The Girl Puzzle: A Very Humanized Nellie Bly

When the Goodreads group Historical Fictionistas decided to allow authors that are active members of the group to nominate their own novels for the March Book of the Month, it had been some time since they had last allowed author members to do this.  The normal rule of the group is that authors can't nominate their own books.  This is a common rule among Goodreads groups.

 I was delighted when Kate Braithwaite nominated her Nellie Bly novel, The Girl Puzzle.  I quickly seconded the nomination, and it won.  I had already purchased it on Amazon a while back, but hadn't had an opportunity to get to it. It's nice to be able to read more historical fiction with strong woman protagonists during Women's History Month.  This means I can  provide more reviews than usual for Flying High Reviews.

                              

I had actually read a novel focusing on patients at the asylum where journalist Nellie Bly did a ten day undercover investigation pretending to have amnesia in 1887.  That book was A Different Kind of Angel by Paulette Mahurin.  It was the best historical fiction that I read in 2018 and I reviewed it here.

The asylum was located on what was then called Blackwell's Island  which is in New York's East River.  It was re-named Roosevelt Island in 1973.  If you're interested in more information about the island's history, see its Wikipedia article here.

In comparing the two books I've read dealing with this late 19th century asylum, I feel that Mahurin's novel was very different in its orientation toward the patients. The fictional protagonist in A Different Kind of Angel was a refugee who was committed to that institution for not being able to speak English.  She clearly didn't belong there.  She encountered other patients who were also unjustly consigned to the asylum.  This protagonist  brought definitions of "sanity" into question. In The Girl Puzzle, Nellie Bly thought that a couple of patients didn't belong there, but the behavior of one patient and the history of the other caused Nellie to doubt her judgment.  So it was unclear whether any of these women were committed without justification.  It seemed to me that Braithwaite was coming down on the side of  compassionate Dr. Ingram who said it was "a complicated issue".  This positively portrayed asylum staff member commented to Nellie that patients could appear sane when they weren't.

It's important for me to add that all the rest of the asylum staff other than Dr. Ingram were portrayed by Braithwaite as either extremely abusive, or  arrogant and uncaring. In her author's note called "Fact and Fiction in The Girl Puzzle" she reveals that the staff  shown in her novel are all real individuals given their actual names, and that their behavior toward the patients is based on fact.  There was a grand jury investigation of this institution after the Nellie Bly exposé , and this too is in the public record.

Another aspect of The Girl Puzzle that makes it dis-similar to A Different Kind of Angel is that it's dual period.  There is a narrator in Braithwaite's book who was Nellie Bly's secretary toward the end of her life.  This narrative displays the elderly Nellie Bly as having poor judgment.   Nellie Bly's secretary admired her employer for her courage and past achievements, but she acknowledged that this feminist heroine had flaws. In the 1887 narrative, Nellie Bly herself experienced moments of angst in which she wondered if she had taken too great a risk when she accepted her undercover assignment.

 I would consider Braithwaite's approach to her protagonist realistic.  She shows us a Nellie  Bly who is strong when the situation calls for it, but is also very human.  This makes The Girl Puzzle vastly superior to a Nellie Bly mystery that I DNFed because she never doubted herself , and kept on repeating the same errors.  Mystery fans call such characters TSTL (Too Stupid To Live).  That's why I recommend this novel by Braithwaite to readers who want believable female protagonists.







                             

Chinawoman's Chance: First In A Series About A Pioneering Woman Lawyer

When I nominated Chinawoman's Chance on Kindle Scout for an opportunity to be published by Kindle Press, I hadn't heard of its real historical protagonist Clara Shortridge Foltz, the first woman admitted to the bar in California in 1884.   This historical mystery novel wasn't selected by Amazon.  So author James Musgrave self-published and offered all those who had nominated his book a free copy.  I eagerly accepted one, and I am now posting my honest review.

                           

My original intention was to praise this cover's illustrations for drawing my attention to the book.  Yet when I copied and pasted the cover to this blog, I noticed for the first time that the title isn't very legible.  If I hadn't already known that the title was Chinawoman's Chance, I wouldn't have learned it from this cover.   Is the legibility of the title on the cover important for a self-published book?  I would argue that it is important. Readers often look at the cover before anything else on a  book vendor site.  Not being able to read the title creates a bad first impression for a reader deciding whether or not to buy the book.

