The Wealthy by Hamutal Bar-Yosef

This book is completely bizarre.  It’s presented as a work of fiction, but the supposedly fictional family which it’s about is very clearly the Mond family of Brunner Mond, with their names changed.  Some of their relatives by marriage are even given their real life names.  The book was originally published in Jerusalem, and I’m guessing that most people in Jerusalem aren’t overly familiar with the industrial history of Northwich and Widnes.  To anyone who is, it’s just blatant.

On top of that, it’s absolutely dripping with historical inaccuracies.  It has Queen Victoria being succeeded by George VI.  I think the author got confused by the fact that both Edward VII and George VI were known to the Royal Family as Bertie, but you’d think she’d have realised her mistake when she then showed George VI being succeeded by George V!

On the very first page of the book, we are informed that Brest (the Belarusian one, not the Breton one!) has just become part of the Russian Empire, in 1763.  Er, no.  Brest became part of the Russian Empire as a result of the Third Polish Partition.  In 1795.  1763 marked the end of the Seven Years’ War.  It had nothing to do with Belarus.  Then we’re told that, as a result of this, a 13-year-old Jewish boy is getting married, as that’s the only way to avoid conscription into the Russian army.  Jews weren’t allowed, never mind conscripted, to serve in the Russian army until 1827.

In fact, it doesn’t say “Brest”; it says “Brisk”.  I was 99% sure that Brisk was the Yiddish name for Brest, but it took me a lot of Googling before I finally found confirmation, on an obscure website.  Anyone who’d just Googled “Brisk” wouldn’t have stood a chance.

The book praises Manchester for being a very tolerant city, by virtue of having a Jewish Mayor.  Whilst I appreciate the compliment, the character made the comment in a scene set in the 1860s … referring to Philip Goldschmidt, who first became Mayor of Manchester in 1883.  And it muddles up the Marks (as in Marks and Spencer family), by saying that Michael and Simon Marks were brothers, when in fact Michael was Simon’s father. Widnes is said to be in Cheshire.  Widnes is in Lancashire.   Even if you believe all that 1974 nonsense, it definitely wasn’t in Cheshire in the 1860s.  I’d be here all day if I noted every single error, but there are plenty more.  All right, maybe I’m being a bit picky with some of them, but the first three I mentioned were just ridiculous.  And England/English and Britain/British are used interchangeably – OK, that’s a common fault in books by non-British authors, but it’s still annoying.  

I’m not even convinced that the author hasn’t got the history of her own country wrong.  There are repeated references to “Israel” by characters speaking during the inter-war years.  Middle Eastern history isn’t my speciality, but I thought that the name “Israel” was only decided on in 1947/48.

The back cover claims that “a vast amount of research was invested” in this book.  I’d hate to read one in which no research was invested.

Having said all that, parts of the actual storyline are quite interesting.  After the aforementioned marriage, our young married friend loses his first wife, remarries, and is then accused of murdering a Christian child.  So he flees to Kassel, where he loses his second wife, marries for a third time, and has a son.   We see his struggles in Kassel, and we hear quite a lot about changes to the rights of religious minorities as a result of the Code Napoleon.   The son studies under Bunsen in Heidelberg, doesn’t complete his degree, marries a cousin from Cologne, and then moves to Manchester.  Hooray for the mention of Manchester!   Unfortunately, we don’t get to see anything of Manchester, as he then moves to Farnworth, Widnes (not to be confused with Farnworth, Bolton), and opens a chemicals factory.

All this sounded oddly familiar.  So, having got to this point, I looked up the Wikipedia entry for Ludwig Mond.  And, whaddaya know, Ludwig Mond was born in Kassel, studied under Bunsen in Heidelberg, didn’t complete his degree, married a cousin from Cologne and, when he first came to the UK, lived in Farnworth, Widnes, and opened a chemicals factory.  Although his factory was in Northwich.  And he lived in Northwich.  Our fictional friends buy Knowsley Hall from the Earl of Derby.   That’s just totally bonkers.  Why Knowsley Hall?!  Why not just make up the name of a place?!

The factory owner’s son then goes to Cambridge, doesn’t complete his degree, marries a woman called Violette, goes into politics, changes parties after falling out with Lloyd George, becomes an ardent Zionist, and is raised to the peerage.  His daughter marries the son of Rufus Isaacs.  His son becomes involved in a weird menage a trois.  One may see on Wikipedia that Alfred Mond, son of Ludwig, went to Cambridge, didn’t complete his degree, married a woman called Violet, went into politics, changed parties after falling out with Lloyd George, became an ardent Zionist, was raised to the peerage, that his daughter married the son of Rufus Isaacs – although the real son had a different first name to the son in the book – and that his son became involved in a weird menage a trois.

