Vicki's Picks

Josephine Tey's 1949 classic Brat Farrar is cropping back up in the literary spotlight with a long overdue appearance on The Folio Society's list of new publications for 2010-11. Often overshadowed by Tey's more popular Daughter of Time and Franchise Affair, Brat Farrar's quiet intensity builds to an almost unbearable suspense, thanks to Tey's stark contrasting of the beauty and serenity of the English countryside against the horror of the secret it conceals.

With a Dostoyevsky-like obsession with the psychology of crime, Tey lets us know from the beginning that our hero is an imposter, and she spends much of the novel inside his mind. But as Brat begins to suspect that his assumed identity might have been the victim of a murder rather than the alleged suicide, he finds himself playing both detective and criminal, torn between a moral obligation to justice and his growing attachment to the home and family he usurped. This brilliant psychological study, with its deep, rich characters (including the horses) and beautifully detailed setting, is a must read (or read again).

Don't let the play format put you off. It easily can be read in a two-hour sitting and had me bursting into fits of laughter. After enjoying the distinction of being a first-generation critic of an original Mark Twain, be sure to compare it with David Ives' 2007 adaption of IS HE DEAD?, which will run from Oct. 22 – Nov. 13 at Deep Dish Theater in Chapel Hill.

Sharing his fellow Romantics' obsession with natural science, Goethe applies the chemical phenomenon of elective affinities (i.e., an overwhelming attraction between two elements will dissolve any pre-existing bonds to forge a new union) to explain and predict the ensuing chaos when happily married Eduard and Charlotte invite two close friends into their home.

But Goethe's concern over the rising divorce rate, as well as the torment of his own marital crisis (on which the novel's plot is based), injects a moralistic tone to the experiment and sets the stage for this epic battle between man and nature, between free will and destiny. The resulting courageous masterpiece, condemned by Romantics and Moralists alike when it published in 1809, is as philosophical as it is passionate.

Move over Homer and Brothers Grimm, Budnitz shows in her debut novel about story-telling, a 2000 Orange Prize nominee, that she can spin a yarn with the best of them. IITYO is about a family of four generations of Jewish women, each trying so desperately to tell her own story that she fails to learn from the others' stories. It is the youngest of the four women who finally understands, though belatedly, that the key to breaking out of her family's cycle of self-destruction lies in listening to her great-grandmother's stories “in the right way,” as Budnitz is subtly challenging her readers to do with the lessons of history. Budnitz gives a female perspective to Garcia Marquez's magical realism with her fantastic vignettes, including the deliciously wicked means she employs in hunting for worthy husbands and disposing of unfaithful ones.