Review of the movie “The House of Mirth” 

based on Edith Wharton’s novel of the same name

Reviewed by Gerti

With a title like that, you would think the movie would be filled with light moments, a breezy comedy perhaps, and nothing at all like a movie titled “Bleak House”. Think again! “The House of Mirth” is a humorless tale with a very sad ending for the film’s protagonist Lily Bart, played by Gillian Anderson of X-files fame.  

Anderson must have felt as though she were in an episode about other-worldly happenings while making this film, because the costumes and sets are gorgeous, and definitely evocative of the early parts of this century. The story ostensibly starts in 1906 New York, where Bart visits a man she loves, and hopes to marry, played by Eric Stoltz. She is one of those penniless young women of any time who are on the prowl for a wealthy spouse, and yet the man she loves has to work for his money (as a lawyer, though!) and so he would be a bad match for her. As if he’d ask her! He’s a gorgeous creature, and has already seduced Bart’s married friend, Bertha. When Bart buys their love letters from the cleaning woman, the viewer thinks she will use them to her advantage. 

But Bart does not, even after being advised to do so by a male suitor, Rosedale. He’s in love with her beauty and charm, but she won’t consider his proposal, despite the fact that he’s very wealthy, because he’s a social climber and not one of her kind. Those of her own social circle, however, use her quite badly. Friend Bertha takes her on a cruise, but Lily finds out it is only to distract her husband while Bertha carries on with yet another younger male conquest. Bertha then publically disrespects Lily by throwing her off the yacht, and the conclusions that society draws are obvious – Lily has been trying to seduce husband George. While it’s not true, Lily foolishly won’t use the letters proving Bertha’s infidelity to save her reputation. And that noble choice begins her descent .

When her wealthy aunt, from whom she was expecting to inherit, learns of Lily’s alleged escapades, she practically cuts her out of the will, leaving everything to a meek cousin who’s been gossiping about Lily to her. Lily tries to appeal to both women, but they will not relent and give her money, or even shelter her when things go sideways. Lily is forced into a flat of her own, and forced to find a job, first as a social secretary, still on society’s fringes, but then as a milliner’s apprentice. She is not suited for such work and is soon fired. Lily makes one final appeal to the man she loves, before leaving him the love letters that would open him to ridicule. He finds them and runs to her, but it is too late. She would rather die than blackmail him, or have his playboy character revealed. 

This story is a bleak portrayal of the choices a woman has and the perils she faces when she plays the game of love. Because she won’t compromise her morals, her social snobbishness, or her romantic but doomed love, Lily is a tragic character ill-suited to the game she has tried but failed to win. 

It’s Always Something by Gilda Radner

Reviewed by Gerti

For those who don’t know, Gilda Radner was a famous comedian from the early days of the television show “Saturday Night Live,” which has been a staple on TV for decades now. As such, the reader might expect this book to be a comedy riot, along the lines of written offerings from other comedians like Ron White or Chelsea Handler. But it is not, yet that doesn’t make it a bad book.

“It’s Always Something” is more the story of how Gilda Radner went through ups and downs during her eventually losing battle against ovarian cancer. It is one of those books where even though you know how it ends (she is dead, after all), the glory is in the struggle itself, and here Radner lays out her fight against the disease in sometimes agonizing personal detail. She talks about her moods, the doctors and nurses who helped her, her husband, fellow comedian Gene Wilder and HIS struggles with her and her disease, and well as what many of these medical procedures and treatments felt like to her. She shows each stage of the process unflinchingly, laying herself open to criticism even while she talks about her mad search for alternative treatments and her evil and depressive moods.

Yes, she does talk about her unconventional upbringing and her early career, and finally the triumphs that made her a household name and a recognizable face while she was on TV. But that is a small portion of the book. More often, she talks candidly about people from The Wellness Community, the cancer support group she meets with, and her hero worship of the man who founded it, and her relationship with Gene Wilder. She is frank about her lengthy struggle to get Wilder to marry her in the first place, and then about their struggles to keep it together when they have alternate ideas about her cancer treatment modalities. Gilda is beyond honest, always leaving herself painfully vulnerable to the prying eyes of the casual reader. But how can anyone read this story and not be sympathetic to the person who went through so much pain and yet brought so much laughter to the world? It is heartbreaking to see her go through this.

