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Several things explain why I haven’t posted much lately–some extended Netflixing, rereading things that don’t fit here, like Mary Stewart and some early John Le Carre, and also rereading, yet again and very slowly, Mary Jane Holmes’ Tracy Park. This isn’t a review. I couldn’t write a review. I wrote a really long synopsis once, and that’s here. This is, I guess, an appreciation.

It’s ridiculous how much I love this book. Objectively it’s not very good, probably, but I’m not objective about it. And anyway, I think it’s Holmes’ best work, and that counts for something. It’s got things that others of her books have–insane people, and the name ‘Hastings,’ and a lot of low-key cruelty–but it’s also a lot kinder than her other books. No one is stripped entirely of their wealth, or left to die alone. No one goes  crazy to the point of raving and tearing their hair out. Frank never has to make a full confession to his brother. Everyone’s okay with each other in the end.

Frank is my favorite, probably, keeping on doing wrong and torturing himself over it for years and years. In a way he’s the villain of the story, but he might also be the most moral person in it–he never really convinces himself that what he’s done is okay. I tend to cry a lot reading the last few chapters of Tracy Park, and most of the bits I cry at involve Frank.

If he’s not my favorite, the Peterkin kids are. Ann Eliza gets my favorite happy ending, popular and wealthy and doted on by her husband and living in Paris–although Tom could be a little more doting. Tom’s happy ending is pretty good for me, too, and the faint praise with which Jerrie damns him is such a delight. “So much more of a man than she had ever supposed he could be.” And it’s better because this is Tom under the least trying circumstances possible: he’s rich, respected, has never had to work a day in his life. Things are pretty great for him, but I enjoy knowing that he’d still go to pieces if anything bad ever happened to him. I have a lot of affectionate hate for Tom Tracy.

And Billy Peterkin. Ann Eliza does pretty well for herself. All Billy gets is Jerrie’s friendship and the author’s promise that he’ll never marry. And I’m not sure how much I think of Jerrie’s friendship, considering that her first reaction to his proposal was to mock him. I reject Holmes’ vision of Billy’s future, and I’ve imagined, in rough outline, an alternate one, where he settles out west somewhere, and is properly appreciated by the people around him, and marries someone who both loves him and impresses everyone in Shannondale. If I could wish a single book into existence, it would be that story about Billy Peterkin.

Dolly Tracy deserves a mention, too. She’s so uncompromising as a character. She’s the one who, in another book by Mary Jane Holmes, would die bald and insane in a shack. And I don’t know how that doesn’t happen, or where Holmes’ change of heart came from, but she walks a very fine line with Dolly Tracy, making her equal parts awful and sympathetic. I wouldn’t want to hang out with Dolly Tracy, but I’m glad she travels to Florida every winter, and I’m sad that she’s lonely.

The main characters are less interesting. They have their moments, but their moments don’t always add up to anything. Harold’s the worst in that respect. Harold’s moments come early in the book, and there is nothing interesting about him at all once he grows up. Jerrie is better–I don’t think I would love this book as much as I do if I didn’t care about Jerrie–but Harold infects her with his blandness and also she made fun of Billy Peterkin for being short that one time. Arthur’s fun when he’s being super weird, but I don’t care about him the way I care about my favorites.

No one’s all bad or all good — except Harold, I guess, which may be why he doesn’t do anything for me — and that’s kind of special even in books where everyone is objectively good. Tracy Park is such a ridiculous melodrama, but it’s also pretty human, and…I don’t know. Mary Jane Holmes manipulates me very effectively, and I enjoy the experience.

It’s Mary Jane Holmes time again, and if you like her, you’ll like this. Darkness and Daylight has a special claim on my affections, because it features a Secret Insane Wife, and obviously that is my favorite, favorite thing. But this is a book for connoisseurs of fictional coincidence as well as connoisseurs of fictional insane wives, and I like to think that I’m both. I mean, I suppose it’s not too strange that the Massachusetts estate Grace Atherton inherits from her elderly husband is next door to the childhood home of Richard Harrington, the man she jilted when she was a teenager in England. Or that Harrington reencounters the little Swedish girl he saved from drowning in Germany that one time. Or that Arthur St. Claire falls in love with his wife’s long-lost half-sister who is supposed to be dead, although that’s pushing it a little. But that all three should be true in one book? Or that the Swedish girl (Eloise Temple) and the long-lost sister (Marguerite Bernard) are one and the same, and that Grace Atherton adopts her from an orphanage in New York under the name of Edith Hastings? That’s almost more than I can deal with. Although, to be fair, “almost more than I can deal with” is Mrs. Holmes’ specialty.

If those names sound familiar, it’s probably because these people show up as minor characters in my beloved Tracy Park. Or possibly you’ve read one of the other Mary Jane Holmes books in which a main character is named Hastings.

I know I’ve just given away a large part of the plot, but don’t worry — you would have figured all of that out pretty quickly anyway. The key to dealing with Mary Jane Holmes is realizing that, yes, all the characters are related to each other/secretly connected/actually also other people. Or possibly their children.

Here’s what actually happens: Grace Atherton, of Brier Hill, takes nine-year-old orphan Edith Hastings from the orphan asylum to be her waiting maid. Shortly afterwards, Richard Harrington returns home to Collingwood, which is basically next door. Grace turned down Richard’s proposal of marriage when she was seventeen because she didn’t want to take care of his insane father. Two things about Richard have changed since she last saw him: first, he’s no longer in love with her, and second, he’s blind. That time he saved Edith from drowning when she was two, he caught a fever and his eyesight started to go, although at the point when he’s introduced, he can’t possibly have been completely blind for more than a couple of years (The internet being what it is, oughtn’t there to be a website where doctors make fun of 19th century novels?). Anyway, Richard and Edith get acquainted, and they grow fond of each other.

Soon Grace’s cousin Arthur St. Claire comes to visit, and he’s also kind of taken with Edith, so much so that when Grace tries to send her back to the orphanage, Arthur goes to Richard and talks him into adopting her. Meanwhile, Edith sees Arthur’s photograph of a young blonde girl and somehow knows that her name is Nina. Of all the things in this book that mess with my suspension of disbelief, none compare with Edith’s remarkable memory. She’s been Edith Hastings since she was three, and yet she’s got strong memories of Germany, Florida, various family members, music, and the French language. Half a dozen times I stopped reading to try and make sense of that, and half a dozen times I decided that the best course was probably not to think about it too hard.

Let’s skip ahead eight years. Edith is s

Although I’ve read Tracy Park about four times and love it to a degree that is truly silly, I never read anything else by Mary Jane Holmes. Part of it was just laziness, but I think it was also because I was worried that her other books wouldn’t be as enjoyable, and that I’d be [...]