Here are the answers to last week’s quiz. I’ve noted the titles and authors of the novels along with the year(s) in which they appeared on the bestseller lists.

1. Globetrotting relative of  Patrick Dennis: aunt  (Auntie Mame [1956 #4] and Around the World with Auntie Mame [1958 #4])
2. B.F., Anderson Crow and Lady Rose each had one: daughter (B.F.’s Daughter by John P. Marquand [1946 #9];  The Daughter of Anderson Crow by George Barr McCutcheon, 1907 #7]; Lady Rose’s Daughter by Mrs. Humphrey Ward [1903 #1])
3. A red black woman: Scarlet Sister Mary (by Julie Peterkin [1929 #1] )
4. They married into the family: The Sisters-in-Law (by Gertrude Atherton [1921 #9])
5. The priests see to her: Grandmother (Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell, 1963 #6 )
6. Sorrell had one: son (Sorrell and Son (by Warwick Deeping [1926 #3] )
7. You’ll never see the end of her: Immortal Wife (by Irving Stone [1945 #10])
8. Grandchildren would be shorter: His Children’s Children (by Arthur Train [1923 #2])
   
9. Jacob may have called his bride this:  My Cousin Rachel (by Daphne du Maurier [1952 #4])
10. He’ll give away his daughter: Father of the Bride (by Edward Streeter [1945 #10])

I hope you enjoyed that quiz. We’ll do another again some day.

~Linda Gorton Aragoni

The answer to each of these clues is in the title of a bestselling vintage novel published before 1960. See how well you do at sorting out the family connections. Think of it as practice for holiday gatherings.

1. Globetrotting relative of  Patrick Dennis
2. B.F., Anderson Crow and Lady Rose each had one.
3. A red black woman
4. They married into the family
5. She associates with priests
6. Sorrell had one
7. You’ll never see the end of her
8. Grandchildren would be shorter
9. Rachel was first one
10. He’ll give away his daughter

Answers will be posted Nov. 25.

© 2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

I’ve come to the end of the novels I’ve reviewed here this year from the bestsellers of  1959, 1949, 1939, 1929, 1919, and 1909. It’s time to reflect on what’s the best reading today from the bestseller lists of those years.

From 1959, I choose Robert Ruark’s Poor No More as the best of list of some very good books. Ruark’s tale of a financial shyster (think: Bernie Madoff, only handsome) is not only riveting reading, but personally revealing about the reader.

From 1939, I’ll pick  Escape by Ethel Vance. Since I’m not a fan of thrillers, one that can keep me up past my bedtime has to be good. I could almost as easily have picked as my top choice John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’  The Yearling or Christopher Morley’s Kitty Foyle. All are strong stories with continuing appeal.

For 1929, my choice is All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. It isn’t a pleasant story, but it is a powerful one. And as long as countries send young people from classrooms to front lines, it will continue to be timely.

I haven’t located enough novels from 1919 or 1909 to be able to pick a top novel for those years.

You’ll see I’ve not mentioned 1949.  None of the bestselling list of  ‘49 fits my definition of great reading for today.

While I was looking through my lists for 1948 and 1949, I discovered I had never published my review of  Dinner at Antoine’s by Frances Parkinson Keyes. I dug it out and posted it earlier today.

For the rest of November and December 2009, I’ll give you novel-related reading that doesn’t fit any any of my established categories.

~ Linda Aragoni

Dinner at Antoine’s is an endlessly pleasing novel. Since I found it on my mother’s bookshelf back in the ’60s, I’ve read it many times. I  never remember reading it until I’m almost done, so I enjoy it every time.

Orson Foxworth gives a dinner at Antoine’s restaurant to introduce his niece Ruth Avery to his New Orleans friends, including Amélie Lalande, the woman he plans to marry, and her family.

Ruth is immediately drawn to Amelie’s married daughter, Odile, but repelled by the sexually charged relationship between her husband and her sister—as well as by Amélie’s refusal to notice anything wrong.

When Odile is found shot to death the day after her doctor diagnoses her trembling as the first sign of an incurable condition that will paralyze her , there’s no shortage of suspects. Everyone from Odile’s mother to Foxworth appears to have a motive for murder—if it was murder and not suicide.

To the murder mystery Frances Parkinson Keyes adds two love stories, a conspiracy to overthrow a Latin American government, and generous dollops of New Orleans insider tittle-tattle, producing as pleasant an evening’s reading as you could hope to find.

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

John Fox, Jr. churned out sentimental novels about the American frontier that were immensely popular in the early 1900s. The Trail of the Lonesome Pine was his first big success, making the bestseller list two years running.

Jack Hale sees the opportunity to make a fortune by buying land in the Cumberland Gap after the Civil War when the demand for steel soars.

While he’s looking for investment property up near the lonesome pine, Jack meets a young hillbilly girl, June Tolliver. Hale arranges for her to get schooling outside the mountains.

Meanwhile, Jack tries to civilize the hillbillies enough that investors won’t be afraid to come in. He makes enemies of both sides in the Tolliver-Falin feud.

His investments don’t fare well either. When June comes back, clean and cultured, she finds Jack gone to seed and the feud ready to blow her family apart.

If you can imagine John Wayne playing Professor Henry Higgins, you’ve got the flavor of the book. Trail has several intriguing  story lines, but none of them is fully developed.

