La's Orchestra Saves the World

*Starred Review* McCall Smith, author of the wildly popular No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, makes his first foray into historical fiction in this delightful stand-alone novel. Lavender ("La") is a divorcee in her thirties living alone in the English countryside at the outbreak of World War II. With little to occupy her time, La devotes herself to the war effort, first working as a "land girl" for a local egg farmer, until Felix, a Polish refugee airman, replaces her. Again at loose ends, she starts a morale-boosting effort that makes her famous—an amateur orchestra. Originally intended to perform only until the Battle of Britain was over, La's orchestra sticks together until V-E day,... Highly recommended for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008), McCall Smith's numerous fans, and historical fiction readers of all kinds. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.

Drowning out the sounds of war with music

By Eugenia Zukerman

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

LA'S ORCHESTRA SAVES THE WORLD

By Alexander McCall Smith

According to George Bernard Shaw, "Hell is full of musical amateurs," but Alexander McCall Smith's new book defies that assessment. One of the most popular writers of our time, McCall Smith has seen his books translated into dozens of languages. His work as a professor of medical law at the University of Edinburgh and as a participant on international bioethics committees may have informed his popular "No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" series, but perhaps it was his amateur bassoon playing that inspired this new work. Not content with merely founding the Really Terrible Orchestra in Edinburgh (which brings really great fun to its audiences), McCall Smith has established an opera house and opera training center in Botswana. Clearly, his love of music has been translated into action and now into a stand-alone novel called "La's Orchestra Saves the World."

Set in England at the onset of World War II, McCall Smith's new tale is a metaphor for the transformative power of music. The story centers on a woman named Lavender, La for short. When we meet her, she appears to be intelligent but naive, all duty and no daring. At Cambridge she "joined a music society, and played the flute in a quartet" and also received from her tutor some heavy-handed feminist lessons, such as, "All these intelligent girls come to us and then leave, more or less promised to some man. And they go off and marry him and that's the end. What a waste. What a criminal waste." Although La vows that she has come to school "to be taught how to think," she marries her first ardent suitor, who ends up betraying her, leaving her and dying just as war breaks out.

In a show of real pluck and purpose, La goes off to live alone in an inherited country cottage in Suffolk, where she grows vegetables in her garden and helps an arthritic neighbor with his farm. McCall Smith captures England's wartime atmosphere of terror, courage and defiance, and his heroine discovers how music can be an antidote to the horrors of battle. "Music was her refuge," McCall Smith writes. "There was madness abroad, an insanity of killing and cruelty that defied understanding. . . . La thought that music disproved this. Reason, beauty, harmony: these were ultimately more real and powerful than any of the demons unleashed by dictators."

La has a chance to test this idea when an air force officer named Tim Honey sees her flute on the kitchen dresser. Once an "indifferent trumpet player," Tim suggests that there are "chaps at the base who would love to play in a band." And so La's orchestra begins, with our heroine as conductor.

The musicians give a rousing victory concert in 1945, but it is during the Cuban missile crisis, when La decides to "hold a concert for peace," that McCall Smith drives his point home. In truth, La wants the concert because "she believed in the power of music." She chose "Bach for order; Mozart for healing. This was the antithesis of the anger and fear that could unleash the missiles; this was music showing the face of love, and forgiveness."

"La's Orchestra Saves the World" is crafted with the author's usual wit, wisdom and grace. Like a pianist putting listeners at ease with the opening phrase, McCall Smith immediately makes us feel confident that this is a true and resonant tale.

Zukerman is a flutist, the author of four books and the artistic director of the Vail Valley Music Festival.

Turn of the Screw

The turn of the screw

By: James, Henry

The story unfolds with the arrival of a new governess at a remote country estate, who has been hired by the uncle of two young orphans to take complete charge of the children's lives and upbringing. Her first peaceful weeks are disturbed by the apparition of the ghosts of two evil servants who once served in the house.

Read-alikes

1.	The haunting of Hill House Jackson, Shirley, 1916-1965 Reason:  These elegantly written, atmospheric horror stories feature ambiguous and unreliable narration, intimate psychological detail, and a fine balance between supernatural terror and psychological delusion. -- Derek Keyser
2.	Frankenstein Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, 1797-1851 Reason:  Readers who enjoy Gothic fiction that sends chills down their spines might enjoy both Frankenstein and The Turn of The Screw. The former is about a monster from a science project gone wrong and the latter is a ghost story. -- Katherine Johnson
3.	The woman in black Hill, Susan, 1942- Reason:  Set in the Victorian English countryside, these atmospheric ghost stories employ psychological suspense to induce subtle chills. Both novellas make use of framing stories and first-person narration to introduce elements of ambiguity into the tales, which concern children in peril. -- Gillian Speace

James's most famous tales include 'The Turn of the Screw,' written mostly in the form of a journal, was first published serially in Collier's Weekly, and then with another story in The Two Magics (1898). The protagonist is a governess, who works on a lonely estate in England. She tries to save her two young charges, Flora and Miles, two both innocent and corrupted children, from the demonic influence of the apparitions of two former servants in the household, steward Peter Quint and the previous governess Miss Jessel. Her employer, the children's uncle, has given strict orders not to bother him with any of the details of their education. Although the children evade the questions about the ghosts but she certain is that the children see them. When she tries to exorcize their influence, Miles dies in her arms.

The story inspired later a debate over the question of the "reality" of the ghosts, were her visions only hallucinations. In the beginning of his career James had rejected "spirit-rappings and ghost-raising," but in the 1880s he become interested in the unconscious and the supernatural. James wrote in 1908 that "Peter Quint and Miss Jessel are not "ghosts" at all, as we now know the ghost, but goblins, elves, imps, demons as loosely constructed as those of the old trials for witchcraft; if not, more pleasingly, fairies of the legendary order, wooing their victims forth to see them dance under the moon." Virginia Woolf thought that Henry James's beings have nothing in common with the violent old ghosts - "the blood-stained captains, the white horses, the headless ladies of dark lanes and windy commons." Edmund Wilson was convinced that the story was "primarily intended as a characterization of the governess."

The turn of the screw has been adapted several times into movies ofthe same name and inspired the following films: The innocents (1961), The haunting of Helen Walker (1995), Presence of mind (1999), The others (2001), and In a dark place (2006).

Henry James’ Turn of the Screw  1973    Lynn Redgrave

Turn of the Screw for Masterpiece Theater  1999  Colin Firth

Turn of the Screw  Opera by Benjamin Britten   DVD   2005    sung in English