“It’s Always Something” is not a funny book, although there are funny scenes in it. I think it should be read rather by those going through cancer treatments, or the family members and friends of those people, than a typical SNL fan looking for a laugh, as it is more informative than funny. My father died of cancer a few years back, and this book explains in detail what he and other cancer patients experience. Reading it was helpful and healing to me because he never talked about what he was going through at the time. In the end, I’m sorry Gilda Radner died, because even though she succumbed to this terrible disease, she goes on helping people not by sharing laughs, but by sharing the story of her struggle with cancer so candidly.

At First Sight by Nicholas Sparks

Reviewed by Gerti

“At First Sight” is the first Nicholas Sparks novel that I’ve tried to read, and it has its good and bad points. On the positive side, his writing goes down as easily as cool water on a summer’s day. I like his descriptions of people and places, and his characters seem lively and fresh.

On the negative side, I really disliked the character with whom the protagonist, Jeremy Marsh, was in love. Her name was Lexie Darnell, and she’s from a small town in North Carolina. Jeremy was a writer in the big apple, and had come to Boone Creek in order to do a story for the magazine “Scientific American” on strange doings in the town cemetery. Lexie was his tour guide of sorts, and he found her irresistible. For her, he leaves NYC, and comes down to NC in order to marry her. His friends and large family adore her, or so Jeremy thinks at first, but the couple’s best friends are actively working to sabotage them.

Not that Jeremy and Lexie aren’t doing enough to sabotage their own relationship. Lexie is still actively engaged with her old boyfriend, and while she claims it’s all innocent when Jeremy confronts her about it, the simple fact that she’s lied to him at all leaves him uneasy. Next he finds out that she was pregnant before (by someone else who just drifted into town) and lost the baby. She hadn’t told him that either. She is supposed to be pregnant now with Jeremy’s child, although he had been tested in the past when his ex-wife wanted children, and found to be sterile. Yet somehow he buys Lexie’s story that the baby is his. He keeps getting mysterious e-mails which tell him to watch out for Lexie, and that has him worried as well, but to my mind, not worried enough. Wouldn’t a man previously found sterile by an MD find the fact that he’d impregnated a relative stranger after a few days together unlikely? 

And every interaction the pair has makes me like her less. They are going out to eat and she dominates what he orders. They are shopping for baby clothes and she wants to go out of town (where no one knows her) to shop. She rushes him into purchasing a house and a car that she likes, totally disregarding his feelings in the matter… In short, I was not at all sad when the surprise ending happened, and was in fact glad that he had seen the last of her. I won’t give away how it happens, but let me say that I saw it coming a mile off. 

Some people call this book a tearjerker, but the only thing I find sad about it is that a smart man like Jeremy would fall for a little manipulator like Lexie in the first place. I know most people probably don’t have that reaction, but I did. And it means the book is a miss for me. But because of his easily digestible writing (if not his likeable female characters), I might consider reading another of Sparks books.

Jane Austen: Obstinate Heart  by Valerie Grosvenor Myer

Reviewed by Gerti

Having read all of Jane Austen’s novels and letters, I felt it was about time to do some in-depth research on the great British author’s life. The first biography that caught my interest was that by Valerie Grosvenor Myer, as it had the intriguing phrase “Obstinate Heart” attached to her name. What it seems Jane was most obstinate about was refusing to marry without love, and although Myer doesn’t pin things down as much as I’d like, she implies that several different men proposed to Jane and were turned down.

Why would that be the focus of my reading this 200+ page bio? I think that Jane’s own romances formed the basis for the plots of her 6 finished novels, especially as they concerned the love matches made by her heroines. Many of the novels include proposals, but they are each very different, and I read the book to try and investigate that issue – whether the novel proposals were so different because Jane herself had received nearly a half dozen varied offers of marriage.

The book is thorough in many ways, talking about where Jane lived and how she got from one location to another, usually travelling via the kindness of friends and family, as she rarely had enough money to pay for her own conveyance. That too harkens back to her novels like “Sense and Sensibility” and “Mansfield Park”, in which her heroines have limited resources and are often dependent on the largesse of relatives. But just like the featured ladies in her novels refused to marry for money although it would make their lives and the lives of their families easier, Jane refused at least one proposal that would have made her the mistress of a large country house and ended her monetary woes.

