complicated mystery about greed and paternity with a sharp-edged, often savage portrait of Chippendale himself, his wealthy, titled (and largely unprincipled) customers, and the artisans who did the actual work of producing those splendid pieces.
Nathaniel Hopson is an unusually tall, thin, physically awkward and somewhat soft-headed young man just finishing a long apprenticeship at Chippendale’s London establishment. Hopson has an excellent eye for the way complicated objects are put together, as well as a slightly harder-to-swallow talent with women—usually maids and working girls eager to accept his embraces.
When his best friend and fellow apprentice, a foundling named John Partridge, disappears, Hopson is sent to the Cambridgeshire mansion of Lord Montfort to put the finishing touches on an elaborate bookcase which Partridge has made from their master’s design. Almost immediately, Hopson (who bristles at being treated like a servant by the family) begins to stumble upon dead bodies—first of Lord Montfort, who seems to have killed himself over a giant gambling debt; then of Partridge, found mutilated in a frozen pond on the estate; and finally of a shady old Italian actress who plays an important role in the story.
Pressed into service by the wealthy neighbor to whom Montfort owed the money, and by the local magistrate, Nathaniel uses his unique talents to solve the crimes. A very interesting young woman who has taken over her father’s rare wood business helps him, even though she seems to be repulsed by Hopson’s philandering. It’s all as shiny and impressively constructed as a piece of fine furniture.
But what makes “The Grenadillo Box” really stand out is the mental pictures it leaves of the devious, angry mind of the most famous of furniture designers. “There is plenty of documentary evidence to suggest that Chippendale was far from incorruptible,” Gleeson says in an author’s note. Add to that a memory by Hopson of his master sounding off in a coffeehouse—“What unjust arbiter decreed that artists and architects, silversmiths and clockmakers and makers of porcelain pots should be the pride of monarchs, while cabinetmakers are accorded only cursory consideration?”—and you have a troubling but highly credible portrait of the gap between an artist’s work and his humanity.
CALIFORNIA GIRL, by T. Jefferson Parker (William Morrow)
These days, Orange County is just another part of the Southern California sprawl—a bit more urban and ethnic in its northern reaches, and tending to real estate pretensions down toward San Diego. But T. Jefferson Parker, who grew up there, remembers a very distinct community in the 1950s and 60s: when the American dream clashed with the national nightmare, and the political reputation of the area was an early mirror of today’s values.
The best thing about Parker’s new book is the way it captures those memories and makes them part of our own past. About a troubled family called the Vonns, a young writer named Andy Becker thinks “…the notion that these poor people had come halfway across the country to find a better life and had instead found ugliness, misery, ruined innocence and death. That we owed them respect for trying. That they had borne a specific burden so that we would not have to bear it.”
“California Girl,” the name on the label of SunBlesst, a now-abandoned orange packing plant in Tustin where a sad, touching young girl named Janelle Vonn is horribly murdered and mutilated in 1968, has serious claims on being the Great O.C. novel—the one (like “Main Street” and “East of Eden”) which stamps and validates the time and place. Young minister David Becker, not moving ahead in his career as he had hoped, in 1963 sees a vacant drive-in theater as a symbol of his life. “Something about that blank marquee got to David, more than the empty screen. It was what he saw when he considered his future as a Presbyterian.”
With the
Nathaniel Hopson is an unusually tall, thin, physically awkward and somewhat soft-headed young man just finishing a long apprenticeship at Chippendale’s London establishment. Hopson has an excellent eye for the way complicated objects are put together, as well as a slightly harder-to-swallow talent with women—usually maids and working girls eager to accept his embraces.
When his best friend and fellow apprentice, a foundling named John Partridge, disappears, Hopson is sent to the Cambridgeshire mansion of Lord Montfort to put the finishing touches on an elaborate bookcase which Partridge has made from their master’s design. Almost immediately, Hopson (who bristles at being treated like a servant by the family) begins to stumble upon dead bodies—first of Lord Montfort, who seems to have killed himself over a giant gambling debt; then of Partridge, found mutilated in a frozen pond on the estate; and finally of a shady old Italian actress who plays an important role in the story.
Pressed into service by the wealthy neighbor to whom Montfort owed the money, and by the local magistrate, Nathaniel uses his unique talents to solve the crimes. A very interesting young woman who has taken over her father’s rare wood business helps him, even though she seems to be repulsed by Hopson’s philandering. It’s all as shiny and impressively constructed as a piece of fine furniture.
But what makes “The Grenadillo Box” really stand out is the mental pictures it leaves of the devious, angry mind of the most famous of furniture designers. “There is plenty of documentary evidence to suggest that Chippendale was far from incorruptible,” Gleeson says in an author’s note. Add to that a memory by Hopson of his master sounding off in a coffeehouse—“What unjust arbiter decreed that artists and architects, silversmiths and clockmakers and makers of porcelain pots should be the pride of monarchs, while cabinetmakers are accorded only cursory consideration?”—and you have a troubling but highly credible portrait of the gap between an artist’s work and his humanity.
CALIFORNIA GIRL, by T. Jefferson Parker (William Morrow)
These days, Orange County is just another part of the Southern California sprawl—a bit more urban and ethnic in its northern reaches, and tending to real estate pretensions down toward San Diego. But T. Jefferson Parker, who grew up there, remembers a very distinct community in the 1950s and 60s: when the American dream clashed with the national nightmare, and the political reputation of the area was an early mirror of today’s values.
The best thing about Parker’s new book is the way it captures those memories and makes them part of our own past. About a troubled family called the Vonns, a young writer named Andy Becker thinks “…the notion that these poor people had come halfway across the country to find a better life and had instead found ugliness, misery, ruined innocence and death. That we owed them respect for trying. That they had borne a specific burden so that we would not have to bear it.”
“California Girl,” the name on the label of SunBlesst, a now-abandoned orange packing plant in Tustin where a sad, touching young girl named Janelle Vonn is horribly murdered and mutilated in 1968, has serious claims on being the Great O.C. novel—the one (like “Main Street” and “East of Eden”) which stamps and validates the time and place. Young minister David Becker, not moving ahead in his career as he had hoped, in 1963 sees a vacant drive-in theater as a symbol of his life. “Something about that blank marquee got to David, more than the empty screen. It was what he saw when he considered his future as a Presbyterian.”
With the
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