Colette's CHÉRI & THE END OF CHÉRI (Tr Rachel Careau, Narr Gabrielle de Cuir)

A sort of anti-love love story in two phases, Colette's Chéri and the End of Chéri takes very seriously an affair of the heart that was never allowed actually to reach those hearts involved. 

It would be easy to dislike young Fred "Chéri" Peloux, a "beauty who has everything and is only the more wretched for it, " raised in cold opulence by the servants of his courtesan mother, spoiled, impatient and demanding -- but Colette is too incisive a dissector of character to let us off that easily. As his lover, the much older "ghoul who only wants fresh flesh" (as she'll rather exultantly describe herself later in the book), Lea, falls in love with him despite herself but would never admit it, we wind up kind of admiring his monstrous qualities, or at least forgiving them; Lea is herself a courtesan, a life-long colleague and frenemy of Chéri's mother, and watched him grow up and never took him seriously as a possible love interest until she found herself kissing him. She has known all his flaws from the start, may be a little bit at fault for some of them, and so intimately understands why he is the way he is, and shares that understanding with us. 

We first encounter this pair five or six years into their relationship, with Chéri all but demanding a long pearl necklace that is something of a trademark of hers. He argues somewhat successfully that it looks better on him but grudgingly leaves it with her when she finally chases him out to go see his mother, Madame Peloux, whom they call the Harpy. Lea, left in peace, models the necklace for herself in a mirror and sees all the ravages time is taking on her beauty and finds that the necklace that used to set off her best features now makes them look shabby. Much later her now-married-but-not-to-her lover will encounter a woman his own age wearing a similar necklace of imitation pearls and finally realize that Lea has meant more to him than an Oedipal-ish crush but it's already far too late. 

But now that he's worn the real thing, fake pearls will never do. 

Lea is highly marginalized for all that she's had a celebrated career, because unlike her rival/friends, Madame Peloux and Marie Laure, she never had children. While she enjoyed wealth and comfort in relative solitude, her the other two made plans to marry their children to one another and settle them with a considerable fortune. Thus Chéri has always been destined to marry Marie Laure's lovely daughter, Edmée, only 19 to his 25 (and Lea's 49). It is thus implied, but never explicitly stated, that Madame Peloux drafted Lea simply to break the boy in and teach him how to be a decent lover for Edmée. Very much a frenemy move, if I've ever seen one.

At any rate, for all that both Chéri and Edmée are born out of wedlock children of courtesans, they and their futures count in a way that Lea does not; they are above her in the estimation of their little wannabe-bourgeois society's values. At least as expressed and embodied by her erstwhile colleagues in a community that is exceptionally interdependent because envied and despised by the greater world; if you have no solidarity, you have neither security nor hope. And the years when Lea wielded enough personal power (via her lovers) to provide her own security and hope are fast leaving her behind; Lea has to go along with her colleagues' treatment of her, whether she even realizes it or not.

But meanwhile, oops, no one ever bothered to let the kids get to know each other or in any way facilitate a relationship between them once their mothers have decided. And like I said, no one ever spelled out what Lea's expected role was supposed to be, to her or to Chéri. 

So anyway, before long Lea, six months or so later, receives belated gossip that Chéri left his wife and is living in a Paris hotel, prompting Lea's maid Rose to observe that "the divorce will be happier than the marriage" and that everyone was "so gloomy" at the wedding. Before Lea can even agree, Chéri is, in fact, at her door once again and it looks like they might resume their prior idyll. But will they?

I mean, would a story like this be famous if it had a happy ending?

All of this takes place in the first novel, Chéri, set in France's Belle Epoque right before World War I. Six years after its publication, Colette took up these characters again for The End of Chéri and allowed an identical span of time to elapse. When we meet Chéri again, he is a war veteran, now returned to civilian life and, while unscathed compared to most Great War veterans of literature, still very much at odds with that life. He is still well off thanks to his mother's machinations but that just frees him of the need to earn a living; it doesn't tell him what to do with his life.

Meanwhile his wife and his mother have discovered charity work and between them seem to be running every aspect of a hospital from Chéri's well-appointed home; Edmée is even under consideration for high civic honors for her work. She and Madame Peloux are sure Chéri will eventually come around and start playing the role they've cast him in as the gracious host at their events and the masculine figurehead for their efforts, but he'd rather hide out in his bedroom when Edmée has committee members over for a working luncheon.

What's a still-beautiful boy to do but go look up old girlfriends, since his marriage, which Colette encapsulates in an early scene with him strutting around in front of his wife in just his underwear "more as a rival than as a lover" because he considers himself the more beautiful of the pair,  is still a wreck?

Ah, but six years has merely taken him deeper into his prime at age 31; Lea is now in her mid-50s in 1926 Paris, when Bright Young Things are running amuck and beauty is more important than ever. Those pearls become her even less well than they did in the first book. She has not only committed the sin of aging, but she has also gained weight -- and won't let him deny, in front of one of her friends when he shows up again uninvited at her home, that they were lovers once. She forces him to look at her as she is now, dumpy and grey haired in her "sexless dignity" and think "I used to hit that."

And worse, Lea finds this funny. And calls him out over the vanity and self-centeredness this exposes even as he still, in his head, is making it all about him; she must have come to this from grief over losing him. When she reveals that she's all but reading these thoughts and laughs aloud, it is, as they say, *chef's kiss.* Oh no, she's had a life of her own all along! It is here and now that he decides how the novel will end, if not on the details.

Was anything in his life real? Bitterly he wanders Paris, watches his wife and mother succeed, passes time with old friends whom he still considers beneath him; at novel's end we discover we were right to dislike him, but he has one last claim on our compassion because Colette was a damned genius. Ah, me.

Now I guess I'm going to have to take a look at the 2009 Stephen Frears film with Michelle Pfeiffer as Lea and Kathy Bates as Madame Peloux. I mean, the casting alone...!

Amber McBride's ME (MOTH)

Poetry was our first vehicle for long-form storytelling - witness all the national epics and the ones that have become world treasures. Homer's stuff. The Icelandic sagas. The Mahabharata. The Kalevala. All of that. I've read almost all of it and daydream about doing a podcast dedicated to this art form.

The novel in verse is only slightly a thing in our day and age, though. There's the Aniara, largely on the strength of which (and it is mighty strong), Harry Martinson won a Nobel Prize. There's Vikram Seth, who writes novels in sonnets... but I don't see a lot of people employing pure lyric as a medium for storytelling. Though maybe I just haven't looked hard enough. 

