VICTORIA’S QUEST by Nancy Hagen Patchen - Review

 

            In this totally absorbing historical-fiction novel we meet Victoria, a young woman in the 1800’s, at various stages of her life. First as a child, living in a lighthouse, we are privy to the hardship she endures. Her parents are finely drawn – the strict, over-bearing, religious father, the effervescent but stifled mother whose only escape is in light-heartedly playing the piano.

            The author seems to have great knowledge of the functioning of an ancient lighthouse, with details that illuminate us as well as the cliff-crashing ocean below. In fact, this period in Victoria’s childhood has many dramatic shifts that keeps the reader involved in this young girl’s development.

            However, there is a parallel story that brings another aspect of her life into focus. Time has passed, and, now a young woman, we find her captive in a convent shelter for pregnant unmarried girls. There is an engrossing description of the harsh atmosphere in such a place and every detail rings true. There is a mystery regarding the identity of the man who is father to Victoria’s child that is only revealed later. Meanwhile, there are heartbreaking scenes when we meet the other young mothers and realize their plight in this unsympathetic and judgmental world.

            As this is historical-fiction, and the era is mid 1800’s, the sudden vivid introduction of the Civil War adds a blazing focus on ordinary life at the time. This comes close to breaking our hearts as the losses and the numbers so coolly add up. As experienced by this particular young woman, it brings tragedy that threatens to shatter her life and the future of those she loves.

            For my usually non-fiction aficionado husband, Ralph, this turned out to be a 3 a.m. read which, when I worked at Dell Publishing, was the key mark of a great book. His comment was that “It reads as if it’s true… it’s fiction that reads like non-fiction!”

            Plaudits to author Patchen for taking us on this journey into a past world where unknown people, such as Victoria, lived and loved so bravely.

***

INSATIABLE AND OTHER STORIES by Jack Clubb

 When I first moved to Los Angeles in 2012, I joined the Hollywood Writers Group that met once a week at the Durant Library on Sunset Boulevard. One of our writers was Jack Clubb, who charmed us all with his realistic stories about the amusing war between the sexes. Even when we worked from prompts he managed to delight us with his bossy women and seemingly henpecked men that came alive under his prolific pen. Jack also attended Librarian John Frank's monthly Open Mic, and performed pieces that had us all chuckling. Now Newman Springs Publishing in Red Bank, New Jersey, has published 25 of these pieces and I was moved to make the following comment on AMAZON to bring attention to this delightful series of mini-dramas.

 "Jack Clubb's short stories are all so visual, and with such natural dialogue, they could be mini-plays. In the title story "Insatiable" we are amused by the doting mother whose son is a successful crook and delighted by her hardworking henpecked husband's wry acceptance of her delusions. Jack's views of the dialogues between married couples reminds me of the many James Thurber (king of the ironic twist) pieces in The New Yorker. Makes me wonder if Jack has been published in that magazine - and if not, why not?" Morna Murphy Martell

THE POW & THE GIRL (reviewed on Theatre Spoken Here)

In this compassionate play Katrina Wood tells the story of a young girl in 1980’s London, living with her grandfather whose memories wrack his sleep and often daylight hours. Years in a WW2 Japanese death camp have broken his spirit and left him with a bitterly caustic wit. This is based on the author’s own memories of her father, who spent years in the Japanese Changi death camp in Singapore. There prisoners were forced to build the Kwai bridge, and the Burma railroad, leaving thousands dead of brutality, work and starvation. 

Percy Herbert

Katrina Wood’s father was well-known British actor Percy Herbert who, after the war, became a familiar face in over 70 movies. Besides appearing in the Oscar winning film The Bridge over the River Kwai, he also served as adviser on that film.

I left the theatre in tears, my journalistic distance wrecked by Wood's showing how past pain distorts a person’s spirit and any present judgment is unfair. Bad temper might really be the still open wounds of past injury. To abandon the damaged soul is perhaps the cruelest thing we all do, thinking that to save ourselves is more important than holding them close.

