A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Right up front, I’ll admit that I’m a Jane Austen fan and I love searching for those books that continue the saga of the people from Austen’s novels.

The Darcys & the Bingleys continues the story begun in Pride and Prejudice. The book opens with the two couples engaged and deep in planning for their weddings, then we have the weddings, honeymoons, and the two couples settle into their married lives. Altman, knowing that this material would be a bit thin on the ground for a full novel, is actually telling us the tale of Caroline Bingley.

As those who are familiar with Pride and Prejudice are aware, Caroline Bingley has been pursuing Mr. Darcy in the hope of being Mrs. Darcy. She hoped that with her brother being Darcy’s close friend and that her being with them would make his heart grow fonder of her and offer marriage. That didn’t happen, instead Charles Bingley married Jane Bennett and Darcy married Elizabeth Bennett. Now Caroline is nearing thirty, which at that time meant she was unlikely to get a good offer of marriage, and her age was against her. She was desperate and, returning to London after the weddings, she threw herself into the social scene hoping to find a good match.

Luckily for Caroline, she does find someone who offers for her hand. Charles is called to London to meet her suitor and to give his consent. It’s at this point that the book really takes off (not that the preceding scenes of the happy couples settling into their new lives wasn’t interesting). Needless to say, Bingley and Darcy find it necessary to vet Caroline’s suitor. In the process they learn more information about the suitor, about Caroline’s life, and the Bingley children’s childhood.

Altman writes with true sensitivity to the characters as developed by Jane Austen. Never does she violate the moral code or core characterizations of any of the characters. However, Altman does allow them to grow and change with the changing relationships that result as daughters marry, women become mothers, and men become husbands and fathers, and as the new relationships by marriage settle in place. I never felt that she twisted the characters core values and attributes, but she did give them strength and growth. Jane gains a spine. Darcy and Bingley become more like brothers than close friends. Jane and Elizabeth gain confidence and find that their sisterhood becomes even more precious to them. Many things change, but at heart it all grows out of Austen’s original story.

I must mention that Altman manages to tell a taut tale while following the template laid down in the original story, being true to the times while striking out into her own territory. That she manages to do this while also injecting a bit of humor, lively wit, crisp dialogue, and outstanding adventure with a few twists and turns makes the book even more exciting.

I’ve read a number of continuation tales where the authors chose to make the plot move by having the main characters complete change their character, morals, and values. So authors who manage to continue the story while maintaining what we readers loved so much about the original characters, while telling new stories, are to be commended and recommended. Give Altman’s The Darcys and the Bingleys a try, especially if you’ve been disappointed by other continuations — I believe you’ll agree this is an excellent addition to the continuation tales.

After complaining about all the rain and the damp, we’ve had several dry days. Today was beautiful and in the 70’s. So, after catching up on some email, pulling all the old review copies that are at least four months past publication and/or the date we received the book (in the case of books that are older), I finally had organized shelves of review copies. Then there was the wash and the dishes and so on and so on.

Finally, walked down to get the Sunday paper at the mailboxes with my hubby and when we got back we decided to put in some garden time. First up was the porch — I swept and cleaned out the gardening pots. We’ve got three blueberry bushes on the deck — the only place to put them so we actually get blueberries to eat (or at least we get more than the critters do). Then we have a pot of summer savory — a perennial that is still doing well. Then two pots that will eventual hold a tomato and the other a cucumber plant (easier to just get for a salad that way).

Then we cleared and cleaned up the table in front of the sliding glass doors. It will eventually hold a geranium and brighten up my view from the living room. We also cleaned/cleared up the barbecue so we’re ready to go for the summer.

Next we moved down to ground level. We cleared the leaves off the mulch around the peonies and found the lovely tips of the plants coming up out of the ground. All four of the peonies are returning and the two peony trees already have buds. We learned we need to buy some more bricks to finish the outline of this area and we need to add more mulch.

Then we clipped back some of the raspberry plants, tied them up and pulled those that had dipped over and started to make a break for it into areas not authorized by us for their new homes. Looks like the raspberries will do well again this year. Of course whether we get them or the crows and birds do is up for debate at this point. We then moved down to the orchard area to check out a run of daffodils and tulips that line a path through the woods. I’m going to have to separate some of the plants this year and spread them out.