I sure did find me a terrific one, though.

In Me (Moth), poet-novelist Amber McBride tells a melancholy and beautiful coming-of-age romance one almost unbearably lovely lyric at a time -- with each line both advancing the plot and demonstrating what perfection in expressive lyricism looks like, all in just a few lines.

Our heroine, Moth (named by Shakespeare-loving parents after a fairy in A Midsummer Night's Dream) is a Black teenaged girl and talented ballet student who once dreamt of being the next Misty Copeland before tragedy ripped her out of the world in which that seemed possible and dumped her in a new city and a new high school full of unfriendly strangers. She endures it quietly and alone until the next new kid comes along, half-Navajo Sani, depressed and lonely and trying to disappear behind his hair and a cloud of cigarette smoke. 

Their relationship begins on a school bus bus, their whispered confidences perfectly pithy and perfectly imagined. They reveal their secrets to one another slowly and carefully until we love both of them to pieces and are so invested in their well-being that we almost want to stop reading to keep them safe from what McBride probably has in store from them, but of course that would be a mistake.

With a name like Moth, our girl can't help but pay attention to these insects, their habits and their life cycles -- and in the process of illustrating this, McBride constructs some of the best poetry about insects I've encountered since first reading Hart Crane's "The Moth Whom God Made Blind" decades ago.*

 

But just as Me (Moth) joins the Crane poem in examining the surprise and heartbreak of a creature out of its element, it gropes more with issues of survivor's guilt and especially with the question of how much joy is appropriate for a grieving survivor to feel or express as life goes on ("Maybe if I didn't gorge myself on life, there would have been some left in the car for Mom & Dad & Zachary," Moth muses early on). Both Moth and Sani are "muffling our passions, for reasons" as Sani says to Moth in their first exchange of text messages. 

Both, too, are heirs to a little bit of magic; Moth had a grandfather proficient in Hoodoo, which, he told her long ago, shares elements with Native American medicine -- Sani's Navajo father's own area of expertise. It's like the two were made for each other, a healthier, if initially sadder, Veronica and J.D. Only instead of terrorizing their school, the pair up and run away with one another in search of both a kinder and more interesting life.

Their road trip across the American south lets them stop at poignant sites associated with this country's twin sins of slavery and indigenous genocide, a sad background against which their gentle courtship is conducted, and they compose together their Summer Song, which Sani will sing and to which Moth will finally dance again. 

This is a book to savor slowly as one would a great poetry collection, but doing so will require a supreme effort as the reader is gently propelled by the story of this journey of discovery and connection. Amber McBride absolutely shattered my heart, but then very kindly swept up the pieces and sewed them back together with good red string. I can't wait to see what she does next!

*I swear that the text of this poem used to be available to just read online but hell if I can find someplace to link to here. The internet is getting so effing broken.

Winston Graham's THE ANGRY TIDE

As I joked recently on Twitter, I can always tell when a new batch of episodes of Poldark hits American or British TV because all of a sudden the page views for all of my prior Poldark book reviews shoot back up into the stratosphere (well, for this blog). I still haven't seen any of the latest series that is just now airing on PBS in the States, so I can't speak to how it compares to the books yet, but I figured the least I could do was take a break from all the Doctor Who and Gene Wolfe and give the Poldarkies something new to look at here at Kate of Mind.

The Angry Tide, the seventh "Novel of Cornwall" in the Poldark saga, starts earning its title right away. As is always the case in these books, the state of the sea reflects the emotional state of the characters living near it, and there's plenty of tempestuous wave action and passionate melodrama in and around Nampara, where our hero and heroine, whose marriage took another near-fatal blow last novel, reside.

And   they're getting used to other changes as well, are Ross and Demelza; last novel saw Ross getting elected to replace adversary George Warleggan as a Member of Parliament, and so has to spend at least some of his time in London now. A bit awkward, that, because of course last novel also saw wife Demelza tempted strongly to have an adulterous affair, and everybody knows that the best way to patch things up after a conflict like that is to put a few hundred miles between husband and wife.

But this is Demelza, though a very subdued and somewhat uncertain Demelza, who has learned some lessons since back in the day when she meddled freely in other people's love lives. She got mostly good results, granted, but at the cost of more than a little pain and awkwardness, so she's not so eager to plunge into that again, except....

Except her poor brothers! Both of them are in love with girls who seem pretty much perfect for them, but Sam's girl is intimidated by the prospect of marrying such a very ardent Methodist when she herself has a bit of a jolly past, and Drake, Drake's beloved was way above his social station and was pretty much forced into a marriage within her class but to a truly odious garbage person.

The course of this marriage, between Morwenna Chynoweth (a cousin of Ross' first love, Elizabeth, who is herself now married to that troublesome George Warleggan but went into said marriage with open eyes and strength) and local vicar Ossie Whitworth, is a big topic in the first half of The Angry Tide, though for most of the first half it's the one plot that doesn't have a lot of ebb and flow to it. Morwenna is a "plain girl with a beautiful body" as her husband thinks of her, while Ossie is your standard puffy, self-righteous C of E man who is also more than a bit of a lecher, and starts trying to manipulate the local medical community into agreeing with him that if Morwenna doesn't want to sleep with him (and she really, really, really doesn't, especially after reluctantly having a son by him), it MUST mean she's insane and should be put away somewhere so that Ossie can get on with his proper churchman's life with the help of, say, a reasonably attractive "housekeeper" to attend to his "needs."

Pardon me while I go and shower now.

Seriously, if you don't hate Ossie already (assuming you've read these books or seen the 1970s era Poldark TV adaptation or something), I'm not sure we can be friends, you guys.

Fortunately, there's the second half of the book, largely concerned with Demelza's first visit to London, its causes and consequences. As I mentioned before, Demelza has changed over the course of these books; there is very little of the poor miner's scraggly, boyish daughter left in her. So her time in London is not merely spent gawping and wide-eyed as once she was intimidated by a house party among the local gentry in Cornwall. She's still not entirely sure exactly how to behave, but she's learned to trust her instincts, and actually makes fewer mistakes than Ross.

She also gets a chance to shine at home, when a banking crisis forces quick thinking and quicker action while Ross is away. We've always known that Demelza is quite intelligent, but here we see that she has become shrewd. It's truly wonderful to see, especially when she is contrasted with the Chynoweth women, who are born to higher stations but who never really develop beyond that. You're not going to see, at any rate, a Novel of Cornwall named after any of them; Demelza's name was on the very second book!