Next I turn to the series title which is Portia of the Pacific. Yes, titles are very important to me.  They influence me more than cover illustrations.   I have an attraction/repulsion relationship with Shakespeare's Portia.   So  I was attracted by the series title because I love a woman taking a professional role that was forbidden to women in Shakespeare's day.  I love Portia's speech.  Yet  I am repelled by the bigotry toward Shylock that motivated her.  I see Shylock as the victim in Merchant of Venice.   His feelings of outrage over having no rights are used against him.  Portia is clever, but she is supporting a system in which Jews can't get justice.

 The fictional Clara Shortridge Foltz isn't bigoted toward the Chinese.   Not only does she have a Chinese client,  but she helps to thwart a plot against the Chinese community. Yet I learned from Musgrave's acknowledgements that the real Clara Foltz was actually prejudiced against the Chinese and would never have had a Chinese client as she did in Chinawoman's Chance. For me, there is a tension between the real Clara and the fictional Clara.  I ended up feeling as ambivalently toward the protagonist as I do toward Shakespeare's Portia.  

For those who want to see what Clara Shortridge Foltz looked like, I found a public domain photo on Wikipedia.

                           

 
I admired the role played by the fictional Clara Foltz, but I felt that the novel fell short as a mystery.  There was a plot twist that I didn't find credible from a police procedural perspective.   I also felt that the resolution was formulaic.  I had seen it before a number of times, so it didn't surprise me.

I also had a problem with a Chinese character's name.  Musgrave said in his acknowledgements that he researched Chinese culture.  If so, I don't understand why he didn't seem to know that Guan Shi Yin, also known as Kwan Yin, is a Bodhisattva.  A Bodhisattva is someone who has reached Buddhist enlightenment and decided to help others achieve it.   Kwan Yin is also known as the Goddess of Compassion.  I was taught a mantra for Kwan Yin "Namo Guan Shi Yin pusa."  The English translation would be: Homage to Kwan Yin, compassionate and wise person.  The character in Chinawoman's Chance who was given this name was the reverse of compassionate.   I therefore considered it culturally inappropriate.

I actually did like most of  Chinawoman's Chance. Musgrave's version of Clara Foltz  has so much potential as a protagonist. Her developing friendship with a Chinese woman who escaped prostitution and encouraged independence for other women was also wonderful.   Yet as a mystery it didn't quite measure up, and the instance of cultural inauthenticity that I mentioned really bothered me.

 

                              

The Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini

I knew Jennifer Chiaverini as the quilt novel author.  She introduced me to the idea that quilts were signposts for the Underground Railroad in The Runaway Quilt which I loved.  I knew that she'd been writing biographical novels of female historical figures, but I didn't sit up and take notice until it was Ada Lovelace in Enchantress of Numbers.  I've always wanted to know more about her role in the development of the early precursors to computers.   So I requested an ARC from Net Galley and was delighted when I was approved by the publisher.   This is my review.

                                  

Most discussions of Ada Lovelace begin by mentioning that she was Byron's daughter and that her parents scandalously separated.    What's really astonishing in the context of the period is that her mother got custody of Ada.   Children were considered property belonging to their fathers in 19th century England.  In this case, it came down to the fact that Ada's mother, Lady Anne Isabella Milbanke known as Annabella to her friends, came from a wealthy family and Byron was debt-ridden.   Debt was a major motivation for his marriage.  So it seemed to me that Annabella's family was in a good position to buy justice for their daughter.  It's probably just as well because the only time Byron did have custody of a daughter, he relinquished his parenting responsibility by packing her off to a convent.

Based on Chiaverini's depiction, Annabella wouldn't receive any awards for parenting herself.  Yet she should be credited with making certain that Ada followed in her footsteps by pursuing mathematics.   This was an extraordinary education for a daughter of the aristocracy.  According to the article about her on Wikipedia, Annabella's parents hired a Cambridge professor as her tutor.
 If Ada hadn't had Annabella as her mother, it's unlikely that she would have been so advanced mathematically.

