This is my symphony

What I read

Lately I’ve been going through books like a pregnant woman munching pickles, driven by some insatiable hunger to read, read, read. I’ve been mad for books that carry me off, but don’t require too much thinking–stories that are sheer escape.

I wrote about my fling with Stephen King last week and with Kate Morton a couple weeks before that. Here’s what I’ve added since:

Pardonable Lies: A Maisy Dobbs novel (Jacqueline Winspear)
Maisy Dobbs, girl detective. I love her. A gumshoe who meditates and relies on intuition to solve crime– in 1930 waaay before all this New Age stuff. I warmed slowly to Maisy Dobbs, but I’m hooked now. It’s the woman and her life that have me captivated, not the crimes. In this book, Maisie refuses to believe that a young girl has savagely murdered the step-father who prostituted her. In exchange for top-notch legal representation for the girl, Maisie agrees to take on the case of Sir Cecil Lawton. Sir Cecil needs Maisie to confirm his son’s death in the Great War (his body was never found) to honor a deathbed pledge made to his wife. And, of course, there’s a mystery in that soldier’s disappearance just waiting for Maisie to solve.

The Clockmaker’s Daughter (Kate Morton)
In true Morton fashion, we’ve got multiple narrators–strong women all–telling this story. Elodie, an archivist, becomes enchanted by the contents of a satchel as she catalogs a collection: a photo of a mysterious woman and an artist’s journal capture her imagination. And lead her to question her own impending marriage and her talented mother’s tragic death–both wrapped up somehow with an old gabled country house on the Thames. A charming ghost tells the story of that house, how the death of a fiance and a lover on the same tragic night drove one man to despair. It’s Kate Morton. What else need I say?

The Cruelest Month (Louise Penny)
This was my second Inspector Gamache novel, but I read the series out of order. I started with A Fatal Grace ( #2), went on to The Cruelest Month (#3), and just bought the first Gamache novel on a Kindle deal. Not the deepest or darkest of crime novels, it wasn’t difficult to fill in the gaps. The setting, Three Pines, a little village in Canada, is really the main attraction, as are its residents: Ruth Zardo, cantankerous poet; Clara Morrow, the self-doubting artist; Gabri and Olivier, hoteliers extraordinaire; Myrna, bookstore owner and sage. And, of course, Chief Inspector Gamache and his crew who come down from Montreal, always at the ready to solve a murder–and battle internal conflict within the Surete. There’s nothing like settling in with old friends.

The Red Notebook (Antoine Laurain)
The Red Notebook is chick lit at its sweetest. Laure is mugged while returning home late one night and can’t get into her apartment without her keys. She is dazed from a blow to the head, so she secures a room at the hotel across the street until the doorman can let her in the next morning. She collapses on the bed … and slips into a coma. Laurent, book store owner, finds her purse the next day and is intrigued by its contents: a red Moleskine notebook, a gilt cartouche, a lovely bottle of perfume, a hair clip, red plastic dice, and a dry cleaning ticket. He spends hours pouring over the items, trying to analyze the woman, but her identity is a mystery. And one that Laurent sets out to solve. Both Laure and Laurent’s personal lives were at loose ends before the accident–could the purse be the thing that brings them together? (But, really, what woman wouldn’t fall for a hero who runs a bookstore?!)

So. much. goodness.

The reading binge isn’t much of a mystery because old habits die hard. After nearly three decades of cramming my reading into summer vacations, August still brings about the same tendency: I used to read fast and furiously during the waning weeks of summer, trying to keep lesson plans, essay grading, and staff meetings at bay until the very last minute. And I guess that rhythm is still part of my nature.

But there’s something else. All the books center on women who doubted themselves, but overcame those doubts when life insisted. Face-to-face with the worst imaginable, they rose and slayed their dragons.

And I like that.

What I lived

A family member’s recent hospitalization brought with it all the normal worries and uncertainties that come with an illness. But quite unexpectedly, it also triggered memories from some years back of a time in my life characterized by terror, confusion, and uncertainty. A situation I tried to vanquish at the time, not yet realizing the chaos wasn’t mine to quell.

But we forget–women, especially, I think–that our power isn’t found in improving circumstances, but in transforming our inner landscape. That’s where real peace can be found. Where doubts are overcome. And demons conquered.

So today I’ll raise a glass and give a nod to the women who carried me away the past few weeks–Maisie. Clara. Elodie. Birdie. Laure–reminding me that the only way out is through.