Summary:

Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns, where the novel begins. In these few years Quoyle metamorphoses from the human equivalent of a Flemish flake--a one layer spiral coil of rope that may be walked on if necessary--to a multi-layered presence with the capacity for constantly renewed purpose and connection. Grief, love, work, friendship, family, necessity, and community effect this transformation, as does Quoyle’s ancestral home of Newfoundland, a place of beauty and hardship, of memory and reverie.

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The initial chapter in this novel, Of Mist, and Grass, and Sand (annotated separately), sets the stage for the quest of the young healer/heroine, "Snake," to find a replacement for the snake she had carelessly allowed to come to harm, in the course of caring for a seriously ill child. The remainder of this coming-of-age novel chronicles Snake's journey during her "proving year" (aka/residency training).

Over the course of this year, Snake continues to minister to the sick and encounters, among others, a patient who demands assistance in suicide, a patient who refuses treatment for a gangrenous leg, and a young girl who has been sexually abused (whom Snake eventually adopts and begins to apprentice). There are, as well, myriad lessons in humility, rigidity of thought, and ethnocentrism.

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Bette is a poor spinster, a frequent visitor at her cousin Hulot’s household. When the story opens, the Hulot family fortune has been decimated by Baron Hulot’s mistress. He spends all his money on her, leaving his wife, Adeline, and daughter, Hortense, to struggle meagerly along. Hortense, whose dowry is shrinking daily, mindlessly amuses herself by teasing Bette about her "lover", the sculptor, Count Steinbock, who lives above Bette’s apartment. Bette treats the sculptor maternally but loves him with a jealous affection.

Hortense decides she must meet Steinbock and the two fall in love at first sight. Though Steinbock has little money, Adeline agrees to their marriage, but the engagement is kept from Bette. Baron Hulot’s mistress leaves him and he becomes invoved with Madame Marneffe, the wife of one of his employees.

Cousin Bette is bitter towards the Baron and his family because they treat her like a servant. When she hears about Hortense’s engagement to her friend Steinbock, she determines to destroy the whole family. Bette introduces Crevel (whose mistress Hulot once stole) to Madame Marneffe and he becomes a rival lover. Bette also anonymously has Steinbock imprisoned for his unpaid debts.

Meanwhile, Madame Marneffe seduces Steinbock. She then secures her power by telling each of her lovers that he is the father of her unborn child. Hulot reaches the end of the line shortly thereafter, when it is discovered that he has been stealing money from the government. Hulot’s brother dies of grief and Hulot himself goes off to live with a seamstress in the slums.

Madame Marneffe and Crevel also meet miserable ends. Several months later, Adeline discovers her missing husband while on a charity mission. He comes home, but soon seduces the maid. Adeline then dies, her emotional reserves exhausted.

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A man called "The Counselor" is wandering the deserts, plains, and villages. He teaches scripture and rebuilds churches, like a monk, eating and sleeping very little. He attracts an odd group of followers--cripples, murderers, fanatical boys--and leads them to Canudos where they build a town and a glorious cathedral. The town is designed in imitation of Jerusalem. Many people flock to the site to see The Counselor; he heals them with a touch and washes them clean of sin.

The newly-installed conservative government is suspicious of Canudos, seeing it as a bastion of progressive sentiment. They resolve to attack the town and wipe it out. The Counselor, however, has long warned his followers that the Dog and his forces of evil will try to ruin their sanctuary.

When the small branch of the army sent to destroy what they think is a band of cripples and madmen arrives, they are slaughtered with all the vengeance of a holy war. The angered government sends a larger force and the town is eventually destroyed, but the few survivors insist that they saw The Counselor ascend to heaven, and so his reign lives on.

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This anti-war novel is written from the point of view of an injured World War I infantryman (Joe Bonham). As the plot progresses we realize how severe the injuries are (most of his face has been blown away and eventually his arms and legs must be amputated--leaving a faceless torso) and why the story is being told by an interior monologue voice.

Interspersed with recollections of Joe Bonham's life is a description of his amazing struggle to remain human. Joe's quest begins with a search for "time," and once time has been found, he begins to "organize" his world. After many years of struggle to orient himself, he tries to reach out to others by "communicating" with them. Unfortunately, his initial attempts to move his head in Morse Code are initially misconstrued as seizures, for which he receives sedatives. Eventually, a nurse new to his care realizes what he is trying to do and informs his doctors.

