Swede Caroline: Brilliant or ...?

 

 

Swede Caroline (2024)

Directed by Finn Bruce and Brook Driver

Belstone Pictures, 97 minutes, R (pixelated nudity, minor violence)

★★★★

 

Swede Caroline (note spelling) is the strangest film I’ve seen since Hundreds of Beavers and matches its production values as a homemade film made on a shoestring budget. It was made in Britain and made just $68,000 worldwide, so I doubt you’ve ever heard of it. If you can stream it or find on DVD, though, it’s worth trying. You will have one of two opinions about it; you’ll either find it so wacky you’ll hoot despite yourself, or you’ll think it’s amateurish and dumb.

 

We will get into this, but first consider that few people on the planet as obsessed by gardening and rural nostalgia as the English. If you’ve ever watched Masterpiece Theatre it’s practically a given that there were mentions of gardening. How many times have we seen some upper-class twit with a name like Lady Handspring Buffington Chicken-Plucker trimming her prize-winning roses, or a country fair with Farmer Bursten Pantstear showing off his sheep? (E’yup lads, look at yonder ryet nice yows by the sitch.)

 

Swede Caroline is a mockumentary on gardening. Caroline (Jo Hartley) grows big marrows (a courgette or zucchini) that can weigh hundreds of pounds. Alas, not everything is on the up and up at the agricultural fair in Shepton Mallet (Somerset). Somehow Caroline’s marrows never win because the veggie judge (Mark Silcox) disqualifies her for things no one else sees-like a hairline crack- and awards the cup to someone from the better classes. Caroline is not such a person; she’s divorced, a bit on the rough side, lives in a council flat, and has a bear-like goofball boyfriend Willy (Celyn Jones) who is more brawn than brain.

 

Rigged judging is scandalous enough, but a line is crossed when someone sneaks into Caroline’s back garden, smashes into her small greenhouse, and steals her plants and seeds. It’s the crime of the century in Shepton Mallet. Willy tries to calm Caroline, but another neighbor, Paul (Richard Lumsen) launches a full-scale investigation. He fancies himself an expert because he’s watched a lot of TV programs about detectives and has their techniques down. (Not!) Caroline knows that Paul is basically an ageing slobbish geek who has no life, wiles away time playing video games, and watches computer porn. Speaking of which, Caroline approaches Louise (Aisling Bea) who allegedly does know something about detection, though every time we see her she’s wearing a slinky robe, as is her husband Lawrence (Ray Ferron).

 

As the investigations proceed, one silly thing after another occurs. I shan’t reveal them other than to say: bad cellphone video, jealousy, an MP (Member of Parliament), a close encounter with a garden fork, demolition, plant napping, social class satire, mallows posing as mammaries, and a group of swingers. Through it all, Kirsty (Rebekah Murrell) gives us a meta backseat point of view. She is allegedly making a documentary about the investigation. (Get it? A documentary within a mockumentary.) I won’t pretend that the script will knock Shakespeare from his literary pedestal. Directors Bruce and Driver made the film for just $64k, cut every corner that could be cut, and turned them into roundabouts. I’ll leave it you to determine if what’s on the screen really is amateurish or whether it’s tongue-in-cheek deliberate. I suspect it was an absolute hoot to make what is akin to an extended Monty Python sketch. Perhaps the cast made a few quid on the video release and buggered off to the pub to laugh and hoist a few pints.

 

About the title. There is a passing mention to a Swede, but that part of the plot is too convoluted to connect the dots clearly. My theory is that it’s another of the film’s many in-jokes. It could be an oblique nod to the film’s (tame) sex subplot. Sweden is generally credited with being the first nation to legalize what was then called “pornography.”* Then again, it might just be a bad pun. Swedes are rutabagas in Britain, though rutabagas are not marrows.

 

Like Hundreds of Beavers, the best way to digest Swede Caroline is just to go with it. Let its absurdity wash over you like V8 Juice.