Of course, near the end of her life, Jane was making a healthy amount of money from her writing, but by then her health had been compromised. She died at age 41 from what is believed to be an adrenal gland disease. She died before 2 of her novels were even published, and I enjoyed learning that it was her brother Henry who named those works “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion.” In short, I loved learning details of Jane Austen’s life, even if Myer’s writing was sometimes dry and her paragraphs occasionally seemed misplaced, as if they had been tacked into the story without a concern about flow or continuity. It almost felt as though there had not been a final edit to this book, as odd facts would pop up during a discussion of something entirely different, which was jarring.

Unlike other critics however I enjoyed Myer trying to connect Jane’s novels with her life experiences, as it is something I do, too. I only wish we had more facts available about Austen’s life to fill in the time gaps that exist, and I sincerely wish that her sister Cassandra had not destroyed so many of her letters! Still, Myer has put together an educational, fact-filled and satisfying biography, and I recommend it.

The Shadow of Your Smile by Mary Higgins Clark

Reviewed by Gerti

In “The Shadow of Your Smile”, bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark has written yet another suspenseful tale with interesting, characters – some likable, and some you love to hate. In the former category is the protagonist, Dr. Monica Farrell, who of course takes care of sick kids, but comes from a less than privileged background. Her father was adopted, and he never learned who his parents were, although he was the spitting image of his former boss (!), millionaire Alexander Gannon. The Gannon fortune is currently being squandered by Gannon’s nephews and other board members of the Gannon Foundation, so much so that they can no longer meet their grant commitments to the hospital where Monica works.

You can already see the direction the story is taking – Farrell will be related to Alexander Gannon, and the rightful heir to the fortune. But other interesting characters populate the story, like Olivia Morrow, an 82-year-old woman who knows the secret of Monica’s ancestry, but fails to act before she is killed. In fact, the plot is littered with bodies, many of whom Monica knows, like her former friend and stalker who also wants to tell her that he’s found out about her relationship to the Gannon family.

There is a vague religious aspect to this novel as well, with Monica witnessing a spontaneous cure of a child’s brain tumor that his family attributes to their praying to a nun the Catholic Church is considering making a saint. The religious woman, named Sister Catherine, was related to Olivia Morrow, so she’s conflicted about confessing to the world what she knows about Sister Catherine giving birth to a child. Yes, she got pregnant by Alexander Gannon, and they gave the baby away. All the pieces of the plot fit neatly into place, so neatly in fact that the book is pretty predictable.

The writing is still clever, the action-like scenes from a soap opera, with thwarted romance and police detectives lurking around each corner. I always love Clark’s writing, and do like that the outcome of the story is predictable to some extent, since it means that the trail was laid properly. What I don’t like is minor – we are lead to believe that one of the board members (and one of the nephews) is more evil than the other, but the reverse turns out to be true. So it turns out there is not one murderer, but several, and that is what I find implausible. If only one character had gone rogue to preserve their piece of the Gannon fortune, I would understand. But by the time several normally upstanding citizens are poisoning people and putting pillows on their faces, it just seems like science fiction rather than suspense.

“The Shadow of Your Smile” is a pleasant enough read if you don’t mind escapist literature. But I found the tale of a nun who had a baby and a cadre of high-society killers stretch the bounds of credibility. Still, I enjoyed reading it. 

Homicide in Hardcover: a Bibliofile Mystery by Kate Carlisle

Reviewed by Gerti

I love books and so does the main character in Kate Carlisle's "Homicide in Hardcover," we just love them in different ways.  I love to read (and review!) them, and protagonist Brooklyn Wainwright loves to restore them.  This book is certainly good reading if you are interested in finding out all about the tools and equipment used to do just that.

