Friday check in: top-a-long + reading

 

Thanks to everyone who's asked for our address for Stevens' birthday card shower. It's not too late--PM me to send the address. 

Quick post this morning.   The Running Doe top-a-long (what is that? read details here) is a flimsy.  

I cut into a few Kaffe prints, including the spashy center flowers.  I used up the large part of several others.  (I'm trying to get over the "can't cut this!" hurdle.) 

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In a small outport town in Nova Scotia in the last months of World War I a dead whale is stranded on the shoreline.  In a hotel in town Elizabeth Frame shoots her husband on their wedding night. She then goes to the whale carcass and shoots the revolver into its blowhole.   Halifax newspaper reporter Toby Havenshaw is dispatched to cover the trial.   Though there is no doubt of Elizabeth's guilt, Toby is determined to uncover her motive.  Things get more complicated when Elizabeth runs off with the court stenographer, a shell-shocked veteran of the war.   Toby's wife Amelia (a surgeon in Halifax returned from the European front) is his sounding-board, anchor, and soulmate through all of this.  

The narration is excerpts from Toby's reporter's journal, told with bemusement and irony. His turns of phrase and observations are wonderful.  "There are missed opportunities to be a better person. To dignify an undignified situation. You miss one of these, it doesn't come back." (p. 34)

"A person sizes up each situation as it comes, and you're either charitable toward it or you aren't charitable." (p. 118)  "Wherever you sit, so sit all the insistences of fate. Still, the moments [hold] promise of a full life." (p. 190) 

One of the Christian Science Monitor's best books of 2024, and rightly so.   And, bonus! This fulfills The Page Turner 2025 prompt for "a book with chapter titles."

Linking up with Finished or Not Friday