Things then become genuinely pretty interesting as the action moves to what was then British Mandate Palestine, with a lot of real people appearing as real people, not as faux fictional people.  We see tensions rising between the British administrators, the Jewish settlers and the Arabs and Bedouins, we learn about practical problems such as plagues of locusts, and we see the controversy over land purchases.  Our fictional family fund a settlement called Heimstatt Hill … and (thanks again, Wikipedia) there is indeed an Israeli city called Tel Mond.  However, the story diverges from the Monds’ story, as some of the fictional family settle there themselves.  The book ends with the Israel War of Independence.

It was an interesting idea for a book.  There are all sorts of books and films about families from various minority groups who’ve progressed from poverty to a comfortable middle class lifestyle, but hardly any about the minority from the minorities who made it to both the top of the rich list and the heart of the Establishment.  (Those of us who read Hello! will be familiar with the name of the Monds’ descendant Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs, as a friend of the Prince and Princess of Wales and other senior royals.) And it showed a lot about the problems faced by minorities in different times and different places. But it’s extremely weird to base a book on a real family and not acknowledge that you’ve done so.  I’d love to know whether or not the Monds are aware of this book.  And there’s just no excuse for all the excruciating historical blunders.  The back cover claims that “This is a major work of historical research”.  It isn’t!

 

 

 

Domina (Season Two) – Sky Atlantic

  This certainly isn’t short on drama.  People keep murdering their relatives and their slaves, Vestal virgins are being blackmailed into stealing wills and then being executed for alleged lesbian affairs, and everyone who’s married seems to be having an affair – usually with their sibling’s spouse.  The crazy thing is that a lot of it’s probably true!   It’s a great shame that classical history isn’t really taught in schools any more, because a lot of it would certainly grab kids’ attention.  I’m talking about the sort of scandalous gossip you find in Suetonius, not boring things like the works of Cicero.  Having said which, even Cicero’s Pro Caelio, which we were forced to read for A-level, has its moments, seeing as Caelius had been having it off with a courtesan, and had allegedly tried to poison her and murdered Dio.   And for GCSE we had Nero et Agrippina, which was full of murder and incest.  It all went on in Ancient Rome.

And all the carry-ons in Domina are well before we’ve even got to the time of Caligula and Nero, who got up to far worse. There is actually some political history in the series, as well as all the soap opera stuff.   I’ve got no idea why Livia’s being shown as wanting to restore the Republic, but we’ve got all the rivalry between the various big players on the scene at the time, and talk about conquering Germania.  And it’s really very entertaining.  Thanks to Sky Atlantic for this, and more dramas set in Ancient Rome, please!

 

A Special Fate by Alison Leslie Gold

  This is a novel, aimed at children, about Chiune Sugihara, who was appointed Japanese vice-consul to Lithuania in 1939, and defied the Japanese government’s orders by issuing transit visas to around 6,000 Jewish refugees, thus saving their lives.  On a slight tangent, I see that a film’s being made about Nicholas Winton, the British man who played a major part in the Kindertransport, and that amongst the cast is Helena Bonham Carter, whose grandfather helped thousands of Jewish refugees to escape from Occupied France.

As it’s a children’s novel, the style of writing’s fairly basic, but it’s a fascinating story.   Sugihara had a tough time after the war: he was interned by the Soviets for a while, and then sacked from the Japanese diplomatic service because of what he’d done.  However, he was later honoured by  Lithuania and Israel, and posthumously by Japan.

It’s a very moving and inspiring tale.  He put himself and his family in danger by going against orders from his superiors, working up to twenty hours a day to get the visas issued, and he had no motivation other than wanting to help people in need.   It’s a short book, but well worth a read.

Jesus Christ Superstar – Palace Theatre, Manchester

  The music in this is as superb as ever, but I’d forgotten how short the show is, compared to most musicals – only two hours, including the half time break.  Excellent performances from all the main cast members, with Julian Clary as Herod making everyone laugh in amongst the more intense performances from the other characters.

The interpretation of the Bible story looks a bit dated, though.  It’s interesting that both Judas and Pontius Pilate are portrayed sympathetically, but the crowd shouting “Crucify him” over and over again made me cringe – even Oberammergau’s toned that down now.  And, whilst this may be the influence of The Da Vinci Code :-), I kept wanting to yell that Mary Magdalene probably wasn’t a prostitute at all.

Still, it’s an excellent production – now touring around the country until next August.   Go and see it if you get chance!

