The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott

Selecting a book to take on a long flight is sometimes a challenge, but not this year. On my annual late evening flight to the left coast I chose The Ninth Hour by Alice McDermott for my in-flight entertainment. A perfect little book that fit easily in my purse and one I knew would keep me absorbed for five hours in the sky.

Alice McDermott has written seven earlier novels, all published to critical acclaim and nominated for The Pulitzer Prize, the Dublin IMPAC Award, and the National Book Award.

With rave reviews by the likes of Mary Gordon and Lily King The Ninth Hour is one of her best. This novel, seemingly simple in detail, by the words of Alice McDermott the people and the place is brought vividly to life.

Growing up in an Irish Catholic neighbourhood in Brooklyn in the 1950s and 1960s, Alice McDermott knows the world she writes about. A world peopled with nuns and priests, widows living in poverty, women raising large families, many without much choice in how their lives are lived. The men are mostly on the periphery, some supportive partners and lovers, others abusive husbands. But, always there are the nuns. The nuns who sometimes find their firm faith tested, and sometimes regretfully find themselves lacking in compassion.

The Ninth Hour opens on a day of tragedy, the death of a young man, leaving Annie, his pregnant widow, in dire need. The nuns of the Little Nursing Sisters of the Sick Poor come to the rescue, providing care and a later a job for Annie after baby Sally is born. Annie works with the nuns as a laundress, with Sally under the loving and watchful eyes of her mother and most especially the two nuns Sister Illuminata and Sister Jeanne.

Many of these nuns are very clever women, very capable nurses, and very much more worldly and ambitious than one might imagine. The Ninth hour prayers take place around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, the time thought to be the hour of Christ’s death, the hour of sacrifice. It is a time of reflection and stillness for some, a time of leisure for others, a time when Annie is sometimes able to leave work and have time for herself, perhaps to go to the shops.

These nuns hold tight the secrets of the neighbourhood. They know of the suicides disguised as accidents, the women beaten, the neglected children. The nuns offer assistance to all, arranging for the services of doctors and undertakers. They nurse those suffering from illness and depression and neglect. They witness infidelity and unconditional love, they make decisions based on faith and may forgo a sacred promise in order to protect the innocent.

Alice McDermott’s novels have been compared to those of writers Anne Enright and Colm Tóibín, always with the words so carefully chosen, each sentence so perfectly crafted. The Ninth Hour is an astutely observed novel that explores themes of isolation, loneliness, devotion, forgiveness, redemption, unconditional love, always frank and unsentimental, and sometimes funny.

Alice McDermott says she had planned, with this novel, to move away from the “whole Irish-American Catholic” thing but found, against her will, “that the nuns showed up and took over the damned book. I wrote the story almost against my will. More and more, The Ninth Hour became, for me, a meditation on selflessness and selfishness, and whether that’s a gift or burden to the people around you.”

Peculiar Ground by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Lucy Hughes-Hallett is an author new to me though she has had a long career as an award-winning journalist, critic and historian. Her first novel, Peculiar Ground, published earlier this year in England, is now released in North America.

The story begins in 1663 on the Wychwood Estate of Lord Woldingham. What I loved immediately was that I had to look up a word before I’d read even two sentences – dendrology - the science and study of wooded plants, particularly trees and shrubs - and it is the specialty of Mr. Norris, the landscape architect hired by Lord Woldingham to design and plant the grand gardens he envisions. This is the age of competitive gardening and the plan is indeed grand, boulevards and fountains, the bigger the better. And a great wall is planned, to enclose the estate, a place contained, separate from the rest of the world.

Lord and Lady Woldingham have only recently returned from exile in Europe, but with the Restoration of royalty in England they, and others, are coming home with great optimism and expectation of good times to come. In the first sixty pages we are immersed into the world of Restoration England and Lord Woldingham’s grand plans, but also a sad tragedy that haunts all who follow.

Then it is 1961, and a whole new cast of characters people the Wychwood Estate. Nell and Dickie are the children of the estate manager, agent to Christopher Rossiter who now owns the property, and his wife Lillian. City folk, friends of the Rossiters spend weekends at Wychwood, riding, playing, dressing for dinner – dancing. There are eccentrics and unconventional men and women. The villagers who work on the estate, as their fathers and grandfathers did before them back to the time of Lord Woldingham, meet in the pub for a drink, a talk and a song.

