Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

Taylor, Elizabeth. Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont. New York : New York Review Books 2021. Print.

First Sentences:

 

Mrs Palfrey first came to the Claremont Hotel on a Sunday afternoon in January. Rain had closed in over London, and her taxi sloshed along the almost deserted Cromwell Road, past one cavernous porch after another, the driver going slowly and poking his head out into the wet, for the hotel was not known to him. 

Description:

This book is a bit of a switch for me. Short, cosy, quiet, not much action. But Elizabeth Taylor's Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont got ahold of me with its characters and concise writing style and wouldn't let go until the very surprising end.

 

First published in 1971, Mrs Palfrey is the eleventh of twelve novels written by Elizabeth Taylor (not that Elizabeth Taylor), and  was short-listed for the Booker Prize. Taylor, once one of the most renowned of British women writers, seems to have fallen off the "To Be Read" list of modern readers. But with Mrs Palfrey, I stumbled onto her work and was immediately captivated.

 

Laura Palfrey, the main character, is a recently widowed mother to estranged daughter Elizabeth and equally distant grandson Desmond. She recently decided to move into a modest hotel to live out her days. The Claremont was located in London near the National History Museum and other attractions, favorable points in selecting that hotel although Mrs Palfrey and her other permanent residents in that hotel never have the energy or desire to visit these attractions.

 

While the Claremont is a regular hotel with temporary guests, there are several elderly women and one man who have made it their permanent home. Living sheltered lives of gossip, loneliness, and boredom, these residents exist on routines of checking the daily posted menu for each meal, eating, watching a TV serial, and knitting. The sole male, Mr. Osborne, spends his days writing complaint letters to The Times and buttonholing the hotel staff with dull stories and crude jokes. Mrs Burton, another resident, loves nothing more that obtaining drinks at the hotel bar, while the others content themselves with observing passersby on the street and gossiping about the lives of other people.

At the Claremont, days were lived separately. One sat at separate tables and went on separate walks. The afternoon outing to change library books was always taken alone. 

Highlights for each person is a visit from a relative, even though that is usually a matter of obligation for the visitor. Mrs Palfrey has only one grandson, Desmond, nearby who works in the British Museum and has little interest in visiting her. So Mrs Palfrey, alone in her days, by chance meets an impoverished young writer, Ludo, who becomes a friend and even visits her at the Claremont.

 

The trick: Ludo with Mrs Palfrey's insistence, pretends he is her grandson, Desmond, to show her fellow residents that she, too, has relatives who visit her. For Ludo, Mrs Palfrey gives him ideas for characterization of people in the novel he is slowly writing, so his intentions are not altogether altruistic. But for Mrs Palfrey, he is a godsend to her life and her relationship with the residents.

 

Taylor writes this novel as a series of scenes rather than a narrative. Mrs Palfrey is a keen observer of her world and its inhabitants, as well as the motivations and shortcomings of herself and others. While not much happens in the routine world of the Claremont, each page is full of quiet insights into the behavior of people, something I found fully absorbing. Taylor's writing style is compact, straightforward, yet loaded with insight, compassion, frustration, loneliness, and yes, some humor.

Sometimes when I was a young, married woman, I longed to be freed -- free of nursery chores and social obligations, one's duty, d'you know? And free of worries, too, about one's loved ones -- childish ailments and ageing parents, money troubles....But it's really not to be desired -- and I realise that that's the only way of being free -- to be not needed. 

In rereading this recommendation, I'm not sure my enthusiasm for Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont comes through. But let me assure you, if you are looking for a quiet, challenging, people-centered story of quirky, yet very human characters, you cannot go wrong with this novel. Give it a whirl and see for yourself.

  

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

Willett, Jincy. Amy Falls Down

An elderly woman stumbles and falls in her backyard, only to awaken in a hospital as a celebrity due to something she recently wrote but now no longer remembers. Her quiet life is soon changed. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis

Woolaver, Lance. The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis. Nova Scotia : Nimbus 1994. Print.