 In The Enchantress of Numbers, Ada's scientific mentor Mary Somerville told Ada about her conflict with her own parents over her studies.   It was widely believed at that time that women's health would be jeopardized by intellectual stimulation.  Mary Somerville's experiences caused Ada to appreciate her mother's encouragement of her scientific inclinations.  I had never heard of Mary Somerville before I read this book, and was glad of the opportunity to learn about this foremother for woman scientists.

We can't really know about Ada's contribution to Charles Babbage's conceptualization of his proto-computers the Difference Engine and the Analytic Engine.  This is a topic that is fodder for  speculation for historical novelists like Chiaverini.  I made the same argument about Einstein and his first wife in my review of The Other Einstein here.  I feel that it's just as legitimate to claim that Ada made a significant contribution as to claim that she made none, and that it was all Babbage's idea.  I believe that Chiaverini is persuasive about what she attributes to Ada Lovelace.

Ada's written notes are clearly attributable to her, and they show her to be a woman ahead of her time.   The Enchantress of Numbers displays her context.  She had influences, and sources of support which do not lessen her achievements.   Isaac Newton is quoted as having said, "If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of giants."  Jennifer Chiaverini helps us to identify who Ada might have stood on.   Yet every designer of a computer algorithm stands on Ada's shoulders because she created the very first such algorithm.




 

Mistress Suffragette

My readers here know that I love to read and review novels about suffragettes.  This year  I've reviewed a YA mystery dealing with suffragettes here and a novel about a suffragette in South Carolina here.  Mistress Suffragette by Diana Forbes is a debut romance taking place in America during the Gilded Age.

I rarely read or review romances. I like unusual books, and romances tend to run to formula. So when I got the request for this review, I had to take a look at what was being said about Mistress Suffragette on Goodreads.  It sounded like there would be more emphasis on the context than I would normally find in a historical romance.  This is why I accepted a review copy, and I am now posting an honest review.

                     

There is a repeating pattern for all three of the suffragette novels I've read this year.  It seemed to me that the protagonists aren't as strong or as interesting as supporting characters.  I always find this disappointing. In my review of In The Fullness of Time by Katherine Stillerman which is the second review linked above, I speculated that the authors may think their protagonists are more relatable.

  When we first meet Penelope Stanton, the protagonist of Mistress Suffragette,  she's sheltered, spoiled and somewhat shallow.   She makes the occasional witty remark, but frankly I found her thoroughly unsympathetic.   I told myself she would improve when she stopped being under her mother's thumb.  She did improve.  She began to be more thoughtful.   Yet throughout the novel, Penelope ends up being swayed by those who surround her.  Some of her worst decisions could only be explained by the proximity of a strong minded individual over-riding her judgment.  She seemed to lack self-determination.

I preferred Verdana, a feminist activist that Penelope encounters after she leaves home.  Verdana's focus is on women's clothing reform to increase mobility.  Verdana is bold within the context of her period.  I liked her self-acceptance and genuine desire to help other women.   For much of the book, Verdana's cause is more central than women's suffrage.  Yet I enjoyed Verdana's expansion of Penelope's consciousness by introducing ideas and experiences that were foreign to her.

Speaking of new experiences, I thought that the scene in which Penelope learns to use a gun and becomes an instant sharpshooter unrealistic.   If you've ever tried to handle a gun for the first time, you know that there's a kick that will be unexpected.  It tends to throw people off.  Diana Forbes should have consulted with someone who knows guns when she was writing that scene.

I  was also irritated by certain character name choices. Names like Daggers or Stalker sound like mustache twirling villains in staged melodramas from the period that Forbes was writing about.  Real people weren't likely to have names like those. I felt that they were heavy handed and predictable.  They would be more appropriate for a satire.

So although there were characters and moments in Mistress Suffragette that pleased me, the book definitely did have flaws.  Judging from reviews, some readers may overlook those issues.  I am hoping that Diane Forbes learned from the experience of writing this book and will produce better work in the future.
                              

