Ms. Hen reviews A Journal of the Plague Year

 

A Journal of the Plague Year

Daniel Defoe

E. Nutt

1722

Ms. Hen decided to read this because she has been reading books about the plague recently. She decided to read this on her phone, because it was free, and easy to carry around. She doesn't like reading on her phone as much as she likes reading a book, but she does it once in a while.

Daniel Defoe is famous for writing ROBINSON CRUSOE. He came to write this book because it is based on a journal of his uncle's. Defoe never lived during the plague year in London in 1665. This book was originally presented as nonfiction, but has since been reclassified as fiction, since Defoe took some liberties with the details.

This book is about the last plague that struck London. Horrible things happened during this year: people would drop dead on the street, and the dead were taken away in dead carts. People who had the plague were nailed in their houses, and they would try to escape. Some people would offer to care for the sick in their homes, but then they would suffocate the patients, and steal all their valuables. Someone decided to exterminate all the cats and dogs because they were thought to have the plague, which made the rat population larger, since every house had a cat to keep out the rats. They tried to kill the rats, but they came back. Nobody had any idea of sanitation, but they did keep coins in the market in a jar of vinegar to keep the germs out.

Reading this novel made Ms. Hen appreciate that she did not live in the time. People had no education, and they were cruel to each other. They are cruel now, but she thinks the world was worse then.

This novel is upsetting, but it's important. It's necessary to know how people handled such a thing as the last plague outbreak in London, and how they managed that tells us a lot about how far we have come, and where we could be.

Ms. Hen thinks this novel fits in well with the other books about the Plague and the Spanish flu she has read recently. The world can be a demented, messy place, but we have to deal with it because it's the only one we have for right now.

Ms. Hen reviews Pale Horse, Pale Rider

 

Pale Horse, Pale Rider

Katherine Anne Porter

Houghton Mifflin

1939

Ms. Hen decided to read this book because she wanted to read some fiction about the Spanish flu epidemic. The title story is about the author's experience when she suffered from that illness. Ms. Hen bought the collection THE COLLECTED STORIES OF KATHERINE ANNE PORTER, but she decided only to write about this book within a book of three short novels, because she didn't want to write about the whole book.

The first short novel, "Old Mortality," is about a family and two young girls, Maria and Miranda, who grow up with stories about their cousin Amy who was beautiful, but died an early death. Their cousin Gabriel was in love with Amy, and they got married, though she was not happy. People have strong opinions about Amy, even after she was gone, including their cousin Eva who Miranda encounters on a train on the way home.

The story, "Noon Wine," is about a farm where a man goes to work as a farmhand. Mr. Thompson hires Mr. Helton, even though he does not like him at first. But Mr. Helton is an excellent worker, and he helps the farm prosper through his money saving techniques, and industriousness. He plays the harmonica, and he plays the same song all the time, "Noon Wine." Tragedy strikes, and the family suffers. This story reminds Ms. Hen a lot of stories by Flannery O'Connor in the way it's about a farm, and rural people, and also because it is dark.

"Pale Horse, Pale Rider," is about a woman who writes for a newspaper, and meets a man in the army who is about to go off to war. The influenza epidemic has struck and people are dying everywhere. The story gives an excellent description of what it's like to be sick from the patient's point of view. It's poetic and beautifully written. Ms. Hen thinks it might be the best description of illness she has read since she has been reading things about plagues and epidemics recently.

These stories, and the worlds they inhabit, remind Ms. Hen of the book she read, "One of Ours" by Willa Cather. Ms. Hen wanted to find out if these two authors knew each other, and they were contemporaries, but not necessarily friends. Porter wrote an essay about Cather called "Reflections on Willa Cather," which was well renowned. Porter considered herself on the outside of the modernist movement.

Since these stories are about rural life, of course there are lot of chickens. In "Noon Wine," some appear, "In spite of his situation in life, Mr. Thomspon had never been able to outgrow his deep conviction that running a dairy and chasing after chickens was women's work." Ms. Hen doesn't think women's work should be anything to scoff at, and running after chickens is as honorable work as any other.

