More from the Stacks: Baragwanath, Cheng , Montague, Ware, McCann

 

 

From the Stacks III:  Baragwanath, Cheng , Montague, Ware, McCann

 

Time for more novels from my book cache. I’ve got so many new and old ones that it’s a tossup which will happen first, a collapse of my shelves or the need to buy more memory for my iPad Kindle reader. I’m thinking of changing my name to Stack-o-lee.

 

 

 

Tom Baragwanath is a New Zealand novelist whose debut novel Paper Cage (Knopf, 2024, 314 pp.) is set near the farming village of Masterton, NZ, where he grew up. Lorraine Henry is a records clerk for the local police. That’s not a post that gives her a lot of street cred, but when kids begin to disappear, she grows suspicious about the half-hearted police attempts to find them. That couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that  the kids are Māori, could it? When her Māori nephew Bradley Mākara disappears as well, Lorraine has her answer. Not that it gives her more influence, as Bradley’s father is a known drug runner and gang member. Lorraine’s effort to save disappeared children involves making inroads into a rough Māori community, working with a detective, and trusting people who she’s not sure she should trust. It’s a tense novel, even when it’s not as coherent or as logical as it should be. ★★★

 

 

 

Can a rabbit teach a family what really matters? It does in The Burrow (Tin House, 2024, 187 pp.), a short novel from Australian writer/doctor Melanie Cheng. Jin and Amy Lee are workaholic parents to 10-year-old Lucie in the waning days of Melbourne’s COVID restrictions. Lockdown, a first child who died, Amy’s stasis, and Jin juggling an affair don’t make for a happy household . Nor do stay-overs by Amy’s mother Pauline, who loves Lucie but is estranged from both Amy and Jin. So how does adopting a bunny help? Pauline reads Watership Down with Lucie, who promptly names her rabbit Fiver. Rabbits are not always a good pet; as several characters note, they are nervous because they are “prey animals.”  The Burrow is, at times, a charming novel, but it is not a children’s book. It’s about what it means to care for people and animals, how to cope with fear, and how to get centered. ★★★★

 

 

 

 How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund (Ecco, 2024, 241 pp.) might sound like a title from Fredrik Backman, but it’s a new novel from Anna Montague about a psychologist who happens to have Scandinavian ancestry. Magda is the oldest member of her practice, but has devoted colleagues who’d do anything for her. She suffers from anthropophobia (social anxiety) and lives an intellectual but insular life. She seldom ventures out for drinks with her office mates and been known to duck out of parties in her honor. Luckily she has Sara, the kind of friend who can finish her sentences, badger her to leave her New York apartment, and  convince Magda to agree to a secret plan to celebrate her upcoming 70^th birthday. When Sara suddenly dies, Magda’s mourning becomes depression and a burden to bear. She’s never been fond of Sara’s husband, who tasks her with dealing with Sara’s ashes. Plus, Magda discovers that Sara had a road trip planned for the two of them that Magda feels honor-bound to take. Along the way she discovers her true identity. It is often said that psychologists are among the most screwed up people in the world. I don’t agree and think it’s a cheap trick to make Magda so self-unaware, but the novel has keen insights into friendship and grieving. ★★★

 

 

 

Ruth Ware is considered a star among twisty mystery/thriller writers. The Death of Mrs. Westaway (Scout Press, 2018, 368 pp.) has a delightful old-fashioned feel to it. That’s by design; Ware admits her love of Agatha Christie and wrote Mrs. Westaway in Christie’s style. Harriet “Hal” Westaway works as a Tarot card reader on a Penzance pier, but has bills she can’t pay, including the rental on her booth. The owner of the latter sends a thug to break a few things and promises she’s next unless she coughs up the dough. Hal has no way to do that, but smells opportunity when a letter informs her that she has inherited money and an estate house from her grandmother. Hal knows she’s the wrong Westaway but cooks up a plan to go to the estate in Cornwall to bilk the rich and get out before she’s discovered. That’s the scheme, but what if she’s wrong? Do not think Cinderella tale. The Westaway family has issues, bickers like caged badgers, and divides into two camps over whether Hal is legit. Is money at the center of all? Too simple. This novel has it all: foul play, dark and stormy nights, long buried secrets, a threatening housekeeper, things that go bump in the night, and desperate flight. If you think an estate house sounds romantic, don’t! Ware’s book contains many unlikely Christie-like touches, but they are of the sort that make both writers enticing. ★★★★

 

 

 