First Sentences:

Nova Scotia is a rural province, as far removed from the great cities as any back-to-the-lander might wish. Yet when a Nova Scotian wants to call up the name of a faraway place, he is likely to turn towards Yarmouth, a county of fishing and farming communities, home to such names as Hebron, Hectanooga, Chegoggin and the birthplace of Maud Lewis.

Description:

For those of you who enjoyed the 2016 film, Maudie, starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke about the crippled folk painter, Maud Lewis, you will love The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis by Lance Woolaver. For those of you unfamiliar with this remarkable woman and her simple life in a remote region of Nova Scotia, well, all I can say is look into this short biography and gaze on her beautiful paintings and the note cards she sold for a few dollars from in front of her house on an isolated road. 

 

 

 

Whether familiar with Maud Lewis or not, Maud Lewis is a treasure of clear writing, researched details, photographs, and, of course, colorful paintings. Maud was born with severe birth defects around the turn of the century, afflictions that rounded her back and caused her constant pain through arthritis, especially in her hands. She endured constant teasing from schoolmates and only achieved a fourth-grade education due to constant absences for health reasons.

 

Trying to achieve an independent life after the death of her parents, she answered a scrap want ad posted by Everett Lewis on the local general store bulletin board asking for a live-in housekeeper and cook. Lewis was currently living a simple life by selling fish, firewood, and handyman work at the poor house/orphanage that adjoined his one-room house, the same poor house where he was raised. A notable miser, he hoarded his money and refused to get electricity, gas, or running water in his house until his death.

 

He hired Maud as housekeeper, but soon they both realized that, due to her physical limitations, she could not handle cooking, cleaning, and other chores. So Maud began to paint, a skill she had dabbled with her entire life. She covered every surface of their tiny house with tiny birds, flowers, and butterflies, from cupboards to windows, from their salvaged stove to tables, walls, and doors. What was once a ramshackle shed soon became a charming, colorful home. 

 

 

 

Everett scrounged for Maud brushes and leftover paint abandoned in trash piles and empty homes. Besides her house, Maud's painting surfaces were cardboard boxes and slats of wood, wall paper, particle board, and Masonite panels. Whatever paint cans he found were the colors Maud used in her paintings. 

 

When a few passersby on the road noticed her decorated house, Everett (Maud was too shy) showed them her other paintings and sold them for small amounts of money. She painted and then posted a sign outside their front door and began a roadside business. Everett did the selling and took all the earnings, putting it in jars and then burying them in their yard. He even took over the household chores of cooking, cleaning, and washing to free Maud to paint more. Maud enjoyed her new life with freedom to paint, a roof over her head, basic food to eat, and "a much-needed sense of worth."

 

 

 

And the paintings? Since she rarely left her chair by the window, they were created from her memories and imagination. Farm scenes, town buildings, cats, butterflies, birds, and cows were her favorite subjects. There were few people portrayed, but those men pictured driving a cart or hauling lumber were always wearing a red cap and checked shirt just like Everett. 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I loved reading about her quiet life where she accepted bitter winters, poverty, a miserly husband, and a few scavenged art materials. She constantly demonstrated that she was a survivor who pursued her art with whatever was at hand, depicting the scenes she remembered from childhood or could envision in her imagination.

 

This is a book full of charm, beauty, and Maud's perseverance over major obstacles. Author Woolaver and photographer Bob Brooks combined thorough research along with historic photographs of Maud, Everett, their family, and the world they lived in to produce this colorful, revealing book. Highly recommended for art lovers and anyone just interested in the life of a woman who pursued the drive of her desires: to paint for its own beauty.

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Kane, William and Gabrielle, Anna. Every Picture Hides a Story.