 

Rob Weir

 

* Many film histories consider Sweden’s I am Curious Yellow (1967) to be a forerunner in mainstreaming movie with overt sexual content. It was followed by Blue in 1968. The Swedish flag is yellow and blue, though the films are black and white.

 

If in Richmond, Catch this Exhibit

 

 

Frida as Toddler

 

Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth

Virginia Museum of Fine Art (Richmond)

Through September 28, 2025

 

Should you find yourself anywhere near Richmond between now and the end of September, by all means make a stop at the city’s Virginia Museum of Fine Art (VMFA) to see Frida Kahlo: Beyond the Myth.

 

A splash of cubism

 

 

Kahlo (1907-54) is, of course, one of the world’s most famed artists–so much so that perhaps you are, such as I was, suspicious that there’s anything new to reveal about her. Wrong! First of all, though Kahlo died at 47, she was prolific in numerous genres, including surrealism, cubism, symbolism, magical realism, and modernism. Second, she had an adventurous love life that remains shocking to some. Her great love was Mexican muralist Diego Rivera to whom she was married twice (1929-39 and 1940-54), but they had an open marriage. Kahlo was openly bisexual and among her lovers was Josephine Baker, Leon Trotsky, photographer Nikolas Muray, Japanese sculptor Isamu Noguchi (who might also been a Rivera conquest), singer Chavela Vargas, and possibly actress Dolores del Rio and painter Georgia O’Keeffe. Though she was a petite mite (about 5’3” tall and not more than 100 pounds), she didn’t apologize for her admiration for communism or her love affairs. 

 

Hit by bus 1926

 

 

These things have long been known about Kahlo, but what’s new in VMFA exhibit are images of her seldom seen outside of Mexico, including hurried drawings, self-portraits, and photos and paintings of her made by others. Kahlo was just 15 when she met 41-year-old Rivera. When they married the first time, Frida was already in the poor health that haunted her for most of her life. At 18, she was hit by a bus. In all, she endured 32 operations, including the amputation of her gangrenous left leg in 1953. (In all likelihood gangrene is what killed her in 1954.)

 

Suicide of Dorothy Hale 1939

 

 

 

Kahlo, Sun and Life 1947

 

 

Granted that two world wars and her love of surrealism and modernism predisposed her to favor gloomy subjects, but so too did her Mexican identity with its fixation on death, skeletons, and the supernatural. The VMFA exhibit is dotted with such material.

 

That said, most visitors are most likely to react most strongly to subjects that are about her. Kahlo was one of those people with plastic (as in malleable) features. Kahlo was something of a fashion plate, a bright quetzal-like presence who wore beautiful clothes based upon traditional Mexican dress. Yet, she retained her unibrow and, depending upon how she posed could look either alluring, coquettish, or masculine. The latter tendency was enhanced later in life when she seldom bothered to pluck her moustache-like upper lip. Her attractiveness also varied according to who was painting or photographing her. Or, how she felt. Naturally, she painted the body cast in which she was encased after one of her many surgeries. 

 

Age 19, first self-portrait

 

 

Photo by Imogen Cunningham, 1931

 

 

Seated nude self-portrait 1930

 

By Nikolas Muray 1939

Frida with Figurine 1939 by Muray

 

By Dora Marr 1939

 

 

 

 

 

Self-portrait with loose hair 19477

 

Today Frida Kahlo would have reaped NIL (Name, Image, Likeness) royalties. And you could bet she’d dictate the terms!

 

Rob Weir

 

Small Towns West and North of Richmond VA

 

When most travelers think of Virginia, the places that first pop to mind are suburban Washington, DC, the Chesapeake Bay, and Virginia Beach. Devotees might pay visits to  Civil War battlefields,* presidential homes (Monticello and Mt. Vernon top the list),  and specialty whiskey tours in the Appalachians. But how many think of Goochland County? Where you ask? Exactly!

