Reading over break

Hopefully, I will have a chance to photograph CPH this weekend. (Yesterday was errands and catching up; today, as soon as it's a bit lighter - if it's a bit lighter, it's still overcast - I'm going to go out and do more observations).

I finished two books (and started two more, but one was a re-read) over break.

The first book I finished is "The Disappearing Spoon," which is essentially a trot through the periodic table. It was interesting, but unfortunately, like many of those books that are generally loose collections of facts/conjecture, I don't always remember a lot of specific details. I already understood the basic structure of the table (and stuff like why the lanthanides are generally exiled down into their own rows, rather than inserted in the middle where you'd expect them), so that was no surprise. Kean (the author) does spend a certain amount of time on the people who discovered many of the elements - the Curies, of course, and Lise Meitner and her collaborator Hahn (Meitner never received a Nobel prize - Kean implies that politics played a factor there - and of course she never will now (they only award living recipients) but she did get a greater honor - an element named after her). There's also a lot of discussion of the splitting of the atom and radioactive decay and the people who worked on the atom bombs. And discussion of what was going on in the Soviet Union at the same time - I already knew Stalin was a bad, bad guy who had millions of his countrymen killed. But I was particularly struck by the fact that scientists who did not speak the party line (like Lysenkoism, which is basically a recycled version of Lamarckism) were either killed or sent to do hard labor in mines, trying to extract heavy metals. (Being shot would be preferable; at least that death would be quick). As disagreeable as disagreement may get here, I hope it never comes to a situation where someone who publishes research results that contradict the "party line" winds up sent to the equivalent of a glue factory.

There's a lot more in the book - he talks about "poisoner's row" (thallium and other elements that are deadly toxic), and industrial accidents leading to poisoning (I remember learning about "itai-itai" in my Environmental Geology class). I will say I would have liked a bit more technical detail on the orbitals and the "buried electrons" and that kind of thing- oh, I learned about orbitals and stuff way back when, but as a biologist, I mostly learned about the "small" atoms (carbon, nitrogen, etc.) and it's the big ones that have the really weird electron configurations. I guess that's my complaint about the book: it's long on gee-whiz stories and shorter on actual scientific detail. But then again, perhaps it would be less readable or comprehensible to the relative layperson with all that detail, I don't know.

The second book I read is a novel. It's a wonderful, odd short novel called "The Brontes went to Woolworth's" (you find out what that title means nearly at the very end of the book). This is one of those between-the-wars British novels centering on a middle-class or upper-middle class family. (At least, I assume they are so, as they have maids and they have a governess/tutor for the youngest girl). It centers on a family - mother, three daughters (the father is, at the time the novel takes place, deceased). The family forms quite a little cohesive unit - they have a sort of family game, where there are "characters" who "visit" (one, for example, is based on Ironface, a tin-headed doll one of the girls used to have). It's a little hard to explain but if you were the kind of child who had a host of imaginative characters that populated your head it will probably make more sense. The thing is - Dierdre (the oldest daughter) is in her early 20s, and Katrine (the middle girl) is somewhere in her late teens, and they are still deeply involved in the game - and yet, it's not really entirely a game to them; it is something that takes hold of them and becomes a reality almost alongside the "real" reality. (As I said, it's hard to explain.) The complicating factor is that some of their "characters" are based on actual people - they incorporate a pierrot (from an acting troupe) named Dion Saffyn into their Saga (perhaps that's the best term to use, rather than "game") and most of the novel focuses on their relationship (imagined, and later, real) with "Toddy" and "Lady Mildred" ("Toddy's" wife). "Toddy" is the judge who presided in court when their mother was called to jury duty - and for some reason, Dierdre develops what we might call a "crush" (not a romantic crush, understand - but it is in some strange way like a crush ) on the man and wants to learn about him.

She and her sisters weave Toddy and Lady Mildred into their Saga. In a way, it's a lot like writing fan-fiction, only it's not written down, and it involves real people.

But then the main tension of the novel happens - first, Miss Martin (the governess) begins to want to "cure" Sheil (the youngest daughter) of the strange fancies she and her sister have. And then, Dion Saffyn (the real one, not the one in the Saga) dies, and Dierdre and Katrine conspire to keep that fact from Sheil, lest it destroy her powers of imagination, which they assume are weaker, seeing as Sheil is younger. Then, Dierdre is given the opportunity to meet the "real" Lady Mildred - which raises an immense crisis: will meeting one of your "characters" in real life cause the fantasy to collapse? What if they find out you have been making up stories involving them?

I won't give away too much more. I will say it's a book where you kind of have to hang on when things do not make sense and just trust that it will become clear, and then keep going. And I will also note that in some of the Lady Mildred/Judge Toddington sequences, it was dashed hard for me to tell what parts were actually happening in "real reality" and what parts were parts of the Saga. But perhaps that doesn't matter so much.

There's also a vague supernatural aspect to the book - at one point, Dierdre and Katrine "turn tables" (I presume from the context that is like a seance or a Ouija board) and they apparently call up the spirits of two of the Bronte sisters - who later show up (or maybe don't, as I said, what is "real" vs. what is "Saga" in the book becomes muddled)

I have skimmed a couple of reviews of the book. It's funny how the things I don't notice or that don't bother me turn other people off. Several people have mentioned aspects of "classism" and yes, I guess they're there, but really, they don't bother me - this was Britain in the 30s, what class a person belonged to was something that did matter, and there were Attitudes. And people had servants. I guess I can overlook that in some ways. Or maybe I just don't notice it because I get caught up in the characters. (Or maybe coming from the middle-class, or at least, what used to be the middle-class, myself, I'm less cognizant of those issues).

Other people have mentioned the aspect of outsiders vs. insiders, where the family is all insiders (they create and participate in the Saga and understand its workings) and the governess was an outsider (and it's implied that she's somewhat driven away by her being outside). And they expressed discomfort at that.

The funny thing is - in a lot of ways, growing up, I was an outsider. At least in my peer group I was, as far as the popular kids were concerned I definitely was - and I didn't find it unpleasant or unsettling. I guess I got so drawn into Dierdre's narrative that instead of seeing it as "insiders" and "outsiders," I saw it more as "people who understand" and "people who don't/won't/don't want to understand" (Actually, had I written my review of this novel as a stand-alone post - and I was considering it - I was going to title it "Grownups don't understand" - because that was how I saw it). I don't think the family TRIED to exclude Miss Martin; I think she just lacked the humor and imagination to enter into or at least tolerate what they were doing. Or at least, that was my impression.

Perhaps I wasn't troubled by it because I like to think in that situation, I would have been an "insider" - that I would have been able to join in to the Saga and understand and take part in it. (When I was a bit younger, I did have something like a Saga in my own imagination - it was peopled by characters, some from books, some I made up, and they kind of lived and moved through immense storylines - so I understand that kind of thing). I don't know. I will say I rather liked the book, it was definitely different. I found it rather light and free of the disturbing overtones some reviewers mentioned...