Crow's Commentary: "Book of Ages" by Jill Lapore

Available in hardcover at Wallace Books

Usually, as I'm driving to work, I get to enjoy the NPR Sunday Puzzler. But, every once in a while, I'll catch a snippet of an NPR book review on my way to Wallace Books. I know many customers are listening in, too, so I'll often put a copy of the book that's being discussed on the order if I think it sounds like a good one.

One day this fall, I heard a discussion of Jill Lepore's Book of Ages: the Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin on Fresh Air. It sounded good. Real good. I put it on the order.

Each subsequent workday, I would come in and see Book of Ages on the new hardcovers table. I'd stare longingly at its cover from behind the desk. Once in a while, I'd flip open the cover or lazily drag my fingers across the spine thinking, "Yes, friend. I will take you home after the holidays..." I told James I wanted to read this book so many times that he started to roll his eyes at me. Secretly, I wanted this book to sell before I could take it home because I had about 25 half-read books in a stack that were abandoned for favor of the never-ending flow of grad school readings. There are good books in this stack-- Lonesome Dove, George Saunder's latest Tenth of December (now out in paperback!). There are books in this stack that I really, really loved reading and really, really regretted putting down for favor of the academic sludge that I've been ingesting on the regular. This book had to go home with someone else, or that stack would never dwindle.

I started to talk it up to customers who came through, "Oh, Book of Ages is on my 'To Read' list. I can't wait." But apparently, they could. The holidays were over, and I took it home. Merry Christmas to me, from me (& Julie). Stack of half-reads be damned, I started in on the book before I even got home from the store.

Now, reader, as I'm sure you're well aware, there is a phenomenon that occurs when something is touted or coveted for so long that the object desired cannot possibly live up to the expectations. I feel like there is a word for this and it was probably in that grad school readings that I most certainly did in lieu of reading for pleasure. I was absolutely sure that I had hoisted this book onto so lofty a pedestal that it would never meet my expectations. So, imagine my delight when Book of Ages exceeded these expectations. There is a reason it was shortlisted for the 2013 National Book Award for Nonfiction.

Jill Lepore's book chronicles the life (and opinions) of Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin's favorite sister. Jane comes alive on the page through Lepore's expert weaving of Franklin family lore, the history of women in colonial New England and the letters that Jane exchanged with her loved ones. The remarkable collection of letters are the real charm of this book. Jane is every bit as intelligent and witty as her famous brother, yet has none of the pretense or requisite form that was required of letters written by gentlemen in her day. It was rare for women to write, and even rarer for these records to be kept. Jane Franklin's letters are a treasure: personal, gossipy, emotional, and charming. The exchanges between Benny and Jenny (Benjamin and Jane's nicknames) are a particular delight-- they respectfully banter about life, politics and values. They challenge each other's way of thinking about the world: a world that started in the same small home in Boston and diverged into two entirely different paths.

We have new copies available in hardback. If my recommendation is not enough, my cat also seemed to enjoy the book as well when I read passages aloud to him, as I am wont to do. Buster seemed particularly pleased with the intricate way Lepore included excerpts of Poor Richard's Almanack and the poems of Ann Bradstreet.

~ Kim Crow, January 2014

2014 Book List Review ~ Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies"

[To keep with his 2014 Book List post, and just for fun, James spends his hours off writing small informal reviews of what he has read, in no particular order. See the (partial) list of books, here]

Bring Up The Bodies ~ Hilary Mantel
Picador -- 2012

The second book of Mantel's "Thomas Cromwell Trilogy," Bring Up the Bodies covers only nine months of English history -- from autumn of 1535 to May 1536 -- the fall of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife. This is in sharp contrast to Wolf Hall, the first book in this trilogy, which covers a greater period of time, and the constraint in time and subject did seem to me to make its sequel a lesser novel. 

The problem may be a matter of subject and primary sources. Wolf Hall details Archbishop Wolsey's fall, Henry's divorce with Catherine, Thomas More's execution, and of course that little thing called The Reformation -- subjects that, since they had more resounding impacts on Western culture, were more fully documented and Mantel had more complete primary texts to work with. (My wife laughs derisively: "it's because they [Wolsey, Henry, More] were men," she says.) With these tools Mantel could powerfully re-create the tensions of that historical period, tensions which spurred us forward. In Bring Up the Bodies the tension is still there, but not the scope. Anne's trial and execution are clouded in historical vagaries; as Mantel notes, "the evidence is complex and sometimes contradictory; the sources are often dubious, tainted and after-the-fact. There is no official transcript of her trial . . ."

So Wolf Hall is a better novel because there was better source material for Mantel to work off of? I believe so. Bring Up the Bodies does what so many other books of Tudor-era England do: fall into the befuddled allure of Anne Boleyn's last days. But this doesn't mean you shouldn't read it. We all fall into that allure. Mantel's skills do not diminish, they just lack space to expand. You especially want to be there when the sword (yes, apparently it was a sword) falls, to see a writer re-create an event hundreds of years past, with all the emotion of the moment. Mantel does it. She's great.

As a side note, for reading groups: there is a passage, lurking in the last fifty pages, that does well to explain Anne Boleyn, Thomas Cromwell, and the challenge Hilary Mantel faced when approaching this time in history. Late into the book, Cromwell speaks to his clerk Wriothesley (pronounced "Risley") of Thomas Wyatt, a poet and Cromwell's friend, and rumored to be another lover of Anne's. Cromwell means to keep him safe from the trials and executions, and speaks to Wriothesley about Wyatt's poetry and genius. Says Cromwell,

Another time you trap him and say, Wyatt, did you really do what you describe in this verse? He smiles and tells you, it is the story of some imaginary gentleman, no one we know; or he will say, this is not my story I write, it is yours, though you do not know it. He will say, this woman I describe here, the brunette, she is really a woman with fair hair, in disguise. He will declare, you must believe everything and nothing of what you read.

There is in this passage a motif of the book, both for the reader and the writer. How words themselves are creations, hearsays, how Mantel is a creator and a liar, how Cromwell is, how Boleyn is. Cromwell certainly knows the power of words, as he begins to weave hearsay into a legal case. And it seems to be Mantel's chief anxiety, how to take the vagaries of the time and make them into something concrete for a reader of the twenty-first century.

Want a less glib more professional review? Why not the New York Times?

~ James Maynard, January 2014