The play also hit home because my mother was abandoned by my father in London during WW2 leaving her destitute with four young children during the Blitz. All my life she was depressed and bitter, even suicidal, and I never understood her pain. After she brought us to America I stayed in New York and she moved to California. It was a relief to be free of her erratic moods. 

I thought of John McCain who spent seven years in such a hell, tortured and demeaned, who was offered an early release but chose not to abandon his men. He lived to become an important political powerhouse but even he never lived beyond today’s mockery and cruelty.

This honest play lays open the question of how can we ever repay those who lost everything?  I left  with sorrowful thoughts of veterans living on the streets, devastated by forces they could not overcome and now just damaged goods in an ungrateful world. Great theater reminds us of our humanity and I dare anyone to leave this play unmoved as they walk back away into their comfortable safe life that cost others so much.

Some years ago I stood on Fifth Avenue watching the sparsely attended Veteran’s Day march. It was a Tuesday and not a legal holiday and the New York workers darted among the marching, often wheelchair riding vets, to get across the street. I was wearing a sparkling Stars and Stripes cap and weeping at the negligence shown to these proud but damaged veterans. A team from the TV news stopped and interviewed me to ask why I was crying. I said something like, “these people marching gave up everything so these passersby could have normal and productive lives, and here they are being ignored and it breaks my heart!” I got calls that night from friends who saw me on the NBC Nightly News!

Over the years live theatre has become infected by cynicism, with plays that mock the afflicted and desensitize us to real pain. The lost and damaged are now figures of fun. To name just two plays I walked out on – The Beauty Queen of Lenane and August: Osage County – because I could not bear their cruel depiction of parental relationships. Mockery allows us to be cruel and a figure of fun is easy to abandon. And as for Book of Mormon, its depiction of Africans, and the roars of laughter at their stupidity and venality, had me leaving at intermission. You can read my published comments further down on this blog.

                         For information on the play: Https://powandgirl.com

THE MAN WHO SAVED PARIS: Roger West’s Ride 1914, By Michael Carragher, Unicorn Publishing Group, UK

Lieutenant Roger R.F. West, DSO

For those with only general knowledge of the events of World War I, here is an on-the-scene memoir that will bring it alive. This is an important book because it gives us one man’s story while placing him within the conflict happening all around him. British-born Roger West was of Anglo-German stock, with many German friends, but when the war broke out he volunteered to serve with the British. Being an expert motorcyclist, he was assigned as a despatch rider to the 19th Brigade in France, which bore the brunt of the fighting in the first few weeks in 1914. Even while in the heat of battle, he jotted events in his diary (Aug 4-Sept 18) and told of many hair-raising experiences.

The bridge at Pontoise-lès-Noyon

Historian Michael Carragher proposes that it was a seemingly casual act by West that changed the course of the war. When West discovered that the bridge at Pontoise-lès-Noyon had been left open to the German advance, he volunteered to ride back and blow it up. This prevented the Germans from crossing a key river and soundly defeating the French and British since, by taking Paris, the Germans would have won the war in a matter of weeks.

West’s diary entries are reproduced in full, with explanations by Carragher that give a broader picture of how West’s experiences fit in with the horrors occurring that same time. We learn how German armies poured through neutral Belgium in their attempt to destroy the French military and sweep down to take Paris. Only the tiny British Expeditionary Force got in the way, and their fighting has achieved a mythical status for the endurance of British regulars in the face of the ruthless might of the Germans who outnumbered them several times over.

British despatch rider

West tells an absorbing story of how he moved around the battlefield amid chaos and uncertainty and his account is full of atmosphere and detail. Even though he was crippled with a badly damaged foot, he still rode around the clock, delivering dispatches and directing and assisting soldiers separated from their units. The picture of an exhausted but determined young man, trundling around the battlefield on a worn-out motorcycle, is gripping, thanks to West’s vivid descriptions of those times.

After the war West was awarded The Distinguished Service Order (DSO) the first decoration awarded to the Intelligence Corps for his bold act that had saved Paris. In his memoir, written later but based on his diary, West modestly states: “I was astonished when I heard the idea put about that I had saved Paris… a gross if enthusiastic overstatement… but the demolition of the bridge at Pontoise no doubt played some part in the outcome of events.”

