Hotel Portofino

Hotel Portofino by J. P. O’Connell 376 pages

I don’t remember where I first saw the cover of this novel, but I was intrigued. On learning that it was not only to be made into a six-part PBS series (which is airing now), it also checked all the boxes on why I pickup a book---FABULOUS cover, historical fiction (set in the 1920s) and takes place in Italy (the Italian Riviera to be precise). It’s gotta be great, right?

Wrong! For me, this book was utterly disappointing. I’m enjoy character-driven stories, but each of these characters lacked depth or they were caricatures of what a such-and-such person should be like.

Bella Ainsworth opened the luxurious Hotel Portofino a few weeks ago, and the visitors are beginning to arrive. From their first glances, the guests look down their noses at what is described as a state-of-the-art, modern as possible, hotel.

Besides the hard-to-please guests, Bella is juggling a lot of other physically and emotionally draining events. Her marriage to Cecil is on the rocks. He comes across as slimy and supports Danionin, an equally slimy politician who thinks Mussolini is a rock star.

Their son, Lucian, is recovering from the Great War; I’m surmising that is suffers from PTSD, or shell shock as they would have called it. Bella has a potential bride coming to make his acquaintance.

Their daughter, Alice, is a nervous wreck and a people pleaser. Not sure about her at all.

I had a lot of trouble differentiating between each of the guest; they are interchangeable.

Plus, I would have never truly figured out the time setting as it is never mentioned, except on the back cover

The descriptions of the setting, the Italian Riviera were gorgeous though, which is why “Hotel Portofino” receives 2 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world instead of one. I’ve been recording the PBS series, and now I’m sacred to watch it, but this might be the one time that a movie is better than the book. 

 

The Bohemians

 The Bohemians by Jasmin Darznik 352 pages

Dorothea Lange. I wonder how many young people recognize her name or recognize the most famous photograph, “Migrant Mother” taken in 1936 during the Great Depression. Probably not that many in the thirty and younger crowd. I have to admit, while I know the name and the photograph, I knew little about the woman behind the camera. Author Daznik has written a compelling biographical fiction novel that allows readers to get to know Dorothea during her coming-of age as an artist in the 1920s.

Dorothea left her native Hoboken, New Jersey, when she as twenty-three years old for San Francisco. She arrived in a town, only twelve years from the 1906 earthquake, that celebrated and misfits.

One of the first things I learned about Dorothea was that, when she was seven years old, she suffered from polio which left her with a stunted leg and a noticeable limp. She loved photography because she felt that she could hide behind a camera; that no one would notice her.

When she first arrived, she was pickpocketed of all the money, some two hundred dollars, she had in the world. In a city where she knew no one, she was terrified. She spent her first night there on the street. One of the first people she was met was, in the book, called Caroline Lee. In reality, Caroline is referred to as “Ah-yee” or the “Chinese Mission Girl” in the historical data.

The two became quite close. Carolina introduced her to the Monkey Block, where all the artists lived. It once occupied the site of the Transamerica Building. Its pyramid-shaped is one of the city’s most iconic buildings. Back then, Monkey Block was “a four-story artists’ colony that housed some eight hundred writers, performers, and artists…and it was the heart of San Francisco’s bohemian area.” According to the Author’s Notes, that only Chinatown still stands---and looks much like it did in the 1920s.

“’The Bohemians’ is about a lost time and hidden history.” It is a story that resonates in today’s world---anti-immigration sentiments, corrupt politics, war, a world pandemic and racism.

I almost put this novel on my DNF list, but I kept seeing it on all the book sites. Granted I didn’t really care for the first 80 pages, but if you decide to read this novel, hang in there until then. Something grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. “The Bohemians” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

 

The Women

The Women by T. C. Boyle, 451 pages

The narrator to this book is a fictional Japanese man who is written as one of Frank Lloyd Wright's apprentices. I think Boyle chose him as a narrator because he could provide an 'inside' perspective but also provide some objectivity. The book is about three of Wright's mistresses. Two of them later became wives. Some of the what Wright did would still be considered scandalous today but to truly understand you have to consider the mores of the time.

It starts with the story of Frank and the last woman and goes backwards. Once I came to the end I saw why Boyle started with the last woman and went backwards. The events at the end are mentioned earlier but it doesn't prevent them from being a fitting climax to the novel.

Before reading this I was only aware of Frank Lloyd Wright as an architect. I didn't know about the mistresses, some significant events in his life or him as a person. It seems that he wasn't good about paying his bills on time. Overall, I would rate this book somewhere between good and very good.

Vile Bodies

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh, 321 pages

Adam wants to marry Nina.  Nina wants to marry Adam.  Unfortunately, he doesn't have any money.  Their pursuit of happiness amidst the anarchic social swirl of 1920s London is at the center of Vile Bodies, but it is the unsettled conditions underlying the swirl itself that are the real target of Waugh's satire.  So, once again, this time in prose, Prufrock wanders unaware into the wasteland.

