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whimsyful) wrote2025-08-17 08:15 pm
whimsyful) wrote2025-08-17 08:15 pm
Recent Reading: August 2025
The Manor of Dreams, by Christina Li
Described as a cross between The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Mexican Gothic, The Manor of Dreams takes place across two timelines: in the 1970s, up-and-coming actress Vivian Yin thinks she’s finally caught a break after marrying a hotshot actor and moving to his sprawling ancestral South Californian manor, but then the horrific visions and nightmares start. In the present day, trailblazing actress Vivian Yin has just passed away after living her last years as a recluse, and her family is shocked to discover that she had changed her will at the last minute, leaving the house to the Dengs, descendants of her former housekeepers, instead of her own daughters. Both families move into the manor to fight for what each believe is their rightful inheritance, and insists on staying even as unsettling things start to happen—odd visions, strange things coming out of the pipes and walls, and a garden that seems to have a mind of its own…
As it happens I read this between two others books that were dual timeline stories about finding out what happened to a reclusive female former celebrity (the other two were the aforementioned Evelyn Hugo and Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Lie), so I definitely noticed some similarities and repetitions. One aspect they had in common, and this is something I often find in dual-timeline stories, is that I found the past storyline far more compelling than the present day one. In the past portions of The Manor of Dreams you’re following Vivian as she tries to pursue an acting career and find the source of the strangeness going on with the manor and deal with challenges to her family; the present is mainly about the younger generation wandering through the manor trying to figure out what happened in Vivian’s final years and days while being involved in their own interpersonal dramas, and it just felt much less dynamic overall.
The prime example of this: both the past and present timelines end up having a surprise lesbian romantic subplot, but I found the one in the past well fleshed out and believable whereas the one in the present was very instalove-y, to the point that I wondered if Li included it purely because she wanted a pair of sapphic lovers ending happily to counterbalance the tragic ending of the pair in the past. Which is completely her perogative if so, but Madeline and Nora just didn’t have much chemistry between them, especially compared to the lovely slow build between Sophie and Ada.
Overall, I did enjoy how nearly the entire main cast are Asian women with distinct personalities and who are allowed to be flawed and unlikeable. I also appreciated that this isn’t one of those genre novels where all ills and evils can be laid at the feet of the privileged straight white guy and everyone else is angelic—there is an evil privileged straight white guy, don’t get me wrong, but ultimately he wasn’t the one who created the horrible situation that lasts all the way into the present day. Let your women of color make massive fuck-ups that perpetuate across decades! It makes for much more interesting characterization.
The Appeal by Janice Hallett
A contemporary fair play mystery with an entirely epistolary format. The setup: the Haywards are the most prominent and socially powerful family in the sleepy town of Lower Lockwood. Not only do Martin Hayward and his wife Helen own the local country club, but he’s the director of the local theatre group The Fairway Players and she’s the star actress. So when their young grand-daughter Poppy is diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer that requires a pricey new experimental treatment, the Fairway Players and the community quickly rally around a fundraising campaign. But Samantha Greenwood, a nurse and newcomer to Lower Lockwood and the Players, thinks something is fishy. As she raises doubts the tension builds up in this close-knit and insular community, culminating in a murder and arrest. But QC Tanner believes the wrong person was arrested and that the real murderer is still walking free—and that the clues to what really happened are in the giant pile of subpoena’d emails, texts and other documents he just handed over to his two junior lawyers Femi and Charlotte.
There was a great commentcleodoxa made on a book review here which perfectly summed up what I’m looking for in a mystery:
The Appeal is an excellent example of this. Hallett is not the first nor the second to marry the mystery novel with the epistolary format (both Wilkie Collins and Sayers wrote well known prior examples), but it’s still thrilling to see someone pull off both the slow shifting of what one believes is the truth and successfully differentiate a large cast of characters in such a format. I was especially impressed by clearly the characters came across in their own words, through situations like having one character texts several others contradictory messages, and how the same event is interpreted completely differently according to each individual’s biases, personalities and allegiances. It also successfully uses all the unreliable narrators to hide the truth in plain sight; any wrongdoers know that in the worst case their electonic messages could be subpoena’d, so you know that some of what you’re reading has to be intentionally misleading or downright false, and the fun part is figuring out what.
