The Pirate Queen by Patricia Hickman is not the swashbuckling, high-seas adventure you might have been expecting from the title. Rather, it is the story of Saphora Warren, a wealthy socialite who appears to have an ideal life, but whose husband is an inattentive, unreasonable philanderer. On the very day that Saphora packs up her bags, planning to quietly leave her husband, he comes home and announces that he is dying. Furthermore, he wants to go to their coastal home — the very place Saphora had planned to retreat to — to seek treatment, and he wants Saphora to go with him. Subduing her own plans and feelings, Saphora goes with him. Various members of their dysfunctional extended family come to visit over the summer, further wreaking havoc with Saphora’s life, but she strikes up a surprising but beneficial friendship with a quiet, older-than-his-years neighbor boy.

I can’t remember now where I first saw the book recommended, but I picked it up to see what the author did with Saphora and her husband Bender’s story. I can’t really say without giving away the plot, but perhaps more important than the plot are their character studies.

My biggest complaint is one I have mentioned before. I don’t believe every Christian fiction novel needs to have a three point outline of the plan of salvation complete with the “sinner’s prayer,” but whatever it does contain of the gospel needs to be clear and accurate. The advice given to Saphora is kind of nebulous: “Keep looking for answers,” “Jesus invites you to join him on his journey,” “Your life is going to be difficult….but with a little help, you’ll learn to love.” If I were in Saphora’s situation, I would want  counsel much more concrete than that.

There were a couple of phrases that struck me as quite nicely written. “The afternoon had been spilled like sweet tea poured out.” And on the subject of not being able to come up with the right thing to say until too late (which I tend to experience!), “Thinking deeply rather than broadly presented so many lost opportunities.”

This is actually a strange little book to me. I don’t mean that negatively, but much of the family’s conversations and interactions were not what I would expect from my own family. Which is fine — different people have different personalities and frames of reference. But though I could enter into Saphora’s angst in dealing with all the unexpected things life throws at her, I couldn’t really fully identify with the characters. The title didn’t really make sense to me until the end, and even then it didn’t seem to fit exactly, considering what a pirate is and how he gets what he wants compared to Saphora’s situation. But maybe I am just missing something.

(Updated to add: The author discusses how she came to write this novel here, and that did help shed light on the pirate allusion.)

If you’ve read this, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

I did enjoy the book, however, and the journey Saphora and Bender take.

I’m not quite sure how I came to read three WWII novels one after another, except that one was a sequel of one of the others, but it did enrich the reading of them, I think. This era is one of my favorites.

I won The Unfinished Gift and The Homecoming by Dan Walsh from Mocha With Linda (Thank you, Linda!)

In The Unfinished Gift, seven year old Patrick Collins’ mother has just passed away. His father is a soldier over in England during WWII and the authorities are having trouble finding him. His social worker takes him to his only known relative, his grandfather, Ian Collins, with whom his father  has not spoken in years. Ian is none too happy about his routine being interrupted by a boy, but has little choice but to take him in. He doesn’t interact well with Patrick, though, and Patrick’s life would be pretty bleak if not for the neighbor, Mrs. Fortini, and his social worker, Katherine Townsend, who has taken a special interest in his case even though her supervisor has told her to move on. When Patrick gets something for his grandfather out of the attic, he spies a partially carved wooden soldier, and he is captivated. But the soldier brings back too many painful memories for Ian, and he angrily tells Patrick not to touch it.

I’ll leave the rest of the story for you to discover. It was a very enjoyable read if a little predictable — I tended to be two beats ahead of the plot line with being able to figure out what was going to happen next. I could easily see it being made into a Hallmark movie.

The Homecoming was not at all predictable. Though I liked The Unfinished Gift, I was taken in more by The Homecoming. Patrick’s father, Shawn, has finally come home from the war, but the army cannot yet let him go. They assign him to what many would consider a dream job: traveling with several actors and actresses on a four-month tour to promote the sale of war bonds. Shawn dreads it both because he doesn’t want to be part of the spectacle, but mainly because it means being away from Patrick for months. He searches for someone to help his father take care of Patrick, and finds that Katherine Townsend is in need of a new job. Shawn’s father, Ian, has not told anyone of the dizzy spells and lack of energy he has been experiencing.

Shawn has a lot on his shoulders with the fresh grief over his wife, the separation from Patrick, and then the news of his father’s declining health. He and Katherine agree to keep their relationship professional, and Katherine knows it is too soon for him to think about another relationship, yet she finds herself attracted to him., besides loving Patrick dearly. And Katherine’s visits to church to take Patrick are awakening a different type of longing in her heart.

Both books are quite heart-warming stories about relationships. The WWII details are just enough to anchor the setting and give you a feel for the times without becoming too much of a historical narrative. One minor criticism is that the author does employ the “not realizing what I have until I’ve almost lost it” resolution in each book — twice, actually, in the second one. But overall I loved these stories and characters. Also, I am not sure why the author had the first character who was a Christian as a part of what I would consider to be a works-based denomination (though one is not saved by denomination but by personal repentance and faith in Christ), but the gospel is clear in both books.

A Distant Melody by Sarah Sundin is one that caught my eye when it was mentioned on several blogs a few months ago, and I finally got it.

Allie Miller is engaged to a man she doesn’t love and who doesn’t seem to love her, yet her parents want the match, and Allie hopes she will learn to love Baxter in time. She hopes she will also finally gain her mother’s approval.

