Hemingway Leaving #2 and, Eventually, #3--Beautiful Exiles

Beautiful Exiles by Meg Waite Clayton
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Don't know why but this story did not resonate with me. Perhaps the fact that I never liked Hemingway's life or his writing made me less receptive to his story, even fictionalized. Gellhorn was almost fearless in her pursuit of her career as a war correspondent. He, on the other hand, avoided, as much as possible the real experience and instead wrote from the tales of others who had experienced battle and purported them to be his own exploits. I guess he wrote good fiction but the fact he claimed the reality as his own doesn't sit well.
A man of his time, he dominated and took control as much as possible of his wives and Gellhorn was no exception. The only one who got the better of him was his second wife who had the money and clout to cause his problems. Gellhorn, who had problems with her male relationships--choosing married men often and finding sex painful always--seemed to hero worship this drunken womanizer. It came as no surprise that the marriage failed. It was boring to trudge through its ups and downs --constantly repetitious --to its inevitable demise. I kept checking to see how many more pages there were til the end.

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The Last Cruise--A Disaster at Sea or Was It?

The Last Cruise by Kate Christensen
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

The entire book was as listless and unwavering as the ship when it at last loses navigation and propulsion. Divided into three sections--typical cruise mentality, off to rest, relaxation, booze and conquests; striking workers, intractable ship owner, viral disease, fire in the engine room, dead in the water; after days drifting with no cooking or toilet facilities, hit by a storm at sea and, I think, sinking.

The mood changed little during each phase, there was little development of characters, except maybe the elderly musicians, and certainly no development of plot that would justify the love that develops between the Chef and the dissatisfied farmer's wife from Maine.

All in all, superficial--as a reader felt outside the story and disconnected from its characters or setting. I won this book from Goodreads in exchange for a review.

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Hiro Hattori and Father Mateo Solve a Sixth Mystery-This One Reminiscent of Then There Were None!

Trial on Mount Koya by Susan Spann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hiro Hattori and Father Mateo find themselves in a Buddhist monastery at the summit of sacred Mount Koya. They've left Ana, the housekeeper, lower down the slope at a nunnery since it is forbidden for women to enter the monks' home. Gato , the cat, is with them, though they had to promise to keep her in their guest room at all times. As is always the case, Hiro is on a mission. This one entails making contact with a monk who is actually an undercover spy and giving him his newest assignment. The contact and directions are made easily almost upon arrival and so, it would seem, mission accomplished, our friends could move on.
Oh, but this is the 6th Shinobi Mystery and by now, faithful readers know this is not to be. On the very night of arrival, their contact is murdered and a blizzard begins making the roads to the monastery snowy, icy, impassible. Needless to say this is likely to keep the murderer from easily making his or her way away in the darkness of night. As murders begin to occur on an almost daily basis, it is obvious the killer is still among them and that it may be that no one except the culprit will live to tell the tall once the storm passes.
Who is killing the monks off, posing them as incarnations of the Buddha and why? A good, engrossing tale, filled with interesting characters and lots of Japanese religious and cultural history as well as a juxtaposing of Buddhism and Christianity. Loved it.

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Trouble in Nuala --A Place in Old Ceylon

Trouble in Nuala by Harriet Steel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Set in a small village of Ceylon, a tea plantation owner has appeared to die of a heart attack, leaving a young widow and her small son behind. Shanti de Silva, a native son, is the local policeman. He is married to a British woman and lives under the governorship of the British. He is mild-mannered and though he loves his native food and customs, he loves his wife enough to endure the British soirees, luncheons and idioms with humor. He is not particularly sure that the death is natural but lacking any sure signs of foul play he is unwilling to rock the boat until something more definite appears.
He and his two subordinates deal with roaming sheep and a herd of horses that seem to be everywhere disturbing traffic. When he finds a used teacup at the death scene with a vaguely familiar odor coming from the dregs, he finds himself looking for more evidence that this unpopular man was indeed murdered. Red herrings and several forays into the countryside that bring no clues ensue. Yet, there are several people who seem rather suspect and Inspector de Silva ponders it all amongst the roses of his beloved garden and over vegetables and roti until he solves the mystery.
A delightful cozy mystery set in an exotic local at a colonial time in the history of the British Empire with interesting characters and events.

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The Radium Girls---Devastating and True

The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a book that will stay with you long after the last page. Did your Dad have a wristwatch with a face that glowed in the dark? Mine did. Did your family have an alarm clock with glow in the dark hands--we had two. I wonder where they are now. I remember my fascination with those hands that had such a pretty green glow when everything else in the house was dark and were such a nice light turquoise in the light of day. I remember my Dad telling me about radium that made them glow and how a few years before I was born it was discovered that the young women who used to paint those hands got sick from the paint. Westclox was still making the clocks and the watches were still available so apparently it was safe now for them to be made.
I forgot all about those things until I noticed a book called The Radium Girls had just been published and, further, Book Browse, to which I belong, was making it available to read for discussion. I applied and received the copy I just finished. It seems that, though the products were still being made and sold by the hundreds or more, back in the '50's when we owned them and Dad spoke of the findings, there was a lot more to the story of what was happening to those girls.
The story aroused so many feelings as I read, disbelief at the callousness of the companies and the legal system. Wait, first disbelief at the illnesses that befell the dial painters, then disbelief at the companies and their executives and the lack of legal recourse for the victims. As time went on the disbelief turned to anger and heartbreak and tears of frustration.
Two places saw the manufacture of dials--Orange, New Jersey and Ottawa, Illinois. Imagine the further disbelief when the girls in Orange won some sort of legal justice, with incredible strings attached and the girls in Ottawa were assured by THEIR employer that what happened there could not occur in Illinois. Yet, fourteen years later, another group of women found themselves in the same legal quagmire. Eventually, a triumph of sorts came and has had an effect on the present legal recourse of workers against employers.
Still, the reader is left with sorrow, sadness, frustration but an abiding admiration for two groups of women and their spouses, children and other relatives and friends, who, though horribly ill, crippled and living with an unavoidable death sentence , fought, sometimes to their last breath for themselves and those who would follow them to the grave.
Wait til you read the epilog--the story isn't over yet. And the tale just won't go away as you close the book and put it on a shelf. Just devastating. Especially, since this sort of thing continues--think asbestos, tobacco, opioids. And, I wonder, marijuana?

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