Library Limelights 198

Pam Jenoff. The Lost Girls of Paris. Large Print. USA: Thorndyke Press, 2019.

It's a brave author who tackles fiction about true-life espionage when the real events ‒ so critical, so enthralling ‒ can overshadow it. In 1946 Grace Healey discovers a dozen photos in New York's Grand Central Station that set her on a mission to find the owner, someone called Trigg. Switching to wartime 1944, Eleanor Trigg is permitted to set up a female operative program for Britain's MI6; recruits will go into France behind enemy lines. We follow Marie, one of the recruits (based on real-lifeViolette Szabo). Grace's efforts to identify the women and their stories are painfully slow; the action is essentially in France with Marie. Ultimately their spy network is compromised (by whom is the big mystery, never resolved) and at least a dozen women die at Nazi hands. While descriptions of the women's training and radio transmissions seem more authentic than the romantic sidelights, the author belies it with a note: "I have taken great liberties with the ways the women trained and deployed."

Beyond the non-climactic story, what is it about the writing quality that leaves me cold? I'm not there with these women. Their bravery, their losses, have no impact. Despite the espionage subject matter, it seems I'd stumbled into the historical fiction genre which is not the same as spy thrillers. Or is it now historical crime fiction?? Mediocre writing is neither engaging nor inspiring. Is it fair to compare Lost Girls with the works of exceptional novelists like William Boyd (Restless, 2006) or even Kate Atkinson (Transcription, 2018) where the heroine did not go into France? Then there's Sarah Helm's biographical A Life in Secrets (2005) about Vera Atkins, the real life "Eleanor." A quick glance into Kate Quinn's similar novel The Alice Network (2017) looks more rewarding.

Grace:

▪ Did he feel awkward too, she wondered, about having slept with his dead best friend's wife? (177)

▪ Seeing him again would be a mistake, and meeting him in Washington an even worse one. (186)

▪ "You didn't think so many of them were arrested on their own, did you? No," Annie said, answering her own question. "Somebody must have given them up." (292)

▪ Grace stared at the paper. It was Eleanor's own confession, as surely as if it had been signed. (381)

Eleanor:

▪ "No bureaucratic meddling," the Director said. You report only to me." She could hear the desperation in his voice, how very much he needed her to make this work. (35)

▪ "It's not the girls. Something is wrong over there." (303)

▪ She was being cast out like a foreign invader from the very place she had created. (409)

▪ "I want to know everything — including how they caught the girls in the first place." (481)

Marie:

▪ The unwanted hands of strange men always transported her back to her childhood, where her father's painful grip was always followed by a slap or strike. (189-90)

▪ "Fear is always the first instinct — and rightly so. It's what keeps us on our guard — and alive. But you must train it, harness it." (209)

▪ "You have to get the messages through. The information we send to London is critical." (218)

▪ Josie was clutching a dark metal egg to her chest. A grenade, like the ones they had trained with at Arisaig House. (468)

Early in training:

Marie's head snapped around. "Missing?" 

"Missing in action, presumed dead." 

"What happened to them?" 

"No one knows." 

"But we're radio operators, for goodness sake. Is it really that dangerous?" 

Josie threw back and laughed so loudly the men at the next table looked up. "Where do you think you'll be broadcasting from, BBC Studios? You're transmitting in Occupied France and the Germans will do anything to stop you." Then her expression grew serious. "Six weeks." 

"Excuse me?" 

"That's the average life expectancy of a radio operator in France. Six weeks." (88)

Eleanor loses an argument:

"When I took this on, you promised me complete control." 

"Over your girls, yes. But not the whole bloody war. This is part of something much bigger. The invasion is coming and every day of the full moon that we don't drop personnel and supplies is an opportunity missed." 

"But, sir, if the information about the drops are conveyed over the compromised radio, our agents and supplies could land in the wrong hands. We have to stop this!" Her voice rose, breaking at the end. 

"I can't shut down the entire operation on an unsubstantiated hunch," he countered. "Everything must go forward." He leaned in, lowering his voice. "The invasion is weeks — no, days away. We can't afford distractions." (304-5)

Grace's liberation:

"So you'll be coming with me then?" 

"I didn't say that." Her words came out more snappishly than Grace intended. 

"You belong with your family," her mother pressed. "It's time to come home." 

"Mother, I don't want to." It was the first time she had said those words aloud to anyone but Mark. She watched the inevitable hurt that crossed her mother's face and waited for her to regroup for another argument. "I love it here. I have a job. And my own place." The flat wasn't much, but it was hers. 