It is less entertaining, or at least was for me, if you are interested in real characters in real settings.  Or real good writing!  There are very few books that I stop reading (perhaps one or tow during my lifetime), but I was very close to doing that after trying to plow through this novel's first chapter.  Starting with the fact that I found the main characters name pretty obnoxious (not that anyone named Gerti should even try to make THAT argument!) I also hated her life details even from the start.  It felt like I was reading a rehash of recent alternative mystery series with occupational hooks like "This Pen for Hire" (by Laura Levine)or the Hannah Swensen mysteries by Joanne Fluke, which involve a lady who runs a bakery, but just happens to find dead bodies everywhere.

"Homicide in Hardcover" is formulaic like that.  Take a heroine with a vocation, in this case repairing rare and expensive books for people, and throw a dead body in front of her.  In this case, that of her former mentor in the business, Abraham Karastovsky.  Of course, you need to have the heroine cross the path of a difficult but gorgeous man, with whom she begins a relationship.  And then toss in a few stereotypical baddies, like a woman who wears tight leather and speaks with a foreign accent.  Add some odd parents, in this case hippies who run a winery, and some equally eccentric neighbors.  In Levine's case, a gay man with super sensitive hearing.  In this case, a pair of lesbians with a cat and house pants which need tending.  Can you see how this is all beginning to sound familiar?

Of the three writers, Levine, is the best, but I enjoy Fluke's recipes as well.  That leaves Carlisle as the odd woman out, although apparently she does have quite a following because a number of books in the Bibliophile series have been published.  I just don't think I'll be reading another one, as I found so much of this so implausible.  Solves the murder, inherits millions, and ends up with a hunky Brit with a Bentley?  Come on!  If I'm going to be reading fantasy, I'd prefer to visit outer space.  And if I want comedy, I'll read Levine or Evanovich, who are much funnier writers.  In the end, I just didn't like any of the characters enough to want to spend time with them again.

The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics

 by Daniel James Brown

Reviewed by Gerti

The subtitle to Daniel James Brown's book "The Boys in the Boat" is "Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics."  Unlike my son, who ruined the ending for me by telling me who won the race (when I was more than 500 pages in!) I will not tell you, although even if you know, the book is still worth reading.  Brown's book is a heart-filled work of fiction that will leave you breathless until the end.  It is much more than a simple sports story!

The heart of the book is the life story of Joe Rantz, who went to the University of Washington and was a member of its storied rowing crew.  Rantz is a character with whom most readers will fall in love.  I certainly did.  He is a young man who had the worst life imaginable.  His mother died when he was young.  Hank, his father, abandoned him, and Joe went to live with a relative.  When his father finally came back to his senses (and his son), he found a second wife, a lady named Thula, who despised Joe.  When she and Hank began to have children of their own, Thula convinces him to move to Seattle, and leave Joe behind.  Alone.  During the depression.  In a half-finished house with little food.  Yes, it is heart-breaking to see how cold-hearted a woman she was!

But Joe never quits.  There was a story called "Unbroken" about another Olympic athlete who had to face inhuman conditions, and Joe is made of the same stuff.  Although abandoned, Joe finds a way to stay alive, feed himself, and works hard enough to send himself to college.  At Washington, it is his ability to survive punishment that makes him great at a sport like rowing.  He also has to endure ridicule of fellow students because he always wears the same sweater.  It is the only one he has.  Can you imagine that?  But Joe does not give up or fee sorry for himself; he just works harder.  And of course, Joe finds himself seated in a boa with other poor but scrappy fellows like himself.  And then he goes to the Olympics with them, against all odds, while the rich-boy rowers stay home.

Rowing itself is another character in the book, and the way Brown describes what it demands of its athletes is epic.  We meet Joe's coach, his crew mates, and spend a lot of time with George Yeoman Pocock, who designs and builds the boat the boys race in.  He was another poor boy with impossibly high standards for himself who made good in the US.  He inspires Joe when he is faltering, and it is quickly evident that he does more for the team than make their boats.

The only part of the book I find distracting is Brown's decision to politicize the Olympics.  Everyone knows Hitler was bad.  Nazis were bad.  We get it.  Brown is at his best when he's talking about the sport and describing the lives of these gifted rowers, not weighing us down with redundant history.  He doesn't use overkill talking about the depression or the dust bowl, but he does with Hitler.  To me, the "Boys in the Boat" are the fascinating part, and Brown would have done better to abandon his political agenda and tell the tales alluded to by his title.