As for the solution and clueing, I did guess the rough shape of the truth and perpetrators, but not the exact details. I do think some parts of the solution are a little out there given the hints available, but overall this was a very fun mystery, with excellent execution of what could have been just a gimmick.
Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
A biography of an incredibly influential but now mostly forgotten fashion designer. Claire McCardell (1905-1958) may no longer be as well known as her contemporaries Chanel and Dior, but she is responsible for either inventing or popularizing a whole host of clothing items so ubiquitous we no longer even wonder how they came to be: the hoodie, ballet flats, the wrap dress, the concept of mix-and-match separates as well as the capsule wardrobe etc. She also was the first to start using denim as a fabric in women’s clothing, and basically created modern women’s sportswear and swimsuits. She also prioritized comfort, practicality and versatility in her designs, fighting to add pockets to as many of her clothes as possible despite objections from her male superiors.
Dickinson briefly covers McCardell’s childhood in Frederick, Maryland where she formed her passion for clothing and design as well as her fight to go study clothing illustration at Parsons School of Design in New York. After a formative year abroad in Paris, then the undisputed fashion capital of the world (American designers basically just copied/stole French designs), she started working in New York’s cutthroat garment industry. The majority of the book is about her rise from a clothes model at a department store, to assisstant for a wholesale manufacturer, to head designer at a major sportswear company (but still constantly butting heads with her male boss over matters like adding pockets), to being the first designer to be given full control over her designs at an American manufacturer, to creating her own brand and becoming the face of the “American Look” -- described as casual, stylish, mass-produced and affordable ready-to-wear and sportswear.
One major theme that struck me about her story was how much fashion was shaped by geopolitics and social mores. McCardell only really got a chance to promote her own design vision on her own terms because afte Paris fell to the Nazis during WWII, the New York fashion industry could no longer continue their practice of copying French designs and so were forced to innovate. And later when America joined the war effort, both wartime rationing and the push for women to join the factory workforce were incredibly well suited to McCardell’s minimalist, practical style that prioritized comfort and flexibility. But once the war ended and attitudes about women working swung back towards conservatism, McCardell had to actively fight against a return to more restrictive, impractical styles such as the “New Look” pushed by rising hotshot Christian Dior. This New Look promoted a more “demure and docile feminity”, reintroduced restrictive shapewear (including corsets cinched so tight in the waist several of his models fainted during the fittings) and clothes you “couldn’t walk, eat, or sit down in”, and went hand-in-hand with the backlash to women’s autonomy.
I also appreciated how Dickinson displayed a more complex view of what it took for women to succeed in business in those times. McCardell owed several of her early opportunities to job recommendations and other help from female colleagues and mentors in her network, which she paid forward amply later down the line in the form of mentorship, informal support and advice to aspiring young female designers. But McCardell also essentially stole the credit for her close friend and fellow designer Mildred Orrick’s idea of separate close-fitting underlayers—precursor to the modern day leggings, which destroyed their friendship for many years. She was also clear to point out that despite the undeniable sexism McCardell suffered, she was also privileged both as a result of her own choices (ex. marrying a wealthy older widower who already had his own children and enough money for servants so she never needed to give up her career for children or housework) and from being a white woman. Opportunities like the affordable and safe women’s-only housing McCardell lived in during her student days in New York only rented to white women. Despite these additional barriers, there were several successful Black designers at the time like Ann Lowe (who made Jackie Kennedy’s bridal gown) and Zelda Wynn Valdes (who created dresses for celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald and Mae West).
Overall, this was a fascinating look at the life of an ambitious and complicated woman who built her own fashion empire and indelibly changed the way we dressed, as well as how politics and social mores are inextricable from fashion.