Then as things go, we started to pull up some of the brush, then the kudzo and one bunch led to another and another and an hour later we’d cleared about ten square feet of underbrush and kudzo. Only 4+ acres to go…. and we didn’t even do the herb circle.

Now I can barely move and I know I’ll regret all this work tomorrow or at least my body will. But, then it’s supposed to rain tomorrow so I’m glad we got this done today. I’m getting real excited about gardening this summer.

April started with rain here but we’ve been having rain off and on for days now. Most of the woods are sodden and spongy with wet.

Before April got here with its dampness and rain, March was grey and overcast, and I, I was on the look-out for an April Coffee Cup. I saw many cups that seemed to speak of Spring and sunnier days. There were even lots of cups that seemed to capitalize on Easter with flowers and cute rabbits or carrots or eggs. However, when I finally spied this cup it was over, searching done, this was the bright bit of cheer that would get me through the rain and grey overcasts. So, today is April 3rd and it’s been raining for three days now off and on — this was definitely a good choice. When I bought it I worried about the bobbles on the rim and thought I’d probably dribble all over myself — I do that on a regular bases anyway so not a big problem for me especially since I work at home and can change. But, it’s not a problem, the bobbles don’t leak and I don’t dribble — at least not any more than I usually do when I get engrossed in reading or whatever and somehow miss my mouth.

I’m getting desperate to spend some time in the garden getting it cleaned up and ready. All the rain and the cold/flu I had have put me way behind on getting things set up. Here’s what we’re dealing with:

I’m standing by the tomato buckets which fill one quarter of the herb garden. Behind are the raspberry bushes and the orchard. We managed to get all the old tomato plants pulled up and get the buckets ready for the new plants.

We have been gardening for a couple of years now and have learned a few tricks. We had to move the garden to our tiny bit of lawn because, surrounded by trees, it was the only area with enough sunlight to grow anything. Last year we grew all out tomatoes in buckets. They’re big painting buckets from Lowe’s and Home Depot that we drilled holes in for drainage and pained a deep blue. The reason is that there are lots of critters here abouts and the previous year we planted all the tomatoes in the ground and then had two in buckets and the next day we only had two tomato plants — the ones in the buckets. Last year we planted them all in buckets and managed to keep them all season and had a pretty good harvest too.

In this photo you can see that we started to get the leaves up off the lawn/garden area. We sort of gave up around December and lately, whenever we have the time, it rains. When we’re committed to some appointment and won’t be home, it’s sunny. But to rake we need a couple of dry days and then a dry day to rake. Hopefully this week will see more sunshine but then the saying goes April Showers Bring May Flowers so I have little hope of getting it all done within the next week or two. As long as we get the garden prepared and the vegetable area cleared and turned, I’ll be happy.

Mark Genevich is a private investigator in South Boston. He’s just gotten another case, or he thinks he has a case…he’s not sure actually. You see, Genevich is a narcoleptic as a result of the car accident that killed his best friend and rearranged his face. As far as he can remember, Jennifer Times walked into his office — refused to take no for an answer — and hired him to find her fingers. The problem is that while she was there Genevich had actually fallen into a hypnogogic state and when he awoke he was alone, there was no check, but there were some cryptic notes on his pad and a manila envelope with two black and white photos of a young girl that looked a lot like Jennifer.

Genevich tends not to take jobs that require him to leave his office. He never knows when he’ll drop into sleep or worse, cataplexy, when he’s awake and aware but can’t move. The little sleeps or hypnogogic states are similar to what happens to most of us with a high fever and tiredness. We fall asleep on the couch with the DVD player or TV on and whatever is playing gets incorporated into our dreams along with whatever our brain’s unconscious serves up. Awoken we don’t know at first what was dream and what reality. For Mark Genevich most of his life is like that. Part of any investigation he does involves figuring out what exactly is the job and what he’s supposed to do, which is why he prefers email, written instructions, and internet searches.