As for the rest of The Angry Tide, well, it's a Poldark novel. Lots more political/military issues come to the fore as we are now contemporaneous with Napoleon's capture of Alexandria and Cairo and with Admiral Horatio Nelson's famous defeat of Napoleon at the famous Battle of the Nile (where, of course, our beloved Captain Jack Aubrey of Patrick O'Brian fame got his medal). There's lots more stuff to make fans of Blackadder the Third smile as George Warleggan strives to acquire a "robber botton" of his very own, and the prose continues to a delight. Seriously, you guys, if all you're doing is watching the new TV adaptation (or the original one, in which the guy who occasionally cameos as Dr. Halsey in the new show played Poldark) (but mostly kept his shirt on, admittedly), you're missing out. These novels are absolutely delightful, and they only get more so as the story moves on beyond what's been covered in (to date) either TV adaptation. Most of them are now available as ebooks; I'm sure eventually all will be as the new TV show creates new fans.

Here's hoping!

For now, I'm almost into dead tree reading, which I have difficulty doing due to chronic hand/arm/shoulder problems, but I'M GOING TO SUCK IT UP when the time comes, because these books are worth it!

Winston Graham's THE FOUR SWANS

I've got to admit, dear readers, that with this sixth Poldark novel, Winston Graham almost lost me, because The Four Swans -- we'll talk a bit about that title in a moment -- has a whole lot of ugly going on, especially for the women.

Oh, there is plenty of the usual struggling for social justice and reform, striving to keep a mining concern going, wrangling with friends, relatives and frenemies, and lush Cornish scenery porn -- it's a Poldark novel. And Ross Poldark is still very much the main character here, even as the story broadens still more to encompass more of the world of Cornwall in the late 18th century.

But there are so many more characters -- George Warleggan, Ross's rival since school days, now married to Ross' first love; Sam and Drake Carne, his worthy but lower-class brothers-in-law; Dr. Dwight Enys, his best friend and co-conspirator, whom he daringly rescued from a French prison in the climax of the previous Poldark novel, The Black Moon; assorted members of the local gentry some of them friends and admirers, others of the sort who still haven't forgiven Ross for marrying his kitchen maid; assorted other miners and laborers and churchmen and crooks, all of them with fully-realized personalities and circumstances and lives of their own outside of their roles in Ross'.

And also, and ostensibly most importantly for this novel that is sort of named for them, there are four women whose lives are very much intertwined with Ross' own: his wife Demelza, his first love Elizabeth (once married to his cousin, now married to the hated Warleggan), Caroline (wealthy sweetheart and then wife of Dr. Enys), and Morwenna (Elizabeth's cousin, who last novel had a love affair with Demelza's brother Drake but was forced to marry an odious churchman who was deemed a more "suitable" match for her by, yep, George Warleggan). Alas, a bit, here. I'd had hopes that this novel would perhaps turn more on them as individuals and characters in their own right, but, well, the title again says it all, though the scene explaining it occurs near the story's end, as Ross takes a nature break and sees four swans floating by on the water and decides they represent these four women, but only insofar as said women relate to him.

That's not to say they don't get story arcs, these Cornish ladies. It's just that, with the kind-of exception of Caroline, who finally gets to marry her man (though she has to share him with his medical practice and the lingering after-effects of his imprisonment and harsh treatment in France), their story arcs are terribly, terribly dark and ugly and highlight in all the most unpleasant ways that it sucked a whole to be a woman back then. Cousins Elizabeth and Morwenna, especially, suffer through the novel, the one subject to suspicion and jealousy at the hands of her increasingly powerful and important husband and with the continuing fallout from an encounter with Ross two novels ago that still has me very angry at Ross; the other married against her will to a thoroughly unpleasant but well-connected and socially acceptable creep who just gets creepier as the novel progresses, while Morwenna still pines for her hard-working and deserving but low-class true love. Elizabeth's and Morwenna's scenes with their men are hard to read, icky, unpleasant and angry-making. I don't think they quite merit trigger warnings, but they probably come pretty close. I came very close to just tossing this book aside after a scene between Elizabeth and Ross that left me in about as dark a mood as I can recall ever experiencing from a work of fiction, and I'm still pretty angry about it.

Too, there are of course more than four women in Cornwall, and two of them have significant stories of their own in this book, but since it's Ross' point of view governing the title, this book isn't The Six Swans. But new characters Rowella (Morwenna's sister) and Emma, carry a more than a bit of this novel's narrative and are some of the most interesting characters (apart from Demelza, which, you've just got to love Demelza) Graham has yet given us. Rowella is Morwenna's little sister, and I'd go farther into spoiler territory than even I like to if I said much more about her; Emma is a lower-class woman whose good -- but not overwhelmingly beautiful -- looks, relative poverty and strong independent streak serve to earn her a reputation as a village Jezebel, and who comes to Sam Carne's notice in a story that kind of unpleasantly parallel's Rowella's but has a less icky overtone because Sam Carne is a better person than the jerk Rowella gets to deal with -- though it is pretty annoying to watch the dude hanker to save Emma's soul over her own protests. And oh, yeah, Sam & Emma are this novel's courtship story. Every Poldark novel has a courtship story. Eyeball roll.

But you know what? I wouldn't be feeling all of this if Winston Graham hadn't been such a tremendous writer. Though the narrative voice is definitely of the patriarchy, and keeps yanking the reader's attention away from the women's plights and stories and back to the More Important (man's) world of politics and trade, both sides are compellingly depicted. Six novels in, I'm more than invested in these characters, and even after what this book put me through, I still am, and not just as a hangover from the prior five books.

Developments late in The Four Swans promise to bring a yet grander scope to subsequent Poldark novels, too, which excites me. I reckon the rest of England is going to matter more, to say nothing of the rest of Europe; it's 1797 in the closing pages, and a little guy named Napoleon is becoming a big deal across the channel and beyond.

Bring it, Mr. Graham.

Winston Graham's THE BLACK MOON: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

George Warleggan finished the last novel of the original Poldark Quartet, Warleggan, feeling very much like his star was on the ascendant. He's married the girl of his lustful dreams, taken over the ancestral home of the nemesis of his dreams, and has a baby on the way. Er, well, his new wife, the former Elizabeth Poldark* has a baby on the way, anyway. But (mild spoilers for that novel ahoy!), while his book was called Warleggan, the baby coming is probably one who should have (cough) quite another, but very familiar, surname. Cough.

