Dec 232013
 

Read in November 2013

Fin and Lady, by Cathleen Schine

Two stars

This novel has a promising setup: an orphaned 11-year-old boy sent to live with the 20-something step-sister he barely knows. Their shared parent — their father — died in debt, leaving the boy’s mother to make their home with her parents on a farm in Connecticut while the girl remained with her still-wealthy mother. By the time Fin is orphaned, his sister, Lady, has been as well and, as a result, she’s loaded. The time is 1964, and the first thing Lady does with her new-found wealth is to ditch the co-op uptown and buy and renovate a house in Greenwich Village, where ensconces Fin along with her black housekeeper, Mabel. The novel follows Fin’s progress over the next couple of years as he settles into the neighborhood, attending new schools and making friends. As for Lady, she spends the years knocking back Scotch, smoking pot, and juggling three suitors. A couple of 1960s touchstones are thinly sketched in — civil rights, Vietnam — but the reemergence of feminism is not among them. Neither are any of the dollars-and-cents issues that real people must deal with because, of course, Lady is loaded and Mabel’s on hand to cook the meals and keep the place clean. There’s not much of a plot on offer but the occasional reference “Fin told me” raises the question “Who’s telling this story?” That may be enough to keep readers interested. I’m not sure Schine stayed interested, however, because she basically short-circuits her climax by having it occur off the page and then quickly wraps everything up with a “here’s what happened next” finale that fast forwards through 50 years in a page or two. As a result, despite the promising setup, Fin and Lady ends in disappointment.

Touch Not the Cat, by Mary Stewart

Three stars

Touch Not The Cat, published in 1976, is the last and least interesting of Stewart’s string of stellar romantic suspense novels that began with Madam, Will You Talk? in 1954. Part of the problem, I think, is that in contrast to most of the earlier novels, which take place in interesting and somewhat exotic settings, this novel is set in England. Stewart’s ability to evoke Provence and Damascus and Corfu, the place and the people, is part of the pleasure of the other books, but to me the English setting and people simply aren’t as interesting. However, unlike England-set novels that came later — Thornyhold and Rose CottageTouch Not the Cat does have the suspense that one expects from Stewart’s non-Merlin novels. The character here is Bryony Ashley, who returns to her family’s grand but threadbare estate following the sudden hit-and-run death of her father, which will transfer ownership to her uncle and, ultimately, the eldest of her three male cousins. The mystery of Bryony’s father’s and his garbled last message to her deepens when she returns to England to find that valuable heirlooms are missing from Ashley Court, which has been rented to an American family. Two features of this novel didn’t work for me. The first was the passages depicting the love affair of an Ashley ancestor that we included in each chapter. The second was the psychic ability of some Ashleys, including Bryony, which has given her a secret communication channel and intimate connection with one of her cousins (she’s not sure which) who she refers to in her mind as her lover. Despite those drawbacks, I enjoyed this novel, not as much as Stewart’s earlier romantic suspense but enough to recommend it to other Stewart fans.