Madame Presidentess by Nicole Evalina--The First Woman To Run For U.S. President

Feminist Victoria Woodhull is one of the irresistible historical personages for me.  She was the first woman to run a brokerage on Wall Street as well as being the first woman to run for President. Tara and I joint reviewed Seance in Sepia, a book that contained Woodhull as a side character, on this blog here.  I admit to not having been enthusiastic about the last book I reviewed by Nicole Evalina, Daughter of Destiny . Yet all the aspects of Victoria Woodhull's life that got short shrift in Seance in Sepia  are fully realized in Madame Presidentess by Nicole Evalina.  I obtained this book for free from the author in return for this honest review.

                                  

                         
We find out about Victoria's childhood as the daughter of Buck Claflin, an abusive and self-destructive con man.  Earlier this year, I read a mystery called The Saints of the Lost and Found in which the central character came from a family very much like Victoria's.   I wouldn't be surprised if the author loosely  based her protagonist's childhood on Victoria's because her parents were so outrageous that they'd be more believable as fictional characters.
                               
In  Madame Presidentess we get the full story about Victoria's spiritualism including her visions and how they impacted her life.  For Evalina's Victoria, spiritualism was not the widely promoted fakery of her day.  It was a deeply felt religious practice. She was absolutely convinced that the ancient Greek historical personage Demosthenes  was guiding her life.   I am not so convinced.  There is no indication that Demosthenes ever advocated for women's rights during his lifetime.  The playwright Euripides would have been a more believable spirit ally from the ancient Greek world.  Euripides wrote powerful plays that centered on women.  He might conceivably have encouraged Victoria in her feminist political activity.   I am willing to believe that Victoria was a sincere practitioner who was duped by a spirit pretending to be Demosthenes for unknown purposes.

Yet Victoria wasn't always above pretending to receive messages from the spirits.  I suspect that she was deceiving herself about having escaped completely from her family's influence.  Evalina  depicted Victoria as capable of being a grifter like her father, and a blackmailer like her mother.   These tendencies eventually wrecked her Wall Street career, and her campaign for President.  In Madame Presidentess Victoria thought that her family betrayed her, but she also made some poor choices from an ethical perspective.  My conclusion is that Victoria was largely responsible for her own downfall.  Like many male Wall Streeters and the overwhelming majority of politicians, she probably felt that the ends justified the means.   Her more idealistic allies in the suffrage and labor movements probably felt that she had used them.

Victoria Woodhull is shown to be a complex individual in Madame Presidentess.  Whether Victoria inspired me or disappointed me, she always engaged me as a character even when I didn't agree with her choices.  I liked the thoroughness of this biographical novel and particularly appreciated the spiritualist content.

Almost Invincible: Mary Shelley's Ambivalent Rebellion

As we celebrate Halloween, readers might want to recall an iconic gathering at Villa Diodati in Switzerland for the purpose of reading spooky stories.  Two literary luminaries, Lord Byron and Mary's future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, were participants.  Another contributor to the evening's entertainment who is not so well known was Byron's physician, John Polidori.  That night isn't remembered for what Byron and Shelley wrote for that occasion.  Nor is it remembered for what Polidori  wrote, though perhaps it should be. His novel The Vampyre that emerged from that dusk assemblage is a landmark work for those who are interested in the history of vampire fiction.  Yet that confluence of creativity draws people's interest because Mary Shelley first imagined the book that became Frankenstein.   Suzanne Burdon opens her Mary Shelley novel, Almost Invincible, with a re-creation of that remarkable evening. 

 A while back I  reviewed The Lady and Her Monsters on my old blog.  It was a non-fictional history of the literary and scientific background behind Frankenstein.  So Almost Invincible is not the first book dealing with Mary Shelley that I've blogged.  It's a biographical novel that focuses on her marriage, but I thought it was appropriate to begin this Halloween review with a mention of Mary Shelley's best known work.