German Cavalry Patrol

One moving incident haunted him all his life. While hiding beside a road in France he saw a German patrol approaching. In his own words: “So here were 21 Cavalry, at 200 yards or less; and myself prone in the long grass above them. I sighted on the leader and then another and another. Eleven of them at least were sitting ducks, and as good as dead, and maybe all 21 before they could reach any sort of cover. It was my duty to kill them. Or was it? For once, in the impersonality of war, I could see them close-to, as fellow men, such men as I had met and been friends with at Bonn University before the war. The horses slopped along with heavy feet, and the leader’s head was bowed on his chest from sheer exhaustion. So, they had been having a hard time too. I squeezed the trigger lightly but not enough to fire, and then crawled back down the embankment to my cycle. I tried to rationalize it to myself - my rifle was full of dust and might have jammed; I was probably unsteady and might have missed; but I knew in my heart I could not have murdered those men.”

The book stays true to Roger West, showing how the tough time he had in the war, and the loss of so many dear comrades, led to his lifelong suffering from PTSD, then called shell shock. After the war was over he left England and moved to British Columbia whose mountains calmed his spirit. In 1938 he moved with his wife to California and became an advisor to Paramount Pictures, working on many movies before ending his days in Carmel, aged 84.

SAN FAIRY ANN By Michael Carragher Published by FireStep Press, Brighton, UK

Review by Tony Murphy

Author Michael Carragher is a teacher in Ireland who specializes in First World War Studies and it is his opinion that it was the British dispatch riders, on British motorcycles, who prevented a German victory. An avid motorcyclist, Carragher gives a convincing presentation in this book that shows the day-to-day activities of the riders. The title captures the maybe daredevil attitude of these men (yes, they were all men) as they cheerfully made a joking adaptation of the French saying “Ca ne fait rien!” that means “It doesn’t matter!”

This dreadful “War to End all Wars” lasted over four years and resulted in more than 20 million deaths. It introduced new technologies such as aircraft and tanks to the battlefields of Europe and involved armies from all over the world. 
Why does Carragher say the dispatch riders won the war? Communications! The Germans, who relied on horses for their cavalry and to pull large bulky cannons, chose radios for communications. Then in its infancy, radios were unreliable and easily intercepted, far less efficient than the person-to-person dispatch rider.

They could communicate directly with the troops in the trenches and always had an advantage in traffic situations. A corporal on a bike had priority over a general in a Rolls Royce in traffic jams (of which there were many) with convoys sometimes ten miles long on muddy trails that passed for roads. A dispatch rider, when heading to the front, could carry a basket on his back with more than a dozen carrier pigeons to be left with those in the trenches so they could communicate with HQ when needed.

Ironically, it was the Germans who had invented the motorcycle 40 years earlier and these riders experienced technical problems with their British motorcycles.  The manufacturers across the English Channel were continually trying to make their bikes more suitable for war. Drive belts were better than chains? Yes, they were. Side valve engines were the design of choice. Why? Carragher is convincing in his analysis of the reasons for these and other technical features of the day.

And what about the bikes themselves? The Triumphs actually originated in Germany years before but were now made in Britain. There were about 25 different brands in service, including Douglas twins, BSA’s, Norton’s and Matchless, a number of them fitted with sidecars carrying machine guns, called “Chariots of Automatic Fire.” In 1914 when the war started the British army had 166 motorcycles and by 1918 when it ended they had 48 thousand.

Carragher gives us an excellent summary of the war itself, with the causes and the politics that prolonged what could have been a shorter and less costly conflict. But the story of the bikes and their brave riders and their heroic exploits provides most entertaining reading that almost counters the depressing history lesson of the death and destruction of 100 years ago.

My brother Tony Murphy knows about the motorcycle world having been the top racer in the USA at the age of 21, a title he held for 4 years. Later he joined  Peterson Publishing as Editor for Motorcycle Magazine. He presently represents ROTAX in the US as the sole importer of often rare or difficult to find motorcycle parts.