 

Tuckahoe Plantation Exterior

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interior

Interior

 

 

Mahala Boyd, enslaved at Tuckahoe

Where the enslaved quarters were located

 

Recently we visited some friends living near Richmond. Virginia’s capital has the usual sprawl and ring roads, but it’s amazing how quickly the pace slows when you leave it. We stayed at a Vrbo in Tuckahoe on Richmond’s western edge booked by our friends. We were shocked when we drove down a one-mile dirt lane to encounter an elegant white mansion. Tuckahoe Plantation was the childhood home of Thomas Jefferson. It was owned by the Randolph family but when William Randolph III died in 1745- one year after his wife- an agreed upon codicil in Randolph’s will made Peter Jackson the caretaker of his three children. (Easily done, as Peter’s wife was a Randolph.) Young Thomas spent ages 2-9 at Tuckahoe and, according to legend, developed distaste for slavery there. (That might be apocryphal given that TJ did precious little to free enslaved people.) For the record, we didn’t stay in the plantation house; we bedded in a farm house a few hundred yards away, but we got a private tour of the house with the James River running within sight of the back door.

 

The town of Tuckahoe was six miles away, near the campus of the University of Richmond. The town is prim and neat and its population of 49,000 is twice as large as all of Goochland County. Our friends lived in Manakin-Sabot, which has 4,634 people–if you can find them. Some maps list them as separate villages and our GPS didn’t recognize either until we put in Richmond in the address for our friends’ road. The county seat is Goochland, but GPS has trouble with it as well unless you ask for Goochland Courthouse (pop. 1,301), which is distinct from Goochland or Goochland Maidens! 

 

 

You are in horse country in Goochland County and many of the others heading north toward Front Royal and Winchester. We’re talking miles and miles of white fences to contain horses. If you had a lumber monopoly, you’d be able to buy New England and lease it to Canada. As for the livestock, we’re not talking heavy Percherons, Clydesdales, or swaybacked nags. These well-groomed beasties are thoroughbreds, riding horses, and polo ponies.

 

Our original homeward plan was to keeping going west, perhaps stop in Charlottesville, and then decide whether to follow the Skyline Drive or proceed to I-81N. Rain changed our decision–the Skyline Drive’s views would be limited and 81 is a high-speed curtain of trucks–so we decided to meander on some backroads. As for the towns of Goochland County, there pretty much aren’t any! Just dots of the map with names like Crozier, Gum Spring, Oilville, Fork Union, and Kent’s Store. 

 

 

 

As we drove west and north of Richmond, we witnessed Virginia’s contrasts. Make no mistake, horse country is beautiful and you’ll see lots of Virginia’s signature architecture, large white homes with second-story front-facing verandahs upon which no foot ever trod. You’ll also see rural life many steps down from McMansions. Local businesses tend to be repair shops, farmstands, antique shops, fabricators, and visitor centers to tell you what you can do in the area. Hint: If you’re enjoying the scenery and tranquil pace of life, you’re already doing what you can do there!

 

Unless you wish to veer east again to Culpepper or forge northward toward Front Royal, there’s not much in the way of a full-services town. Front Royal is generally considered a supply center for the Skyline Drive, the Appalachian Trail, or the Shenandoah Valley, though it’s a fairly sleepy place and many people push northeast to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Since those two towns sort of defined the southwestern edge of our childhood explorations we headed north to Winchester, grabbed some food, connected with Route 81, and joined the trucks trekking northward. But I’ll say it again, Virginia horse country is mighty pretty–even in the rain. 

 

 

 

 

Rob Weir

 

* Virginia is littered with Civil War sites, so it scarcely matters which part you visit.

 

 

 

 

 

A Call to Spy: Remarkable Women, Flat Film

 

 

 

A Call to Spy (2020)

Directed by Lydia Dean Pilcher

IFC Films, 124 minutes, PG-13 (war violence)

★★★

 

A Call to Spy (incompletely) tells the story of two unsung heroes of World War II: Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas) and Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte).