                                     

 After reading Almost Invincible,  I've come to the conclusion that Mary Shelley was truly caught betwixt and between her heritage as the daughter of the radical and unconventional Mary Wollstonecraft and her upbringing in the Godwin household run by the second Mrs. Godwin, Mary Jane Clairmont, who was obsessed with respectability.   Mary ran off with Shelley, who was then a married man, but she worried about the scandal that ensued.  At one point, she complained to Shelley that his metaphorical umbrella that protected him from malicious talk didn't  shield her. It seems to me that if Mary wanted to share his metaphorical umbrella, she needed to shelter under it.    Shelley's protection was a mindset that the opinions of conventional people didn't matter to him. Stepping under his umbrella would mean that Mary would have to adopt that mindset, and she seemed incapable of doing so.   The only explanation is that Mrs. Clairmont-Godwin had influenced Mary far more than she had managed to influence her own daughter, Claire.   Mary recognized that her father,  philosopher William Godwin, had become a hypocrite who no longer supported the social radicalism that he advocated when he and Mary Wollstonecraft were a couple.  Yet she didn't perceive that she was equally inconsistent.

The title of the novel is taken from Godwin's evaluation of his daughter, but Mary was by no means invincible.  She was hurt by Claire who she viewed as a rival for Shelley's affection, and she was very wounded by the deaths of all her children except for Percy.   In fact, I thought that Claire was far more resilient because she lacked Mary's emotional sensitivity. Claire was unsympathetic, but I thought she was stronger than Mary.  Claire's response to loss was anger.  She refused to  completely surrender herself to grief, and was able to move on with her life.

What I liked most about this book were the references to what was happening during the period. For example,  in Villa Diodati Byron and Shelley discussed the increasing unrest due to serious climate change.   It was known as "The Year Without a Summer" which was caused by a volcano eruption in Indonesia in 1815.  There is an excellent article about it here by Gillen D'Arcy-Wood.  It includes descriptions of the uncanny weather that Mary wrote in correspondence with her half-sister Fanny Imlay.  These reports of  extreme climate in 1816 eventually found their way into Frankenstein.  

Another compelling example of historical context in this novel occurred when Mary, Shelley and Claire traveled through France in 1814. Burdon describes the devastation and misery of the Russian invasion and occupation that had taken place at that time. For more information, see an article about it on the Napoleon Society website here.

So although the main focus of Almost Invincible was on Mary's relationship with Shelley, Burdon did provide a frame of reference which shows us the truth of their times.









                               



  

The Dream Lover: The Unconventional Personal Life of George Sand

New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Berg has written a lush historical novel based on the sensuous Parisian life of the nineteenth-century writer George Sand—which is perfect for readers of Nancy Horan and Elizabeth Gilbert.

At the beginning of this powerful novel, we meet Aurore Dupin as she is leaving her estranged husband, a loveless marriage, and her family’s estate in the French countryside to start a new life in Paris. There, she gives herself a new name—George Sand—and pursues her dream of becoming a writer, embracing an unconventional and even scandalous lifestyle.

Paris in the nineteenth century comes vividly alive, illuminated by the story of the loves, passions, and fierce struggles of a woman who defied the confines of society. Sand’s many lovers and friends include Frédéric Chopin, Gustave Flaubert, Franz Liszt, Eugène Delacroix, Victor Hugo, Marie Dorval, and Alfred de Musset. As Sand welcomes fame and friendship, she fights to overcome heartbreak and prejudice, failure and loss. Though considered the most gifted genius of her time, she works to reconcile the pain of her childhood, of disturbing relationships with her mother and daughter, and of her intimacies with women and men. Will the life she longs for always be just out of reach—a dream?

Brilliantly written in luminous prose, and with remarkable insights into the heart and mind of a literary force, The Dream Lover tells the unforgettable story of a courageous, irresistible woman.

*****REVIEW*****

Since the life of George Sand has always interested me, this is the second novel about her life that I'm reviewing for Book Babe.  The first was The Romances of George Sand by Anna Faktorovich.  That review was What's Really Interesting About George Sand?  I also interviewed Anna Faktorovich on the subject of Why Do We Need A Novel About George Sand?  I am still fascinated by George Sand. So I jumped on the opportunity to read and review The Dream Lover.  I downloaded my copy from Net Galley and this is my honest review.