MAE WEST AND ME

I met Mae West in a quite amusing and memorable way back in 1976 when she was appearing on the Dick Cavett Show on CBS. This was when I was the TV critic for the Hollywood Reporter and was invited to a press party to celebrate Mae West’s historic reappearance on screen (no matter how small the screen she could always fill it magnificently).

When I arrived at the festivities there she was, in a low-cut red-spangled gown, with the familiar shoulder-length blonde wig, sitting like a queen on a throne, surrounded by a bevy of men. All the male reporters from the industry had turned up to see and talk to this Goddess. I saw how she was talking with her deep growl, and provocative smile, and heard their laughter and retorts. I started to move closer so I could join the adoring crowd – after all I was a significant journalist at a major event and paths always opened for me.

However, a young women, obviously a publicist for the show, stopped me. I’m sorry she said, You can’t go over there. Miss West never allows women reporters to get even close to her.

I stopped, prepared to argue, ready to insist, but then I looked over to the dais and saw why. This was a love fest, men adored her, men got it. Of course, women, myself included, would have noted the creases in the red dress, the dusty blonde wig, the deteriorated countenance of this legendary octogenarian diva.

Mae West was a genius of illusion. The woman that her male worshipers wished we all could be - sexy, witty, challenging, independent, and ready for whatever action they imagined. Was she beautiful? She was 83 and yes there was a radiance to her that transcended time. Okay Mae, I smiled to myself, I got it!

As the Hollywood Reporter is a paper of record, my review of the show is somewhere in the HR archive, and you can see the full Cavett interview on You Tube.

NOT MY FATHER’S SON …a memoir by Alan Cumming

  

Christine Dixon, my Harriet Tubman actress, is appearing on a TV series in New York, “Instinct,” with Alan Cumming as the star. Having seen his work in Cabaret on Broadway, and being an admirer, I was interested to find he had written a memoir, “Not My Father’s Son.” 

Alan in Cabaret

Turns out his father had claimed that, due to his mother’s extra marital affair, Alan was not his child. In this book, the search for answers makes for an emotional detective story as a young man wonders, if not him, then who is my father? 

 

Tony Murphy

Coincidentally, my younger brother, Tony, was 6 months old when my father ran off with another woman. My father’s affair had been going on for more than a year and apparently he told his paramour he was not having sexual relations with his wife. Therefore, my mother was a bad woman and Tony was not my father’s child. 

In “Not My Father’s Son” there are 2 mysteries that parallel each other. Alan is being filmed for a documentary TV series, “Who Do You Think You Are?” in a search for the truth behind his maternal grandfather’s tragic death. Over a period of months the film crew take him from England to France to Singapore, unmasking the story of a WW2 hero who never came home and died mysteriously in a foreign land. 

For 10 years, my brother lived with a loving elderly couple until my mother brought us all to America. In fact, he never met my father until he was 38 years old. By then Tony Murphy was famous in the motorcycle world, winning the US Speed Racing title when he was only 21 and holding it for 3 more years. 
 

The walls in his large ranch house in Antelope Valley are covered with photos from his championship days, along with the medallion from Trailblazers Hall of Fame. 

Alan's parents

While Alan is reeling from the facts he learns about his grandfather, a man he never met, he is drawn into a greater drama. Is it possible that the brutality he experienced from his father was punishment for being the result of a betrayal by his beloved mother. Where does the truth lie? The parallels are mind-boggling. 

  

My parents

Was my mother unfaithful to my father, which gave him reason to abandon her and seek happiness elsewhere? After the woman died, my father came to America to visit us and, when he returned to England, amazed everyone by proudly showing photos of “my son in America!” It takes a leap of faith to know your own son, or does it?

Today there is DNA, and a parent can no longer disown their own child. Alan, in the book, goes the distance and takes the leap to DNA testing, a journey that my brother and I are still considering. As Tony says, “I want to know the truth. If I’m not his son I’ll be quite happy to not have been acknowledged by him.”

Read the book. You will not be able to put it down. When I worked for Dell Publishing there were 2 rules for buying a book: If the phone rang and you had to put it aside, did you immediately return to it? And, if you took it home, did you stay up until 3 a.m. to finish it?

“Not My Father’s Son” is definitely a 3 a.m. book!

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