Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Summer Reading 2021

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Like last year, I’m going with a modest-sized summer reading list—to avoid any semblance of pressure, and to leave room for the spur-of-the-moment reading that I always know will happen along the way. My summer reading lists usually don’t follow much of a pattern, but this year there is a general trend: it’s almost entirely made up of authors I haven’t read before (though it also includes a couple of sequels to books I’ve already read). I’ve been feeling kind of in a rut this spring reading-wise (with a couple notable exceptions), so I felt like deliberately branching out and trying some new things this summer. We’ll see how that goes.

The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff
The Swiss Summer by Stella Gibbons
The Huguenots by Geoffrey Treasure
The Land of Strong Men by A.M. Chisholm
Borrower of the Night by Elizabeth Peters
The Dark Horse by Rumer Godden
The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates by Matthew J. Trewhella
Unexpected Night by Elizabeth Daly
Thunderhead by Mary O’Hara
The Dreaming Suburb by R.F. Delderfield

what’s on your summer reading list?

image: “Afternoon Pastimes” by Edward R. King

Ranking all the “Miss Marple” adaptations starring Joan Hickson

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Up until last year, I’d only seen two of the dozen British TV movies and miniseries starring Joan Hickson as Miss Jane Marple. As a matter of fact I hadn’t realized there were that many. But last summer I picked The Murder at the Vicarage for a family movie night on a whim, and since then we’ve ended up working our way through all twelve. Now that I’ve seen them all, I thought it would be fun to do a ranking of them in the order of my favorites. As you can see, I’ve ranked them based on my overall enjoyment rather than strictly on their accuracy to source material, although I have to say that none of these films do any real violence to the original storylines.

A Murder is Announced (1985)
By far my favorite of the lot—a wonderful three-part adaptation that does full justice to one of my favorite Marple books, with excellent casting and performances. I don’t think I really have any bones to pick at all with this one, which is a rare thing when I watch a classic mystery adaptation.

The Moving Finger (1985)
This one surprised me, because it was one of my less favorite books! On film, though, I liked it a lot. The classic village setting where Miss Marple is so much at home, and a straightforward but clever plot involving anonymous letters and murder, all very well done.

The Murder at the Vicarage (1986)
I liked this one just moderately the first time I saw it, but found I warmed to it more on watching it a second time. I think it’s largely because of things like the charm of St. Mary Mead on film, the likeable characters of the vicar and his wife, and the particularly entertaining scenes of interplay between Miss Marple and her quasi-nemesis, the uptight Inspector Slack. All the key elements of the book are there, though I was a bit sorry they dropped a couple of small subplots that added texture to the story.

They Do it With Mirrors (1991)
Much, much better than the dreadful 1985 version. The casting is excellent in this one, and it has all the atmosphere of English stately-home-and-countryside that the other lacked. My one criticism would be that a few key clues are not really emphasized enough—they are present in the scenes where they belong, but are never touched upon in the eventual explanation, so if you hadn’t read the book you might easily overlook their significance. However, I enjoyed the overall effect enough that I didn’t mind this too much. (The shoehorning in of a bizarre modernist ballet sequence seems rather pointless, but doesn’t affect the plot).

Sleeping Murder (1987)
An almost faultless adaptation! It even comes across with slightly more color and personality than the book, which was a little vague and neutral when it came to setting. The only mildly annoying change was moving the climactic scene from daytime to night to try and wring a little extra suspense out of it, which has the unintentional side-effect of making the heroine’s behavior look rather idiotic. All else is perfectly on-point, however.

At Bertram’s Hotel (1987)
I actually think the film format does some favors to the later novels, which were a little rambling: the script is able to focus on the essential elements and streamline them into a good order. The adaptation of this one is pretty much flawless (and I loved the character of the cheerful police inspector who sings snatches of Gilbert and Sullivan to himself on the job). The only minor misstep is the casting of an actress with a very weak and husky voice as Lady Selina, since there is so much information important to the plot scattered through her gossiping conversations early in the film.

4.50 From Paddington (1987)
This one is one of my favorite Marple novels and the first of the Hickson adaptations I saw, so I have a soft spot for it (which is why it just squeaks in over Nemesis). It’s pretty accurate overall, but I think it’s a great pity they left out some of the most fun parts (Lucy’s string of proposals, for example, and the twist to the Martine subplot) and changed the second murder to something more obvious and garish instead of the very clever poisoning plot from the book. (Also I thought Cedric was badly miscast.)

Nemesis (1987)
Like At Bertram’s Hotel, this one does a really good job pulling together a rambling plot and making it a little more cohesive. Giving Miss Marple a traveling companion so she has a sounding-board to share her discoveries with makes good sense, though I found the invented character of her godson—or perhaps just the actor’s performance—not very interesting. I can also understand why the writers chose to change the fate of the accused man in the cold case, to add a little more sense of urgency, but it’s rather less plausible. Very good casting, performances and scenery, though.