 

Many Americans assume that World War II began on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Europeans, Russians, and the Chinese know it started two years earlier. By 1940, the situation was dire, with much of Europe and North Africa occupied (or controlled) by fascist Germany or Italy and North Africa indirectly so. In Europe, only Britain stood against fascism and suffered near-constant bombing by the German Luftwaffe.

 

Virginia Hall grew up amidst gentility in Virginia and yearned to be a diplomat. She had three strikes against her; she was a woman, she lost her left leg in a hunting accident in 1933, and she did not suffer fools gladly. After being disqualified for serious work, Hall made her way to Britain and was accepted in Winston Churchill’s SOE (Special Operations Executive). Because of her language skills, she was sent into Vichy, France,* to set up networks, report on German activity, recruit members of the French Resistance, and organize sabotage raids. There was scarcely time to train agents like Hall; as late as 1943, the average lifespan for spies was just six weeks.

 

Noor’s story is woven into Hall’s though the two shared only the fact that they were part of SOE Section F headed by Vera Atkins (Stana Katic). Noor, was born in Moscow to an Indian father and American mother, was a Sufi Muslim pacifist, a poet, a talented musician, and happened to be good with electronics. She was recruited to be a radio operator. If anything, she was in more danger than Hall as she and her 34-pound transmitter had to change locations constantly to keep ahead of Nazi detectors. Unlike Hall, she would be captured, taken to Dachau, and executed.

 

That could have been Hall’s fate as well. Infamous Nazi monster Klaus Barbie (Marc Rissman) considered her the most dangerous spy of the war and obsessed with trying to capture and torture her. Hall (1906-82) operated under code names such as Marie and Diane had an uncanny abilities to organize, recognize potential allies, disguise herself, and avoid capture. She also had a remarkable ability to tolerate pain. Few knew she was missing a leg and, in her one major slip-up of trusting Father Robert Alesch (Joe Doyle), a double agent, got out of Germany ahead of Barbie’s pursuit by walking across the snow-covered Pyrenees into Spain and making her way to Portugal for transport back to England. (Those who knew often heard her joke about “Cuthbert,” her name for the leather-and-steel prosthetic she wore.) She returned to France in 1944, disguised as an old woman after having her teeth ground down and stained. This time she was a radio operator and still avoided capture while collecting vital information in advance of D-Day.

 

U.S. General William Donovan recommended her for a Distinguished Service Cross to go with her Croix du guerre and an MBE. He vouched for her when she sought to join the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency after the war. Alas, her CIA career was marked by extreme sexism and was an unhappy one. To this day, Hall’s name is revered in France and nearly forgotten in the United States.

 

Both Hall and Noor deserve to be known. Alas, A Call to Spy serves only as an  introduction.  Even if you are not a big reader, pick up Sonia Purcell’s ironically named A Woman of No Importance to learn about Hall–even if you merely skim it. The movie leaves out so much, including her family’s disapproval and her marriage to French agent Paul Guillot, though he was 8 years younger and 6 inches shorter than she. The film provides enough to imagine Hall’s gallantry, but not the scope of the prison breaks, sabotage, and smuggling airmen and POW escapees out of France. Overall, the film is flat and lacks sparks.

 

I suspect Hall’s story was conflated with that of Noor to add notes of political correctness to the film. There was no need to do so. Almost no one saw this film, and Noor bloody well deserves a film of her own!

 

Rob Weir

 

*When France fell in 1940, it was divided into two zones, one controlled by the Nazis directly from Paris, and a southern collaborationist government from Vichy. Hall operated as “Marie” in Lyon (Vichy zone).

The Jackal's Mistress: Chris Bohjalian's Novel of the Waning Confederacy

 

 

 

The Jackal’s Mistress (2025)

By Chris Bohjalian

Doubleday, 308 pages.

