A DIFFERENT MAINE
Maine is very different than Florida. It has one of the lowest rates of Covid-19 cases and one of the lowest numbers of deaths. Masks are required almost everywhere, and the level of compliance is very high. Going to the supermarket here is a real adventure. One entrance only with sanitizer and a mask enforcer, big arrows and signs indicating one way down the aisles, and a reminder at the checkout station to stay back on the indicated spot. It’s strict but reassuring.
Even the outdoor Boothbay Farmers’ Market is compliant. Everyone was masked! Stands are fewer and spaced farther apart on the town green than in past years. A sign in the middle of the lawn states face coverings are required.
People queue up widely spaced to be served, and the produce stand has a rope in front of its offerings. When it’s your turn there, you tell the man what you would like. He gathers up your zucchini, cherry tomatoes, basil, and lettuce, and then at the end figures out your total. You insert your credit card and bag your veggies while the transaction takes place. The process takes longer than usual, but certainly reduces contact with anyone else and with the veggies!
WEATHER
The weather too has been a welcome change from home. Not the heavy rain showers of our arrival day, but the cool to cold nights thus far and two days with highs in the middle 60’s. Last evening and this morning, we were blanketed by coastal fog. Eerie, moody, calming, you name it, it’s a different scene. I am happy to be wearing long pants, long sleeves, socks (yes!) and even a light fleece indoors.
NOVEL READING
Maine is quiet, quieter than usual this year, and social engagements will be fewer, so more time for reading and reflection.
ON TRIAL
The Body in Question by Jill Ciment
This spare novel was on several notable and best-of-the-year booklists, but I don’t believe it received much attention when it was published in 2019. Googling Ciment, I learned that at 17, she married a professor thirty years her senior and remained with him until his death in 2016.
For this murder trial, the jurors are sequestered. Juror C-2 is 52, married, and attracted to 41-year old juror, F-17 and, against judicial rules, engages him in a secret affair. In part, she is testing whether or not she is still attractive enough, even though she has a husband she loves. Her spouse is decades older (86) and in rapidly failing health.
There are several bodies referenced in this novel: the body of the child Caleb at the heart of the court case, C-2’s husband’s body described alternately with tenderness and medical detachment, F-17’s body, and lastly, the bodies F-17, anatomy professor, dissects. The trial goes on and ends as does the affair, but it is followed by a media frenzy and a crisis.
C-2 returns to her husband’s decline and to another meeting with the other jurors. It is only then in the aftermath that the characters have names, not numbers, and life twists and unwinds.
As I was reading, I wasn’t sure whether I liked this book or what to think of it. I appreciated the clean-cut writing and the distance the author maintained from the characters. Upon finishing, it has stayed with me. And I have pondered the various facets of love and desire, trust, innocence and guilt it presents. (~JWFarrington)
MYSTERY AND LOVE
The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs
Susan Wiggs is a reliable author of contemporary women’s fiction and, early in her career, historical novels. One such was set at the time of the Chicago fire. I looked forward to reading this latest novel but was somewhat disappointed. The setting in a San Francisco bookshop hooked me from the start, but I found Natalie’s all-consuming grief over her mother’s unexpected death overdone and tiresome.
Natalie returns home and takes over managing her mother’s bookshop. The store is teetering on the brink of failure in a dilapidated historic building, and she has the added burden of caring for her grandfather Andrew, who has early dementia. There are two likely “knights in shining armor”: one, contractor Peach, who takes on the building repairs, and the other, the famous, handsome and wealthy author Trevor Dashwood (what a name with echoes of Jane Austen!) who agrees to do a reading and signing in the store.
A bit of mystery surrounding the legacy of the building and hints of hidden treasure add to the mix. Wiggs did her bibliographic homework on the ultimate treasure as it is very believable. The outcome is predictable, and the two men engaging characters. Especially delightful is Dorothy, a regular store patron with initiative and pizazz, who is also Peach’s young daughter. Overall, this is pleasurable reading to while away an afternoon. (JWFarrington)
Note: Header photo and farmers’ market photos ©JWFarrington (some rights reserved).
