FICTION: GOTHIC SPRAWLER
The Distant Hours by Kate Morton
Kate Morton writes Gothic-inspired novels about grand British houses of yesteryear: “The House at Riverton” chronicled a servant’s-eye view of the Edwardian era, while “The Forgotten Garden” carried a colonial orphan’s dreams backward and forward over a century. Now, in “The Distant Hours,” Morton turns to her largest house yet, an actual castle — and it’s crumbling. Can the symbolism get any more obvious?
Actually, in Morton’s hands, it’s not obvious at all. “The Distant Hours” demonstrates a new leap in Morton’s authorial choreography. Although the novel would have benefited from some judicious cuts, its multiple story lines intersect in a satisfying conclusion that will leave no reader feeling cheated.
In 1990s London, single and self-sufficient book editor Edie Burchill reads an old letter from someone at Milderhurst Castle that intrigues her but shocks her quite ordinary mother. She then receives an assignment to write an introduction to “The True History of the Mud Man,” a children’s classic by Raymond Blythe, who lived at Milderhurst.
Edie meets an odd trio of women at Milderhurst: Blythe’s daughters, elderly twins Persephone and Seraphina and their much-younger half sibling, Juniper. And there are mysteries in abundance: Juniper may or may not be “mad,” Persephone may or may not be in love, and Edie’s mother may or may not share a strange secret with a local teacher named Thomas Cavill.
By the time Edie unravels the sad truth within the castle, it is too late for some — no surprise in a Gothic tale — but not too late for others. The revelations involving these characters’ “distant hours” make this a rich treat for fans of historical fiction.
Bethanne Patrick is a freelance critic and author who lives in Arlington, Va. You can follow her on Twitter @TheBookMaven.
By Summer Moore
The Associated Press
SELF-HELP: A COMEDIAN’S ADVICE TO WOMEN
Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man by Steve Harvey
Steve Harvey has a lot of good information for women who want to find a husband — and keep him. And he will tell you. Over and over again.
“Straight Talk, No Chaser: How to Find, Keep, and Understand a Man” is the actor-comedian’s follow-up to his 2009 best seller, “Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment.”
According to Harvey, women need to be ready to walk away from a bad relationship and be willing to demand a ring when they’re in a good one.
As he puts it: “There’s not a man I know who’s sat around dreaming about his wedding day.” Harvey spells it all out, plain and simple: Don’t be afraid to change your lifestyle if it means finding someone better.
Women want to be married, which means they have to take control of the direction of the relationship.
If this sounds familiar to readers of “Act Like a Lady,” that’s because “Straight Talk” is primarily a rehashing of the previous book. Harvey acknowledges as much, saying women still aren’t getting it.
“Straight Talk” may be repetitive, but the lessons still ring true.
By Ron Charles
Washington Post Writers Group
FICTION: ART YARN
An Object of Beauty by Steve Martin
Those classic “Saturday Night Live” skits are more than three decades old, but it’s hard not to keep thinking of Steve Martin as a Wild and Crazy Guy or the white-suited man with bunny ears. Who could have predicted the trajectory of that arrow that passed through his head, sailed through his platinum albums, his dozens of movies, his New Yorker magazine sketches, and now hits its target in a smart novel about the contemporary art market?
Like “Shopgirl,” Martin’s best-selling novella from 2000, “An Object of Beauty” tells the story of a young woman, but this time his heroine is ferociously ambitious and has “a scalpel personality.” With a killer body, a wardrobe to show it off uptown or downtown, and a sharp sense of humor, Lacey Yeager makes sure she’s the center of every room.
From her entry-level position at Sotheby’s, she beats, cheats and sleeps her way into the frothy art world, riding its peaks and crashes in the years before and after the 9/11 attacks. “She was rash with people, with her body, her remarks,” Martin writes. “She was equally reckless with all.” She’s so sure she can perceive and control invisible forces of desire that it’s hard to take your eyes off her, even when she’s standing next to some of the the world’s most beautiful paintings.
The person most thoroughly hypnotized by her performance is the almost-invisible narrator, Daniel Franks. In love with her since college, he’s Norman Rockwell to her Niki de Saint Phalle. While Lacey leaps ever higher in the gallery world, Daniel wistfully toils away as a freelance art critic, watching her soar along with the prices of ironic, deconstructive works by young artists no one had heard of two years earlier. On the opening page, he tells us that he’s writing down this story as a way of exorcising Lacey from his mind, but he only seems to be engraving her presence more deeply.
Bound on bright white paper, with splashy red endpapers, the text is enriched by more than 20 color reproductions of the artworks that catch Lacey’s attention, from Maxfield Parrish’s “Daybreak” to Richard Serra’s “Betwixt the Torus and the Sphere.” They make lovely, helpful enhancements to Martin’s always engaging discussion of these pieces, and how wonderful it is to see a mainstream publisher that knows a book can still be an object of beauty itself.
