Jane Austen's Best Friend: The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd by Zoe Wheddon

 

Jane Austen was especially close to her older sister Cassandra. She had mentors and friends. And she had Martha Lloyd, who was a 'second sister', and who lived with Jane, Cassandra and Mrs Austen.

They became friends when Jane was yet a girl. Although ten years older than Jane, Martha had much in common with her. 

"Martha was a strange mix of...amusing and highly sensible, experienced yet not educated into a forced air of formality," Wheddon writes. She held a deep Christian faith. 

She loved being outdoors, she loved to laugh, she was efficient and calm and she adored Jane's writings. The two friends shared in-jokes.

I did enjoy learning about Martha, her family history, her relationship to the Austen family, all that she contributed to Jane's happiness.  But, Wheddon's writing style felt wordy, long passages of imagined delights, descriptions of what Jane and Martha's relationship was possibly like, and then quotes from letters and other sources upon which her imaginings are based. I wanted to rush her along. The breezy, conjectured passages of what their friendship was possibly like became weighty.

But it seems I am in the minority, as better lights have awarded this biography 5 stars--Lucy Worsley Dr Paula Byrne, Natalie Jenner, Rose Servitova.

Chapters consider aspects of their life, including Fashion, Frolics, Charity, Love Lives and more, to Martha's life after Jane's death.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Jane Austen's Best Friend: The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd
by Zoë Wheddon
Pen & Sword History
Pub Date 28 Feb 2021
Hardcover £19.99 (GBP)
ISBN: 9781526763815

from the publisher

All fans of Jane Austen everywhere believe themselves to be best friends with the beloved author and this book shines a light on what it meant to be exactly that. Jane Austen’s Best Friend; The Life and Influence of Martha Lloyd offers a unique insight into Jane’s private inner circle. Through this heart-warming examination of an important and often overlooked person in Jane’s world, we uncover the life changing force of their friendship.

Each chapter details the fascinating facts and friendship forming qualities that tied Jane and Martha together. Within these pages we will relive their shared interests, the hits and misses of their romantic love lives, their passion for shopping and fashion, their family histories, their lucky breaks and their girly chats. This book offers a behind the scenes tour of the shared lives of a fascinating pair and the chance to deepen our own bonds in ‘love and friendship’ with them both.

Land of Big Numbers: Stories by Te-Ping Chen

Te-Ping Chen's debut story collection Land of Big Numbers started out strong and ended with a mind-blowing parable that knocked my socks off. 

I read the first story through BookishFirst and put in my name for the ARC. Set in China, twins go on separate life paths, the bright and driven girl challenging government repression, the boy excelling in competitive video gaming. A reversal of expectations challenges our values.

The stories are revelatory about life in modern China and the expat experience. I was unsettled by the portrait of life in China, seemingly normal people doing seemingly normal things, and yet so much at odds with American expectations. 

The generational divide shows up clearly. The older characters had lived hard lives of manual labor and poverty. Some hold onto fantasies of achievement and acceptance into the Party. Their children become teenage factory workers in the city or hope for a rich benefactor or play the stock market dreaming of easy money.

It is a world at once very familiar--and very alien. The details are different, but the human experience universal.

All around Zhu Feng, it seemed, people were buying, buying, homes and stocks and second and third houses; there was a whole generation who'd gotten rich and needed to buy things for their kids, and the same dinky things from before didn't pass muster: penny rides on those plastic cartoon figures that flashed lights and gently rocked back and forth outside of drugstores; hawthorn impaled on sticks and sheathed in frozen yellow sugar casings, a cheap winter treat. They needed to buy because they had the money and that's what everyone else was doing...Also, the government said it was the buying opportunity of a generations...China was going up and up and nobody wanted to be left behind."~from Land of Big Numbers by Te-Ping Chen

The last story Guebeikou Spirit is amazing, a parable that reaches past it's setting to alert against the lure of complacence that can become complicity. Characters are stranded on a new high-speed train station after trains pass them buy. Regulations state that passengers must depart from a different station than they entered, and so they remain.