★★★★

 

The Civil War is the most written about subject in American history, hence it’s hardly surprising to see novelists try their hand. Vermont’s Chris Bohjalian is the latest. That surprised me, but he seldom repeats himself.

 

This review is headed by something I saw at the Valentine Museum in Richmond as I was reading Bohjalian: the remains of a statue of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. It was spray-painted and pulled from its base on Monument Avenue in 2020, a leafy street that used to be lined with “heroes” of the Confederacy before anger over police killings of African Americans led young people to counterattack symbols of the Lost Cause. Romanticism of a noble experiment prevailed throughout the South for a century and a half after the Civil War ended. It was as if slavery had nothing to do with the conflict, which just happens to be the biggest load of horse exhaust in our history. The second is that Confederates were gallant and gentlemanly.

 

The Jackal’s Mistress takes us to the Shenandoah Valley in 1864, where Union generals such as Sheridan and Hunter conducted a scorched earth policy to break the Confederacy. Forgotten is that Confederacy also looted the region, especially General Jubal Early and the brutal John Mosby and his gang-like “rangers.” Early and Mosby commandeered slaves, confiscated farm animals, raided food larders, and summarily hanged “traitors.” By 1864, though, Grant was nearing Richmond and the Confederacy’s only hope was that Lincoln would lose reelection and a favorable peace could be negotiated. That’s not what happened.

 

Bohjalian reminds us that people die and are maimed until the ink is dry on the surrender papers. Maiming is the fate of Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the 11^th Vermont regiment. As his troops regrouped, he was hit so badly that he lost two fingers and a leg. He lost so much blood that it was near-certain he’d die. His comrades left him in an abandoned house near Berryville, Virginia, with minimal supplies because any attempt to move him behind Union lines would kill him.

 

Instead, an elderly freeman named Joseph and his wife Sally discover Weybridge. They  inform Libby Steadman, their white employer who lives with her younger niece Jubilee, and shares work, food, and occasional shelter with Joseph and Sally. Her husband Peter, last she heard, was wounded and in a Union POW camp in Ohio. When Joseph kills Libby’s potential rapist–probably one of Mosby’s Rangers–Libby must dispose of the body. Libby has been lucky in one respect; she runs a mill necessary to the Confederacy, but she must maintain the fiction that Joseph and Sally are her slaves. Libby hates the “blue-bellies” from the North, but decides to nurse Weybridge solely on the hope that some Yankee woman might have done the same for Peter. But Libby has a house full of trouble. If Mosby or Early find out about the dead attacker or that she’s hiding Weybridge, the entire makeshift household will be a postmortem one. 

 

What could go wrong? All Libby needs are guns and ammunition for protection, a doctor to bribe into silence, ways to prevent anyone from discovering Weybridge, unavailable medicines, whiskey to sterilize his wound, protein to help him regain strength, ways to keep neighbors from talking, and more luck than a riverboat gambler.

 

Do you suspect a potential romance? The discovery of shared humanity and mutual understanding? Forgive and forget? Don’t be so sure! Jubilee is so contemptuous of their Union patient that she dubs him “Jackal,” though she’s intrigued that he was a professor at Middlebury College before the war and shares the household contempt for slavery. (Peter Steadman freed Joseph and Sally before the war.) Besides, Weybridge has a wife and two sons back in Vermont. Lots of things happen, but not aways in predictable ways. The Jackal’s Mistress is a veritable page-turner that is touching, thrilling, tragic, and tense.

 

Several final notes. First, Bohjalian based his tale on the true-life tales of Lt. Henry Bedell of Westfield, Vermont, and Bettie Van Metre of Virginia, her imprisoned husband James, and her black friends Ginny and Dick Runner. Second, Berryville is about 20 miles from the Union stronghold of Harper’s Ferry, an indication of how close the Confederacy was to defeat. Finally, the Confederacy raided my Pennsylvania hometown three times and burned it in 1864. Not so gentlemanly!*

 

Rob Weir  

 

* One of Bohjalian’s characters provides a perfect postscript from 1937. Commenting on Richmond’s statue of J.E.B. Stuart on Monument Avenue she says, “… it’s hollow…. I find that telling. A hollow statue for a hollow cause.”

