Let's suppose it's a rainy Friday evening in October. You've just had the Week from Hell at work, so the last thing you feel like doing is going out clubbing or yelling yourself hoarse at some sports event. After dealing with the idiots in Marketing, the even bigger fools in Corporate, and the whiners in HR, you feel more like a zombie than a human being.
As you maneuver Chinese takeout with your chopsticks you ask yourself gloomily how the evening is to be spent. Watching a movie on Netflix? Gag, no. You're not in the mood for car chases, gun battles, and naked bodies writhing sweatily through twisted sheets. Rinse. Repeat.
Nor does TV appeal as you throw another log on the fire and listen to the beat of rain against the windowpanes. Most American sitcoms are either vulgar or boring, you're sick of talking heads, and on PBS your favorite Britcoms are nothing but reruns until January next year.
So whaddaya gonna do? Suddenly, as you swallow the last bit of Shrimp Lo Mein and crack open a fortune cookie, inspiration strikes! Because when you extract the tiny strip of paper and open it, you receive the following message:
You sit in chair and read book.
Aha, how easy this will be to arrange! Recliner springs oiled and ready? Check. Cosy knitted Afghan to hand? Post-prandial scotch and soda, hot chocolate, or tea, poured and waiting? Check.
And which book do you reach for? This will be a real book from the pile Aunt Agnes left you, not an electronic thingummy. The books we're about to explore are Oldies But Goodies.
Dorothy Gilman was best known for her "Mrs. Pollifax" mysteries. Those I have yet to read so we'll focus on her novels, which combine a hint of mystery with a whiff of magic. Although romance happens it does not dominate, nor does it involve panting, moaning, or writhing.
After collecting all the Gilmans off my bookshelf and ordering the only one I don't seem to possess at the moment, I've indulged in the considerable pleasure of rereading them all.
Caravan was the first one I picked up. It begins with young Caressa, growing up in the carny world with her Mum and her Gran, as she learns to pick pockets expertly to supplement the impoverished family exchequer. However, Mum has ambitions for Caressa, so at 15 the girl finds herself at a young ladies’ seminary in Boston, Mass. Here’s part of the blurb from the book jacket:
With her anthropologist husband murdered and their caravan stolen by fierce Tuareg tribesmen, Caressa’s choices are death or a life of slavery. Concealing her dangerous beauty beneath the faded robes of an Arab boy, she embarks on the adventure of her life, harassed by vicious nomads, slave traders, and the envious witch doctor, Isa.
Next was
A Nun in the Closet, one of the funniest suspense novels I've ever read. After learning that her order has inherited a fine old house in Massachusetts, Mother Superior asks Sister John and Sister Hyacinthe to borrow a van and drive up from Pennsylvania to investigate. Weird things start happening after they arrive. Here's a pulled quote from the book:
Sister Hyacinthe sighed. "I've driven several hundred miles today, Sister John; I've pulled money out of a well and a bleeding man out of a closet, and we've not had our supper."
The two nuns soon find that not everyone does well in the religious life, especially a guy who has three bullet holes in him. The hippies camping illegally on their property complicate matters, to say nothing of the mysterious Garbage Man, who wears a three-piece suit to pick up their garbage.
Third was Incident at Badamya. This one would go especially well with an Asian meal. A bowl of rice, a pot of tea, and you’ll feel right at home in Gilman’s post-World-War II Burma, where things are not quite what they seem. Here’s the blurb from the book jacket:
“It’s time for me to go, Gen. If you can get to Rangoon, there’ll be help. Go to New York—I couldn’t—and God bless you.”
After he writes these words, Gen Ferris’s missionary father commits suicide. The year is 1950, and suddenly orphaned at sixteen, Gen must find her way out of an exotic land she loves but is not her own. With little more than a hundred dollars in her knapsack, a slingshot, a magical Burmese puppet, and the New York City address of an aunt she’s never met, Gen sets off to meet her kan, her destiny.
Gilman’s protagonists are mostly young and female, weighed down by psychological burdens. As the stories unfold, however, these protagonists discover amazing strengths within themselves. One of Gilman’s few novels with a male protagonist is my favorite,
Thale’s Folly. The account of Andrew’s investigation of an old house in the middle of nowhere, Massachusetts, contains some of Gilman’s most endearingly eccentric characters.
I like the bits of philosophy, some Buddhist, some Christian, some Wiccan (Ms. Gilman was nothing if not impartial) in the novels. The philosophical pronouncements of the mystical characters leave one with a lot to think about.
These novels are for those who enjoy a Rattling Good Read, with no obscene dialogue (how tired one becomes of the F-word), no graphic descriptions of that (we’ve all been there and done that), and the sheer pleasure of a good story well told. That’s why I heartily recommend Gilman’s novels for those rainy, snowy, or just bone-chillingly cold Friday evenings. Try them, you’ll like them.
So pull your chair closer to the fire, top up your scotch-and-soda, and tell us: what’s your favorite read on a rainy Friday night?