Her mother's face softened. "You know, part of me is jealous," her mother confessed. "I always wanted a life like this." Grace was surprised. (414)

Jokha Alharthi. Celestial Bodies. 2010, 2018. UK: Sandstone Press, 2019.

Winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize, this novel was impossible to find (in May) in our library system or at U.S. or Canadian online booksellers, a fact I found stunning. It's the first translated work to win the re-categorized prize, and the first by an Arab (and a woman, at that). Here is an extended Omani family living through twentieth-century modernization, how each generation is affected by changes ‒ or not. Most women were married as teenagers, either expecting or spurning the elusive "other half" soul-mate myth. A chart assists with a full cast of characters ... a husband Azzan, bewitched by a Bedouin woman; mature Abdallah, still suffering from his father's abuse; Zarifa the ex-slave; Khawla, who waits twenty years to leave her marriage; oddly-named London, a pediatrician in love with a self-centred artiste; ... and so many more.

The narrative alternates from one family member to another; memory shifts between childhood and adulthood may require the reader to become accustomed to the construct, but it works effectively to open up each individual. Celestial desires of the heart contrast with the gravity of daily life and accepted customs. Beyond the general Islamism, slaves from Africa (the slave trade in Oman only effectively abolished in 1970) introduced elements of superstition and exorcism. Allusion to the defeated Imamate of intellectual and artistic renown still stirs resentment (or more) in some, but the arts and literature yet flourish in the Sultanate even as international business expanded. Alharthi gives voice to multiple facets of Omani living, ultimately demonstrating that humankind is really universal.

One-liners:

▪ This anger of mine pursues me to the edge, where I'm screaming without making the slightest sound, crying without any tears. (61)

▪ Very soon she was back, spitting and swearing at the viper whom her son had married. (78)

▪ The only books Khawla could bear to read were translations of Harlequin Romances, books that Asma scorned, refusing to be seen holding them for even a few moments. (97)

▪ Yes, he had done it: a respectably able wife, circling within his gravitational pull, quietly, invisibly, inside its orbital path, never straying beyond. (195)

▪ She would not live forever, her whole and entire life, under the sway of her mother, in the way that I lived completely cowed by my father's every word, she declared. (207)

Multi-liners:

▪ Do you love me, Mayya? I asked her, once everyone else was asleep. She was startled, I could see that. She said nothing and then she laughed. (11)

▪ Anyway, as the proverb-maker says: The flesh of youth? Old age devours it! (23)

▪ In her sleep she saw nothing, not even dreams. Entering the realm of sleep meant coming into a place of no responsibilities where she felt nothing, and the things she had anxiously needed to hold on to while awake flee away. (55)

▪ I chose him. Everyone of you rejected my choice, and so I insisted. What else could I do after that? (61)

▪ He beats her? She said he beats her? The peasant's son beats my daughter, mine? (62)

▪ My son Salim returns from college and before he says Good evening he asks, What's for supper? If his mother's response doesn't please him he turns around and leaves the house, heading for the pizza takeout or McDonald's. (93)

▪ That's when she got her nickname, Bas ish-Shaab. Everyone's Bus. (142)

To inspire poetry:

Her piercingly sweet fragrance and the way she stood there ‒so close to him! ‒ was even more disturbing. But it was her words that truly made him lose what was his already fragile sense of control.I am Najiya. I am Qamar, the Moon. It is you I want. 

For many years to come these words would reverberate through his head. I am Najiya, I am the Moon, Qamar, and it is you I want. Azzan had not known many women in the course of his life. Certainly he had never known a woman of such resolution and valour, a woman called after the moon itself. She deserved an even greater name than that, he would muse. She was more beautiful than any image he had ever seen or would ever see again in the whole of his life. (41)

After childbirth:

Every day, Asma would ask her, So what does it feel like, this motherhood? Is it the greatest feeling in the world? Mayya wouldn't answer. All she felt was exhaustion, pains in her back and belly, and an urgent need to bathe. Her itchy scalp, which made her want to constantly rub her fingers into her hair, was simply no longer bearable. Finally her mother permitted her to have a quick bath but only on condition that the water didn't touch her hair. After all, colds stalked brand-new mothers, Salima would remind her. And if their hunt was successful, well, we all know that fever is fatal to new mothers ... Meanwhile, tiresome Asma went on asking about motherhood and what she called the warm intimacy of nursing! (53-4)