Every day they hear the announcement that the train is delayed. The guards reassuring,"we'll get there together," as they bring in food, blankets, personal health supplies, and as weeks go on, televisions and coloring books. 

The stranded people become a media sensation and the organize to represent 'Gubeikuo Spirit.' Several dissident young men try to follow the train tracks to another station, but always return and finally give up. The outside world's hardships come through the television news. They become comfortable so that when a train finally stops, they are unwilling to leave.

Obedience to an illogical rule, becoming comfortable, leading to the loss of volition and self-determination--it's a powerful message. 

Te-Ping Chen is a marvelous writer and I look forward to reading more from her pen.

I received an ARC from the publisher through BookishFirst and an egalley through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Land of Big Numbers: Stories
by Te-Ping Chen
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Mariner Books
Pub Date: February 2, 2021
ISBN: 9780358272557
softcover $15.99 (USD)

eBook $9.99

ISBN-13/EAN: 9780358275039

ISBN-10: 0358275032

from the publisher

A debut collection from an emerging “fiction powerhouse,” vivid portrayals of the men and women of modern China and its diaspora that “entertain, educate, and universally resonate” (Booklist, starred review).

Gripping and compassionate, Land of Big Numbers traces the journeys of the diverse and legion Chinese people, their history, their government, and how all of that has tumbled—messily, violently, but still beautifully—into the present.

 Cutting between clear-eyed realism and tongue-in-cheek magical realism, Chen’s stories coalesce into a portrait of a people striving for openings where mobility is limited. Twins take radically different paths: one becomes a professional gamer, the other a political activist. A woman moves to the city to work at a government call center and is followed by her violent ex-boyfriend. A man is swept into the high-risk, high-reward temptations of China’s volatile stock exchange. And a group of people sit, trapped for no reason, on a subway platform for months, waiting for official permission to leave.

With acute social insight, Te-Ping Chen layers years of experience reporting on the ground in China with incantatory prose in this taut, surprising debut, proving herself both a remarkable cultural critic and an astonishingly accomplished new literary voice.

About the author

TE-PING CHEN's fiction has been published in, or is forthcoming from, The New Yorker, Granta, Guernica, Tin House, and The Atlantic. A reporter with the Wall Street Journal, she was previously a correspondent for the paper in Beijing and Hong Kong. Prior to joining the Journal in 2012, she spent a year in China as a Fulbright fellow. She lives in Philadelphia. 

John Keats: Poetry, Life and Landscapes by Suzie Grogan

I will never get to England. I had dreamed of it when I was in my twenties and thirties. I wanted to see the places that inspired the literature I loved. Now, I am content to remain an armchair traveler. 

Suzie Grogan's biography John Keats is a real treat, a wonderful way to meet John Keats and learn about his life and work and travels. Grogan discovered Keats as a teenager, memorizing his poetry and studying his life. She makes readers love Keats, too.

I will admit that I had a limited knowledge of the Romantic writers, a deficit I have tried to make up for in my mature years. I had come across Keats while reading about other Romantic era writers. It was time to become more familiar with his poet. 

Keats studied to be a doctor but decided to dedicate his life to poetry. As a teenager, Keats had nursed his mother who was dying from TB. And he had taken care of his brother who also died of TB. As a physician, he knew he had tuberculosis, and it drove him to give up the woman he loved. Keats himself tragically died of TB at age 25.

Severn's portrait of Keats dying of TB

Before his death, he managed a strenuous walking tour, although troubled by a sore throat. Grogan follows Keats's walking journey across north England and Scotland, describing what Keats would have seen and the modern view of the same scenes. The tour helped to inspire some of his best poetry. 

Illustrations enrich the book: Keats's beautiful, refined face, the houses and cottages where he lived or visited, the cathedrals and the streets he knew, statues and art portraying him.

Grogan includes the iconic poems she discusses in the volume, and reading them was an important part of my appreciation.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

John Keats: Poetry, Life and Landscapes
by Suzie Grogan
Pen & Sword History
Pub Date: January 31, 2021 
ISBN: 9781526739377
PRICE: £19.99 (GBP)

from the publisher

John Keats is one of Britain’s best-known and most-loved poets. Despite dying in Rome in 1821, at the age of just 25, his poems continue to inspire a new generation who reinterpret and reinvent the ways in which we consume his work.