A Caribbean Mystery (1989)
Not bad at all as far as accuracy of adaptation goes. I did feel that there was less of Miss Marple herself in this one, somehow (though her scenes with Mr. Rafiel were all very well done). The Hillingdon-Dyson subplot didn’t come off very well: it gave away some things too early and made excuses for others, and everyone involved except for Evelyn was too unappealing to even be interesting. I suppose, in the end, the Caribbean setting just doesn’t appeal to me as much as the English countryside—Miss Marple’s being a fish out of water is a main element of the story, but seeing it on film seems to emphasize it even more, making her seem just a little lost and on the fringes of things, even though she does eventually solve the mystery.

The Body in the Library (1984)
Though this is one of the classic Marple novels, somehow the film version didn’t quite cut it for me—the pacing dragged a touch, the tone wasn’t as sprightly as the book, and a lot of the minor characters were somewhat underdeveloped

The Mirror Crack’d From Side to Side (1992)
Accurate, and with the key scenes around the murder itself quite well done; but seemed to spend more time focused on the bickering among Marina Gregg’s unlikable entourage than on the mystery plot, and just a little more harsh and crass in tone overall. (And why is Inspector Craddock suddenly Miss Marple’s nephew? He did end up calling her “Aunt Jane” in the books after they had worked together for a long time and grown to be good friends, but somebody seems to have missed the point that they aren’t actually related!)

A Pocket Full of Rye (1985)
This one was always one of my least favorites of the books, a rather gloomy story without any really likable characters, and the movie does  nothing to improve on that (on the contrary, it seems to take something of a relish in playing up the unpleasantness of the murders).

So, have you seen any of these? Would you agree with my rankings?

The Cowboy and the Sailor

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A few years ago, one of my sisters was doing a lot of reading about the Age of Sail, particularly the life of the common seaman during the golden age of British seafaring in the 17th and 18th centuries, and (as is common in our family) filling me in thoroughly on everything she was learning. There was a time when I felt almost equipped with enough knowledge to put to sea and manage a modest-sized sailing ship myself. But one night when we were talking I realized something interesting: there were a number of remarkable parallels, in both a practical and cultural sense, between the British tar and the American cowboy. For some reason that conversation was called to my mind again recently, and looking back over it, I realized that there were actually even more parallels than I noticed at the time—so as a matter of interest, I decided to tally them up:

  • Both were working-class, outdoor professions involving strenuous physical labor and conflict with the elements; both professions became surrounded with an aura of romance even in their own times, with the British sailor and the American cowboy each becoming a figure symbolic of their respective nations.
  • Both were freelance laborers who frequently traveled widely, signing on as a crew member of different ships or cattle outfits for varying periods of time.
  • Both carried all their worldly possessions with them in a single portable piece of luggage: the sailor’s sea chest, the cowboy’s war sack.
  • Both wore clothing specifically adapted to the conditions of their work, which society at large considered “picturesque,” eventually borrowing and adopting elements of their costumes for general wear.
  • Both were known for singing at their work, and specifically for inventing their own songs inspired by or fitted to their tasks: sailors’ sea shanties for hauling on ropes, cowboys’ lullabies sung to soothe restless cattle.
  • Because of their physcially demanding nature, both professions were primarily the domain of young men: elderly sailors or cowboys were not common.
  • Owing to specific aspects of the work, very tall or large men were less common in both professions: sailors had to be agile for climbing and could not be too tall to stand up below decks in ships of the period; and cowboys who spent most of their lives in the saddle tended to be lighter and leaner men as well.
  • Both had the reputation of possessing upbeat dispositions and a distinctive sense of humor.
  • Both had a reputation for being roisterers, fond of wine, woman, and song.
  • Both had a criminal alter-ego who turned the tools of their trade to unlawful use: the pirate and the rustler.
  • Despite the hard and often dangerous nature of their work, men from both professions were often known for having a strong emotional attachment to the wide-open, untamed natural setting they belonged to—the open sea, the open range—a sense of restlessness and wanderlust that drew them to it.
  • Both the sailor and the cowboy were often considered rough and less than respectable by polite society, but at the same time credited with qualities such as bravery, dependability, tenacity, and loyalty—in other words, perhaps not the kind of person you’d want to mix with socially, but definitely the kind you’d want on your side in a fight.

Am I the only one to have made these connections? Looking at this list laid out in detail I find it hard to believe at least some of it hasn’t struck somebody before. I’ve never come across the analogy myself in any of the reading I’ve done, but I’d be fascinated to hear if anyone else has!