coming of age

Review: Northanger Abbey

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Cover image of "Northanger Abbey" by Jane Austen

Northanger Abbey

Northanger Abbey, Jane Austen. Penguin Classics (ISBN: 9780141439792) 2003, first published 1817.

Summary: Catherine Moreland, in her first social season, avoids the attentions of one man and visits the family home of another.

Catherine Moreland was a clergyman’s daughter and one of ten children. A former tomboy, she has turned into an attractive seventeen-year old woman. She also loves to read Gothic novels. Family friends, the Allens invite her to join them for the summer social season at Bath. It is a round of balls, dances, and social gatherings. All of it fascinates her, but she and the Allens do not know anyone. Then they meet the Thorps.

Daughter Isabella and Catherine soon become fast friends, introducing her to The Mysteries of Udolpho. It’s all Catherine can talk about. But it all gets complicated when Catherine’s brother James and Isabella’s brother John join them. They are friends at Oxford. Isabella and James fall in love and get engaged, only to learn they will have to wait two years to marry when James receives a living worth £400. Meanwhile, John directs his attentions to Catherine but she does not return them.

Instead, Catherine likes Henry Tilney, a young clergyman with a benefice that is part of his father’s estate. Like so many Austen novels, she hope to run into Henry and deepen the acquaintance, with John doing his best to distract her. Finally, things look up when Henry’s father meets her and extends an invitation to visit the family at Northanger Abbey. Perhaps it’s just as well, because Isabella has begun flirting with Henry’s brother, leading to a breakup of the engagement.

Aside from Gothic fantasies about the old abbey, things go well. Catherine gets on well with Eleanor, Henry’s younger sister, and her somewhat eccentric father. Then there is a sudden turn. While Henry is away Catherine is suddenly sent back to her parents while the Tilneys leave on an unannounced visit to friends. Clearly, she has done something to arouse the ire of Henry’s father. But she hasn’t a clue. She has to go on a 70 mile journey without an escort and even has to borrow money to get home. A sad homecoming indeed. It doesn’t end here and you might be able to guess from other Jane Austen stories how it does. But you won’t hear it from me.

The novel has an interesting history. While published posthumously at the end of 1817, along with Persuasion, Austen completed a draft of the novel in 1799. Austen may have begun writing it as early as 1794. She also may have worked on revisions at the end of her life. This may account for the disjunct between the Bath portion of the novel and the Northanger Abbey portion. It feels like two stories stitched together. Also, there is this weird thing with multiple loves between three families, the Morelands, Thorps, and Tilneys. It sounds kind of in-bred.

Like other Austen novels money as well as love seems to dictate the affairs of love. And like so many, those who focus on money often end up surprised to find out the value of character. Finally, Northanger Abbey, with its wardrobes, closed off wings, and valley setting creates the perfect setting to spook Gothic-fascinated Catherine. I wonder if Austen was having fun spoofing the Gothics!

Review: The Song of the Lark

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Cover image of "The Song of the Lark" by Willa Cather

The Song of the Lark (Prairie Trilogy), Willa Cather. Open Road Media (ISBN: 9781504035361), 2016 (First published in 1915). 

Summary: A young woman from a frontier town discovers her passion for music, eventually taking her to the world’s opera stages.

Thea Kornberg nearly did not survive her childhood in the frontier town of Moonstone, Colorado. Deathly ill with pneumonia, only the ministrations of Dr. Howard Archie, then just a country doctor, save her life. The experience also forges a lasting bond between them. As the daughter of a minister, learning piano and singing were par for the course. Yet even as a child, Wunsch, her piano teacher discovers an unusual passion for excellence. Not only does she exhaust his ability to train her. She also recruits her own students and replaces Wunsch after a moral lapse forces his departure from Moonstone.

She also attracts the attentions of Ray Kennedy, a railroader who wants to marry her when she comes of age. But his longing is never fulfilled. He dies in a rail accident. But, knowing her unfulfilled potential as a musician, he leaves her a bequest of $600 to send her to Chicago. She is fortunate to train with Andor Harsanyi. But he describes himself as exhausted after piano lessons with her because of her intensity. Yet he wonders if the piano is her instrument. When he learns that she sings in a church choir, he asks to hear her sing. He realizes that her voice is her instrument.