 What I missed most in Faktorovich's book was character and relationship development.  It was told in third person narrative with relatively few character scenes or dialogue. Elizabeth Berg's novel is primarily focused on character and relationships.   In The Dream Lover we get tight character focus and complex motivations.  Berg does leap backward and forward in time, but each section is clearly labeled with time and place identified.  Since I already knew the events of George Sand's life, I had no trouble with this time traveling technique, but I also didn't see how the book benefited from it either.

I also feel that I didn't really learn anything about George Sand or gain any additional insight into her life from Berg's novel.  Her choices about what to include in her book confirmed the usual view of George Sand.  There were no surprises for me.   This was a book about her unconventional lifestyle, her difficult family relationships and her romances with many important men of the period.  Berg apparently chose not to believe that she learned enough about medicine from the physician who was her tutor to assist him in surgery, or that she took over his practice after his death.  She mentions it as an unsubstantiated rumor that was intended to destroy Sand's reputation.  Faktorovich did choose to believe it.  This was one of my favorite aspects of Faktorovich's novel.  As a 21st century reader, George Sand's embryonic medical career enhances her reputation for me.   Another aspect of George Sand's life that was barely mentioned by Berg, but was emphasized by Faktorovich was her political activities.

 It comes down to the title of my review of Faktorovich's book.  What is really interesting about George Sand?  Is it really her personal life?  Berg only mentions Sand's novels when they were based on one of her real life relationships.  Readers might think that Sand's literary specialization was the Roman à clef.  Yet she wrote a great deal about political issues and devoted much of her life to political causes.  You'd never know this from The Dream Lover.  I think that my ideal George Sand novel would meld Berg's beautiful writing and nuanced characterization with the thematic focus of Faktorovich.

                                                     

About Elizabeth Berg

Elizabeth Berg is the author of many bestselling novels, including Tapestry of Fortunes, The Last Time I Saw You, Home Safe, The Year of Pleasures,and Dream When You’re Feeling Blue, as well as two collections of short stories and two works of nonfiction. Open House was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for an Abby Award, and The Pull of the Moon was adapted into a play. Berg has been honored by both the Boston Public Library and the Chicago Public Library. She is a popular speaker at venues around the country, and her work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. She is the founder of Writing Matters, a reading series designed to serve author, audience, and community. She divides her time between Chicago and San Francisco.



Elizabeth Berg’s TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Monday, April 13th: Reading Reality

Monday, April 13th: Books on the Table

Tuesday, April 14th: Let Them Read Books

Wednesday, April 15th: History from a Woman’s Perspective

Monday, April 20th: Bibliophilia, Please

Monday, April 20th: Bookchickdi

Tuesday, April 21st: Unabridged Chick

Tuesday, April 21st: The Novel Life

Wednesday, April 22nd: Books on the Table – Bookstore Event post

Wednesday, April 22nd: Kritter’s Ramblings

Thursday, April 23rd: Unabridged Chick – author Q&A

Monday, April 27th: Peeking Between the Pages

Tuesday, April 28th: Books a la Mode – author guest post

Wednesday, April 29th: Bibliotica

Thursday, April 30th: Life is Story

Friday, May 1st: 100 Pages a Day… Stephanie’s Book Reviews

Monday, May 4th: Laura’s Reviews

Monday, May 4th: Book Babe

Wednesday, May 6th: Unshelfish

Monday, May 11th: Broken Teepee

The Witch of Napoli: A Psychic Medium's Successes and Failures

Please join Michael Schmicker as he tours the blogosphere with HF Virtual Book Tours for The Witch of Napoli, from February 16-March 20.

Publication Date: January 15, 2015

Palladino Books

Formats: eBook, Paperback

Genre: Historical Fantasy 

Italy 1899: Fiery-tempered, erotic medium Alessandra Poverelli levitates a table at a Spiritualist séance in Naples. A reporter photographs the miracle, and wealthy, skeptical, Jewish psychiatrist Camillo Lombardi arrives in Naples to investigate. When she materializes the ghost of his dead mother, he risks his reputation and fortune to finance a tour of the Continent, challenging the scientific and academic elite of Europe to test Alessandra’s mysterious powers. She will help him rewrite Science. His fee will help her escape her sadistic husband Pigotti and start a new life in Rome. Newspapers across Europe trumpet her Cinderella story and baffling successes, and the public demands to know – does the “Queen of Spirits” really have supernatural powers?