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery

  This is an interesting book, by an author who sadly died young.  French-American orphan Aurelia is taken to Japan by her missionary uncle.  When he’s killed in a fire, she’s taken in by a family who run a teahouse, and becomes close to Yukako, the daughter of the family, initially in a sisterly way but then in a romantic way.   As the Meiji Restoration brings great changes to Japanese society, we see Aurelia, renamed Urako, and Yukako coming to terms with what that means for the class structure and the role of women.  There’s quite a lot of interesting information about clothes, the arranging of marriages, the position of young wives, bathing rituals and, of course, tea ceremonies.   However, Aurelia/Urako eventually realises that she’ll never be fully accepted into Japanese society, and ends up returning to New York.

There are a lot of minor characters and it does get a bit confusing, but generally it’s well worth reading: it’s a very original book about a fascinating time in history.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3

This wasn’t quite as bad as the critics made out, but it wasn’t the tiniest patch on the original My Big Fat Greek Wedding.   There were some interesting themes, but they weren’t really developed; and a lot of it was just plain silly.

Toula’s dad has recently died – and that’s quite poignant, because the actor who played him has died – and her mum is living with dementia.  Her dad’s last wish was for the diary he kept when he first came to America to be given to his three childhood friends, with whom he’s long since lost touch.  Odd wish, but anyway.   The mayor of the village from which he came is organising a reunion for all the people who’ve left the village over the last 50 years or so, and their families.   So Toula, her brother, two aunties (one of whom is a maternal aunt who came from a completely different part of Greece), her husband and their daughter all set off for Greece.

There’s a whole load of ridiculous stereotypical rubbish as dozens of relatives come to the airport to see them off, and one of the aunties hands round souvlaki on the plane … because you’d really get on a plate with a dish of souvlaki.  On arrival in Athens, they drive past the Parthenon and the Olympic Stadium without stopping, then stop at the seaside and all go swimming fully clothed.  Why??

When they get to the remote island village from which the dad came, they find out that only six people live there.   The mayor, an old woman who turns out to be the dad’s old girlfriend, her son, who turns out to be a half-brother whom they never knew existed, his son, a Syrian refugee girl, and a monk.  Why is a Syrian refugee living in a remote village where there are only 5 other people?   Why does everyone in this remote village speak fluent English?   How have they contacted the Portokalos family?   And how come they’ve invited a load of other people – none of whom have accepted – to the reunion, yet no-one knows where these three childhood friends are?

It eventually transpires that the monk knows where the friends are, whereupon Toula’s cousin Nikki tracks them down, everyone turns up for the reunion, the diary is handed over, and the long-lost half-nephew (keep up) marries the Syrian refugee.  After a lot of references to food and goats, an irrelevant sub-plot about the daughter failing her first year at college, and not much else.

It’s a shame, because, as I said, there were some interesting themes there.  It’s the first time that Toula, her brother and her daughter have been to Greece – what’s it like for second and third-generation hyphenated Americans to go to “the old country” for the first time?   How do small villages cope, when most people move away to seek better opportunities elsewhere?   How do families cope when the patriarch dies and the matriarch is incapacitated?   How easy it was, in the days before social media and mobile phones, to lose touch with people.   There was a lot to go at.   But the film just … didn’t.

Sakuran by Edward Tolosko

  This month’s Facebook group reading challenge was to read a book set during a war other than the two world wars.  That would normally have had me running for a book set during one of the many wars of the 19th century, but I had this one, set during the period of Kublai Khan’s attempts to conquer Japan, waiting to be read, so I read this instead.

It’s a little-known (outside Japan) time in history, but it was actually crucial, because it stopped the Mongol Empire in its tracks.   However, there was very little in this book about the politics of it all – most of it was about the personal feelings of two young samurai and two young women, with a very unlikely story about twins being separated at birth and finding each other again.   But it was an interesting insight into the culture of the time, and it was something different.  I’ve read plenty about the Mongols’ invasions of Kievan Rus, Poland and Hungary, and a bit about their conquest of China, but this is the first book I’ve read about their attempts to conquer Japan.  It was Edward Tolosko’s only novel, and I’m glad that he got the chance to write it.

Beneath the Same Stars by Phyllis Cole-Dai

  This is set during the Dakota War of 1862, and based on the memoirs of Sarah Wakefield, an American woman taken prisoner by the Dakota (Sioux) but protected by a Dakota warrior.  It’s written in the third person but from Sarah’s point of view, and it tells a lot about Dakota culture as well as about the events of the war.