Whether or not there's a cuckoo in George's nest -- said maybe-cuckoo being born in the first chapter during a lunar eclipse, giving this novel, The Black Moon, its title -- he's got some trouble on his hands in this one, as his lively little Poldark stepson has discovered a delightfully hilarious way to irritate George (at least, by proxy) and just cannot stop doing so, even though it gets everyone else in trouble until someone gets caught in the act. D'oh!

And then there's the governess George has engaged for his wife's older son, Elizabeth's cousin Morwenna, who is nowhere near as pretty as Elizabeth (who is still considered a classic beauty nonpareil even after years of marriage and motherhood and household management) but still catches the eye of a man or two, one highly suitable by George's standards, one less so. Very less so. Because this is still a Poldark novel, and Ross is still part of the picture, and so is his wife Demelza, and Demelza comes from a poor family of miners, and her brothers have grown up to be big strapping handsome men, and her little brother Drake is the strappingest and handsomest of all.

Hey, it wouldn't be a Poldark novel without a pair of star-crossed lovers, would it? Verity and Andrew. Caroline and Dwight (though their course of not-smooth true love still hasn't gotten them to the altar as of this book; Dwight went for sailoring last novel, remember,  and in this one has gotten himself both shipwrecked and captured by some very cranky villagers in the middle of Revolutionary France. Oops), meet Morwenna and Drake. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.

Meanwhile, Ross Poldark, now happily married through four novels and then some, with a growing son and a new baby daughter and a wife he loves dearly, with a prospering mine and money to spend on fixing up his house, can't stand contentment. When he learns of Dwight's plight in France, and that Caroline has managed to persuade the government to do something about it (sort of), well of course Ross has to get involved. Even though it's dangerous. Or perhaps because it's dangerous. Because Ross Poldark. Duh.

And then there is one more Poldark, who until this volume has barely been a figurant but roars forward for key moments in this book: Agatha. Agatha is Ross' great-aunt, an old maid who has seen six generations of her family living out their lives in the house that is now George's. She's been good for an excuse for Ross to visit and for moments of comic relief here and there, but now she's finally a character. And what a character she is. And her little cat, too. Vale, Miss Poldark. Your last barb hit home.

Interestingly, The Black Moon was written a good 20+ years after the previous book. Winston Graham apparently got tired of his career as a highly successful and beloved author of historical fiction and turned his hand to mainstream work for a while. Of course he was good at this too (Marnie, anyone?), but he was eventually persuaded to return to this beloved world of miners and fishermen and barely-making-it-landed gentry in 18th Century Cornwall. I would say he didn't miss a beat, but really, I do detect slight differences in his prose in this later Poldark book. The quality is still first rate, but it's a bit more economical, more precise, less wild. He's grown as a writer, we see, but sometimes miss his excesses. Or at least I do.

But still, it's a Poldark novel, a novel of Cornwall, full of scenery porn, resource drama, borderline class warfare, and ROMANCE. One can't help but love it, and be glad there are still several more to go.

*First love of Ross Poldark, wife of the late Francis Poldark, mother of Geoffrey Charles Poldark, etc.

Winston Graham's WARLEGGAN: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

Lordy, I do love me some tempestuous, romantic historical fiction now and then, and it doesn't get much more tempestuous, romantic or historical than Winston Graham's wonderful Poldark novels, of which Warleggan is the fourth. And possibly the most tempestuous, if not the most romantic.

Though it's quite the soap opera, is Warleggan. The title, of course, referring to the family name of those dastardly anti-Poldarks, the gotten-up and unscrupulous nouveau riche Warleggans, whose scion, George, grew up with the cousins Poldark but never quite gained their acceptance because his family was so very, very declasse.

But here he is, getting a novel named for him! Do the Poldarks finally admit him to their charmed-not-really-charmed circle? Do they finally see that he's not the villain of their tale but merely a different kind of hero? Does he get a happy ending?

Well. Sort of. Yes and no. Um.

This most soap-operatic yet of Graham's wonderful Novels of Cornwall doesn't feature George Warleggan all that much (though certainly more than did the prior novel, Jeremy Poldark, feature that boy, who spent almost all of that book in his mommy's tummy). He looms over events somewhat, yes, and it is certainly a carefully executed action of his that is the most important development in the overall Poldark plot, but...

But it is the affairs of yet another pair of star-crossed lovers that hog most of the reader's attention. Lovers and the Poldark who abets them, but this time it is mostly Ross playing cupid rather than Demelza, for one of the lovers is his friend Dr. Dwight Enys (he of the prior tragic live affair in assign earlier novel).

Meanwhile, Ross and Demelza are not themselves the picture of wedded bliss, because Ross's first love, Elizabeth, who jilted him while he was away in America getting his rakish facial scar, is still a big part of their lives. She jilted Ross to marry his cousin Francis, meaning she is both family and neighbor, and then [REDACTED TRAGEDY] strikes and suddenly she becomes an even bigger problem...

And then there is Warleggan. Remember Warleggan? This is a book named for Warleggan. When I watched the original BBC adaptation as a  tween, I gnashed my teeth at him, I bit my thumb at him, I spit at the mention of his name. As an adult better attuned to problems of class and economics, though, I kind of feel for him. His family's success has thrown him into social circles that his family's background has not prepared him to navigate well. He has decent enough instincts for how to behave, has learned what fork to use and all that rot, but he is not to the classy (and somewhat impoverished but still one has FORBEARS) manor born. If the cousins Poldark had been nicer to him as young'uns they might all have been friends, or at least business partners. But nope.

But so, can we blame him for seizing the opportunity he does? Sure, he's kind of a jerk about it, but he has feelings, too, and he didn't just one day decide a chip on his shoulder would set off his slightly coarse good looks, right?

And anyway, he might not entirely be getting what he wants. Hur hur hur. He might only have given his NAME to his son, IYKWIM.

The first four Poldark books are often regarded as a quartet, and to a degree things are decently enough rapped up here, but I find there are eight more "novels of Cornwall", some yet with Poldark in the title, so I'll keep on reading them.