Very readable and informative background stories and explanations of the most famous works by artists including Michaelango, Da Vinci, Ver Meer, Degas, Manet, and many more. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 500 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

 

The Lost Masterpiece

Shapiro, B.A. The Lost Masterpiece. Chapel Hill, NJ : Algonquin Books 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

I hate spam. Well, obviously everyone hates spam, but I hate it with an admittedly unwarranted ferocity. When I see it, my blood pressure rises, my fingers curl inward, and my jaw throbs. A bit excessive, I know....Unwanted emails and phishing texts are bad enough, but when spam hits my voicemail, my nerves migrate to the outside of my skin and I'm ready to scream. 

Description:

When Tamara Rubin repeatedly receives multiple voice messages on her phone urgently asking her to call for important news, she naturally becomes enraged and deletes them. Finally she returns the call to berate the spammer, only to find out he is a legitimate person from a legitimate organization whose purpose is to recover artworks stolen by the Nazis and reunite them with their rightful owners.

 

Tamara learns she is the inheritor of a long lost masterpiece painting by Edouard Manet. The painting had been newly-recovered from a Nazi storage location. Further research showed it had been given by Manet to Tamara's great-great-great-great-great grandmother, Berthe Morisot, a fellow Impressionist painter who was rumored to have had a love affair with him.

 

So what does one do with an inherited masterpiece worth hundreds of millions of dollars? Of course, Tamara hangs it in her modest apartment to view its engrossing scene of a picnic in the park of ordinary people laughing, playing, embracing, and generally enjoying themselves. 

 

But there are problems. An unknown cousin descended from Manet, informs Tamara that actually he is the rightful owner of the painting and has Manet's will to prove it. Tamara hires a lawyer to fight this claim and cement her own right to the painting.

 

But is it safe hanging in her apartment, without insurance, guards, proper temperature and humidity, and a host of other complications? When her cousin offers staggering amount of money to purchase the painting outright from her to avoid legal battles, how can she refuse? 

 

But the painting speaks to her. She often feels she is part of the figures depicted in the painting, especially her grandmother who is a prominent figure in the work. She even imagines her grandmother winks at her from the painting.

 

Thus begins a dual narrative, one offered by Tamara living in the current age, and one narrated by Berthe herself from the 1800s. Berthe reveal her privileged life, her struggles as a female artist, and her fellow artists and family, some of whom encourage her work while others are shocked by her profession and subject matter. She also reveals her attraction to Edouard Manet which grows daily as she paints in his studio alongside Degas, Renoir, and others attempting to create a new form of art full of color, abstract figures, and unusual settings. They were mockingly referred to as "Impressionists," a name they gradually took on as a badge of pride, and thus started a new movement away from the staid art of the time.

 

This is historical fiction, meaning the characters in Berthe's era are real, as are many of the situations depicted. Beyond that, this is a story imagined by author Shapiro, one which seems perfectly reasonable as it engulfed me the people and era of France in the late 1800s.

 

I loved the story, the creation of the masterpiece painting contracted with Tamara's fight to protect the piece. It is a totally engrossing novel on so many levels, I highly recommend it for art lovers and just anyone who loves a fight for independence and a romance or two set 150 years apart. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Cane, William and Gabrielle, Anna. Every Picture Hides a Story: The Secret Ways Artiss Make Their Work More Seductive.

Fascinating insider research on the background and hidden messages in the works of Berte Morisot as well as Michelangelo, Raphael, Vermeer, Manet, Degas, Cassatt, Kilmt, Van Gogh, Sargant, and many others,

 Happy reading.

Fred

[P.S. Click here to browse over 480 more book recommendations by subject or title and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader.]

 

The Strange Case of Jane O

Walker, Karen Thompson. The Strange Case of Jane O. New York : Random House 2025. Print.

First Sentences:

Jane O. came to my office for the first time in the spring of that year. She was thirty-eight years old. Her medical history contained nothing unusual. This was her first visit, she said, to a psychiatrist....What I remember most about that first day is how lonely this woman seemed. I am not talking about ordinary loneliness. This was something else, a kind of loneliness of the soul.


Description:

Three days after that opening paragraph meeting, Dr. Byrd, the psychiatrist, received a call from the local emergency room. A woman had been found unconscious in a park by a maintenance worker who brought her to the ER. She had no wallet, no keys, no identification at all. She told the ER staff her name was Jane. She said her doctor's name was Dr. Byrd and thus he was contacted by the ER staff.