Her son argues:

No, Zarifa, no! Merchant Sulayman has no claim on me. We are free ‒ the law says so, free, Zarifa. Open your eyes. The world has changed but you just keep on saying the same words over and over: ya hababi, ya sidi, my master, my honoured master. While everybody's gotten educated and gotten jobs, you've stayed exactly where you always were, the slave of Merchant Sulayman like that is all there is. He's just an old man who can't even keep his hands steady! Open your eyes, Zarifa! We are free, and everyone is his own master, and no one owns anyone else. I am free and I can travel wherever and whenever I like and I can name my children whatever I want to name them. If it's what you want, then stay with him, the old fool. Fine. Just stay then. (104)

Alex Gray. Never Somewhere Else. UK: Canongate Crime Books, 2002.

Another Scottish writer I wanted to explore, going back to an early book featuring DCI William Lorimer in a police procedural. Here, he's frustrated over three murders of young women that look like serial killings, occupying his time night and day to the distress of wife Maggie. When he's grudgingly forced to accept the help of a criminal profiler, Solomon Brightman, it takes some time for mutual respect to grow. A familiar theme is the annoyance and possible interference from newspaper reporters like Martin who seems to have disturbing insider information. More victims succumb as the killer eliminates potential witnesses to his identity.

The characters are not exactly compelling despite Lorimer's piercing blue eyes and Solomon's curly hair. Martin gets his macho on with Diane, women's page reporter. In one way, the book was a serendipitous choice in that the famed Glasgow School of Art plays a role. In real life, architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh's most celebrated structure was gutted in a 2018 fire and rebuilding to the original specifications will take years; nice to get the feel of it here. I didn't find satisfactory answers to some questions such as why/how was the killer using Lucy's old vehicle. And really, we didn't need to be told so often that Solomon is a Jew. The Epilogue clippings, though, were a good touch. Not difficult for the reader to bounce ahead of the cops early on.

One-liners:

▪ Maggie loved her house, and yearned for it to be their home, but more and more it seemed that her husband was merely a passing stranger, a bedtime companion. (71)

▪ Whoever this killer was, his profile was adding up to show a man of Machiavellian cleverness and ruthless disregard for human life. (123-4)

▪ "I have done nothing wrong whatsoever and you have an obligation to eliminate me from your, your, enquiries." (251)

Multi-liners:

▪ This psychologist dealt with intangibles. Lorimer preferred to deal with facts. (44-5)

▪ What struck him most about the picture was the beautiful art nouveau lamp curled against the white sky. It seemed to throw up the real contrast of Glasgow: City of Culture and city of crime. (50)

▪ The very lifelessness of the corpse had spelt out clearly to him how terribly evil it was to commit such a deed. To take away forever that vital spark which changed a meaningless husk into a man. (100)

▪ "Bastard knows too damn much for my liking. Nosied into something he should have left alone." (253)

▪ Who would ever have imagined that these slim hands with their pearly painted nails could wield such an effective scalpel? Appearance and reality. (264)

Tracking the profiler:

"I'm sorry, Dr Brightman just left." 

"Oh, just my luck!" Martin groaned, affecting the tome of an anxious student trying to locate his tutor. 

"Is it urgent?" The secretary's voice became concerned. 

"Well, sort of. Do you know whereabouts he might have gone?""He was heading for the Art School, I believe. He should be there within half an hour." 

"Thanks. I'll maybe catch up with him there." 

Martin replaced the phone and grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair. The Art School! Was there some new lead concerning Lucy Haining that he should make it his business to find out about? Martin's long legs took the stairs two at a time. Whatever Dr Brightman might stand and stare at this time, he wanted to see it too. (124)

Family of 4th victim:

"Didn't you want to see your daughter more often?" 

"This is a Godly house, Chief Inspector. I wasn't going to take Norma into a place like that!" 

"A place like what, Mrs Yarwood?" Lorimer's question was smooth as steel. 

"A den of iniquity! All these terrible pictures everywhere! All the terrible goings on in that ‒ Art School! And see where it all led to? I told her. I told her she'd come to a bad end!" 

"Bad end," echoed Norma, a silly smile still fixed on her face. 

"Perhaps you remember the pictures?" 

"Why should I remember them? A product of Satan, that's what they were. No graven images were ever allowed in this house. She never got those ideas from me. She had a good and Godly upbringing here." (231-2)