The Last Ballad

The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash                 Audio Book:  14 hours, 6 minutes      Paperback Book:  592 pages                 

I could hear the tunes of Woody Guthrie in my mind while listening to this audio book.    The story is all about poor people working in Mills in the 1920s, pulling 12 hour and longer shifts 6 days a week and clearing $9.00 to pay their rent and feed their families on.      The times were rough and so were the Mill owners.     In this story the American Communist Party sends representatives down to get the workers to organize and join together to form unions to force the Mill owners to pay better wages and better hours.    One of the workers Ella May, is contacted and is convinced the union is the right way to go.    The setting of the story is Bessemer City, North Carolina and the bosses pretty much own the town and between their fraternization with the local constables and the backing of the Klan they keep people knuckled under in fear and accepting their lot as just the way it is and ain’t no changing it.    One of the gals from the Communist Party befriends Ella May while continuing to chat her up to get her to help get the word out about unionizing to all the local workers.    Since Ella May is so poor and has her own hard luck story of how life and work are in this Applachian-like setting is so filled with tragedy and hardship the Unionists ask her to speak at the rally they hold just outside of town.   She is a down to earth soul and hasn’t a clue what to say but agrees to do so.   When Ella May gets up to speak everyone falls silent as she tells of trying to live and feed her 5 children and how they have to eat biscuits and grease and stretch it to last as long as they can and how her last baby died because she wasn’t able to adequately support the family while recovering from childbirth.   Everyone can relate because almost every family has lost a child or more trying to get by on the low wages and high prices at the company store.    Ella May told stories to her children at night and sang them songs.    She wrote a song to sing at the rally about being a mother with starving children crying for food and not being able to afford any.   Not a dry eye in the house and many people signed up for the union everywhere the unionists took her to speak, always asking for her to sing “The Mother’s Ballad,” as they came to call it.   The story is filled with violence as you can imagine   but the story is a good one, kind of like Norma Rae but more in her grandmother’s life time.    A good story if a sad one.   

Moonlight Over Paris

Moonlight Over Paris by Jennifer Robson    352 pages

           

December 1923.  Lady Helena Montagu-Douglas-Parr is near death in her London home. Doctors have told her parents to start planning for the worse. I believe that her illness was scarlet fever, but that didn’t come out until about halfway through the story. Robson would have readers believe that her broken engagement has caused her illness.

She feels the shame and shun or her relatives, friends, and strangers. Her five-year engagement to Edward is over. The Great War changed him, but it wasn’t her who broke off the relationship; it was Edward. Now Helena is 28, and her prospects are few.

A letter arrives from her bohemian, free-spirited Aunt Agnes in Paris. She invites Helena to come and visit her. Helena quickly agrees, despite her parents’ concerns.

Helena has always been drawn to art and enrolls in an art school under the tutelage of Maitre Czerny. She drops her title and simply becomes Helena Parr.

Although Robson is an excellent writer and researcher, the story becomes predictable. She does her best at art but is never noticed by Czerny. She becomes fast friends with three of her classmates and, together, they rent a studio. She meets a handsome American, Sam Howard, to whom she is attracted. They hit it off and are smitten with each other, yet…

There are a lot of wonderful details in the work. I enjoyed watching Helena become an artist and gain self-confidence that he broken engagement destroyed.

Although it’s predictable, Moonlight Over Paris has strong characters and character development. Since I didn’t expect anything different, I really enjoyed this read.

I give Moonlight Over Paris  4 out of 5 stars.

Saint Mazie

Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg     336 pages

Mazie Phillips’ story opens in 1907 when she receives a diary for her 10^th birthday. 

Rescued from her abusive parents and poverty in Boston by her sister, Rosie, she is now a New Yorker. Mazie LOVES New York. She loves it streets, the men and women who live there, the air, everything. The diary entries are typical of a developing young lady. As the Jazz Age blossoms, Maize blossoms. The entries are spasmodic until about 1916.

Rosie had married a wealthy man who owns the Venice movie theater. Now Rosie is sick, and Mazie needs to help at the theater. Her brother-in-law, Louis, needs someone who is honest and good with money. Therefore she is put in the ticket cage. She feels like a caged animal.

Mazie knows everyone in the neighborhood---from the bums to the upper lower class. That’s who lives in the Bowery. Then the Great Depression hits. Poverty and homelessness become more widespread. By this time, Mazie owns the Venice and throws it open to those most in need. Oh, she’s still showing the movies, but those who need a warm/cool place to stay for awhile are welcome.

The diary entries continue to be spasmodic and include a chorus of voices that help fill in Mazie’s story. While Attenberg’s story ends in 1939, the “Queen of the Bowery,” as she was known, died in 1961.

I was attracted to this story for two reasons: 1) Supposedly more than 90 years after Mazie began writing in her diary, it’s discovered by a documentarian in search of a good story. However, readers never hear from the movie-maker until the last third of the book.  It didn’t work for me. 2) Maize was a real person living; she was profiled in Joseph Mitchell’s Up in The Old Hotel, a collection of short stories based on real people.

I was never able to get into the plot or the characters. In my opinion, Attenberg wasn’t able to pull off the story. That’s why I’m giving Saint Mazie two out of five stars.

Circling the Sun

Circling the Sun by Paula McLain   368 pages

If you, like me, loved Paula McClain’s novel, The Paris Wife, I’ll bet good money that you are going to enjoy her new novel as much.

The timeframe is still the 1920s, but instead of the United States and France, McLain’s new story takes to the wilds of Africa, when it was still a remote and uncivilized country. Kenya wasn’t Kenya yet; the majority of countries as we know them today didn’t exist either.

McLain also follows suit in that she has picked a real women to portray, Beryl Markham. I didn’t know much about Markham other than she was a renowned aviator. Because of that, I must also say that, as I was reading, I often thought of Anne Morrow Lindbergh as depicted in Melanie Benjamin’s wonderful novel, The Aviator’s Wife.

The story begins in 1934 as Markham is beginning her solo trip across the Atlantic from England to America. No one, not man nor woman, had ever managed this daring feat. After leaving readers with their hearts in their stomachs, the story starts where all stories start—at the beginning, when Charles “Clutt” and Clara Clutterbacck relocate their family from England to a farm in Njoro in the British East Africa Protectorate. From there, we watch young Beryl grow into a trailblazing horse trainer.

There were lots of names of town and native tribe language that I didn’t know how to pronounce, but it didn’t get in the way of the story. The writing and plot are solid, the story intriguing and enchanting, and the characters, both fictional and real, are captivating.

I give Circling the Sun 6 out of 5 stars.