 

But strangely, this woman had no memory of anything that had happened to her in the previous 25-hour period of her life, nor how she arrived at the park where she had been found.

"The last thing I remember," she said, "is filling my teakettle with water." This was her habit, she said, to make a cup of tea right after dropping her infant son at his daycare.

She begins to see Dr. Byrd professionally to try to understand what caused her blackout and what had occurred in her life during those missing 25 hours. Turns out, she had already briefly met Dr. Byrd 20 years earlier, but she would not reveal to him why they had met. 

Through their new sessions, he learns she has hyperthymesia, a perfect memory that forgets nothing seen, heard, or experienced. He is astonished to learn she is able to recite the names of every book on his office shelves, the miscellaneous items on his desk, newspaper headlines, weather conditions...from their only session 20 years ago. 

Although her memory is faultless, she does relate to Dr. Byrd a few stories that he knows are untrue, such as Jane memory of discovering her upstairs neighbor dead in her apartment, seeing and talking with a man she knew was dead, or her fear about an unusual disease that was currently sweeping the country. Dr. Byrd had met her neighbor (in good health) and had no evidence that any disease currently in the world. Yet Jane swore these were true events she experienced.

[Jane thought] I guess I should consider whether [Dr. Byrd's] right, that my conviction that [my neighbor's death] is meaningless is evidence of its meaning. Once a mind begins to question itself, there is no bottom to its questioning. In one sense, I am conducting an investigation with a flawed instrument. 

With no medical abnormalities or injuries after being found in the park, Jane freely resumed to her life, her work as a librarian, and her sessions with Dr. Byrd. That is, until one day she misses her appointment with him. It is soon discovered that she and her son are missing, unable to be found anywhere.

What and who to believe? Jane is so sane, so calm. Yet she has seemingly told lies about her life and now is somewhere unknown, moving with an infant son and occasionally briefly caught on surveillance cameras in stores and restaurants in scattered places.

Gripping, puzzling, sympathetic, solid, and full of hidden secrets leading to unexplainable behaviors pulls readers along page after page. Narrated alternately by Jane and Dr. Byrd, we glimpse their inner thoughts and questions as we slowly unravel who they are and what causes their actions. 

And best of all, readers will not know the final outcome until the final sentences. What is better in a story that that? Highly recommended.

What might it mean for a life, [Dr. Byrd] wondered, if one's memories were never subject to alteration or decay, if one's most precious experiences glowed permanently in the mind, always intact, forever whole?....[But] a mind like Jane's would preserve not only the treasured memories but also the loathed ones. Every old joy would remain forever at hand -- but every sadness, too, every terror, every shame. 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:]

 Watson,S.J.. Before I Go to Sleep.

The narrator has a memory that lasts only one day, then forgets everything about herself and life by the next day. But she has doggedly determined that someone may be trying to kill her. So she must figure out a way to remember who is to be trusted and who to be suspicious of. (Previously reviewed here.)

 Happy reading.

 

Fred

Click here to browse over 480 more book recommendations by subject or title (and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

Shock

Dukakis and Tye, Larry. Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. New York: Penguin 2007. Print.

First Sentences:

 

There is no treatment in psychiatry more frightening than electroconvulsive therapy. It works like this: Two electrodes are strapped to the patient's skull. The doctor presses a button that unleashes a burst of electricity powerful enough to set off an epileptic-like convulsion. The sheer strength of the seizure shocks the brain back into balance.

 

There also is no treatment in psychiatry more effective than ECT. 

Description:

 

Wow! Those are some mighty strong, challenging first few sentences which launch into Kitty Dukakis' (with Larry Tye) memoir of her depression, addictions, and Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) treatment. Her book is Shock: The Healing Power of Electroconvulsive Therapy. And in a world where I, along with probably many other people, only have knowledge of ECT (commonly referred to as "Electroshock") from films like The Snakepit, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and A Beautiful Mind, I felt it would be interesting to learn the facts behind this seemingly scary procedure and the patients who receive it. 