Apart from his long association with Hampstead, North London, he has not previously been known as a poet of ‘place’ in the way we associate Wordsworth with the Lake District, for example, and for many years readers considered Keats’s work remote from political and social context. Yet Keats was acutely aware of and influenced by his surroundings: Hampstead; Guy’s Hospital in London where he trained as a doctor; Teignmouth where he nursed his brother Tom; a walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland; the Isle of Wight; the area around Chichester and in Winchester, where his last great ode, To Autumn, was composed.

Far from the frail Romantic stereotype, Keats captivated people with his vitality and strength of character. He was also deeply interested in the life around him, commenting in his many letters and his poetry on historic events and the relationship between wealth and poverty. What impact did the places he visited have on him and how have those areas changed over two centuries? How do they celebrate their ‘Keats connection’?

Suzie Grogan takes the reader on a journey through Keats’s life and landscapes, introducing us to his best and most influential work. In many ways a personal journey following a lifetime of study, the reader is offered opportunities to reflect on the impact of poetry and landscape on all our lives. The book is aimed at anyone wanting to know more about the places Keats visited, the times he lived through and the influences they may have had on his poetry. Utilising primary sources such as Keats’s letters to friends and family and the very latest biographical and academic work, it offers an accessible way to see Keats through the lens of the places he visited and aims to spark a lasting interest in the real Keats - the poet and the man.

Important Blog News— Leaving Bloglovin

 Dear Readers,

I need to opt out of Bloglovin.

I was badly impacted when Goggle+ closed a few years back, when 90 people followed me on that medium and I lost followers when they shut down. I hate to lose my 34 Bloglovin followers, too.

The reason why I want to exit Bloglovin is because it is used by sex trafficking! And there is no way to block them. These accounts don’t show up on my list on the blog. But on my Bloglovin account I see tens of foreign followers with links to sex sites.

So please, readers, change to email following of my blog! Or you can find me on Twitter @NancyAdairB and Instagram @NancyAdair where I share links to my blog. I also have a Facebook page for The Literate Quilter.

In a few weeks I will exit from Bloglovin. 

Thank you!

Nancy

Covid-19 Life; Quilts, Books, and Grandpuppies

I have finished Hospital Sketches, the Block of the Month by Barbara Brackman inspired by Louis May Alcott's time as a nurse during the Civil War. There are many amazing versions of these patterns. Everyone finished them off differently. I made a floral vine based on the applique templates, in the style of 19th c. quilts. The quilt is hand appliqued and hand quilted.

I have started the Rebel Girl quilt. But...I decided to applique the records and not piece them. 

I did thread work on the Michigan lighthouses. I need to size the blocks still. And I am looking for the right sky fabric for the central block of the Mackinac Bridge.

New to my NetGalley shelf are:

• Buses Are a Comin': Memoir of a Freedom Rider by Charles Person and Richard Rooker from St. Martin's Press
• Silence Is a Sense by Layla AlAmmar, a Kuwaiti-American writer, from Algonquin Books

New books 'in the mail' include:

• Brooklyn On My Mind: Black Visual Artists from the WPA to the Present by Myrah Brown Green from Schiffer Publications

• A Shot in the Moonlight by Ben Montgomery from Little, Brown and Company

My father's sister, my Aunt Alice, celebrated her 85th birthday party...in isolation. We sent flowers and many friends sent cards. I wrote a blog post about her birthday a few years ago, found here.

Our grandpuppies go to doggie day care a few days a week. Both their parents work from home. Sunny is still very energetic at a year old and needs lots of play. They have their photos taken there.

Ellie is learning to socialize with the other dogs. Sadly, this week she became ill with gastroenteritis and spent an overnight at the vet's. With medicine and fluids, she is back home and doing well. 

Ellie was thrilled when her mom came to pick her up and take her home.

And Sunny eagerly awaited her fur-sister's return.