 

 

 

Detective Story a Fine Late Film Noir/Drama

 

 

Detective Story (1951)

Directed by William Weyler

Paramount, 103 minutes, not-rated

★★★★

 

Detective Story can be tagged, “Who is Mary” Mary McLeod isn’t the central character of Detective Story, but she is its pivot. We first meet her (Eleanor Parker) outside of the police precinct in which her husband James (Kirk Douglas) is a detective. The two sit in a car and make out like teenagers before James returns to work.

 

Inside the station house we see a different side of James. First, though, another officer brings in a shoplifter (Lee Grant) who is like a second pair of eyes for viewers. She’s also a sarcastic and funny New Yorker and we suspect her outward naivete might be an act. We see precinct life largely from her POV with all of its noise, confusion, seriousness, and absurdity.

 

James reveals himself as a throw-the-book-at-‘em hard-nose, a product of the fact that his father was a criminal who drove his mother mad. We see James’ zealousness when young Arthur Hill (Craig Hill) is being booked for stealing money from his employer. His was an impulsive act for which he is embarrassed. Although he has a character witness and his employer is willing to drop the charges if he’s paid back, James wants Arthur in handcuffs and prosecuted for his theft. We learn from other detectives that James has a history of being too serious for his own good, but James convinces Arthur’s boss he should not drop the charges. To hear James tell it, the very moral fiber of America is at stake.

 

James also has a bee in his bonnet for Dr. Karl Schneider (George Macready), who he thinks is an abortionist responsible for a young woman's death. In 1951, abortion was illegal and, as Schneider’s attorney Endicott Sims (Warner Anderson) asserts, has been roughhoused by James several times in the past. Sims agrees to bring Schneider in for questioning, but comes armed with photos he took of his client an hour earlier and threatens to sue everyone in sight if his client has a mark on him after his interview.

 

To add another level of chaos, police also bring in two men accused of burglary, including career crook Charley Gennini (Joseph Wiseman). “Guilty” is practically etched on Charley’s face, despite his not-so-convincing insistence he’s as pure as a baby. Everyone knows Charley’s rap sheet and rumor has it he’s associated with gangster Tami Giacoppetti (Gerard Mohr).

 

You don’t have to look very hard to find a major logic error in this film. During Schneider’s interview, he drops some information about Mary that drives James into a state of rage. He also slips up enough to warrant a trip to the lockup, but if you’re the duty lieutenant (Horace McMahon) do you send the not-so-good doctor to the hoosegow in the back of a van with McLeod as his guard?

 

James hears things about Mary and comes to suspect he doesn’t know his new bride very well at all. At this point I must remind you that gender relations in 1951 were quite different that they are today, especially for a guy who is strung as tightly as James and is used to taking justice into his own hands. Is he irredeemable? Detective Story will surprise you in several ways.

 

Detective Story is a very good late black and white film noir. It didn’t win any of the four Academy Awards for which it was nominated–hardly surprising in a year it was up against An American in Paris, A Street Car Named Desire, The African Queen, and Quo Vadis–though it arguably stands up better than An American in Paris.

 

I should add that it’s not a typical film noir. I suspect it was labeled as such because of gritty themes, not an interplay of light and shadow. Visually the film’s most notable characteristic is the use of deep focus; that is, shots in which foreground, middle grounds, and background are all in focus. Director Willam Weyler was a legendary Hollywood talent. Today we’d probably label this movie a drama, but in 1951, the Hollywood Code simply didn’t cotton to themes of abortion or shooting cops. Weyler had to alter a few things to get it past Hollywood’s moral guardians and drew upon his considerable reputation to bring it the screen.