Nigel Huxley is convinced she’s simply another vulgar, Italian trickster. The icy, aristocratic detective for England’s Society for the Investigation of Mediums launches a plot to trap and expose her. The Vatican is quietly digging up her childhood secrets, desperate to discredit her supernatural powers; her abusive husband Pigotti is coming to kill her; and the tarot cards predict catastrophe.

Praised by Kirkus Reviews as an “enchanting and graceful narrative” that absorbs readers from the very first page, The Witch of Napoli masterfully resurrects the bitter 19th century battle between Science and religion over the possibility of an afterlife.

*****REVIEW*****

While I was rooting for Alessandra to convince the academics that she was genuine, she did do something foolish at one point that disappointed me very much.  She had a choice and she made the wrong one.   I wish she hadn’t done it.  I respected her less afterward. 

Alessandra made an unethical choice because her emotions were out of control.  It has long been demonstrated that paranormal gifts aren’t 100% reliable.  Most scientists seem to think that this means they are completely invalid and don’t really exist.  Yet no non-paranormal gift is 100% reliable.  For example, a gifted author can experience writer’s block when he or she isn’t emotionally ready to write.  Does this mean that there is no such thing as a gift for writing?  Humans aren’t machines.   We all have good days and bad days, but science makes no allowances for psychics.  Alessandra was being held to a standard that was too rigid for any human being.  The Witch of Napoli demonstrates how and why genuinely gifted mediums can fail. 

Yet when Alessandra was successful in her work, I very much enjoyed reading about her.  I looked forward to finding out what she would do or say next.  Her unconventionality and unruly tongue made her a charming and unpredictable character.  In an author’s note, Michael Schmicker tells us that Alessandra was based on a real medium named Eusapia Palladino.  If the real woman was anything like Alessandra, I’d be very interested in finding out more about her.  Schmicker provides a bibliography that allows readers to pursue that interest.

I did have a problem with the fact that Alessandra was regularly possessed by a spirit entity who was supposed to be Girolamo Savonarola, a fanatical 15^th century preacher.  He was an ascetic who was best known for his opposition to the arts and all luxuries.  Based on what I know about him, Savonarola would have despised Alessandra.  I can’t imagine that his spirit would have chosen her as his mouthpiece.   While the spirit knew historical facts about Savonarola, his actions didn’t convince me of  his authenticity.  Why would he be so invested in proving that Alessandra was a real medium?  Wouldn’t he be delivering thunderous sermons as he did in his lifetime?

Despite this flaw, I did like The Witch of Napoli and look forward to future paranormal fiction by Michael Schmicker.  I'd like to thank Net Galley for giving me access to this book in return for this honest review.

About the Author

Michael Schmicker is an investigative journalist and nationally-known writer on the paranormal. He’s been a featured guest on national broadcast radio talk shows, including twice on Coast to Coast AM (560 stations in North America, with 3 million weekly listeners). He also shares his investigations through popular paranormal webcasts including Skeptiko, hosted by Alex Tsakiris; Speaking of Strange with Joshua Warren; the X-Zone, with Rob McConnell (Canada); and he even spent an hour chatting with spoon-bending celebrity Uri Geller on his program Parascience and Beyond (England). He is the co-author of The Gift, ESP: The Extraordinary Experiences of Ordinary People (St. Martin’s Press). The Witch of Napoli is his debut novel. Michael began his writing career as a crime reporter for a suburban Dow-Jones newspaper in Connecticut, and worked as a freelance reporter in Southeast Asia for three years. He has also worked as a stringer for Forbes magazine, and Op-Ed contributor to The Wall Street Journal Asia. His interest in investigating the paranormal began as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand where he first encountered a non-Western culture which readily accepts the reality of ghosts and spirits, reincarnation, psychics, mediums, divination,and other persistently reported phenomena unexplainable by current Science. He lives and writes in Honolulu, Hawaii, on a mountaintop overlooking Waikiki and Diamond Head.