We do not know what Gus the cat thought about the incident. He keeps his thoughts to himself.

It finally snowed here! We even had to get out the snow blower. 

This photo is from before the snow. For several winters we have put a heated water bowl on the patio for the animals. Usually squirrels come to drink, but this year we have seen many Blue Jay and Cardinals come.

We are still waiting to be contacted about our Covid vaccination. We are signed up through our hospital and our county health department. 

We are a week away from a milestone: it was one year ago on February 2 and 3 that we had family gatherings to celebrate my husband's birthday. Four households met for a dinner one day, and the next day we dined with Gary's brother and wife and our son. 

We know that even with the vaccine we will not be back to old normal again very soon. Especially with new virus strains emerging. I wonder what  the new 'normal' will be like when it comes? One friend suggested she would continue to wear a mask all the time as she has not even had a cold this year.

So many social media friends are writing about burning out, the isolation and loneliness wearing on them. Even for introverts with rich inner lives, a year in isolation is too much. We want to hug our family and friends. We want to share a meal and laugh loudly into the open air so that our joy rings and echos through crowded rooms. 

It is hard. Life is hard. Everything is worth doing is hard. It takes courage to be in this world, and patience, and faith.

Stay safe.

Find your bliss.

Tsarina by Ellen Alpsten

 

In Tsarina, Ellen Alpsten imagines the life of a peasant widowed soon after her marriage, claimed as a war prize and handed up the ranks until she catches the eye of Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia. 

Marta may be illiterate, but she uses her wiles, wit, and physical attractiveness to become Peter's favorite bed partner. She becomes necessary to his happiness as a man and as a ruler. Renamed Catherine, Peter marries her and then crowns her his equal-- Tsarina.

The novel follows Marta/Catherine's life, taking readers into the peasant villages and the brutal life of serfs, into war, the building of St. Petersburg, and the decadent royal courts with all its intrigue and shifting alliances. 

Since the novel is written from the viewpoint of Catherine, we can't expect to understand much about Peter's inner life. Which is too bad, since he was a complicated man who pushed Russia to Westernize and modernize but still employed brutality and ruled with a heavy hand. His excesses resulted in terrible health problems. His volatile temper and complete power resulted in the torture and murder of his enemies. It appears that Catherine was able to calm his temper, and minister to him when he suffered seizures.

I did expect to understand more about Catherine's inner thoughts. Did she truly love Peter, or, as a powerless female, was she merely using her wit to survive? Late in their story, she fears Peter and has doubts.

That Peter loved Catherine appears to be true if we believe the love letters he sent her. 

Catherine's twelve pregnancies resulted in only two surviving children, but not the sons Peter so desperately desired to keep his dynasty intact. Upon Peter's death, Catherine had to quickly react to maintain control of the government.

The violence of the age comes through, the court entertainment revolving around mistreatment of jesters and anyone the royals decided to force into humiliating situations, including physical abuse, the torturing of political or romantic rivals, real or perceived, to downright murder.

Readers will gain insight into the development of Russia. Peter envisioned a modern Russia, emulating France and European civilization. It required the heavy taxation of serfs, forced labor to build St. Petersburg which would protect Russia's western border and access to the North Sea for trading. Meanwhile, he fought endless wars  with Sweden, Persia, and the Ottoman Empire.

Alpsten's debut novel has its drawbacks, and yet still was compelling; Catherine's story is at once that of a fairy-tale princess and of a powerless pawn struggling to survive. My Goodreads friends highly rated Tsarina, swept away. 

I did not appreciate the frequent, descriptive sex scenes of rape or lovemaking, which to me were not well written and took up too much space. I really don't need to know about parting thighs, etc., when knowing feelings and thoughts in response could add depth to a character. The writing is at times awkward. But I have to admit, I did not walk away from the story. 