And yes, I had a cheeky peek at the first episode of the new adaptation, but promised my mom I'd wait and watch the rest with her when it airs on PBS here in the states later this year. I see it's got a more lavish budget than the original, and lots more scenery pork, but I don't find the cast to be any improvement on Robin Ellis, Angharad Rees et al. But they might grow on me, these new actors, and I know Ellis has a small part in NuPoldark. We shall see.

Winston Graham's JEREMY POLDARK

Not since Tristram Shandy has a novel's titular character taken quite such a long time to actually appear -- by which I mean be born -- in his novel as does Jeremy Poldark. And Jeremy Poldark actually takes longer!

He's not a character so much as a placemarker in his book, is Jeremy, second child of Ross and Demelza Poldark, Regency era Cornwall's sudsiest soap opera couple. The year of Jeremy's birth also sees his daddy on trial for his life, accused of attacking revenuers and inciting a riot during the wreck of a pair of ships near his property one tempestuous Cornwall night, his parents somewhat estranged over some behind-the-scenes meddling Demelza seems to have done to ensure a favorable verdict, his family's fortunes threatened by dastardly deeds of business (by which I mean, mostly, the upstart Warleggan clan), and, as always, his daddy making eyes at Cousin Elizabeth, who was originally set to marry Ross but who married Ross's cousin Francis instead back when Ross was given up for dead in the American Revolution (see the first Poldark novel, Ross Poldark).

For added historical flavor, the assizes at which Ross is tried coincide with a local election, and of course the Poldarks live in a rotten borough, so lots of tasty machinations ensue -- by the way, if you don't want to click on that boring old Wikipedia explanation of a rotten borough, you might enjoy one E. Blackadder explaining it to the Prince Regent:

And yes that's House doing the chicken impression

The machinations in Jeremy Poldark aren't quite as hilarious as those in Blackadder the Third, but they're still a pretty entertaining backdrop to the novel's action.

Other subplots include Jeremy's Aunt Verity finally getting to meet the stepchildren that came along with the marriage Jeremy's mother helped make happen in Demelza, and the somewhat hapless Dr. Dwight Enys,  perhaps Ross' best friend, meeting yet another woman who flummoxes him, though admittedly with less disastrous results than the last go-around.

And as I said, Jeremy eventually gets around to getting born, but even his birth is something of a non-event. One hopes this new hero gets more to do in later books...

Winston Graham's DEMELZA: A NOVEL OF CORNWALL

This 1970s version of the cover of Winston Graham's second Poldark novel, Demelza, keeps cracking me up. I wouldn't have touched it in a million years, with its emphasis on lustiness and defiant love and whatnot. I would though, have been missing out.

As I observed recently, I was sold on the idea of reading these by the BBC TV adaptation (America's Grandest New TV Saga the little green label on this book cover says), but even so was not quite prepared for how much I would like these books, like Graham's writing, like the characters and their world.

It's a small world, is late 18th Century Cornwall, populated by struggling tin and copper miners, struggling farmers and the odd ridiculous bastion of Georgian gentility, but it feels the effects of the wider world in its own way, as last novel showed us in the hard homecoming of Captain Ross Poldark after Britain's loss of its American colonies, and this one shows us in its tiny echoes of the nascent French Revolution happening just across the water from its wind-and sea-swept shores -- mostly in the form of food riots in the bigger towns, but still, rumblings all the same.

But for our purposes, the biggest stirring is still Ross's decision to marry his kitchen wench Demelza, who has turned out to be the perfect wife for him and, in her own novel here, to be a fascinating character all on her own. Unbelievably happy in her marriage and motherhood, she thinks everybody should be so, and so a lot of the plot of Demelza spins out from her efforts to secure her kind of happiness for Ross's cousin Verity, long separated from her man by family and social disapproval of his past as a wife-beater, violent drunk and all-around less-than-ideal prospect for any daughter. But it's true love! Can't anyone see it but Demelza? No, apparently not, so off she goes on her errand, with surprising and far-reaching results.

For while Demelza is off match-making, Ross is busy trying to do his bit as a social reformer, trying to keep his workers' offspring out of trouble, their livelihood from going belly-up, and to keep himself from decking every ponce in a powdered wig who winks at his wife, cheats him at cards, or outmaneuvers him in business. Oh, and to do all of this mostly in secrecy, which is hard to do in a small world with a busybody wife running around playing cupid and touching off family and social drama.

And again, there are lots of lovely moments, poignant and well crafted, like when the great old Grambler mine, on which the Poldark fortune seems largely to have originally been built, closes down and the gentlemen gather around the huge steam pumps that keep its galleries more or less clear of water to watch their last ups and downs and Ross's cousin Francis chalks the word "Resurgam" ("I shall rise again") on the side of the biggest of them to express the hope that someday what's still down in the Grambler will be economically worth digging for again. I hope it will, I do! But those darn Warleggans, the upstart banking family who are always on the verge of becoming the Poldarks' nemesis but never quite manifest as same, seem destined to keep copper prices low and the mine owners and their employees poor and dependent, those bastards!

Thrown into the mix is a High Romantic sub-plot involving a fancy lass who marries an honest, big-but-dim mining man and regrets it to the ruin of, well, just about everybody in some fashion or another. It's this sub-plot that raises a lot of modern eyebrows, because of course it all ends tragically, but then, oh, what's this? All of these characters we have come to love and sympathize with are loving and sympathizing the guy who killed his wife! To quite an extraordinary degree. Because the fancy lass had it coming, I guess? Um.

So no, I didn't like that bit either, but such has been the way of the world. If there's one thing a reader of novels learns over and over again, it sure do suck to be a girl. But then again, it mostly seems to suck to be a guy, too, though the old saw about being laughed at versus being murdered still comes to mind. Or at least until everybody is up against bigger problems, like rampant deadly disease, economic ruin and shipwrecks with pickings for all to fight over!

ALL THE MELODRAMA.

100 Books #109 - Louis L'Amour's TO THE FAR BLUE MOUNTAINS

..."There is game."
"Poaching?"
I smiled. "There are no lords there to bespeak the deer or the hare, William. There is enough for all."

I love this exchange between Barnabas Sackett, gonnabe American pioneer, and the man he's leaving behind to work his tiny plot of land in England's famous fens. Neither can believe that the other wants what he does. William is happy to cut rushes and grow what crops he can on the tillable bits of Barnabas' inheritance; Barnabas wants to be in on the ground floor of history's greatest Do-Over. It's a moment that all but sings with romance and makes the reader want to have been there to sail off with Barnabas, even though that reader knows that yesterday's frontier became today's suburban franchise ghetto and, while there is actually enough for all, the dream of all getting to share in it is far from realized.