Described as a cross between The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Mexican Gothic, The Manor of Dreams takes place across two timelines: in the 1970s, up-and-coming actress Vivian Yin thinks she’s finally caught a break after marrying a hotshot actor and moving to his sprawling ancestral South Californian manor, but then the horrific visions and nightmares start. In the present day, trailblazing actress Vivian Yin has just passed away after living her last years as a recluse, and her family is shocked to discover that she had changed her will at the last minute, leaving the house to the Dengs, descendants of her former housekeepers, instead of her own daughters. Both families move into the manor to fight for what each believe is their rightful inheritance, and insists on staying even as unsettling things start to happen—odd visions, strange things coming out of the pipes and walls, and a garden that seems to have a mind of its own…
mild spoilers below the cut...
As it happens I read this between two others books that were dual timeline stories about finding out what happened to a reclusive female former celebrity (the other two were the aforementioned Evelyn Hugo and Emily Henry’s Great Big Beautiful Lie), so I definitely noticed some similarities and repetitions. One aspect they had in common, and this is something I often find in dual-timeline stories, is that I found the past storyline far more compelling than the present day one. In the past portions of The Manor of Dreams you’re following Vivian as she tries to pursue an acting career and find the source of the strangeness going on with the manor and deal with challenges to her family; the present is mainly about the younger generation wandering through the manor trying to figure out what happened in Vivian’s final years and days while being involved in their own interpersonal dramas, and it just felt much less dynamic overall.
The prime example of this: both the past and present timelines end up having a surprise lesbian romantic subplot, but I found the one in the past well fleshed out and believable whereas the one in the present was very instalove-y, to the point that I wondered if Li included it purely because she wanted a pair of sapphic lovers ending happily to counterbalance the tragic ending of the pair in the past. Which is completely her perogative if so, but Madeline and Nora just didn’t have much chemistry between them, especially compared to the lovely slow build between Sophie and Ada.
Overall, I did enjoy how nearly the entire main cast are Asian women with distinct personalities and who are allowed to be flawed and unlikeable. I also appreciated that this isn’t one of those genre novels where all ills and evils can be laid at the feet of the privileged straight white guy and everyone else is angelic—there is an evil privileged straight white guy, don’t get me wrong, but ultimately he wasn’t the one who created the horrible situation that lasts all the way into the present day. Let your women of color make massive fuck-ups that perpetuate across decades! It makes for much more interesting characterization.
The Appeal by Janice Hallett
A contemporary fair play mystery with an entirely epistolary format. The setup: the Haywards are the most prominent and socially powerful family in the sleepy town of Lower Lockwood. Not only do Martin Hayward and his wife Helen own the local country club, but he’s the director of the local theatre group The Fairway Players and she’s the star actress. So when their young grand-daughter Poppy is diagnosed with a rare type of brain cancer that requires a pricey new experimental treatment, the Fairway Players and the community quickly rally around a fundraising campaign. But Samantha Greenwood, a nurse and newcomer to Lower Lockwood and the Players, thinks something is fishy. As she raises doubts the tension builds up in this close-knit and insular community, culminating in a murder and arrest. But QC Tanner believes the wrong person was arrested and that the real murderer is still walking free—and that the clues to what really happened are in the giant pile of subpoena’d emails, texts and other documents he just handed over to his two junior lawyers Femi and Charlotte.
read more...
There was a great comment
cleodoxa made on a book review here which perfectly summed up what I’m looking for in a mystery: the appeal of the mystery genre is less about the restoration of order than the dance of the seven veils. The constant discovery of secrets and alterations of the picture is what I like, and also simply the way the structure of the mystery genre makes a collection of character portraits and an atmosphere into a novel
The Appeal is an excellent example of this. Hallett is not the first nor the second to marry the mystery novel with the epistolary format (both Wilkie Collins and Sayers wrote well known prior examples), but it’s still thrilling to see someone pull off both the slow shifting of what one believes is the truth and successfully differentiate a large cast of characters in such a format. I was especially impressed by clearly the characters came across in their own words, through situations like having one character texts several others contradictory messages, and how the same event is interpreted completely differently according to each individual’s biases, personalities and allegiances. It also successfully uses all the unreliable narrators to hide the truth in plain sight; any wrongdoers know that in the worst case their electonic messages could be subpoena’d, so you know that some of what you’re reading has to be intentionally misleading or downright false, and the fun part is figuring out what.