His first step is to figure out what the real job is since he couldn’t have possibly been hired to search for her fingers. It must have something to do with the pictures. However, contacting Jennifer reveals that she doesn’t know who he is or what he’s talking about. So, now it’s necessary to step back and figure out who hired him and why?

The entire story is told from Mark Genevich’s point of view, which means most of the information is disjointed and we, as readers, don’t know anymore than he does. Some authors hide information in mysteries by keeping us out of the detectives head but Tremblay lets us into Genevich’s head because it doesn’t matter what he knows because we don’t know if what he knows is real or dream or a combination of the two.

A gritty, noir mystery with a very different private investigator, Tremblay manages to tell a story that keeps the reader engaged from the first page. It’s not just can you figure it out before the sleuth, but will he figure it out because you both have the same confusing information and little to guide you.

I haven’t read anything this different in a while and it was not only interesting as a mystery, but contained a lot of information about a neurological problem that doesn’t get dealt with much in any fiction. Tremblay does a great job bringing Mark Genevich to life. He may not be someone you like very much, but you will respect his determination.

Since the entire novel is told form Mark Genevich’s point of view, the reader is left as much in the dark as Mark, we can’t know more than he does about anything. The reader and Genevich must decide what memories are are of real events and which are a result of hypnogogic hallucinations. Kept off balance throughout, Genevich is fighting a battle to control his neurological symptoms, retain his memories as well as shift through them to figure out which are real and which are a result of his little sleeps, and solve a crime.

Gritty, noir at its best, The Little Sleep manages to allow the reader to be an active participant in the case as there’s little chance the reader will spot clues before the PI since the reader also has to figure out what to believe. Imaginative and entertaining, it’s a story you just can’t put down.

Since we’d marked the calendar and set an alarm, we were ready this year for Earth Hour 2009.  We turned off all the lights outside the house.  We shut down the laptops, router, printer, UPS, and electronics and then turned off the lights, fan, and everything else.  All we left on were the appliances (furnace, fridge, water heater).

Throughout the year we try to do what we can to conserve and reduce our footprint on the Earth.  We only own one car.  My husband drives it to work and back during the week.  He makes a loop on the way home to the post office or store so there’s no additional travel since their on the way home.  We shop once a week or every other week depending on our needs.  That weekly shopping trip is on a loop so we drive to the recycle center to drop off all our recycling (we’re not on a pick up route), then we hit the stores in order  and come home.  Many times we do the shopping on Saturday and thus don’t drive or go anywhere on Sunday.

We have a small vegetable garden during the year and eat out of that for fresh veggies when we can.  Of course, most years we’re struggling to get the fruits of our labor before the critters get them.  (We live on five acres in the midst of farm country and often have deer, rabbits, and other critters in our yard.)

We also have a small fruit orchard but even though we do get peaches and plums and apples by they time they ripen the deer or other critters get them.  We have managed to get our strawberries and raspberries (and we put the blueberries in planters on the deck so we could get them.)

What angers me sometimes is the questions on surveys: Will you drive less because of gas prices?  No, we won’t. We’ve reduced our driving years ago and they only way we could further reduce it is not to go to work.  Many of us have been cutting down and doing what we can for the Earth for years and have very little we could still cut back on so the questions don’t truly get at the current status of some of us.  For other, who have never considered cutting back, they probably could find ways to reduce driving or use of resources but others of us have already done the hard stuff and we’re working on refining where we can.

So, this year we did our bit for Earth hour and now we need to consider what more we could do.

Last year we turned off all our lights and the computers and everything we could find in the house except some appliances. We cranked up our wind-up radio and our wind-up LED Camp light and some candles and listened to music and read.

It wasn’t as quiet as the time when a hurricane blew through and we lost power for a week. One thing that power outage and Earth Hour taught me is just how much noise there is in our lives from our electronics. If you’re reading this on your laptop or PC, just listen for a moment. Do you hear the computer’s fan? Do you hear the hum of electronics? We’re so used to the background noises that we don’t even hear them anymore. But they’re there — subliminal and slightly annoying.