What Joe wants most is to let the world know about the horrors of war. He assures his keepers that he could support himself in this venture if only they would let him out (people would be glad to pay to see a "freak" such as himself). The answer he receives in return, one which had to be "literally" pounded into his forehead: "What you ask is against regulations."

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Summary:

Humphry Clinker is an epistolary novel, a collection of letters, that charts the adventures of a family group traveling through Britain. The head of the family is Matthew Bramble, a gouty old man, who is constantly writing his doctor with his complaints and visiting areas supposed to be good for his condition. He is accompanied by his niece, Lydia, who is in love with a poor man, Wilson. Her brother, an Oxford student, also comes along, as does Bramble's unwed sister, Tabitha. Tabitha's maid, Winifred Jenkins, accompanies her.

The group travels to Bath, London, Edinburgh, and the Scottish Highlands. Along the way, they meet Humphry Clinker, a dull-headed creature who becomes devoted to Matthew Bramble, even saving his life. He turns out to be Bramble's illegitimate son. Lydia's lover is discovered to be the son of a wealthy man who is Bramble's friend; they are finally happily married.

Tabitha marries Lismahago, an eccentric captain. Winifred Jenkins joins the festivities by marrying Clinker. Relieved of the feminine presence and bother in his life, Bramble recovers his health, writing to his doctor that from now on he will go hunting rather than write letters.

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Frank Gresham is the squire of Greshambury Manor in the fictional county of East Basetshire. His wife is the aristocratic Lady Arabella, daughter of Earl de Courcy. Because Lady Arabella's and her husband's tastes are more expensive than their means, Gresham goes heavily into debt and has to sell part of his property to the uncouth, but extremely wealthy, Sir Roger Scatcherd.

Thus, it is determined by Lady Arabella that their son, Frank Gresham Jr., must marry an heiress to restore the family fortunes. Doctor Thomas Thorne is the senior Gresham's close friend and advisor. Doctor Thorne is a bachelor who has raised his niece Mary as if she were his own daughter. In reality, she is the illegitimate daughter of Sir Roger's sister and the Doctor's brother. (Sir Roger had killed Henry Thorne in a fit of passion over his sister's shame; the Doctor sent Scatcherd's sister to America; and Scatcherd served time in prison before going from rags to riches in the railroad contracting business.)

The novel tells the story of the apparently hopeless romance between Mary Thorne and Frank Gresham; and Gresham's mother's attempts to have him marry into a wealthy family. Ultimately, both Sir Roger and his reprobate son, Sir Louis, die of complications of alcoholism. It then turns out that Mary Thorne is sole heir (as the "eldest child" of his sister) to Sir Roger's fabulous fortune. Eventually, Frank and Mary marry and establish their home at Boxall Hill, which is actually built on the land that Gresham had sold to Scatcherd.

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Summary:

The Stone Diaries is the story of Daisy Stone Goodwill, an ordinary woman born in 1905 in Manitoba, who arrives in this world at the same time her mother leaves it, and who moves through the world as child, daughter, young wife, widow, mother, friend, grandmother, and old woman. What makes The Stone Diaries extraordinary, in addition to the quiet lyrical quality of Shields's writing, is the book's autobiographical form: Daisy tries to tell the story of her life by becoming a witness to her life in ways quite impossible in a traditional autobiographical format (e.g. she witnesses her own birth).

Woven throughout the book is Daisy's sense of never quite being in control, of never being the subject of her own life but rather being pulled along by forces beyond her control. Only during the last dreaming weeks as she lies dying, contemplating her own life and death, does she realize that she's never constructed the story of her life, which she is finally able to do as she "returns to currency all that's been sampled and stored and dreamed into being."

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Opening during the early days of World War II, this haunting story of love, war, families and nations, good and evil covers 60 plus years in the life of a young Greek woman on the island of Cephallonia. The narrative traces the disruption of the peace of the old village by Italian occupation, German cleansing, and Communist infiltration in developing a history, while revolving around the personal life stories of the island physician, his daughter and her deep and romantic love for an enemy soldier, and the cowardice and bravery of people caught up in the horrors of war.

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Summary:

The Book of Mercy is a novel in which each member of a family tries to deal, in individually idiosyncratic ways, with his or her abandonment, as a family and as individuals, by their wife/mother.

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