A Respectable Trade

I love to have a Philippa Gregory book to read when I'm going anywhere. They're easy to get through and I don't mind leaving them behind if necessary. So I was glad to pick up A Respectable Trade in the bookshop for €4, but almost put it down again straight away, because it seemed, um, exploitative.

The story concerns a lady of the upper classes who is penniless and unmarried. She ends up marrying a Bristol slave trader, who has this idea to bring slaves into England, have her train them as fancy house servants, and sell them on at a vast profit. Unfortunately for him, his wife develops an, um, relationship with one of the men (which is, of course, the bit I found a bit yeesh) and his business more or less collapses and he goes a bit mental.

On the whole, the book is simplistic and a bit slavery-is-bad-DO-YOU-SEE? But there are some lovely touches in it. Gregory reminds her readers, for one thing, that the kind of investment and trading behaviours she talks about in this book (and has, as is typical of her, meticulously researched) are the kind of behaviours that the men in Jane Austen's books would have been engaging in when not flitting around the countryside saving ladies from consumption. The ridiculous social climbing and the horror of debt that seemed to be a feature of the merchant class in the late 1700s are also well sketched. Overall, I'd have to say her intentions are good, her detail is excellent, but her plot and characterization are weak. The book wasn't quite as cringey as I expected, though.

All the Pretty Horses

Not read, but listened to, which still counts for the purposes of the New Year's resolution. I recently upgraded my eMusic account to include audiobooks, and have recently started listening to them while I try to tire the cat out in the mornings so I can get some work done.

This is an abridged version of All the Pretty Horses, read by Brad Pitt. He's an excellent reader for Cormac McCarthy, because he has that young but weary tone to his voice, which is ideal for telling the story of young men who cross the border from Texas into Mexico looking for work and getting into serious and grim trouble. This story has all the hallmarks of a Cormac McCarthy book (Note: I have never read a Cormac McCarthy book, I'm just going on what people tell me), including horses, trekking across inhospitable landscapes, feelings of loss and loneliness, and extreme and random violence. It's a pretty compelling story, and I'm looking forward to listening to the other two books in the trilogy, which are also available on eMusic for one audiobook credit. Pretty good value, I think.

God, this post really reads like one of those fake ones that people are paid to write to big something up, doesn't it?