 

In those films, ECT is often used as a punishment rather than as a real treatment, nefariously meant to be administered to a recalcitrant patient. Results were portrayed as similar to a lobotomy, making patients passive, submissive, and quiet.

It was the medical madness of an earlier era, a remedy forever equated with thrashing limbs and obliterated memories. Now, at the same Harvard teaching hospital where Kitty Dukakis gets her treatment, twenty patients a week volunteer for shock therapy....Today [2007] the number of Americans getting ECT each year is almost 100,000 and growing.

The reality presented by Dukakis' spellbinding recollections of her personal ECT experience helps readers understand that this treatment can be highly beneficial for a great number of patients suffering from depression, suicidal thoughts, and addictions. Shock presents Dukakis' honest, often powerful recollections of her decades-long journeys into addiction (diet pills and later alcohol), overwhelming depression, and suicidal thoughts, as well as her experiences with various psychologists and prescribed medications. 

 

Dukakis first became addicted to diet pills when she was very young to achieve her mother's image of a slimmer daughter. She also received a tremendous energy boost from these daily tablets. Later, as she tried to kick that addiction, she began to rely on alcohol to blot out her overwhelming depression about her appearance. 

She soon lacked any of her former commitment to social programs, volunteering, and even family, remaining in bed for days, and was regularly found passed out in her vomit. As a governor's wife, she realized she was a danger to her politician husband, Michael's, campaign for president, but was helpless to overcome her mental illness.

[In 1988] I stopped showing up at my office. I spent all day at our duplex....I got up in the morning, waited for Michael to leave, then canceled all my appointments. I headed straight to the liquor cabinet in the dining room, carried the bottle into the kitchen, poured out three or four ounces of spirits, and gulped it down. Then I grabbed a newspaper or magazine, went upstairs, drew the blinds, unplugged the phone, and read for the ten minutes it took me to pass out. When I got up two hours later, I did it all again. 

When ECT was suggested to her as a last resort, she naturally was hesitant. But after undergoing her first treatment on her 38th wedding anniversary, she immediately felt lighter, less stressed, and with enough energy to go home that same day. She continued the normal series of five ECT treatments spread over the next weeks, finding she was much improved mentally for about eight months. After that time, she then began a new series. This became her regular pattern over the rest of her life.

 

There is one predictable drawback faced by Dukakis and other ECT patients: memory loss. Sometimes it is only portions of minor memories that are lost only for a few weeks. But for other patients, the loss might be of more important events and permanent. Dukakis completely forgot a romantic trip she took with husband Michael to Paris. Re-enacting that vacation, even staying in the same hotel and eating at the same restaurants, did not jog a hint of the old memory.

 

But that same memory loss side effect also included forgetting about those areas that troubled her into depression. She no longer could remember why she was insecure about her image and personality, could not conceive of the causes of her depression, nor remember her flawed behavior when under the influence of diet pills and alcohol.    

Co-author Tye, in alternate chapters, delves deeply into the historical background of these mental illnesses and ECT treatment, including its discovery and testing in 1938 (which first included putting patients into a medical coma). Tye interviews  doctors, psychiatric hospital staff, and patients themselves, presenting a well-rounded picture of individuals and research involved with these paralyzing and all-encompassing mental illnesses, as well as the changes brought about by ECT. He also examines the extreme backlash from many doctors, teaching hospitals, and public organizations who vocally denounce and actively work against the benefits of ECT.

 

Of course, as published in 2007, the medical treatments and advances in ECT presented in Shock make some data, both for and against ECT, possibly dated. But regardless, the confessions of Dukakis and others, her struggles, and her triumphs over crippling mental illness cannot be discounted.

 

I was swept away by her candid narration as well as Tye's medical and personal interview and research to provide a more clear picture of ECT and its affect, good and bad, on its patients. There were fascinating facts and personal assessments of this treatment on every page. 

