{"id":6317,"date":"2014-08-23T23:18:30","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T03:18:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lettersandsodas.com\/books\/?p=6317"},"modified":"2014-08-23T23:18:30","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T03:18:30","slug":"hapenny-by-jo-waltontor-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/hapenny-by-jo-waltontor-2007\/","title":{"rendered":"Ha’penny by Jo WaltonTor, 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ha’penny<\/em> is set in the same world as Farthing<\/em> (an alternate 1940s England in which WWII ended with a peace treaty and Hitler is still in power in Germany) and takes place shortly after that book ends. The structure is similar, with chapters of first-person narrative alternating with chapters of third-person narrative. Some of the characters are the same—the third-person narrative, as in Farthing<\/em>, centers around Inspector Carmichael and his colleagues in the police force, and some other figures from politics\/society reappear as well. And the first-person narrator shares some characteristics with the narrator of Farthing<\/em>: they’re both upper-class women, and each has done something to earn the disapproval of her family. (Viola, the narrator of this book, is an actress; her family is modeled on the Mitfords. She grew up with her five sisters, and one point she says: “From one angle, I could see how ghastly they were, and that was the angle on which I had changed my name and made my life in the theater. There was another angle though, a very deep one, and from that angle everyone else came and went but my sisters were the only ones who were real” (202-203).)<\/p>\n

I liked this book more than I liked Farthing<\/em>, maybe because that book played with the conventions of the English country house mystery, whereas this one had the excitement of a thriller: the structure felt like it worked particularly well in this one, which starts with Viola’s narrative, and immediately makes it clear that she’s in a psychiatric hospital, after some involvement in something criminal. That something turns out to be a plot to assassinate Hitler and the Prime Minister (Mark Normanby, whose government has been encroaching on people’s freedoms in the name of security and safety from terrorism). It’s clear from the start that the plot is discovered, but what isn’t clear is the timing of that discovery: is the plot stopped before the bomb goes off? Or if not, what happens?<\/p>\n

The setting of this book also felt a lot more fun than the setting of Farthing<\/em>: Viola is playing Hamlet in a cross-cast production of the play, and I liked the vibrancy the theater world a lot, and also the vibrancy of the relationship Viola ends up in, and of London itself, which Viola describes like this:<\/p>\n

It’s strange how many Londons there are and how they overlap in some places but not at all in others. There’s the debutante London, which is mostly Mayfair and Knightsbridge, in which the embassies and Pall Mall are included. Then there’s theater London, which overlaps at the West End, but only there, and which includes bedsits and fix-ups in Muswell Hill and Clapham that I once hadn’t known existed. There’s financial London, around St. Paul’s and the City. There’s the London of the swarming poor, still almost Dickensian. All of these pass each other in some streets, rub shoulders in others, and leave certain areas untouched. (228)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ha’penny is set in the same world as Farthing (an alternate 1940s England in which WWII ended with a peace treaty and Hitler is still in power in Germany) and takes place shortly after that book ends. The structure is similar, with chapters of first-person narrative alternating with chapters of third-person narrative. Some of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lettersandsodas.com\/books\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}