Characters are underdeveloped, too. Hale initially considers June a child , but readers never learn her age, which is a pivotal fact.

This melodrama survives as a curiosity, but it’s too splintered to endure as a novel.

© 2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

Mary Roberts Rinehart sets her mystery The Man in Lower Ten on a pullman car. From there, she leads an unlikely hero down many wrong tracks, much to his discomfort and reader’s delight.

Bachelor lawyer Lawrence Blakely’s take a train to Pittsburgh to take a statement from John Gilmore proving Andy Bronson forged the millionaire’s name. Blakely’s eye is taken by a photo of Gilmore’s granddaughter, Alison West.

On the return trip, Blakely is assigned to the lower 10 berth. He finds it occupied by a sound-asleep drunk.

The next morning the man in lower 10 has been murdered, the documents are gone, and there are blood stains on the berth where Blakely slept.

Suspicion falls on Blakely.

When the train wrecks and burns, Blakely escapes accompanied by a woman who turns out to be Alison West. From there the plot thickens, twists and turns before gliding gracefully to a halt.

With its gentle, quirky characters and period setting, The Man in Lower Ten practically begs to be made into a movie. It’s witty, funny, and totally absorbing—everything a mystery ought to be.

Find a copy and watch it in your mind’s eye.

The Man in Lower Ten
By Mary Roberts Rinehart
Rinehart, 1909
#4 on the 1909 bestseller list

My grade: B+

I have exhausted my pile of 1919 bestsellers. I meant to get to the state university branch library to use their archives, but life intervened.

I’ll step back 10 years and give you reviews of two novels from the 1909 bestseller list that I found in circulation: The Man in Lower Ten by Mary Roberts Rinehart and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine by John Fox Jr.

Both books have been reprinted since their copyrights expired and they went into the public domain. If you can’t find them in your local library, you’ll find them at booksellers. Or you can find them at  Project Gutenberg for online reading. Rinehart’s novel is available for download to a Kindle, but I don’t believe the Fox novel is.

There is also a 1936 film version of The Trail of the Lonesome Pine for which Fox wrote the screenplay. It’s available on DVD.

~ Linda Gorton Aragoni

The Desert of Wheat is an unsatisfactory romantic novel by the master of westerns, Zane Grey.

The story is set in the Bend Country of eastern Oregon in 1917 after America had declared war on Germany. The Industrial Workers of the World is organizing farm and timber workers to disrupt the war effort by sabotaging America’s food production.

Kurt Dorn sides with his father’s mortgage-holder, Anderson, against the IWW, causing a breach with his father. Anderson tells Kurt how to save his wheat crop. The plan succeeds, but the IWW burns the harvested wheat before it can be sold. Kurt’s father dies attempting to save the wheat, and  Kurt deeds the farm to Anderson to pay the mortgage.

Kurt insists on going into the military to fight Germans. Anderson’s daughter Lenore promises to marry Kurt when he comes home.

Grey held me spellbound with the IWW material and his description of trench warfare in France. Lenore’s letting Kurt go to war made psychological sense to me, too. But I never got the sense that the issues that gave rise to the IWW were solved, nor that Kurt’s post traumatic stress was over.

I can’t help wondering what this novel might have been if Grey had shaken off the conventions of cowboy romance.

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

The Arrow of Gold is presented as a manuscript written to a childhood friend by  a sailor, “Monsieur George.”

Between voyages, M. George meets two men in Marseilles who introduce him to Dona Rita de Lastoala, a beauty who secures her curls with a golden arrow.

Rita was discovered by a painter who made his model and mistress. At his death, he left her his extensive art collections and fortune.

Rita’s family considers her a disgrace. Her ugly elder sister condescends to manage one of the houses Rita inherited and in which M. George lives when he’s not at sea.

Rita seduces M. George into gun-running to support Don Carlos de Bourbon’s 1870’s attempt to win the throne of Spain.

The novel seethes with political intrigue, lust, murder, and mayhem all politely covered by pages of talk. When Rita disappeared, I was just happy she shut up.

Joseph Conrad’s characters are complex in a literary fashion. They have to be studied rather than just observed.

Conrad’s plot is also more literary than lively. Readers must pay close attention (or read the book twice) to figure out what is happening.

Sadly, what’s happening isn’t worth the effort.

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was acclaimed the greatest novel of the great war when it appeared in 1918.

Few today would rate it so highly.

Vicente Blasco Ibanez relies heavily on exposition, paints all French as noble and all Germans as monsters, and shifts focus unnecessarily. But despite its flaws, The Four Horsemen is still worth reading.

To escape military service, Marcelo Desnoyers flees to Argentina, where he and a German marry a rancher’s daughters.

Both ex-patriots become rich and return home. The German’s son goes into the military. The Frenchman’s son becomes a painter and philanderer. After Julio seduces a friend of his father, the elder Desnoyers refuses to see him again.

To fill the void in his life, Desnoyers begins collecting art in his Marne River castle. When World War I begins, Desnoyers is caught in the Battle of the Marne.

Afterward he is old, sad, and vehemently anti-German. Mutual emptiness reunites father and son until war parts them forever.

The novel’s strength lies in tiny details, like a farmer swerving his plow around mounds that indicate buried corpses, and  Desnoyers’ reply when asked in what capacity he served during the Battle of the Marne.

“Merely as a victim,” he replies.

©2009 Linda Gorton Aragoni