But it's a great reminder, a book like this, that the American Experiment really was and still is one. People who knew what had become of hundreds and thousands of years of hereditary aristocracy and hierarchies that might as well have been castes wanted to try something different, but they had to make it up as they went along. And we still are, today. We may be disappointed that this country seems not to be living up to its early promise, but we set ourselves some pretty lofty goals, for which Plan A might not have been the best. Plan B? Plan C? Plan D? Plan E? The important thing is to keep trying.

But that's not what To the Far Blue Mountains is about, of course. All that experimentation is far in the future for America and the Sacketts. First, Barnabas has to gain a proper foothold on the continent and survive and have kids.* But even before that, he has to get out of England, where people in high places have come to think he is a very bad man (some even think he's hiding the Crown Jewels**, which they think he found with the gold coins that started him on his path to independence in Sackett's Land). Which is to say that Barnabas spends the first chunk of this novel (again) in what I like to call "Doctor Who jeopardy"***. There many, many novels after this one, and they're about his descendants, so we kind of know he's not going to be hanged or murdered or anything. Yawn.

Again, this is the stuff of Romance, not history or historical fiction, but fun nonetheless. Swirling capes and salutes, daring escapes, audacious seizures of ships -- all that's missing is D'Artagnan, really, but our Barnabas, so legendary that even weird old men in Welsh shacks know his name without an introduction, makes a pretty fair substitute.

And while he's got him a wife all picked out, the beautiful and tough Abigail (who fought off pirates off the coast of India when she was just 13, apparently), his female companion for a lot of the best bits of this novel would make him a fine match, too. Oh, if you don't love Lila, Abigail's maidservant who got left behind when Abigail and her father sailed for America but who bulls her way into chasing after her with Barnabas, you don't love strong women. Lila is physically imposing, plies a mean sword, cooks a fine supper on no notice and with whatever crap ingredients are on hand, and is fiercely loyal. If Barnabas is larger than life, and he certainly is that, Lila is even larger, a paragon of rough country virtue and can-do-it attitude.

It's a pity that she more or less disappears, for huge chunks of the novel, but this is Barnabas' story, and he's got a lot going on. Like fighting off pirates. Like fighting off the urge to become one himself. Like darting in and out of English ports under the noses of his enemies so he can sell the spars and furs and potash (oh my!) he has collected in the New World and buy clothing and beer and seed corn and whatnot. Like fighting some Indians and befriending others. Like building and rebuilding his fort in Virginia. Like impregnating his wife. Like scenery appreciation.

His is a fun ride on which to be along, and no mistake. Onward to the next book, soon, which appears to concern his first son, the improbably named Kin Ring Sackett.

*So far no plan for dynasty founding has succeeded by avoiding that step.

**Lost in a flash flood by King John's baggage train in the early 13th century.

***As in the way episodes of that show may dangle its title character over any number of cliffs but the fact that the show is his and that he is known to have many future incarnations makes any episodic endings in which he is in danger kind of laughable when one watches, say, Jon Pertwee's turn in the role back in the 1960s.

100 Books #49 - John Urbancik's DARKWALKER

As I observed last year, John Urbancik is one Romantic, poetic motherfolklore.* He likes his gore on the picturesque side, frequents atmospheric locations like glorious old cathedrals and elegant old-fashioned theaters, and tends to feature seriously star-crossed love stories in his fiction. Horace "Castle of Otranto" Walpole had nothing on this guy!

He stays in that romantic vein for this new novel, but that exquisite sense of place Urbancik always achieves is this time gone for seedier locales: disused warehouses, back alleys, dive bars, abandoned houses. His hero this time around, Jack Harlow, is a guy who can perceive what most people cannot: he can see ghosts and spirits, penetrates the shoddy disguises of vampires and ogres, catches them in the act, often smells them before he sees them** -- but cannot interfere. Anytime he tries, things go horribly, horribly wrong. So he watches and records, collating his findings on a laptop (because memory plays tricks, and is faulty) he keeps in the car that is also his home.

When he meets the beautiful Lisa Sparrow in a heart-stopping scene of love-at-first-sight, though, and she gets attacked by some kind of horrifying beastie, he begins to want, very much, to be able to interfere. But can he? And what would be the consequences if he did?

One of those consequences is Nick Hunter, a man whose vocation is killing monsters, who comes to the aid of this ill-starred pair in the midst of that first attack on Lisa, and then begins to take a very strong interest in Jack's very comprehensive database. A monster hunter could do a lot with a tool like that. Meanwhile, as third wheels go, he's pretty much the best a couple could possibly ask for...

What sells me on this book most of all is that, though it's a very romantic book, it's not one of those irritating wish-fulfillment paranormal romances, all sexy vampires and werewolves in heat. No, the monsters are very much the bad guys, a threat, what needs killing. No one (willingly) sleeps with one or falls in love with one or anguishes over its future  as the meat on a really big shish kebab. They're deadly, vicious and scary.

Too, Jack Harlow winds up with a very unusual problem -- unusual both within and without the confines of this novel and this genre -- that I don't think I've seen before, which makes this a much more interesting read than I was expecting! And even better are the turns taken by his lovely Lisa, who embraces Jack's weird existence and runs with it, becoming an active partner in the struggle to find out what the hell is going on into the bargain. "The future stretched before her like a blank canvas, wiped clear of the mundane."

I like that.

Darkwalker thus has a great deal to offer -- horrifying imagery, a sweet love story, danger, inner turmoil, high stakes (very high!), very occasional humor -- and is very obviously something over which its author and editors have taken very great care. Every scene is minutely crafted, polished, and displayed in its best possible light. Sometimes the prose might feel a little overwhelming, but it's always revealed as exactly what was needed to convey the appearance of Jack's foes, the turbulence of Jack's, Lisa's or Nick's emotions, the almost unbearable tension through which they struggle to establish a new normal after the cataclysm of Jack's and Lisa's falling in love.

Really, the novel's only flaw is that it's not really my thing. I'm pretty over vampires and zombies and werewolves and whatnot, I'm sorry to say. Maybe if there were altogether fewer of them in the stories that keep crying for my attention, I'd still have an appreciation for them.

Or maybe if it was only writers like John Urbancik who got to play with them. Because despite this not being my thing, he ripped my heart right out my rib cage with his bare hands and then threw it on the floor and stomped on it 'til I died. Unh!

