Family Secrets, Ghosts, and Greed: Sudden Light by Garth Stein

The Riddell family has a problem. The patriarch Samuel thinks he has a moral duty to fulfill the intentions of his ancestors and let the family estate return to forest as an expiation of the sins of the fathers. The 'fathers' having been a money grubbing, soulless timber baron who decimated the forests of Puget Sound for family wealth. 

Samuel's daughter Serena wants to sell the land to developers and take a cruise around the world. Brother Jones is in a trial separation and thinks that money will solve his martial problems. He has returned home to assist his sister in making the old man sell and has brought his fourteen year old son Trevor along. 

Trevor has never seen his father's childhood home or met his estranged family. The bright, bored teenager perceives there is something more going on and sets out to solve the family mystery. He is assisted by the ghosts of his ancestors. What he learns is not nice. 

When I requested Garth Stein's A Sudden Light  from Simon and Schuster through NetGalley I had not realized it was a ghost story. It is also Gothic, derivative, and discomforting. It is a family drama, a coming of age story, and a mystery as well. Have I left out any genres? Romance? Yep. Got it and it's a gay relationship. And incestuous lust. Philosophy, religion, morality, and environmental issues all show up as well. In the words of Tim Gunn, it is a "hot mess."

The creepy psycho aunt and the ghosts were bad enough, but it was the overuse of easy information dumping and plot problem solving that made me put the book aside for a few days as I considered finishing it or forgetting it. I can handle ghosts, if I know it's a ghost story. Finding one secret room with a hundred year old diary that reveals his ancestor's secrets is iffy. Finding another 100 year journal that sheds light on his great-uncle's death is stretching credulity. Finding hidden letters that reveal information that brings about the denouncement is overboard. And all those back stories told by ghosts...

Perhaps had I realized I was reading Genre fiction I would have come at it with a more open mind. (Amazon has it listed under Genre Fiction, Horror, Ghosts. Other places it is categorized under Young Adult, Coming of Age!)

Stein said his original idea of writing about a house turned into a play which turned into Sudden Light*. He also references that it is about father-son relationships. It is a good look at How Not To Father. Both Trevor's mother and his father's mother are referenced but are absent. Which leaves us with Serena, that crazy girl.

There are a lot of reviews online by readers who enjoyed this book. Some mention it's failures or weaknesses. Others related to Trevor's struggle with "manhood" as he dips his toes into the complexities of the adult world.

Stein's previous book The Art of Running in the Rain was a best seller when I  read it with a book club a few years back. The story is told from the family dog's point of view. Everyone loved it. Except me. My problem was... it was improbable that the dog could know and understand all the things were were asked to believe he knew.

*http://www.garthstein.com/garth-introduces-his-new-novel-a-sudden-light/

Sudden Light by Garth Stein
Simon and Schuster
Publication September 30, 2014
 $26.95

• ISBN-10: 1439187037
• ISBN-13: 978-1439187036

A VIsit To The Detroit Institute of Arts

Uncle Tom and Little Eva, Duncanson

Indian Telegraph by Stanley

Head of a Negro by Copely

Watson and the Shark by Copely

On Sunday afternoon we visited the Detroit Institute of Arts. They have some real treasures. Recent financial issues have brought the art to the table as a way of raising money for the bankrupt city. So far the art has been protected from sale.

Frederick Church's Cotopaxi

George Washington by Peale

Vincent Van Gogh self portrait

When I was in Eight Grade my homeroom and music teacher arranged for our class to go on a series of cultural field trips. The art museum was included. Afterwards I begged for my family to take me back.

In the Garden by Mary Cassett

A Woman by Mogdalini 

Matisse

Van Gogh

Every visit I see familiar paintings which I recall from childhood and notice others that had not struck me before. There were also paintings on loan from other collections, keeping the experience fresh. These were new to me:

Three Top Sergeants by George Luks

Fisher Boy by Charles Webster Hawthrone

Merrymakers by Carolus-Duran

The museum has learning experience throughout. Whistler's painting Black and Gold was controversial in its day and children could read about it and comment.

We bought a membership although we can attend free of charge as our county taxes helps to support the museum. I look forward to many more visits.

The Lily Pond by Charles Harry Eaton

An Insect Notebook

I picked up a 1920s "Insect Notebook" at a book sale. It is at once an identification book and a journal for keeping track of sightings. I gave it to my brother but first scanned these wonderful line drawings of butterflies and Moths.