It is very much the Cold War era, the border between East and West Germany is closed, dividing a country, it’s people and the world, and another wall is built. Some of the characters in this contemporary part of the book spend time in both Germany and England where they may or may not be working for the British Government.

By 1973, things are changing again at Wychwood, and the house has become a salon of sorts. The garden designed by Norris is, of course, now mature and there have been additions over the years. Years pass, and by 1989 we are still following the lives of many of the same characters but the configurations of relationships have changed. There have been deaths, and children born. Those who were children are now adults, married and having children of their own. There are celebrity characters and world events that serve as touchstones for the time.

One of the things I loved most about this book was the passing of time – and the jewels of detail sprinkled throughout. The mention of George Macdonald’s The Princess and the Goblins, one of my favourite books from childhood, a tale of courage overcoming evil. Children once read these sorts of terrifying books. We read the real Brothers Grimm, not the prettied up versions. Educators didn’t need to look for books to encourage resilience as we were raised reading them.

Then it is 1989, and the Berlin wall comes down. Salman Rushdie becomes the target of a fatwa. Life at Wychwood is both the same and very different as world affairs affect those who come and go.

Lucy Hughes-Hallett knows the world she writes about, she grew up on a grand estate in Oxfordshire where her father was agent. We know the contemporary world she writes about, and she brings the world of the 1600s to life. It is so beautifully described, and fully peopled, from the privileged on the Wychwood estate, to those fleeing London and the plague. This is a great big, glorious novel, full of superstition and coincidence, and sure to be as widely read here in 2018 as it has been in England in 2017.

The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner

The Bridge Ladies by Betsy Lerner is a memoir that, on the surface, it is about the author’s mother and the friends she plays bridge with each week over many years. But, really it is about mothers and daughters, about expectations and the differences between women who were born and grew up in the depression and the years that followed, and those who were born in the boom years of the 1950s and 1960s.

Betsy Lerner is a poet and a literary agent who now lives in New Haven, Connecticut. After leaving home, earning a MFA in poetry, and establishing a career as a literary agent in New York Betsy moved back to her hometown when her husband accepted a job offer at Yale.

Living close to her mother, a widow who still lives in the family home proves to be both difficult and wonderful. Difficult because Betsy and her mother have always had a rather prickly relationship, and wonderful because they come to know, and more or less accept, each other as the independent adult women they have become.

Betsy’s mother, Roz, has played bridge with the same small group of five women for going on 50 years. They meet on Monday, have lunch, and then settle down for an afternoon of bridge. The ladies are all in their 80s, all Jewish, all long married or widowed, and all relatively well off. They are women who married young, had children, and stayed at home to care for the family and the home while their husbands worked and supported them all. These ladies may well have had ambitions but none that they followed – their path led straight to the altar, and into the kitchen.

Betsy Lerner finds these women a mystery, and wonders how they could not have wanted more. How could they not have wanted the independence of work, and the sense of achievement that is found in work outside of the home? Betsy, born in 1963, wanted none of her mother’s world, rebelling as soon and as often as she could. She did not understand her mother, and her mother did not understand Betsy. How could they?

But, now, Betsy is older, and so is her mother. They both realize that they have an opportunity – never spoken mind you – to share something of themselves with each other. Betsy, curious about her mother’s generation of women, invites herself to Monday bridge. Betsy is most astounded at the lack of intimacy displayed by these women who have known each other for so many years, they do not talk about feelings, there are no hugs or kisses. 

As Betsy comes to know these women she discovers that not only are they always perfectly groomed and well mannered, they do, in fact, have a lot to offer as an example of how to bravely face what life might bring.

Betsy observes that “Bridge brings out the best and worst in a person: how competitive you are, how generous, how petty, how kind”. Not only is Betsy intrigued by the ladies she also becomes fascinated with bridge. Deciding to learn to play she takes lesson from a club in New York, and sometimes joins the ladies as a player.

Ultimately, The Bridge Ladies is a book about the love, expressed or not, between mothers and daughters, the support of friends, expressed or not, and the choices and challenges we all have to make at some stage of the game – in life and in bridge.

Wonder Valley by Ivy Pochoda

A few years ago a friend who lives in New York City, but summers near Parry Sound, told me about a terrific new book written by her daughter’s friend Ivy Pochoda,Visitation Street. You can read my review of that book on our website, written in September 2013.