Walt Novak is a young Army pilot with “chipmunk cheeks and a nose like an upside-down kite” who freezes when he encounters a woman who is not “taken.” But on his way home for a wedding during furlough, he encounters Allie, and, thinking she is a mother to the children seated next to her, has no problems entering into a conversation. When he realizes she is not a mother, not married, and furthermore headed to the same wedding he is attending, he is delighted that he still finds her easy to talk to.

By the end of their time at the wedding, he wants to know her better, so they promise to write each other. Allie thought their mutual friend told Walt that Allie was engaged, but when he learns that fact, it sets off a series of misunderstandings between them. Yet they continue to be drawn to each other through all the trials of their respective experiences.

Allie has to wrestle with more than her attraction to Walt and the emptiness of her engagement: she realizes that her parents’ church and views are not consistent with what Allie believes God wants her to do with her life, yet stepping out on her own will have dire consequences, some that she never dreamed of.

I loved that the main characters were not beautiful and suave, muscular and handsome, one of my complaints with much fiction. They are ordinary, they’re flawed, yet the reader is drawn to them and roots for them not only in their relationship but in the difficulties they each encounter in life. There is also great historical detail in the setting and realistic views of war time experiences. I am glad to know there is a sequel out.

Over the past few years I have been reading all of Jane Austen’s books, which I had somehow missed along the way, except for Emma, which I had read way back in a Literary Criticism class in college. I wanted to reread it some day, and that day was spurred on by a recent Masterpiece Theater production which aired last winter.

I wanted to read a copy that was not abridged or modernized, but when I went to by the book, the one shown, with the star of the Masterpiece production, was the only one available. It says it has been “reset” from the Penguin Classics version “which was edited from the first edition” — so I don’t know how much has been changed from the original.

The main character, Emma Woodhouse, “handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition” and “had lived nearly twenty-one years…with very little to distress or vex her” suddenly finds herself at a loss at the beginning of the book. Her governess, who had become more like an older sister over the years, has recently been married, and Emma faces long days entertaining her beloved but very neurotic father. She meets a young woman “of uncertain birth” named Harriet and decides to try to take Harriet under her wing. Longtime family friend Mr. Knightly disapproves. Social classes in that day were much more distinct, and he feared Emma’s raising Harriet’s hopes of marriage only to be disappointed.

But Emma likes Harriet and feels she is doing her a favor. She not only tries to help elevate her to higher society, she discovers the man whom she feels would be a perfect match for Harriet and then does everything in her power to bring them together. Only things don’t go exactly as planned, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile, two different people related to Emma’s friends, whom Emma has heard about all her life but never met, come to town, Mr. Frank Churchill and Miss Jane Fairfax. The former is effusive and charming, the latter is quiet, more talented than Emma, and not forthcoming enough for her tastes. Frank seems to set his sights on Emma right away, but something is not as it appears in this situation, either.

Emma is unlike many of Austen’s other heroines because she is wealthy and secure, and perhaps because of her wealth, she does not seek to marry (as opposed to some of the others needing to marry well in order to survive and provide for their families). But she is similar to the others in that she is charming, intelligent, likable, and sensible in matters other than love and her interaction with Harriet. Yet her intentions are good, and she comes to see her own foibles along the way. She learns “it was adventuring too far, assuming too much, making light of what ought to be serious, a trick of what ought to be simple” (p. 109) to try to manipulate and influence two people into a relationship as she had done.

I’ve read other descriptions of this novel as “frothy” and “a comedy of manners.” But though there are funny, witty moments in it, and it doesn’t have quite the drama of some of the other novels, personally I wouldn’t classify it as a lighthearted comedy. There is genuine depth to Emma’s realizations about herself and her growth as a person. When watching one of the films, one of my sons was getting quite aggravated with Emma and decided he didn’t like her, but I tried to point out that she doesn’t remain that way, she does grow and change for the better. And Mr. Knightly, who is the only person to criticize her, also sees beyond her faults to the person underneath, the woman she could become as she matures.

Some of the more well-known quotes from Emma are:

Silly things do cease to be silly if they are done by sensible people in an impudent way (Emma).

“There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do, if he chuses, and that is, his duty…” (Mr. Knightly)

“I cannot make speeches, Emma . . . If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

“Vanity working on a weak head, produces every sort of mischief” (Mr. Knightly).

Better be without sense, than misapply it as you do (Mr. Knightly).

I had wanted to discuss the film versions of Emma in connection with this review. I have seen three of them and wanted to rewatch two, but with the weeks getting ready to move and then getting settled here, there hasn’t been time. But the first of the films I saw was the 1996 version with Gwynneth Paltrow and Jeremy Northam. Then there was a TV version that same year with Kate Beckinsale and and Mark Strong. And most recently was the 2009 Masterpiece version with Romala Garai and Jonny Lee Miller. Of the three, the Beckinsale version was my least favorite. That Mr. Knightly came across as an old grouch that it seems unlikely anyone would fall in love with, much less a much younger woman. The Paltrow version has long been one of my favorite videos. But the newer version had some scenes that were much closer to the text of the book, and I enjoyed Romola Garai’s more youthful yet still sophisticated version of Emma. Though Ewan McGregor is one of my favorite actors, I did not really care for his version of Frank Churchill, but I think a lot of that had to do with his hairstyle in the film. But no one can beat Jeremy Northam’s Mr. Knightly. Though older than Emma and her sharpest critic, he still comes across as charming and gentlemanly, and it is not hard to fathom the attraction of two of the characters for him.

I’ll leave you with the trailers for two of the versions. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the book or any of the films.

This post will be linked to the Classics Bookclub hosted by the folks at 5 Minutes For Books on the fifth Tuesday of the month as well as Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books..