 

 

Rob Weir

 

The Bog Wife: Strange and Haunting

 

 

The Bog Wife (2024)

By Kay Chronister

Counterpoint, 307pages.

★★★★

 

The Bog Wife Is one of the most unusual books of last year. It’s set in West Virginia whose license plates proclaim: “Wild, wonderful.” Author Kay Chronister's tale is wild;  you can judge whether it's wonderful. I guarantee, though, that it's unlike anything you've read lately.

 

There remain pockets of Appalachia where time has stood still. In the early 20th century, folklorists combed the hills for ballads, customs, and vernacular speech in such places. Speaking of customs, the Haddesley family takes the cake for uniqueness. As we meet them in the not-so-distant past, the family consists of a dying father, sons Charlie and Percy, and daughters Eda, Wenna, and Nora. It is a patriarchal family that lives in the novel's namesake bog. In family lore, their ramshackle manor house has been owned by the h Haddesleys since a royal ancestor came to America and built it.

 

Lots of people go to Ancestry.com in search of august relatives–much of which is of dubious authenticity–but the Haddesleys are anomalous.  Their origins are supposedly contained in a book written in old French that none can read, though the patriarch is the keeper of oral lore. The bog has allegedly always provided what the family needs except for a few things the patriarch buys in a nearby town. They keep a few scrawny animals but rely on gardens and harvested bog bounty. Rituals are needed for the bog to sustain the Haddesleys.

 

Not weirded out yet? When the patriarch’s death is imminent, it’s the eldest son’s duty to administer a slow poison, place the dying body in the bog and wait for the sphagnum moss and algae to grow over him. From this will emerge a bog wife for the eldest son/new patriarch who digs her from the bog and vitiates her by spitting into her mouth. At least that's what the family believes the big black book says. Only Nora has much world experience, which she acquired by running off to Chicago, but did not acquire any old French! She is skeptical of family legends, though she returns to help the family perform their father's death ritual.

 

Wenna is also a symbol of how the bog has withdrawn its blessings–weeds have choked it, Wenna’s flight might be a curse, and a tree fell upon the room where slovenly Charlie slept and crushed the family jewels. Before he was placed in the bog, papa Haddesley told Percy that Charlie is a fool incapable of taking over and asked Percy to kill his brother. Everyone has issues that threaten to break the pact between the family and the bog. Oldest daughter Eda is a whiner who thinks she does all the work, Wenna doesn’t want to be there, and Nora, the youngest is naïve and willing to do anything to keep the family together. (Call Nora’s attempts unusual and distressing.) Meek Percy becomes a mystic survivalist, their inheritance money is nearly gone, and they are forced to sell items in the house that are old but don't yield a lot of money.

 

It is easy for us to identify a way of life in decline with five inept people adrift in a world that has passed them by. They are so isolated that many locals assume the manor is empty and consider it haunted. In a way, they are right; a few more crises and the withering House of Vegetation will fall down. The novel turns in ways that could be imaginary or perhaps magical. Stir in a visitation, a few revelations, and it spells change or perish.

 

It's never entirely clear what Chronister wants us to take away from all of this. For me,  the book is a metaphor for the clash between traditionalism and modernity with the Haddesleys representing a decaying pioneer spirit versus the encroaching outside world, the veritable serpent in the bog. Chronister never romanticizes life in the decaying manor house and played out bog, nor does she juxtapose modern life as a new Eden.

 

Disclaimer: My take could be nuts! The Bog Wife could be read as an environmental novel, or just an odd story populated by eccentrics. One blurb mentions “honoring family commitments and the drive to strike out on one's own... a haunting evocation of the arcane power of the habits and habitats that bind us.” That doesn't really help! Whatever you conclude, I suspect this book will stick with you like bog mud.

 

Rob Weir