Ivy Pochoda now has a new book, Wonder Valley. Equally as good as her first, and again about a place, and people, most of us know little about. Wonder Valley tells the story of people who live in a world so far outside my own experience that I found myself both distressed and fascinated in equal measure.

We follow a cast of characters from 2006 to 2010, with the years between filled in as we read. There is Ren, a young black man recently released from prison, determined to find his mother and make a better life for himself. And Tony, a middle aged white man, a lawyer, who appears to have a good life but finds it awfully hard to keep it all together. And Britt, a young woman, running from her past and falling into a very strange community in the California desert. And, a pair of serial criminals, Blake and Sam, dangerous men. And, the Flynn family, Patrick and Grace and their twin sons Owen and James. They will all find their lives connecting in some way or other throughout the novel.

The action beings in 2010 with a scene on a busy highway in Los Angeles, the commuter traffic moving slowly, when a running man appears. He is running between the vehicles, across lanes of traffic – and he is naked. Who he is, and what his story is, is the thread that binds these characters and this novel together.

I found this book utterly compelling, I could not wait to get back to it each time I had to put it down to work, or to sleep. Wonder Valley takes place on Skid Row in Los Angeles, at a cult like community in the California desert, in down and out bars and hotels, and in the privileged suburbs of a sprawling American city. I was constantly reminded of just how very privileged I am. As middle class Canadians we may have occasional stress as we juggle the family finances to keep everything afloat, but our lives are so far removed from life on the street that it is hard to really understand what that life is like. There are characters in this novel who truly have almost nothing. Unfortunate souls, who live in desperation and fear. They are truly homeless. There is no one who is going to help beyond those who work among them, attempting to assist with food and the offer of shelter and medical care.

There are people damaged by mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse. There are people who disappear, and those who choose to become invisible. As one of the Flynn boys says, “down here your past is your past, no better or worse than anyone else’s. People don’t ask questions and they don’t judge. We’ve all got stories. And trust me, there’s always someone whose story is worse than yours.”

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor was published this past spring to immediate rave reviews – longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and the Costa Novel Award, and listed as a Kirkus Best Book of 2017. The cover quotes Roddy Doyle, “Quite extraordinary – the way it is structured, the way it rolls, the skill with which McGregor lets the characters breathe and age”.

Reservoir 13 is extraordinary, and a really good read! And, Jon McGregor is an extraordinarily good writer. I am certainly going to look for, and read, earlier books by this author.

Rebecca Shaw, 13 years old, wearing a white hooded top, five feet tall, dark-blonde hair, is missing. Just before the turn of the year, early in this century, while her family is renting a holiday barn conversion on the moors. During a walk with her parents in the hills nearby, the girl known as Becky, or Rebecca or Bex, goes missing. There is a search, the first of many, all with the same disappointing result.

The village is a small – everyone knows everyone to some extent. There are few secrets and all are suspect. We meet the people who live here – the farmers, the shopkeepers, the teachers, the retired people, those who have allotments in the community garden. Some have nothing to hide, some have much. Others may not know the secrets, but the reader learns of many. All are haunted by the disappearance of the girl. She had visited the village the summer before and befriended some of the local young teenagers. We wonder if they know what happened to her. Or, did she choose to disappear?

Her parents are understandably distraught, but we wonder if either, or both, of them had anything to do with their daughter’s disappearance. Did something happen on that walk, do they know where she is, and if she is dead or alive?

This is a region of reservoirs, sometimes full, sometimes not. Other writers of mystery novels have used a similar approach, On Buelah Height by Reginald Hill and In a Dry Season by Peter Robinson both feature long ago mysteries solved when there is a change in the water level of a reservoir. In Reservoir 13, as water levels rise and fall, and years pass, we continue to expect the discovery of a body that will be identified as that of the girl whose name was Rebecca, Becky or Bex. We wait for that day, as do her parents, and those who remember her.

Years pass, lives move on. There are marriages and separations, illness and death. Some spend time on their allotments, observing each other and the passersby. Those we met as young teenagers finish school, and go off to university, or not. Some are successful, some are not. Some return home, they meet occasionally.

Village life changes with the times, more of the houses are now owned by incomers who use them as holiday homes, some converted into small inns.

There are very few now who remember the day a plane crashed during the Second World War, a wreckage in the moors. Some day there will be few who remember when the girl whose name was Rebecca, Becky or Bex went missing in those same hills.