The Dakota in Minnesota were pressured into ceding large tracts of land to the American authorities in return for annuities, but in 1862, after a poor harvest in 1861 and then a long winter, and obviously during the Civil War, the annuities were late, and the Dakota were unable to buy food as traders refused to give them credit.  War broke out, with hundreds of American settlers killed and many others displaced, and hundreds of white and mixed-race hostages/prisoners, mainly women and children, taken.  Amongst these were Sarah Wakefield, a doctor’s wife, and her two children.  At the end of the war, 40 Dakota men were hanged, including Sarah’s protector who was apparently hanged due to mistaken identity, and the remaining Minnesota Dakota were interned and then sent to a reservation in Dakota Territory.

No-one’s quite sure how the women taken captive were treated, but Sarah Wakefield insisted that she was treated well – which damaged her reputation in the white community.  The book tells us about Sarah’s rather complicated life before the war, and also about her experiences during it, including quite a lot about Dakota culture.  It’s a neglected part of American history, because it happened during the Civil War and so it’s overshadowed by it.  Everyone knows about Little Bighorn and Wounded Knee, but the events of 1862 are far less well known, making this book very well worth reading.

The Women of Troy by Pat Barker

This is the sequel to The Silence of the Girls.   There’s been an explosion in the number of books written about Greek myths and legends from a female viewpoint, and Pat Barker’s really the one who kicked it all off.  (I do wish that Amazon would reduce the price of Jennifer Saint’s Atalanta, which I really want to read because it fascinates me that the Atalanta is the only woman from Greek myth/legend to have a football club named after her!)  The treatment of the Trojan women in the Iliad is appalling: they’re sexually abused and treated like prizes of war.   So full marks to her for drawing attention to the point.  However, her style of writing isn’t that wonderful; and this book’s a bit odd because Briseis, the main character, disappears from Greek writings after the end of the Trojan War, so this is all made up.  Yes, OK, I appreciate that all of it’s pretty much made up, but the stories of Achilles, Odysseus et al are so well known that they *seem* real!

This book covers the period between the end of the war and the Greeks’ return home, when they and their Trojan captives were stranded outside Troy, waiting for a favourable wind.  We’re told that Briseis, who was famously – in Homeric epic – taken as a prize of war by Achilles, then stolen by Agamemnon, then given back, is carrying Achilles’ child, and has been married off to Alcimus, another of the Greek leaders.   Also featuring prominently are Hecuba, who eventually kills herself by jumping off Odysseus’ ship, Cassandra, forced to marry Agamemnon, Andromache, taken as a concubine by Achilles’ son Pyrrhus (usually called Neoptolemus), and an invented character called Amina.   Amina, AFAIK, is an Arabic name, so I’ve got no idea why Pat Barker’s used it here!   Sections told by Briseis are in the past tense.   Sections in which the main character is Pyrrhus are in the present tense, and use a lot of swear words.

The story goes that Amina decides to bury Priam’s body, and is killed by Pyrrhus as a result.  Pyrrhus is then blamed, due to his treatment of Priam, for the lack of a favourable wind to take the Greeks home – although mention’s also made of Ajax the Lesser’s rape of Cassandra.   However, much of the focus is on the general horror faced by the ordinary Trojan women and the women of the Trojan royal house, who saw their men, including baby boys, killed and are now enslaved by the Greeks.   It’s not a brilliantly well-written book, and, unlike The Silence of the Girls,  it doesn’t follow a story that’s been established for centuries, but it’s an interesting idea.   The treatment of the Trojan women was horrific, and Homer just didn’t even comment on that, just took it for granted that that was the lot of women in war.   I think that a bit less focus on the invented character of Amina and a bit more on Andromache and Cassandra would have worked better, though.  It seems a bit odd to re-tell a legend but then make a new story up.

Godmersham Park by Gill Hornby

This wasn’t bad, although it was slow-moving.  It’s a novel about Anne Sharp, governess to Jane Austen’s niece Fanny and friend of Jane herself, based partly on Fanny Austen’s letters and diaries and partly on Gill Hornby’s imaginings.

Jane Austen’s brother Edward was adopted by wealthy relatives who left him their home, Godmersham Park, where he lived with his wife and many children.  In the book – I’m not actually sure what’s fact and what’s fiction – Anne’s mother has died and her father’s abandoned her and, having turned down several proposals of marriage, she’s become a governess.  She later learns that her father was actually married to someone else, so she was illegitimate.

It’s an interesting portrayal of the life of a governess, neither a servant nor a member of the family but something in between, and of Anne’s developing friendship with Jane and love for Jane’s married brother Henry, written in an Austen-esque style.  Not very much actually happens, but it isn’t a bad read.   I’m wondering if I should try Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen, about Jane and her sister Cassandra, but I’ve already got an enormous TBR pile and this wasn’t so wonderful that it made me feel that i had to rush out and get it.  We’ll see!