I received a free book through the Book Club Cook Book. My review is fair and unbiased

Catherine I By Jean-Marc Nattier - http://www.barmin-ekb.ru/?page=katalog&id=100065, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2074479

TSARINA: A Novel
Ellen Alpsten
St. Martin's Press
On Sale: 11/10/2020
ISBN: 9781250214430
hardcover $27.99

from the publisher

St. Petersburg, 1725. Peter the Great lies dying in his magnificent Winter Palace. The weakness and treachery of his only son has driven his father to an appalling act of cruelty and left the empire without an heir. Russia risks falling into chaos. Into the void steps the woman who has been by his side for decades: his second wife, Catherine Alexeyevna, as ambitious, ruthless and passionate as Peter himself.

Born into devastating poverty, Catherine used her extraordinary beauty and shrewd intelligence to ingratiate herself with Peter’s powerful generals, finally seducing the Tsar himself. But even amongst the splendor and opulence of her new life—the lavish feasts, glittering jewels, and candle-lit hours in Peter’s bedchamber—she knows the peril of her position. Peter’s attentions are fickle and his rages powerful; his first wife is condemned to a prison cell, her lover impaled alive in Red Square. And now Catherine faces the ultimate test: can she keep the Tsar’s death a secret as she plays a lethal game to destroy her enemies and take the Crown for herself?

From the sensuous pleasures of a decadent aristocracy, to the incense-filled rites of the Orthodox Church and the terror of Peter’s torture chambers, the intoxicating and dangerous world of Imperial Russia is brought to vivid life. Tsarina is the story of one remarkable woman whose bid for power would transform the Russian Empire.

A View From Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe by Jeanne E. Abrams

A scholarly presentation, well presented, with the main ideas and insights easily grasped, The View from Abroad is a vivid study of the Adams, their time, and the formation of the American system of government.

John Adams lived in Europe over ten years, his wife Abigail joining him his last four years. The experience gave Adams insight into the social and economic implications of monarchical governments, helping to form his ideal American political system with a balance of power to contain both oligarchy and mobs. 

John and Abigail remained staunchly attached to their homeland, rejecting the 'fripperies' and attachment to entertainment of the wealthy court and aristocratic life styles. 

America would thrive, they believed, if the good New England values of virtue, cooperation, faith, and thrift remained foundational. Virtue was necessary for good government.

John had no idealistic view of human nature. He knew that people could be rallied by self-promoting, charismatic leaders, and that the lure of luxury would seduce many.

Revolutionary friends parted ways over the Constitution. Mercy Warren and Thomas Jefferson was critical of John Adams' views.

As a Federalist, Adams believed that a strong federal government was required to make trade agreements that would ensure America's economic growth and levy taxes to support an army. Anti-Federalist Jefferson was influenced by the radial enlightenment view of humanity progressing toward perfection, and he feared the loss of individual and states rights.

Abrams highlights Adams concerns about America. He worried that short terms of office that might create instability, especially interference by foreign nations.

I especially enjoyed the excerpts from letters written by John and Abigail, hearing their opinions in their own voices.

I received a free galley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

A View from Abroad: The Story of John and Abigail Adams in Europe
by Jeanne E. Abrams
NYU Press
Pub Date: January 26, 2021
ISBN: 9781479802876
hardcover $27.95 (USD)

from the publisher:

From 1778 to 1788, the Founding Father and later President John Adams lived in Europe as a diplomat. Joined by his wife, Abigail, in 1784, the two shared rich encounters with famous heads of the European royal courts, including the ill-fated King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette, and the staid British Monarchs King George III and Queen Charlotte.

In this engaging narrative, A View from Abroad takes us on the first full exploration of the Adams’s lives abroad. Jeanne E. Abrams reveals how the journeys of John and Abigail Adams not only changed the course of their intellectual, political, and cultural development—transforming the couple from provincials to sophisticated world travelers—but most importantly served to strengthen their loyalty to America.

Abrams shines a new light on how the Adamses and their American contemporaries set about supplanting their British origins with a new American identity. They and their fellow Americans grappled with how to reorder their society as the new nation took its place in the international transatlantic world. After just a short time abroad, Abigail maintained that, “My Heart and Soul is more American than ever. We are a family by ourselves.” The Adamses’ quest to define what it means to be an American, and the answers they discovered in their time abroad, still resonate with us to this day.