When the power went out, everything was off — not just the non-necessary lights and gadgets. The silence was unbelievable. In our bit of the world, our home, was only the sounds of wind rustling in the trees, birds chittering and tweeting, and that was it. Just our talking or turning a page — just the noise of life.

This year, I’ve marked the calendar and we plan to turn off all non-essential electronics again. I hope you join with all of us throughout the world to give the Earth an hour. Vote for the Earth by turning off your lights and non-essential electronics for one hour on March 28th from 8:30 PM (your local time). You’ll be amaze at what the world around you sounds like.

I’ve been grappling with a cold or the flu or a just plain nasty combination of the two. What it means, other than feeling like I got run over by a especially large convoy of sixteen wheelers, and as if I ran at least 10 consecutive marathons, is that my brain doesn’t run on all thrusters. In other words, since my life doesn’t make any sense anymore and I can’t seem to wrap my mind around the simplest tasks of living; like cooking, cleaning, or doing the wash; let alone trying to proofread or copyedit (without 30 gallons of coffee per item), I read.

I dip into someone else’s life and universe and just enjoy their adventure. That’s basically what reading is…suspending belief and immersing yourself in some other world/culture/universe/life.  To imagine that soon maybe your life will make sense again.  If fiction makes sense then shouldn’t reality?

So, these past two weeks I’ve read a lot — and taken a lot of notes.  Now that my head is beginning to clear and a bit of coherence is returning, it’s time to tackle my email, proofread the April reviews that are piling up and begin writing my own reviews from my notes.

The end of the month is coming towards me at a pace that seems like a billion miles and hour — the zines need to be done and ready to go live on April 1st and I’ve been out of it most of this month. Sometimes you slay the dragon, and sometimes you’re just lunch.

Cassandra and Jane by Jill Pitkeathley is a fictionalized account of the life and times of Jane Austen, told from the point of view of her sister Cassandra. So, while it’s about Jane and her life and writing it’s a step removed and filtered through Cassandra’s feelings and beliefs. I’ve read all but one of Jane Austen’s novels — some several times over — but other than an occasionally link to a letter on the Pemberly site, I haven’t read any biographies of her life. I thought this fictionalized account would be a good introduction, better than the two movies I’d seen (Becoming Jane and Miss Austen Regrets).

For the purposes of the book, Cassandra is looking back over her life with Jane and wanting to make sure that Jane is seen as she should be, as Cassandra wants her remembered. It’s a given that Cassandra burned most of Jane’s correspondence prior to her own death. Cassandra didn’t want to leave any possibility that people would see Jane’s rapier wit and misunderstand her gentle nature. It’s tragic that Cassandra didn’t put the letters in trust to be opened and seen at sometime in the future so instead we’re left with bits and pieces of Jane’s life and her view of her world.

Told from Cassandra’s point of view, beginning with Jane’s birth, then using bits of letters and other material with fictional narrative to tie the bits together, we get a look at these two sisters — their lives, their loves, hopes and dreams. Cassandra is definitely a woman of her times. Jane on the other hand is a woman out of time. She’s very aware of the unfairness of being a woman in a world run by men. In another 70-80 years she’d probably have been active for votes for women. Without making an advantageous marriage, the sisters would be at the mercy of their brothers and their brothers wives for their home, money, comfort, and there was little to no chance of independence.

Jane chaffed at this while Cassandra tried to help Jane come to terms with her view of the unfairness of the world. Cassandra, much like Jane Bennet, is willing to be used by her family as they feel is best because that is her duty. Luckily, or unluckily depending on your point of view, neither sister married. I find that lucky since if Jane had married it would be unlikely to say the least that we’d have ever have had her novels.

While I enjoyed the tale and the history behind the story, the narrative structure gives us a deep look into Cassandra’s thoughts and feeling and while she never does anything to hurt Jane or put obstructions in her path, she’s jealous of the time Jane spends away from her and is hurt when Jane turns to others for discussions of her works in process. The relationship between the sisters is believable and has all the expected ups and downs of family relationships. Even though I found I didn’t care for Cassandra much, I do have to respect her and her defense of sister and her works.

A worthy addition to anyone’s Austen collection.