry—is probably too technical and specialized for anyone to explain in a work of popular nonfiction in a way that makes sense to people who haven’t studied the field. But I came away with only a vague idea of how all this works.
I do sort of like Isaacson’s decision to the use the career of Jennifer Doudna—who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her CRIPSR work—as a focal point for the book. There needs to be a central thread, especially with so many people involved, and this is a good example of a respectful biography of a female scientist: it’s focused on her work rather than her home life, refers to her appropriately by her last name, etc. That said, I generally found the human-interest portions of the book too mundane to spark much interest, with the scientists’ lives only briefly summarized and mostly quite ordinary, and the book spending disproportionate time on things like who had dinner with whom at what restaurant during which conference. (I also wasn’t nearly as confused as Isaacson or apparently Doudna—though I wasn’t sure how much she was performing this concern for Isaacson—about why Doudna’s personal friendship with fellow Nobel winner Emmanuelle Charpentier didn’t outlast their collaboration. Charpentier clearly doesn’t do long-term anything and they didn’t have much else in common.)
It isn’t all bad: the discussion around the ethics of gene editing is thoughtful and interesting, and in general the book is informative about the development of gene editing and the realities of scientists’ work and competition with each other. After reading a lot of novels in which characters’ STEM-related interests are inevitably attributed to a “need for certainty” it was refreshing to read about real scientists and their motivations—the cutting edge in reality providing no certainty, they mostly seem motivated by solving mysteries, and making their names through competing with one another. But I think I’d have enjoyed the book more at half the length, minus most of the play-by-play. Perhaps worth a look for those interested in the subject, but not one I’d personally recommend....more
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