I know it sounds strange to go on and on about this controversial treatment. But Dukakis' book is a must read for anyone interested in depression, addictions, psychiatric treatments, and impacts of individuals suffering from mental illness.

How one of the most reviled psychiatric procedures is fast becoming one of its mainstays is an astounding yet untold chapter of American medical history. 

 

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Mukherjee, Siddhartha. The Emperor of All Maladies  

In-depth research into the medical history and current status of all forms of cancer, treatments, and patients. Fascinating.

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 475 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).

 

 

Tracks

Davidson, Robyn. Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback. New York: Vintage. 1980. Print.

First Sentences:

 

I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes....A freezing wind whipped grit down the platform and I stood shivering, holding warm dog flesh, and wondering what foolishness had brought me to this eerie, empty training station in the centre of nowhere. 

Description:

With personal challenge and survival memoirs, I always try to imagine whether I could achieve what the author accomplished. Almost always the answer is a resounding "No, not in my wildest dreams." That is even more obvious while reading Robyn Davidson's magnificent journey, Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1,700 Miles of Australian Outback.

 

Davidson is just an ordinary Australian-born young woman with no special skills or ambitions...except for a persistent desire to walk across the Australian outback desert, alone, with only camels and her dog as her companions. Yes, that's right. She will walk on foot, not ride the camels, for 1,700 miles, making her "lunatic idea" (her words) even more impossible-sounding.

 

So she takes a train from her home in Queensland to the bleak outback town of Alice Springs, where men are men and women stay home. There she hoped for the first time to actually even see a camel and then learn how to manage them by herself. 

 

She began to work for a domineering man who captured and tamed wild, feral camels that roam the outback. Taking on the lowest position on his ranch, she agreed to work for free in exchange for camel-training experiences and, at the end of eight months, be given three of his camels for her expedition. Not all goes according to this plan, however.

 

Eventually, off she goes, with her two camels, following old desert roads, trails, and open terrain from one feeding spot to another, hoping local information about watering holes is correct and the rumored tiny settlements are still active and places where she can get rest and advice along the way.

I knew [people] all had that sinking feeling that they would never see me alive again, and I had the sinking certainty that I would have to send messages from Redbank Gorge the same day, saying, "Sorry, muffed it on the first seventeen miles, please collect." 

Along with her faithful dog, Diggity, and occasionally a photographer from National Geographic magazine, the source of her funding and eventual article, she slowly walks, gaining rhythm, confidence, and power in her aloneness. Wild, unpredictable camels, numerous hardships, and the vast desert all around her. What could possibly go wrong?

We were breaking camp at four in the morning, walking until ten, resting in the shade until four, then continuing until eight at night....Living on one's nerves and expecting every moment to produce a horrendous catastrophe is one thing -- doing it in 130-degree heat is quite another. Hell must be something like that. 

Along the trek, she encounters wild camels ("If you see one, shoot it first -- immediately" is the advice given her), snakes, dried up water holes, abandoned villages, as well as friendly, generous people and moonlit skies that kept her dream alive.

 

I really enjoyed reading her clear, honest prose as she recounts adventure after challenge, or just the boredom of putting one foot in front of the other mile after mile. It is a powerful, yet simple read, one that should be enjoyable to anyone seeking an insight into the beauties and threats of the Australian Outback desert, and the perseverance of one woman who tries to live in it.

It struck me then that the most difficult thing had been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity....One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever, one really could act to change and control one's life; and the procedure, the process, was its own reward.

[If this book interests you, be sure to check out:] 

  

Harris, Kate. Lands of Lost Borders.   

One woman's quest to trace the route of Marco Polo through China, Tibet, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkey, India, and other countries...by bicycle. Wonderful descriptions of her journey, the land, and the few people she encounters in the vast, mostly unsettled mountains of Asia. (Previously reviewed here.)

Happy reading.

Fred

 

Click here to browse over 475 more book recommendations by subject or title

(and read the introduction to The First Sentence Reader).