*I cannot take credit for that awesome neologism. That comes from my friend Jessie, aka @Xutraa.

**Lots of smells in this book. Very few of them good. "Jasmine, vanilla, cinnamon -- then decay... Rot like cabbage unatteded, dead rats, congealed blood." Haunted Orlando is a very stinky place.

Lost and Found (FGC #2)

Alica paused to shake her hands and looked at the clock. Oh god, she had been typing for three hours, and yes, most of it was chatting with this guy whom her two best friends had insisted she'd like. And she did, basically, sort of, but things were definitely going south.

His referring to how much he loved to stimulate "lady softness" was a definite clue that this was someone she did not need cluttering up her real life. But how to get rid of him.

She had already tried her usual gambit: "Well, it's getting late..." which the fellow had blithely ignored -- indeed, it was that which had prompted reference to "lady softness." What a phrase. She would never get over it. And she would make sure that Michael and Clay didn't, either.

She would make sure they never, ever forgot it.

"Look," she typed, "I've really got to call it a night. Really nice chatting with you. Good luck with the whole steer wrassling thing and all. That sounds very exciting."

"OH, IT IS," this CWBY28 typed back. "So, when can I call ya? Can't wait to take you out for a steak!"

She had told him twice she was a vegetarian. Taking a deep breath to summon courage, she went for the straight-up honest approach.

"I'd rather you didn't call me, to be honest. You seem nice, but I don't think we're a good match. Sorry. No hard feelings?"

"OH, IT'S LIKE THAT, IS IT?"

"Yes, it's like that." No, this was not going well at all.

"MIKE DINT TELL ME YOUR A SNOB." Still in all caps. Great.

"I'm not. I just... trust me, we're not a good fit. Good night, and like I said, good luck."

He had already signed out of chat.

Alicia sighed again, but then took a moment and took stock. She was, she realized, actually pretty proud of herself. She had been honest and direct and not wasted anyone's time. She hadn't prevaricated with any of the usual "It's not you, it's me" crap; she hadn't accepted a date she really didn't want to go on; she hadn't led him on. Her only mistake had been to let the happy couple, Michael and Clay, try fixing her up again. They loved her, sure, and she them, but when it came to dating, their idea of a perfect match for her was... any heterosexual man they came across and thought was "hot."

They meant well.

Alicia looked up at the clock again. It wasn't too late to call them -- and maybe it was a good idea to get her side of the story on the record before this got blown into something it wasn't.

Michael picked up on the first ring. "Hi, heartbreaker," he said, with more than a hint of mockery. Great. She was too late.

"'Lady softness', Michael. He called it 'lady softness!'"

"Aw, how romantic!"

"Not romantic, Michael, lame. And that's just the beginning. But short version, just, just, no. I mean, shit, he's a Republican. Not even just a Republican. You do realize if he got his way you and Clay would be in prison, or worse, right?"

"Aw, that's too bad."

"But you thought he was 'perfect' for me?"

"Clay," Michael's voice was a little muffled; he'd pulled the phone away from his mouth for a moment. "Did we say that guy was perfect for her?"

Alicia couldn't hear his answer.

"You know. Whatshisname. That we met at the Ranger last week." Michael continued. Then he returned to clarity. "We never said he was perfect for you, Leesh. Just... we really thought you should meet him. Or at least sleep with him a few times."

"Giddyup," Clay's distant voice came tinny over Michael's phone. "Yeehaw."

"No, you said 'perfect'" Alicia insisted with a sigh. "So did he already call you and tell  you I'm a bitch?"

"I don't even think he has my number."

Argh.

"I see. So I was just supposed to be your proxy again?"

"Ha ha ha. Yeah... something like that..."

"Oh, honey, please stop that, okay? It's really not funny and it makes me feel pretty awful."

"Really?"

"Michael, really. Do you just not get it?"

"I guess not."

"Well then, please, just accept that I don't want it. I know you guys mean well and all but Christ, I'd rather stay single and celibate than mess around with the jerk parade. Okay?"

"Sure. Love you, babe."

"Love you, too. Say good night to Clay for me."

"Sure. G'night!"

Alicia decided to go for a walk. There was a light snowfall so she'd need to bundle up. On went the coat (a Scott-E-Vest, with great pockets, all nice and secure), boots," scarf... She stood in the mud room of her house and pondered a moment. It was very dark out, probably too dark to write, but the greenway had lights here and there... and surely the one time she didn't bring her Field Notes would be the time she had that killer idea for a new story, or thought her way out of the plot problems she was having with the current one. And hey, that's why she had all these pockets. In it went.

She took two steps outside and realized she needed a real coat. The Carhartt. Back to the closet, on with the really warm coat, quick pocket triage, Field Notes fit if she left the wallet -- and why did she need her wallet for a late night greenway stroll in the snow anyway?

Of course she had the paths to herself, hers the only footprints in the powder covering the asphalt. The willows along the constructed wetlands' edge looked magical in a light coating of frost, as did the big cottonwoods looming over the walkway here and there. She gathered her resources and broke into a run, trying to achieve enough speed to create the Star Wars hyperspeed effect, when the snowflakes seemed to be coming right at her in trails of white light, but she just wasn't that fast. That only happened in a car on a snowy, windy, stormy night in the middle of nowhere.

She stopped in her tracks. That was it. Strand those characters in a car on the highway in a winter storm. That would get them talking. That might even get them having the talk.

"Yes!" she screamed, knowing no one else would hear her lunacy. Instinctively, she reached for interior coat pockets that weren't there. No pen loop, no zipped up pocket with her little notebooks inside. Wrong coat. Exasperated, she tore off her gloves and dug into the front pocket of the coat she was wearing. There it was. And there, mercy of mercies, was a pencil, which would write better in the damp anyway.

Scribble. Scribble. Scribble. Frantic scribble. Exclamation points and underlining. Yes.

She should go for snowy walks more often.

Finished at last, she jammed the Field Notes and pencil back into her pocket and resumed her stroll. She had gone maybe a half mile before she realized she had forgotten to put her gloves back on.

She only had one.

With a sigh, she turned around and went back for it, watching the ground closely until she saw it lying there amongst her strange footprints from her writing stop.

"There you are!" she said, bending to pick it up. She missed on her first try, awkward in bulky extra clothing, bobbing like a drinky bird toy. "Gotcha!"

She didn't miss her notebook for a few days, when she again decided to tackle the novella she'd solved on her walk.