If you’ve never read Let the Great World Spin (Random House, 2009, 350 pp.), you should. It’s a complex book that is poetic, non-linear, and told from the perspective of 11 separate characters, but it’s an extraordinary piece of literature for which author Colm McCann rightly won a National Book Award. The title comes from Tennyson. It’s next lines are, “We stumble on. It is enough.” McCann leverages those sentiments in a novel about vulnerability and the fragility of life. Interspersed within the narrative are metaphors posing as descriptions of Philippe Petit’s 1974 walk between the two towers of the World Trade Center. Two Irish brothers, Corrigan, a Jesuit street minister, and Ciaran are the novel’s fulcrum. Ciaran visits Corrigan in his Bronx apartment in the projects. Despite obvious dangers, Corrigan leaves his apartment unlocked when he’s at work at a nursing home so that the hookers can use the restroom or stay if they need rest or shelter. Ciaran is appalled by those “hanging on to (Corrigan) like he was some bright hallelujah in the shitbox of what the world really is.” McCann deftly intersects the lives of prostitutes, a judge, his wife, mothers who lost sons in Vietnam, an overweight African American woman, the blood disease TTP, and other voices and situations. The key secondary characters include street walkers Tillie and her daughter Jazzlyn, a mother of two. The fragility of life is reinforced in a hit-and-run accident that kills two key individuals and the affects upon survivors. In an epilogue, Ciaran revisits New York 32 years later (2006) that serves the great world spinning theme. A name change by Jazzlyn’s grown daughter is significant. Those who lived in or visited New York in the 1970s can attest to McCann’s observation of its Inferno-like decadence and how much it changed. I won’t tell you that this is an easy novel to digest, but I will say that you’ll know you’ve read a masterful work  that invites pondering good, evil, naiveté, pessimism, consequences, hope, race, and injustice.

 

Rob Weir

 

Green for Danger: See the Humor Audiences in 1946 Did Not

 

 

 

Green for Danger (1946)

Directed by Sidney Gilliat

General Film Distributors, 91 minutes, not rated

★★★★

 

It’s a comedy. It’s a thriller. It’s a mystery, a tale of power, jealousy, and indeterminate romance. It’s twisty, silly, and horrifying. Green for Danger was banned because British officials feared it would cause the general public to avoid hospitals. That’s how a film that is now well-regarded lost money in its day.

 

The film was released in 1946 but was based upon a 1941 novel by Christianna Brand that has an intriguing backstory. Brand was married to a military surgeon whose anesthesiologist jocularly told her of a clever way to commit murder. She based one of her Inspector Cockrill tales on it, director Sidney Gilliat read it while on a train journey, and adapted it for the cinema.

 

The date of Brand’s novel is significant. Great Britain went to war against Germany in September 1939 and the following May, Adolf Hitler’s Luftwaffe began its infamous Blitz bombings of London, which it extended across the British Isles. By the time the RAF (Royal Air Force) gained control of the skies in May 1941, 60% of London was destroyed, as many as 43,000 citizens were killed, over 100,000 were injured, two million homes were destroyed, and over 3,300 airmen lost their lives. One of the most dreaded Nazi weapons was the V-1, an early cruise missile, which also terrorized. One could hear bombers flying overhead but when things grew silent, seek cover as it was impossible to know where the missiles would strike.

 

It was gutsy of Brand to write a cheeky comedy during the Blitz and of Gilliat to make a film involving events fresh in people’s memory. Having said all of this, Green for Danger is not a war film in any sense other than taking place during one. It is set in a hospital somewhere in the English countryside that treats civilians as well as military personnel. Its nurses are called “sister” and its male medical staff flirted shamelessly and clashed egotistically. Dr. Eden (Leo Genn) is a combination of charm and smarm. He has his eye on Nurse Linley (Sally Gray), who seems to be wavering in her affection for Dr. Barnes (Trevor Howard). Poor Dr. White (Ronald Adam), the titular head of the unit, has his hands full trying to keep his staff in line.

 

Trouble begins with the local postman Joseph Higgins (Moore Marriott) is injured in a V-1 attack. His wounds are not serious but he needs an operation. He hears something that spooks him badly as he’s wheeled in for surgery and dies on the operating table. Barnes’ competence comes into question, as it was he who administered the anesthesia, though he insists he followed correct procedure. Enter Scotland Yard Inspector Cockrill (Alastair Sim). To call him unorthodox is an injustice for the umbrella carrying Cockrill, a seeming goofball eccentric with a sharp mind and sharper tongue.

 

You no doubt suspect he will solve how poor Joe Higgins died, but part of Cockrill’s charm is that his instincts are not always correct. Heaven knows his directness doesn’t do much to calm the spurned Sister Bates (Judy Campbell), nervous Nurse Woods (Megs Jenkins), the normally unflappable Nurse Sanson (Rosamund John), or any of the other women at the hospital. Things get really tense after another murder and the shocking news that a gas attack will probably kill the popular Linley.