Connect with Michael Schmicker on Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads.

The Witch of Napoli Blog Tour Schedule

Monday, February 16

Spotlight & Giveaway at Passages to the Past

Tuesday, February 17

Review at Book Babe

Wednesday, February 18

Review at 100 Pages a Day – Stephanie’s Book Reviews

Thursday, February 19

Review & Giveaway at A Dream Within a Dream

Interview at Books and Benches

Saturday, February 21

Spotlight at Flashlight Commentary

Sunday, February 22

Review at Carole’s Ramblings

Monday, February 23

Review & Giveaway at A Literary Vacation

Interview at Boom Baby Reviews

Tuesday, February 24

Guest Post & Giveaway at Teddy Rose Book Reviews

Wednesday, February 25

Review at Book Nerd

Friday, February 27

Spotlight at Let Them Read Books

Monday, March 2

Review at A Book Drunkard

Spotlight at Historical Fiction Obsession

Tuesday, March 3

Review at Unshelfish

Wednesday, March 4

Review at Carpe Librum

Thursday, March 5

Interview at Carpe Librum

Monday, March 9

Review at Just One More Chapter

Tuesday, March 10

Review at CelticLady’s Reviews

Wednesday, March 11

Review & Giveaway at The True Book Addict

Spotlight at The Never-Ending Book

Thursday, March 12

Review at Dianne Ascroft Blog

Tuesday, March 17

Review at With Her Nose Stuck in a Book

Wednesday, March 18

Guest Post at Historical Fiction Connection

Thursday, March 19

Review at Svetlana’s Reads and Views

Friday, March 20

Review & Giveaway at Broken Teepee

I Always Loved You: A Difficult Relationship Between Artists

I really liked the portrayal of American Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt in City of Darkness and Light, a Molly Murphy mystery by Rhys Bowen, which I reviewed for Book Babe here.  When I did research for that review, I discovered that Mary Cassatt was a feminist.  That’s why I was intrigued by I Always Loved You by Robin Oliveira, a novel that focuses on Mary Cassatt’s relationship with the Impressionist painter Edgar Degas.   

                                                 

                                                                                                         

The Mary Cassatt that I encountered in Robin Oliveira’s novel contrasts with the one that I saw in Rhys Bowen’s mystery.  One reason is that the mystery took place in 1905 when her circumstances were quite different than they were earlier in her life.  Mary Cassatt was financially dependent on her father, Robert Cassatt, when she first arrived in Paris.   Her father took even more control over her life when he and the rest of Mary Cassatt’s family moved to Paris in 1877.  She had to move in with her family and had to account for every expense.   Being a feminist and standing up for your rights is much more difficult when you are dependent on someone else, but Mary did manage to change her father’s opinion about her painting career in Oliveira’s novel.  Her financial independence later in her life, after the death of her parents, is probably due to her father’s shift in attitude.  She inherited enough money to live on her own and continue to paint.

 I was pleased by Mary’s professional evolution over the course of the novel.  She took the risk of allying herself with the Impressionists when the painting establishment rejected them, and the public didn’t understand their work.  She was interested in learning new techniques and experimentation. 

I was not at all pleased by Robin Oliveira’s portrayal of Mary’s relationship with Degas.   She would stop speaking to him because he had been verbally abusive and extremely inconsiderate toward her, but then she would forgive him.  She apparently loved him, but Degas was emotionally unstable.  He could be very helpful and supportive to Mary, but then he would suddenly withdraw and fail to keep his professional commitments.  His negative behavior tended to coincide with Degas losing faith in his own work. Given Oliveira’s portrayal of Degas, I wondered if he was in fact bipolar or was a survivor of abuse himself.   The BipolarAid website lists Degas as clinically depressed rather than bipolar.  I think that Degas deserved compassion, but Mary should not have allowed him to undermine her career during his bouts with depression. I thought that the characterization in I Always Loved You was painfully honest, but I was nevertheless disappointed in the way Mary Cassatt related to Degas.  I wanted her to be stronger which caused me to like this novel less.