***

"No, it's probably long gone. Or just wrecked," Alicia said into her phone. Michael had been trying to cheer her up with stories of how she might yet find her Field Notes if she retraced her steps one more time. "Anyway, I mostly remember what I scribbled down, for the story anyway. The rest was just grocery lists and stuff. And oh -- but you can just give me that recipe again..."

"I'll email it as soon as Clay gets off the computer," Michael said.

"Huh huh, gets off," Clay said in the background.

"Your boyfriend's a loon," Alicia said.

"Wouldn't have him any other way. So oh, okay, Clay just emailed it to you. The recipe."

"I think I did," Clay said. "Can she check? I might still have her address wrong."

"Thanks, babes," Alicia said.

"You coming out for bar trivia tomorrow night?"

"If I get this draft done. I promise."

"We'll hold you to it, sweetie pie."

"K."

The amount of email was, as usual, staggering. Thirty five messages since last night? Sometime soon she really needed to sit down and unsubscribe from some of the mailing lists she was on. Just because she bought some stuffed grape leaves online once didn't mean she wanted to hear about the entire catalog of fancy foods she could order from Company X.

Delete. Delete. Delete. There was the recipe. Delete. Delete. What the hell?

From an unknown address there was a message that had gotten past her spam filters and snared her attention instantly. The subject line was "found on the greenway."

"Dear Alica -- We do not know each other, but I'm pretty sure I found something of yours on the greenway Thursday night. I know how I'd feel if I dropped one of my Field Notes, and I see you had some pretty important notes in yours (yes, I peeked). On the inside cover you circled that there IS a reward for returning it, but I'd rather be a beta-reader for that story you're working on than take any of your money. I can just mail it to you if you provide an address. Sincerely, Mick Carlson."

Alicia froze, staring at her netbook screen as several different thoughts collided in her head. Her notebook was found and legible. Oh god, someone read those notes. This guy not only had perfect grammar and punctuation but also knew what a beta reader was. Another Field Notes fetishist. Stalker! Stalker! Stalker. Was he single? How pathetic was it that she was wondering if he was single? Oh god, someone read those notes. Good thing she only made grocery lists when she was shopping for healthy foods. Who named a kid Mick these days. Stalker! Her notebook was found. She could get it back.

She had to write him back.

"Dear Mick -- What a relief to find out you picked up my notebook! You must have been out there right after me or else it would be..."

Delete that second sentence. Keep it brief and noncomittal.

"I'd be very grateful if you could mail it to me. I'm at..."

Should she really give a stranger her mailing address, which was also her home address? Why hadn't she gotten a P.O. Box? Well, that thought had just occurred to her, but she probably should. Stalker! Stalker! Stalker!

Oh, what the hell. Clay had a friendly ex at the police department. If things got bad, it could still be all right.

"I'm at 139 Legerski Avenue, here in town. And yes, I could use a new beta reader; some of my current ones are getting flaky. Thanks again, Alicia."

SEND, before she started over-thinking it.

Flustered, she decided to take another walk. At least this time, the weather was going to let her go back to her wonderful, reliable Scott-E-Vest.

As she left the house, a window popped up on her still-active netbook. It was a chat request from none other than Mick Carlson.

***

Much refreshed, Alicia sat down to resume writing.

And there it was.

>>Hey there. You there? Is this too stalker-y?

She looked at the time stamp. Not too long ago. Should she answer him?

Before she even realized she'd decided, her fingers were typing.

>>Hey! Yes! Was on a walk and left Gmail open. I'm here, now. Are you?

>>Were you on that same stretch of the greenway? Damn, I bet I just missed you. I was biking.

>>In this weather?

>>Sure. It's actually pretty fun, and it makes me feel like a badass.

>>Ha ha, I bet it would.

>>Do you have a bicycle? You should try it.

>>I totally do! Should I get, like, chains or something?

>>Naw. The asphalt on the greenway is pretty dry most of the time. Hardly any ice. I even go at night.

They continued chatting until very, very late.

***

"Mick Carlson? Sounds like a porn star name or something," Michael quipped, sipping his tall Bud Light.

"Wonder if it's his real one," Clay said, mopping up the ring Michael's mug had left on the table.

"I think it's real," Alicia said, blushing a little.

"So you guys were up all night chatting?"

"Yes," she said, feeling foolish. "I gave him my phone number, too. Eek!" She buried her face in her hands.

"Hubba hubba," Michael said.

"Oh god, why did I even tell you?" Alicia glanced around. The rest of their trivia team was arriving. "So hey, um, don't tell the rest of the guys about this, okay?"

"Mum's the word," Clay said. "Right, Michael?" Clay looked sternly at his partner.

"Of course!"

"Hey, look who's here!" their friend Paul shouted, taking a seat on a barstool. "You realize this is the first time I've seen you in three months? Freaking hermit!"

"Hi, Paul," Alicia said, watching the rest of the team assemble. There was a new face at the end of the table. Short hair, clean-shaven, hipster glasses, tallish, comfortably overweight, really nice voice. Michael caught her staring.

"Who's the new dweeb?" he bellowed down the length of the table.

"Pipe down," one of their teammates said. "Time for the first question."

"Question #1," the trivia master began. "Name the famous composer who became George Sand's lover in 1838."

"Who the hell is George Sand? Was he gay?" Michael asked.

"George Sand was a she," Alicia explained.

"So you know the answer, then?"

"Fuck, 1838. Franz Liszt or Frederic Chopin? When did she meet Chopin?" Alicia muttered.

"It was Chopin," the stranger said, confidently.

"Not so loud," a teammate said. "You sure?"

"Yes."

"Alicia?"

"I think he's right."

"Okay, writing it down. You take it up, Leesh."

As she returned to the table, her eyes and the stranger's met just as the trivia master announced they'd been right. The stranger winked.

"Hoo-ee," Michael said, nudging her. He never missed anything, the bastard. Alicia blushed.

The team didn't win, but a few stayed behind to have a drink to celebrate anyway. Paul gestured at everyone to move in closer. Closer to the stranger.

"Hey, Leesh! Have you met my buddy Mick yet?" Paul said.

Michael and Clay sputtered into their drinks.

"No, I haven't," Alicia said, proffering her hand. "Alica Hess."

The stranger -- Mick -- started to laugh. "Um. Mick Carlson."

And suddenly there was no one else in the bar.

2500 WORDS