Ms. Hen really liked these three short novels. They're different from each other, but show the world how it used to be in an honest way. Things were different then; there was less communication, and more prejudice. Ms. Hen is fascinated by this time period, as well as others throughout history. We are products of history, and we keep projecting forward, leaving more history behind.

Ms. Hen reviews Motherless Child

 Motherless Child

Marianne Langer Zeitlin

Zephyr Press

2012

Ms. Hen decided to read this novel because she received it as a door prize at the National Writers Union book party last January. The person who own the press is on the Steering Committee for that organization with Ms. Hen, and he decided to give away some of his books to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the press. It took Ms. Hen a while to read this; it had been on her to read shelf for almost a year, but she's happy she finally read it.

This novel is about a young woman named Elizabeth with a haunted past. Her father passed away recently, and she was told her mother committed suicide after she left her father to marry a man named Alfred Rossiter, a classical music manager. Elizabeth's father had been a musician, but he never achieved the success his family thought he deserved.

Elizabeth lives in New York, and she discovers that Alfred Rossiter was planning opening a new agency, and was hiring. She decides to apply for the job, by using a false name and forging her college transcripts, simply to get a glimpse of the man her mother abandoned her and her family for. This novel takes place in the 1970s, and this could be probable back then, but using a false name would not work in today's world, because a person would undoubtedly get found out, either from social media or some other source. Surprisingly, Elizabeth gets hired for the job, even though she knows she is not qualified. She meets a man writing a biography of Rossiter, George Wentworth, and they both get entangled with each other and the stories George is writing about the past.

Ms. Hen had a difficult time trying to get into this book, since it differed from the last book she read. This book has elongated sentences, and flowery language, and Ms. Hen's last book, THE PASSION by Jeanette Winterson, has short sentences, and sings like a piccolo. This novel reads like a symphony, with all the characters and their stories and troubles blending in together to make beautiful music. 

This novel is full of music, and was written by someone intimate with that world. Ms. Hen does not know that much about classical music and musicians, but it appears that they struggle the same way she knows rock musician do, with not enough money to eat on the road, and being at the mercy of managers and booking agents and everyone else.

Ms. Hen figured out the secret to this novel before she knew the truth, but she knew it was coming. She is not a fan of mysteries, but a clue appears that makes this novel part mystery; it's also about romance, work, and family complications. This novel is similar to a window to someone's life, a complete picture of personal tragedy, and a lonely young woman discovering herself.

Ms. Hen thoroughly enjoyed this novel. It's not an easy read; it's dense, but well worth the time. She believes in the power of music to heal and make people happy, like books and all art are able to do at times.

  

Ms. Hen reviews The Passion

 

The Passion

Jeanette Winterson

Bloomsbury Publishing Ltd

1987

Ms. Hen picked up this book at a Little Free Library near where she lives because she had read other books by this author and loved them. She saw Ms. Winterson at a conference once, and she thought she was a breathtaking speaker, and her presentation was almost like a revival meeting. She decided this novel was the perfect one to read during election week.

THE PASSION is about characters surrounding Napoleon; a young man, Henri, who is in the army and works as his waiter, and serves him chicken (which Ms. Hen was excited about) and Villanelle, a woman from Venice, whose father was a boatman, who has webbed feet that she never shows anyone. Originally Henri's passion is for Napoleon, but he falls in love with Villanelle when they leave Russia together and abandon the army, where she was indentured as a prostitute, as a vivendiere, one that travels with the army to service the men. At the time they left, she only served the officers. Villanelle's passion is for the woman she loved for nine nights, years ago, who stole her heart, literally, and keeps it in a jar in her house covered with a shift.

Ms. Hen thinks this is a beautiful novel, even though she thought it was a little too short. She likes short books because she can read them fast, and write about them fast, and this one seemed like it is meant to be brief, but she liked living in this world. This is a book strewn with fairy tales; it reminds Ms. Hen of Marquez, but with a Venetian, European flavor. This novel is about gambling, war, fighting, love, obsession, madness and redemption.