I thought the art could be used in so many wonderful ways: embroidery, coloring pages, applique, card making... What would you do with these images? 

My Grandfather's Edgar Allen Poe

I discovered the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe when I was eleven or twelve. My Grandfather Lynne O. Ramer had a 1904 Commemorative set of the works of Edgar Allan Poe which he had purchased in his college days in the 1920s.

I borrowed those books over and over until Gramps just gave them to me. I most loved the poems, especially The Raven.

"And the silken, sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me--filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before..."

Such wonderful language! Such words!

It is hard to imagine my grandfather--a church deacon, engineer, and mathematics professor-- reading Poe. His college library included Vanity Fair by Thackeray and The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Hugo, The Last of the Mohicans by Cooper, essays by Emerson and poetry by Lowell and Wordworth. Poe seems to be a wild card in this library.

When I was older Gramps lent me books of historical fiction (Kenneth Roberts), non-fiction (Arch Merrill's books about early New York State history; I Was A Fugitive From A Chain Gang) science (Velikovsky's pseudo science book Worlds in Collision); and politics (The Political Plague of America a self published book by someone he knew and which he highly edited in the book). I never knew him to read poetry or fantastic stories.

Strange tales and the macabre' were not new to me. I'd grown up on "Twilight Zone" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" television shows! I had seen Hitchcock movies; when my folks went to the drive-in movies I was supposed to be asleep in the back of the car but instead saw "The Birds", "Marnie", and "The Amazing Shrinking Man". (Yes I did have nightmares after viewing these movies.)

I read the stories of terror and horror and the early detective stories. But it was the poems I returned to most often, and this volume shows the most wear of all the set.

 .

Over the next years he gave me a number of books to read. I borrowed 101 Famous Poems so often he also gave it to me. I previously have blogged about at
http://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2013/09/one-hundred-and-one-famous-poems.html

Eventually I inherited most of Gramp's college books, each with his own book mark. As an orphan boy working his way through college he would have had to sacrifice to find the money to buy his precious books.  I always loved his bookmark.

Some great info about Poe and The Raven can be found at
http://knowingpoe.thinkport.org/writer/annotated.asp
and
http://www.poedecoder.com/essays/raven/

A fun but through article on all aspects of The Raven: http://www.shmoop.com/the-raven/

An article that explains why Poe chose to use the pseudonym Quarles when he published The Raven
can be found at http://www.jstor.org/stable/27533122?seq=1

The complete poems of Edgar Allen Poe can be found
at http://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/poeraven/poeraven.html

The end of Volume IX  has advertisements including this one for Funk & Wagner's revised and enlarged English Synonyms, Antonyms and Prepositions, "Exquisitely bound in full crushed Levant, gilt edges, hand tooled, raised bands, boxed for $10":

The Wonder of Words!

Have you ever fully realized the wonder and witchery of words? A single word can be a blessing or a curse, an incantation or a prayer, a blow or a caress. And the study of words is thrilling! Thousands of men and women who daily use the English language get no further than a stinted vocabulary, when a little study would soon give them mastery of a vocabulary that would express countless shades of meaning.

That copywriter was right about the power of words. And Poe's poetry is a wonderful example.

"The Printed Square" Review and More Handkerchiefs

 The Printed Square by Nicky Albrechtsen is the latest addition to my collection of books on handkerchiefs. All but two or three hankies presented are new to me, and even those are in a different color way than what I own.

The author offers an overview of the history of handkerchiefs including their social significance, the various materials used to produce handkerchiefs, especially during WWII, and the rise of designer handkerchiefs. I especially appreciate her delineating characteristics of handkerchiefs by decade. The 240 photographed handkerchiefs, dating from 1920 to 1960, are arranged by color groupings with one handkerchief per page.

Each was chosen for it's overall design. Most are 'generic' printed cotton, with floral or geometric motifs, yet each has a nice visual impact on the page.

Most books have focused on handkerchief categories such as novelty, designer, souvenir, or hand work embellished. Here we come to understand the wonderful design of the hankies women actually carried in their pockets and purses, the ones not saved special. Some even show wear and holes. The collector saw beyond condition, appraising the design quality of the piece. The designs have an exuberance about them, an energy that is delightful to the eye. This is wonderful eye-candy for collectors.

Harper Deisgn
ISBN 978-06-212338-1
$24.95 hardbound

For your viewing pleasure here are some 'generic' handkerchiefs from my own collection.

Someone embellished this with French Knot embroidery

The white background shows through this thin linen material under the flash 

Machine embroidery in black

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