Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

 July 12, 2020

Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry

Career criminals Maurice and Charlie wait in the ferry boat terminal in Algeciras, Spain.  They have been told that Maurice's missing daughter Dilly will be either arriving on the ferry boat coming from Tangier, Morocco, or departing on one of the ferries going to Tangier.  In between handing out missing person flyers and terrorizing the waiting passengers, they reminisce about their long life of crime together.

Kevin Barry won the Dublin IMPAC award in 2013 for his previous novel City of Bohane, set in a gritty Ireland of the not-too-distant future.  Night Boat to Tangier is written in the same Irish colloquial dialect, salted with frequent vulgarities.  Sometimes it's hard to figure out which of the two main characters is speaking/thinking, since the author doesn't bother with phrases like "Maurice said" or "Charlie replied."  If you're easily offended by curse words and disturbed by various types of abuse, Kevin Barry is not for you.

This is my second week of retirement, and it's been hectic to say the least.  On Monday, a woman in an SUV hit the front end of my car when she was turning left into a parking lot (or maybe she was trying to make a u-turn).  Tuesday was spent finding a repair shop and getting a rental car, a cute little Hyundai Elantra hatchback.  Hyundai wasn't on my new-car-buying radar but the Elantra is a small sedan, very quiet and nice to drive.  Today I'm venturing out to the library to return a couple of books and to the grocery store for a few items.

On the plus side, my good friend Marj Monaghan stopped by and we had coffee and conversation on my patio in the backyard.  She brought a yummy carrot cake and flowers from Whole Foods.  It's always so good to catch up with her.

The rescue group (As Good as Gold) has identified an adopter that they think will be a good fit for foster guy Tommy.  They are coming to visit him on Tuesday.  Is he a cutie or what?

Tommy, the foster dog

I also talked to Bonnie at the library, who had some good work gossip in addition to needing to vent.  She is going to come over and drink wine on the patio one of these days.  AND I got the first shipment of wine from Winc - the LIT staff gave me a gift certificate as a retirement gift.  So much fun to try different kinds of wine!

The Last Queen by C. W. Gortner

January 30, 2020

The Last Queen by C. W. Gortner

Joanna (Juana) of Castile was the second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, older sister of Catherine of Aragon, the first wife of Henry VIII of England.  As a toddler, Joanna was promised in marriage to Philip of Flanders of the House of Habsburg and she was sent to Flanders at the age of 16.  After her mother’s death, Joanna became Queen of Castile in her own right.  Although initially happy in her marriage and the mother of five children, Joanna grew dissatisfied with her husband’s overwhelming desire to rule as king of Castile.  But after returning to Spain to take her throne, Joanna soon realized that she was surrounded by men determined to seize her crown.

I love a good historical novel about royalty and have read a number of books by Philippa Gregory, Alison Weir, and Margaret George.  Most books about the royals focus on the British royal families, so I was glad to find a well-written, well-researched fictional biography of Joanna of Castile.  She was also known as Juana la Loca (Joanna the Mad), declared mad and unfit to rule by her own father Ferdinand.  Juana is another one of those unfortunate queens that you keep hoping will have a different, happier ending to their stories (others include but are not limited to Anne Boleyn or really any of Henry VIII’s wives, Mary Queen of Scots, and Marie Antoinette).

Being a female member of any royal family has pretty much sucked down through the ages, since daughters and sisters were used as human chess pieces and baby machines with little regard for their happiness or the appropriateness of their arranged marriages.  There was also the overwhelming boredom these women experienced – days spent oppressed by court etiquette, endless embroidering, gossiping and plotting, with virtually no privacy.  If you were young and lucky and had forward-thinking parents, you got a few lessons in music and languages.  But other than look ornamental, show up for court occasions, and produce a lot of children, queens didn't do much of anything (has anything changed in the 21st century?).

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

January 6, 2020

A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende

(I would have finished reading this yesterday on my commute to work (the library is open on Sunday) while I was on the CTA Blue Line train.  But there was a homeless man on the train who was sleeping across several seats, and when he stood up, he wasn't wearing any pants.  Yep, bare-ass naked.  There are cameras in the cars, and the CTA workers removed him from train at the next station.  But it was still pretty unnerving and I had a hard time concentrating.)

In 1938, with war looming in Europe, Spain is in the middle of its own civil war.  Medical student Victor Dalmau and his family live in Barcelona, and Victor and his brother Guillem join the battle for independence, Victor as a medic and Guillem as a soldier.  When Franco’s forces overrun Barcelona, Guillem’s pregnant sweetheart Roser flees over the mountains to France, in the company of Victor's mother and one of Victor's friends.  At the instigation of Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, Victor and Roser marry and emigrate to Chile on board the Winnipeg, where they meet and become entangled with members of the aristocratic del Solar family.

I have read just about everything that Isabel Allende has written, including her nonfiction.  Her books are always extensively researched and gorgeously written, and A Long Petal of the Sea is no exception. The title of the book refers to Allende's native country of Chile.  There are loads of details about the Spanish Civil War, and then the revolution and dictatorship in Chile, maybe a little too much. But there are hidden historical details such as the refugee ship Winnipeg, organized by the Chilean government and the poet Pablo Neruda to bring Spanish refugees to Chile after Franco set himself up as a dictator in Spain.  The characters and the lives that Allende creates for them are wonderful.  Be advised that there is some brutality since the characters were living in brutal times.

Many thanks to Edelweiss and the publisher for providing an e-ARC in return for a review.