Ms. Hen was thrilled that this novel is full of chickens. She thinks that the last time she read a book so full of them was when she read ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE and reviewed it here. The first sentence of this novel mentions chickens, "It was Napoleon who had such a passion for chicken that he kept his chefs working around the clock." Apparently, Napoleon loved chicken and he ate it all the time. Napoleon was a dictator, and in the way of dictators, he always had to have his own way. These days some dictators are not generals, but instead, they are TV stars, but they act the same fashion. 

When Henri first meets Villanelle, she and Patrick, the former priest from Ireland, are eating chicken, "The pair of them were wolfing chicken legs and offered one to me." After that the three of them attempt to walk from Moscow to Venice. It's a long way to walk, and they did not know what to expect at first.

Ms. Hen was enraptured by this novel. It surprised her, and she likes to be surprised. She didn't know what it was about when she started reading it, but sometimes the right book comes along at the right time. She believes in fairy tales, and that they are important, because a fairy tale can be anything we want it to be, and it can tell us what we need to know in a way we don't expect.

Ms. Hen reviews To the Lake

 To the Lake

Directed by Peter Kostomarov

2019

Ms. Hen does not review that many series, but she does watch at lot of Netflix and Amazon Prime. She has to do something to rest her hen brain after she works and reads all day. She reads a lot in between her working time, on the train, before she starts work, on her lunch break, but nighttime is the time to relax and watch things, most of the time. 

This series is made in Russia, and has subtitles, which does not bother Ms. Hen. She likes listening to different languages, because she can learn some foreign words that way. This show is about a virus that hits Moscow, and as soon as people get it, they die. They get pulmonary problems, their eyes turn red and white and they die. Ms. Hen thinks this show is prophetic, but it is not an unusual concept to imagine.

When the virus hits, two families who are not close go on the road to escape the military chasing them, because they killed some people who attacked their homes outside of Moscow. Sergey's father, Boris tells the group he has a house that he built on a lake that nobody knows about, and they would be safe there. The groups heads to the lake.

This show is full of quirky characters, Leonid, a misogynistic rich man with a pregnant ex-stripper wife, Marina, and an unstable alcoholic daughter, Polina; Sergey, whose ex-wife Ira shows up with their son Anton, and his girlfriend Anya, and her son with Aspergers, Misha. Misha is obsessed with Polina. Ira is jealous of Anya because she and Sergey started dated while she was his psychologist. Later a doctor, Pavel shows up, and tries to help everyone, and falls in love with Ira.

Ms. Hen thinks this show would be different if it took place in the United States, or anywhere in the West. Russians have a deep seated culture or paranoia, combined with the fact that everyone is a jerk. However, they are fiercely loyal to the ones they love.

The older men on this show are all pigs, Leonid and the doctor's uncle, but Russian men from their time acted that way. The younger men, Sergey and Pavel, are intelligent, sensitive men, and are a sharp contrast to the older men. Ms. Hen thinks this is an interesting way to depict characters, and is not sure if it's true to life, because she is not acquainted with many Russian men, but believes it must be honest.

This show is a typical post-apocalyptic story about people going on the road to find safety from something evil. The road trip story makes great cinema. But we know in real life, for us, it hasn't been like this, most people dealing with the current virus are told to stay in their houses and not go anywhere.

There is a mention of a chicken in this show, when the doctor tells the group that he found a chicken in the freezer of the house they were staying in, and wanted to cook it, to cure people, as popular belief teaches. Ms. Hen thinks that means chicken soup will make a person healthier, but she is not sure if it's the same with viruses.

This show is important, because it's about a virus running rampant in Russia, and could be seen as something related to what is happening now. People who are sci-fi fans know that anything is possible, and to learn what could happen with any scenario could be helpful to our lives, while we're not watching Netflix or reading books and escaping the horrors of everyday life.