He connects her with Madison Bowers, the best voice teacher in Chicago. Although not a pleasant man, she develops as a singer under his instruction. To pay her way, she also accompanies other students but quickly comes to despise their stupidity. On the edge of disillusionment, she is introduced to Fred Ottenberg and a Jewish family who are friends of his, the Nathanmeyers. The chance to sing at their music parties kindles her love of performing. But she is worn out and ill. Fred whisks her off to a friend with a ranch near ancient cliff dwellings.

She comes to understand her passion to perform, how it is a part of every fiber of her being, during months of solitude. Meanwhile, she is falling in love with Fred. But she learns that he is married and bound to a mentally invalid wife. From New York, she wires Dr. Archie, who has always looked out for her, having escorted her to Chicago. She will accept no further help from Fred, despite the fact that he is from a wealthy brewing family. Yet they remain on friendly terms. Dr, Archie provides her a loan to go to Europe to continue to train.

The work concludes in New York. Dr, Archie, Fred, Harsanyi, and even Spanish Johnny, from the Mexican part of Moonstone, hear her perform at the Met to acclaim. Through their eyes, we glimpse the full realization of the passions and drives that have animated her life, poured out in performance. And we see the contempt she feels toward mediocrity. We observe the life of a diva, and what she left behind–the prairies, her parents, who died while she was in Europe, and those who stood in her way. And those who attend her performance remind us of those without whom it would not have been possible.

As in the other Prairie trilogy novels, Cather draws a compellingly strong female character. Having been around singers, I also thought she really got inside the psyche of a singer, exploring what makes them great. It’s not merely a voice but how the voice and the music become the means through which a whole personality expresses itself. We also see the sheer work involved, not only the practice but getting inside the idea of a piece and giving expression to that with one’s whole body.

Review: Raft of Stars

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Raft of Stars, Andrew J. Graff. New York: Ecco, 2021.

Summary: A coming of age adventure story of two friends fleeing down a river after what they think is the murder of the father of one of the boys, and the pursuit to save the boys from certain destruction from a danger unknown to them.

I would not have known of this book apart from an Ohio friend who put me onto this debut novel of Andrew J. Graff, a writing instructor at Wittenberg University. This was a delightful find.

The setting is the north woods of Wisconsin in 1994. It centers around two boys, Breadwin and Fish. Breadwin has a violent father he tries to stay away from as much as possible. Fish lost his father and his mother, Miranda lets him stay summers at her father Ted’s farm. Fish is concerned about the bruises he sees on his friend, and follows him home one night, to discover the father in the act of choking Breadwin. Fish spots a gun as the father spots him, fires, and the man collapses in a pool of blood. They think they’ve killed him and run for it, leaving a note at Ted’s, where they collect supplies. Fish proposes they take the path to the river that runs through the north forest to where it comes out at his father’s military post, not telling Breadwin he no longer has a father. Finding an abandoned shack by the river, they are able to turn it into a raft.

Sheriff Cal came from Texas. This little town was the perfect escape from a situation where he broke procedure in apprehending a bad character. He’s no longer sure about a career in law enforcement and drinks more than is good for him, but this seems to be the perfect place to get some peace and perspective–until he finds Breadwin’s father apparently dead and the boys on the run. He and Ted mount a search on horseback, kind of a series of mishaps for Cal, unused to tracking in a forest.

Then Fish’s mom Miranda decides to follow, along with Tiffany, a gas station attendant who colors her hair, has lived on the edge of poverty, but has come to appreciate the boys, and even the new sheriff. Miranda is a cross between a devout pentecostal and a mamma bear, the latter more urgent yet because she finds out Breadwin’s father had survived and her son was not a murderer.

The pursuit is urgent, not to apprehend the boys but to head them off from destruction from a river gorge they cannot raft through and don’t know is there. Much of the book is an account of how the boys elude capture while being pursued by their rescuers. Perhaps some of the best writing is the storm and tornado sequences, where one experiences the terror of encountering these phenomena unprotected.

What makes this debut novel so good? Is it the deepening relationship and resourcefulness of the boys? Is it the collaboration of people for whom life hasn’t been easy? Is it the lovable but seemingly ineffectual Constable Bobby (who plays an important role toward the end)? Is it the river journey, a literary trope featuring in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness? Only here, instead of people becoming stripped of the veneer of civilization, they summons the means to become better versions of themselves. This is an adventure story, a coming of age story, and a love story wrapped into one. And in a rare achievement, the author does it without sex scenes or profanity and through characters with flaws and grit, not plaster saints.

I understand the author has a sequel in the works, set in northern Wisconsin, where he grew up. Sign me up. I look forward to seeing how he develops as a writer. This was a very good debut.