 

The comic relief in Green for Danger comes from the pretentious battles between the doctors and from Cockrill. Well-known actor Robert Morley was originally offered the role, but it was a pure stroke of genius to replace him with Alastair Sim. Not only was he letter perfect in the role, but he was also the sort of actor who makes you laugh just by looking at him. His mannerisms, not his appearance, put me in min d of Jacques Tati’s bumbling Monsieur Hulot. Sim gets the last word in the film and it’s delicious.

 

Things were hazy when the film was released, but only partly because World War II was barely over. Green for Danger was perhaps too clever for its day, with audiences and several important reviewers missing the fact that it’s actually a sendup of detective stories, especially those of the omniscient variety. It’s a rare movie that is easier to understand 79 years later!

 

Rob Weir

The Manchurian Candidate is Still Powerful

 

 

 

 

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Produced and directed by John Frankenheimer

United Artists, 126 minutes, PG-13

In black and white

★★★★★

 

Most psychiatrists either do not believe in brainwashing or have declared it unproven. Yet, when heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped (1974) and subsequently helped her captors rob banks, her counsel insisted she was a victim of Stockholm syndrome, in which an abused person comes to identify with her captors/abusers. You can make up your own mind about such things, but when The Manchurian Candidate came out (1962) mind control was indeed considered a real thing. The Cold War between the United States and the communist bloc was at a fever pitch. (The Berlin Wall was less than a year old.)

 

The Manchurian Candidate is a classic Cold War film from when President John F. Kennedy was in office, though George Axelrod’s script was based upon a 1959 novel from Richard Condon. Note that I said “novel.” Yet to audiences of its day it felt like a documentary, a belief enhanced by the use of melodramatic narration from Paul Frees. The movie’s depiction of North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet uses of brainwashing was taken so seriously that the CIA launched what is now a discredited program: MKUltra, the use of psychedelics (including LSD) to interrogate enemy captives.

 

The Manchurian Candidate is considered a film of such importance that it is preserved in the Library of Congress. If that doesn’t sway you, know that it’s considered an American classic and is indeed a very fine film. Stay with it, as the opening is bold and odd. A bunch of American GIs sit intently listening to a lecture on gardening. Huh? We only catch on when the women’s faces dissolve into those of Korean, Chinese, and Russian military personnel. We are actually witnessing a show trial of a different sort. An American platoon captured during the Korean War was brainwashed in China. As a demonstration of how effective it has been, Sgt. Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey) is shown a Queen of Diamonds and ordered to kill two of his men as victims and their peers sit passively.

 

As the film moves back to the United States, Shaw is hailed as a hero. Shaw is vaguely unsettled, but more by the fact that thinks his mother Eleanor (Angela Lansbury) and her fungible second husband, Senator John Iselin (James Gregory) are creeps. (The novel involved mother/son forced incest, a big no-no for a 1962 movie.) Also troubled is recently promoted Major Bennett Marco (Frank Sinatra) who has reoccurring dreams that Shaw was a hated squad leader who killed two of his own men. Another soldier has the same dreams and Marco is assigned to intelligence to investigate.

 

Shaw’s handlers prove to his American contacts that he is a controllable sleeper agent assassin by ordering Shaw to murder a newspaper editor critical of Senator Iselin, a rabid right-winger browbeaten by his wife Eleanor. She advises him, for instance, to claim that the Defense Department is riddled with communists. If that rings a bell, Iselin is clearly based upon infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy’s during the early 1950s. In the film, Shaw keeps tabs on Iselin’s liberal foe, Senator Thomas Jordan (John McGiver) and ingratiates himself to Jordan’s daughter Jocelyn (Leslie Parrish). While we’re at it, let’s assign a love interest for Major Marco, “Rosie” Cheyney (Janet Leigh). They first meet on a train and låater bails Marco out of jail for assaulting a Korean (Henry Silva!) he recognizes as an agent.

 

The Manchurian Candidate is terrifically acted, which more than compensates for situations we today might find overdone or implausible. Perhaps some of the names of the actors are unfamiliar to younger readers. In 1962, though, this was an all-star cast. Harvey was perhaps better known in Britain than in North America, but he was well cast for his icy, withdrawn demeanor. Lansbury was a veteran of stage, screen, and television–think Tony awards, Oscar nominations, Golden Globes, and Emmys–and Leigh had a distinguished movie career. She was the gal in the shower in Psycho and the mother of Jamie Lee Curtis. Could Sinatra act? He sure could. Even his mistakes were praised. (Watch for an out-of-focus scene in Manchurian Candidate used to show disorientation.)

 

Will Marco be able to stop Shaw? The Manchurian Candidate is a beat-the-clock thriller with sneaky motives, oily villains, and a shocking ending. Beware the Queen of Diamonds!

 

Rob Weir