As for the solution and clueing, I did guess the rough shape of the truth and perpetrators, but not the exact details. I do think some parts of the solution are a little out there given the hints available, but overall this was a very fun mystery, with excellent execution of what could have been just a gimmick.
Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free, by Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson
A biography of an incredibly influential but now mostly forgotten fashion designer. Claire McCardell (1905-1958) may no longer be as well known as her contemporaries Chanel and Dior, but she is responsible for either inventing or popularizing a whole host of clothing items so ubiquitous we no longer even wonder how they came to be: the hoodie, ballet flats, the wrap dress, the concept of mix-and-match separates as well as the capsule wardrobe etc. She also was the first to start using denim as a fabric in women’s clothing, and basically created modern women’s sportswear and swimsuits. She also prioritized comfort, practicality and versatility in her designs, fighting to add pockets to as many of her clothes as possible despite objections from her male superiors.
read more...
Dickinson briefly covers McCardell’s childhood in Frederick, Maryland where she formed her passion for clothing and design as well as her fight to go study clothing illustration at Parsons School of Design in New York. After a formative year abroad in Paris, then the undisputed fashion capital of the world (American designers basically just copied/stole French designs), she started working in New York’s cutthroat garment industry. The majority of the book is about her rise from a clothes model at a department store, to assisstant for a wholesale manufacturer, to head designer at a major sportswear company (but still constantly butting heads with her male boss over matters like adding pockets), to being the first designer to be given full control over her designs at an American manufacturer, to creating her own brand and becoming the face of the “American Look” -- described as casual, stylish, mass-produced and affordable ready-to-wear and sportswear.
One major theme that struck me about her story was how much fashion was shaped by geopolitics and social mores. McCardell only really got a chance to promote her own design vision on her own terms because afte Paris fell to the Nazis during WWII, the New York fashion industry could no longer continue their practice of copying French designs and so were forced to innovate. And later when America joined the war effort, both wartime rationing and the push for women to join the factory workforce were incredibly well suited to McCardell’s minimalist, practical style that prioritized comfort and flexibility. But once the war ended and attitudes about women working swung back towards conservatism, McCardell had to actively fight against a return to more restrictive, impractical styles such as the “New Look” pushed by rising hotshot Christian Dior. This New Look promoted a more “demure and docile feminity”, reintroduced restrictive shapewear (including corsets cinched so tight in the waist several of his models fainted during the fittings) and clothes you “couldn’t walk, eat, or sit down in”, and went hand-in-hand with the backlash to women’s autonomy.
I also appreciated how Dickinson displayed a more complex view of what it took for women to succeed in business in those times. McCardell owed several of her early opportunities to job recommendations and other help from female colleagues and mentors in her network, which she paid forward amply later down the line in the form of mentorship, informal support and advice to aspiring young female designers. But McCardell also essentially stole the credit for her close friend and fellow designer Mildred Orrick’s idea of separate close-fitting underlayers—precursor to the modern day leggings, which destroyed their friendship for many years. She was also clear to point out that despite the undeniable sexism McCardell suffered, she was also privileged both as a result of her own choices (ex. marrying a wealthy older widower who already had his own children and enough money for servants so she never needed to give up her career for children or housework) and from being a white woman. Opportunities like the affordable and safe women’s-only housing McCardell lived in during her student days in New York only rented to white women. Despite these additional barriers, there were several successful Black designers at the time like Ann Lowe (who made Jackie Kennedy’s bridal gown) and Zelda Wynn Valdes (who created dresses for celebrities like Ella Fitzgerald and Mae West).
Overall, this was a fascinating look at the life of an ambitious and complicated woman who built her own fashion empire and indelibly changed the way we dressed, as well as how politics and social mores are inextricable from fashion.
I finished 
Spoilers from Gestral Village and Stone Wave Cliffs's end
